Screaming in Spanish: St. Vincent Conquers New Ground With Todos Nacen Gritando

St. Vincent is a great example of why some phrases stick around long after they’ve graduated to a cliché: In this case, “You can take the girl out of Texas but you can’t take Texas out of the girl” seems freakishly fitting.

Dallas native Annie Clark, the singer behind the Grammy-winning alt-rock solo outfit St. Vincent, embodies all that’s cool in the Lone Star State with Todos Nacen Gritando. The album, out Friday, Nov. 15, is a Spanish re-recording of her seventh studio album All Born Screaming, which dropped last April, and a culmination of the lessons she’s learned in her eventful life and milestone-marked career.

We chatted with Clark, 42, the Monday before Election Day. Like any conscious being, she's anxiously awaiting the race to be over. She spent her day watching the news and calming her anxiety by rewiring her studio in Los Angeles. Though she calls LA home these days, Clark visits Dallas quite frequently, noting that she's stopped by Lake Highlands’ Resident Taqueria — owned by her sister Amy and brother-in-law Andrew Savoie — just “three nights ago.”

“I am not a vegetarian even though it seems like I would be,” Clark says. “Actually, it seems like I would be vegan. Did you think I was vegan?”

Her go-to order includes the restaurant's most popular dish, the cauliflower taco, plus the the soft-shell crab taco, an elote and cabbage salad.

Clark’s fondest life memories are tied to Dallas, from “being in high school and driving around White Rock Lake and getting stoned with friends” to “realizing I did not like weed.”

As she grew up, Clark’s family fostered her love of music, taking her to see artists such as Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac at Dos Equis Pavillion, then known as Starplex.

“There is a real cross-pollination in Texas of musicians,” Clark says. “My friend Robert Ellis was educating me on country swing musicians and the jazz heads. There's a deep connection there. I feel like there's a reason why Texas breeds a whole lot of really cool musicians … There’s always been a vibe in Texas, in terms of music.”

As her love of music flourished, Clark’s uncle and stepdad helped set up a recording studio in her bedroom. She learned at a young age how to record and produce music using a Tascam board track.

“Most of my formative experiences with music was sitting in my room alone, recording myself and figuring out, ‘OK, this wire goes here, and that goes here, and then what happens if I make this sound?'”

By 15, she was working as a “glorified roadie” supporting her aunt and uncle — jazz duo Tuck & Patti — on tours.

Some of Clark's earliest work — including her second, third and fourth albums, Actor, Strange Mercy and St. Vincent — was recorded at Elmwood Studios in Oak Cliff with producer John Congleton at the helm. The bulk of these albums were very much a local effort, with Dallas musicians.

“Annie doesn’t sound like anyone else,” says Midlake drummer McKenzie Smith, who contributed to those three albums,  “and no one else sounds like her. The timbre of her voice, her sharp-witted lyrics and her signature guitar style and sound are uniquely her own, regardless of whatever creative backdrop she chooses to frame herself in.”

Clark's brand of smart rock-pop became a staple in the world of alternative music through her poignant, vivid storytelling and next-level guitar stylings. She would later collaborate with acclaimed producer Jack Antonoff on subsequent albums, 2017’s MASSEDUCTION and 2021’s Daddy’s Home. The latter found Clark reckoning with the release of her father, Richard Clark, from prison. He was convicted in 2010 on one count of conspiracy, seven counts of wire fraud, five counts of securities fraud and one count of money laundering.

For All Born Screaming and Todos Nacen Gritando, Clark took the reins as sole producer for the first time — an experience she describes as “pushing a boulder up a mountain.” She began working on All Born Screaming immediately after Daddy’s Home and experimented with microdosing psychedelics in the album’s early stages.

“The entire process was humbling, and I certainly didn't need psychedelics to tell me that,” Clark says. “... It's certainly, at times, really exhilarating and then other times you're like, ‘What Nietzsche Hole did I climb into? Why am I doing this to myself?' I would say Daddy's Home was a way more psychedelic record, both inside and out, than this one. But I certainly appreciate psilocybin.”

Clark knew by 23 that she wanted to make an album called All Born Screaming, centered around life, death and love, and for this particular record, she knew she had to be the sole producer.

“There were emotional places I needed to find, and I felt like I could only really find those alone,” she says.

El Mito, el Grito

Some of All Born Screaming’s notable tracks include the thrashing “Broken Man” and the melancholy “The Power’s Out," which Clark describes as her version of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” — “but in 2024.” Following “Power's Out,” the album hits a more joyful stride, with “Sweetest Fruit,” a tribute to the late DJ and producer SOPHIE, as well as the late queer politcal cartoonist Daniel Sotomayor.

On Nov. 8, the 67th Grammy nominations rolled in and once again St. Vincent (who has three wins under her belt) proves to be an Academy favorite with noms for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for “Broken Man,” plus a Best Alternative Music Performance nomination for “Flea” and Best Alternative Music Album for All Born Screaming.

When it came time to translate All Born Screaming to Todos Nacen Gritando, Clark sought help from her best friend in high school, videographer Alan Del Rio Ortiz.

“As soon as we started I realized the project was going to be pretty complex,” Ortiz says. “I thought about it in terms of translating poetry. At first your brain wants you to think about it as strictly literal, but of course you can’t do that. Some things just don't make any sense in other languages. Plus, things start getting clunky and lose their meaning. You have to start making decisions on whether you want to focus on flow, or accuracy or length, etc. It’s really more based on feeling. And then of course we have to think about the actual sounds, and how it audibly registers when she sings.”

Clark was inspired to record Todos Nacen Gritando after performing in various Hispanic and Latin American countries. Though not a native Spanish speaker herself, she is often stunned by how often she performs in these countries, seeing these fans recite back every lyric to her in perfect English.

“I had a number of really pivotal experiences going and playing this tiny club, and realizing that every single person — 1,000 people in this place — are singing my songs back to me so loud that I can't even hear… and this is their second or third language — maybe their fourth — and they knew it all and they cared," Clark says. "They were so giving of their spirit and so unabashed in their love. And I thought, ‘Well, OK, so if they've been coming to me for this many albums, maybe I can try to meet them halfway and sing in their language.’”

Clark describes the process of making Todos Nacen Gritando with Ortiz as “Classic Annie and Alan being in theater class or English class together, talking about poetry.”

Though the project posed many challenges — some English phrases don’t translate well to Spanish, and vice versa — Clark and Ortiz found ways to make the messages of the All Born Screaming songs equally impactful in Spanish as they are in English — in some cases, even more so.

In a line in “Sweetest Fruit,” Clark sings, “The sweetest fruit is on the limb.” On the Spanish version, titled “La Fruta Mas Dulce,” the phrase she sings translates to “The sweetest fruit is on the vine.”

“It’s different,” Clark says, “but also very powerful, I think.”

Another song from All Born Screaming, titled “Reckless,” is called “Salvaje” on Todos Nacen Gritando.

“I remember early on suggesting ‘salvaje’ for ‘reckless’, which is more like ‘wild’ or ‘savage’ and she really liked that. Literally, ‘reckless’ is closer to ‘imprudente,’ but it just didn’t give off the right emotion,” says Ortiz. “She really leaned into putting the puzzle back together in a new way and that was exciting. There was a lot of, ‘Now that the song is heading in this direction, what are some lyrics that will support that?’”

Cool Summer

Though Clark is revered in the rock and alternative world, she has maintained a subtle presence within the pop landscape. Around the time Clark released MASSEDUCTION, New Zealand singer Lorde released her sophomore album, Melodrama — which was also primarily produced by Antonoff. On X (still Twitter then), Lorde posted the line “You’re the only motherfucker in this city who can handle me” from the album cut “New York.”

The tweet sparked a meme, with one fan notably quote-replying to the post, “Me drunk on the floor talking to my dog.”

Clark doesn’t remember this moment, but is “so touched Lorde did that.” To this day, “New York” remains one of Clark’s signature songs.

“That's the one, without fail, I think brings people together, which is quite sweet,” Clark says.

In 2019, Clark was credited as a co-writer on Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” from her Lover album. Though “Cruel Summer” wasn’t marketed as an official single upon its release, the song became an instant fan favorite through viral pandemic-era TikTok videos and from performances on Swift’s Eras Tour.

Due to demand from Swifties, “Cruel Summer” was released as a single in 2023 and was sent to radio to drill into listeners' memories. In 2024, the song remains in rotation on pop stations.

“I knew it was such a cool song,” says Clark of the Swift track, “and I always thought like, ‘This is a banger,’ but I had no idea [it would be a hit] because it wasn't a single at the time. and Taylor's fans just being just a real force of nature, they were like, ‘Wait a second, hold on. This song's a hit. We're going to make it a hit. Even though this is from five years ago, it doesn't matter, this is a banger and we choose it and we're going to march it up the charts and make it a sleeper hit.’ I was truly blown away by that.”

Self-producing an album is never an easy task, but throughout Todos Nacen Gritando, there’s a palpable softness within the music — a wisdom Clark has gained from having already written these songs. There's also a sense of newness as the three-time Grammy winner continues to push the envelope through compositional risk-taking.

“Life is hard,” Clark says. “It's hard for everyone. To live is to suffer, it’s to dance with fire. But, ultimately, we're here, we get to live it. So let's go.”