“I wish I was still in college,” St. Vincent waxed nostalgic between songs during her outdoor set at the University of Connecticut’s South Quad during an overcast Saturday afternoon. I can commiserate — my alma mater has developed something of a fledgling indie identity since I left the beer-swilling, jock-strap-smelling campus in 2002. Since graduating, I’ve been lucky enough to see a bone-crushing Mastodon/Thurston Moore/Lightning Bolt show at Hilltop Café circa 2004, Joanna Newsom at Von Der Mehden Recital Hall in ’06, and, just last year, Vivian Girls and Real Estate on Halloween at the recently renovated Student Union.

Today, the petite 27-year-old Texas native showed off her considerable chops and the prowess of a predatory jungle cat throughout her 45-minute set. She threw herself into a jarring rendition of Actor highlight, “Marrow,” and offered revised takes on now-familiar tracks like “Your Lips are Red” and “Jesus Saves, I Spend” from 2007’s Marry Me. She also played almost every song from 2009’s beautifully-realized sophomore-slump eschewing album, Actor.

This was my fifth time seeing Annie Clark live, and she has only improved with age. My first time was at New York’s Bowery Ballroom in 2007. I remember distinctly being taken aback by Annie Clark’s singular talents and wealth of charm. She was an up-and-coming phenom then, and her stage persona has become only more self-possessed and engaging since then. Here is a character so suited for the stage you’d mistake her for the offspring of vaudevillians. At one point during her set, she even went into a two-minute monologue about a college roommate who used to dress as a different historic personage on a daily basis, bewildering the youngsters in attendance.

Clark has stated in interviews that she’s partially inspired by cinema. The influence shows in her performances, where she seems to shift shapes, breaking songs down into their constituent parts, then rebuilding them out of a healthy mix of effects, samplers, and, most endearingly, live instrumentation, including strings and horns. She has a dramaturge’s knack for creating tension that she releases in glorious squalls of feedback and guitar freakouts.

Today, Clark had the UConn hipster set — an invisible demographic when I attended, now numbering in the seeming hundreds — eating out of her paw. Her relentless touring schedule in support of Actor has paid dividends in fresh arrangements that sound nothing like the songs on the album. You get the sense playing by rote would only bore an intelligence as razor-sharp as Miss Clark’s. My only gripe being that she didn’t play any covers (she’s been known to play the Beatles’ “Dig a Pony,” as well as Jackson Brown’s  — though more familiarly, Nico’s — “These Days” on occasion), and if she has any new material, she isn’t tipping her hand.

As Clark’s set wound down to the plaintiff strains of longtime sideman Daniel Hart’s violin, the sun began to peek through the clouds. Had Miss Clark summoned Apollo from his hiding place? It would not surprise me one bit if such celestial music had fans even in the heavenly spheres.