For the record, I don't put much stock in anything St. Vincent says. Apparently she needs a guitar tech to hit which pedals she needs to use for particular songs.
Interesting. Do you have a link about the guitar tech hitting the pedals?
No. I heard that one directly from a musician friend who would know for sure.
the pedals thing is a non-story, IMO. there are a good number of guitarists that get their techs, or a computer via MIDI, to do their pedal/sound switching.
the number of pedal/preset combinations a guitarist has to remember can be overwhelming if they want to sound live like they did on the album. given all the other stuff an artist on stage has to remember and do, hitting the correct combo of pedals isn't something that is going to impress the crowd - but getting the combos wrong is going to drag the show down. i'd rather have a solid show by a guitarist who isn't stepping on his/her own stompboxes, than have a guitarist mess up a song because they accidentally put distortion on a clean rhythm part (which in turn makes the drummer jump and miss a beat, pisses off the singer so they're no longer focused on their performance, etc.)