Wintergarden, Eastbourne

A computerised voice orders the audience to refrain from “digitally capturing tonight’s event” seconds before Annie Clark walks out onstage. As soon as she arrives she, almost instinctively, commands the gaze of the crowd gathered in Eastbourne’s majestic Victorian theatre. It’s a gaze she holds until the dying embers of the encore’s finale. It’s an ability she shares with few other artists.

She opens with a synchronised high energy dance routine to the electronic, throbbing Rattlesnake before launching into a crowd pleasing rendition of Digital Witness. It’s a song in a strain of kooky pop that burbles with its high class funky-edged beat and squelchy, synthesised, brass boosted bassline.

From the synchronised moves that cheerfully grapple with St Vincent’s restrained brand of pop to the between song conversation designed to endear the audience she strikes a vital connection and temporarily makes the room feel they have been welcomed into the inner circle.

A sixteen song strong set saw Clark cascade through a series of grown up, disjointed pop songs. Songs like Cruel, with it’s flickering, fluttering, radiant charm and the drivingly propulsive Actor Out Of Work which knits melodic lightness to dark edged, heavily fuzzed riffs.

Though the performance always feels theatrical and highly controlled there is an underlying notion that there is enough freedom reverberating underneath the poise that it could also break free at any time, particularly when Annie Clark temporarily cuts loose and fires out a ferociously wild guitar break.

One thing is for sure, Annie Clarke is a rare and idiosyncratic talent. She really is unlike any other.