Annie Clark

"It was a good night for martinis at the milky way recently. That's right, real martinis, with real booze, authorized by a real liquor license, no longer restricted to beer, wine, Bailey's and Jagermeister. If you ask, the bartenders might still mix you one of those cordial-based makeshift cocktails they so creatively devised under the old restricted license. But on the first week-end night of a full-bar service, the crowd seems happy enough with the real thing. It's a bonus to find some potent stuff on the music bill as well. the bill is dominated by the distinctive females voices of the three local talents. The Boston-based openers all tend to elicit comparisons to the same gang
of female singer-songwriter prototypes (pj harvey, bjork, ani difranco, and kristin hersh among them) but none is in danger of copping anybody else's style. Heidi Saperstein (a former guitarist for '90s boston rockers shiva speedway, accompanied here by come/throttle drummer daniel coughlin) is a moody solo artist with a deeply intimate signature style. And then there's Annie Clark, a 21-year old musical auteur so offbeat you either have to stare or look away. Most of the crowd here opts for the former. The pixie-ish beauty is nearly obscured by her enormous guitar, a vintage Gibson Birdland. She accompanies the idiosyncratic turns of her breathy, arching melodies with an astonishingly nimble, percussive style--fingering, tapping and slapping out a complex, textural musical landscape. Clark's soprano makes you think of a lot of people, from Laura Nyro to Sinead O'Connor, but only in passing. As a child, she says, she had an obsession with the guitar and fashioned her own instruments from cardboard and rubber bands. She started playing a real guitar at about 11 years, making up songs with a few chords her mother had shown her and singing along spontaneously. 'I would just play and open my mouth and whatever came out, came out,' she says in a phone interview earlier this week. 'A strange thing used to happen when I first started. when I opened my mouth to sing, I would instantly start crying. I guess it had to be coming from such a deep part of my being, to be that emotional.' She's still doing what comes naturally. See for yourself when she opens for guitar gods Television on Wednesday night at the Paradise, 969 Commonwealth Ave. Tickets $25. Call 617-562-8800 - Boston Herald, Robin Vaughan 3.21.04

Annie Clark has me in her pocket before she even technically starts her set, as she plays and sings an ex tempore sound check song (lyrics include "can I have more vocal in the monitor please?") and the band joins in seamlessly. The band comprising drums and electric cello; this looks good. And so it proves to be, as Annie's ebullient stage presence is matched by jazzy, powerful vocals, kick-ass guitar, and a whole lot of complicated, capable support from the rhythm section. The drumming is creative and solid, with lots of unexpected rhythm changes. The electric cellist mostly gives us fat, funky plucked bass lines, but occasionally he bows buttery-rich low parts or crunchy distorted high pizzicato rhythms. And Annie's singing is mostly delicate highs, but with an occasional growl or scream thrown in that keeps it from getting lightweight. The tunes are a little light on melodic hooks, but heavy on weird chord progressions and raw talent. - The Noise, Rock Around Boston, June 2004 Issue #242, Steve Gisselbrecht

Adorably spunky guitar prodigy Annie Clark startet strumming at age 5, when she rigged up an instrument out of cardboard and rubber bands. Happily, she found herself a real guitar before it became necessary to start cutting up the dining room table and pulling wires out of the walls. Tonight, you can see Clark and her guitar at the Milky Way Lounge, where she headlines a show that also features sets from Heidi Saperstein and prettytheboat. Doors are at 9; $7. 401 Centre St., Jamaica Plain, 617-524-3740 - Boston Globe, 3/5/2004

One special gem was a modest-appearing Annie Clark, a singer/songwriter who seemed almost dwarfed by her electric guitar. Stripping herself of the back-up band that accompanies her on Dorm Sessions Vol. 1, she revealed a much more private and intimate rendering of "Count." Her jazzy guitar playing and a breathy-sweet voice was an ethereal marriage of Jeff Buckley and Bjork. - Berklee Press, Toshia Mana, 3/5/03