Jeremy's Indie Music: St. Vincent Manchester Cathedral 21st February 2014 10/10

The greatest art is multi-disciplinary, stimulating your senses to the exclusion of all else. At its best, opera can provide such total absorption, and St. Vincent drew upon robotic ballet to achieve the same effect. Every detail of the choreography had been painstakingly thought out for the optimum dramatic effect. A high, stepped platform in the centre of the stage was ascended by St. Vincent, only for her to recline on the top and then roll back, upside down. Even without such acrobatics, it would be difficult to imagine a more atmospheric venue than Manchester's gothic cathedral. The strobe lighting added to the over worldly sense of mystery. The huge acoustic may have blurred the vocals slightly, but compensated by enveloping you in sound.

A saxon carving of an angel from 700AD found preserved in a wall is testament to the fact that we were present in a space which has been a place of worship for centuries. St. Vincent's music may have very contemporary rhythms, owing something to Prince who was playing across town, but it feels primeval and mystical. With such ceremony, St. Vincent is more Catholic than Protestant, and her striking dress was as bold and theatrical as any high church ecclesiastical vestment. As it happens, Annie Clark's stage name comes from the Catholic medical centre where Welsh poet Dylan Thomas died, and this was a religious experience. Like Janelle Monae's, her act is highly stylised and imaginative. We were a universe away from the rainy, mundane world outside.

The set, heavy on material from her exceptionally fine new album, was played flawlessly, and didn't diverge greatly from the studio sound. Yet, to my surprise, the experience was far from cold and clinical. On record, St. Vincent isn't perhaps the most immediately appealing contemporary musician. The sounds she makes are viscerally startling and vital, but almost wilfully eccentric. That they are so much more compelling live is in part because she demands total concentration. Once you enter her strangely hypnotic sound world, it's impossible not to be drawn in, and an extraordinary two hours passed all too quickly. Despite the meticulous planning and the adoption of an alter ego, at its heart was a warmth and joy. Flashes of Annie Clark emerged from the character when her eyes smiled radiantly at me. She also struck up an unusual rapport by calling out random facts which she predicted must applied to someone in the audience, by bizarre coincidence, like a medieval prophet.

It seems almost superfluous to try to dissect the music, other than to say that despite the strong vocals, her guitar playing was even more original and memorable. Perhaps I'm influenced here by the surprising turn of events when St. Vincent leaned down from the stage, mid song, and handed me her plectrum, signalling to me to strum her guitar. For me, this was the culmination of a dream-like experience, an evening when I was spirited into an incredibly creative, stimulating parallel universe. Prince Johnny was a mid set highlight, but the climax came with the encores and Krokodil which closed the main set. This song, from a Record Store Day 7" was performed when I saw her amongst the palm trees of Coach ella in 2012. Since then, she's developed her act further into an extraordinary artistic achievement. You should do all in your power to experience it personally; even so early in the year, it's hard to imagine that 2014 will bring another experience to rival this one.