I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WYE OAK-May 29, 2011, Sasquatch Festival (2011).

I don’t know all that much about Wye Oak.  This concert from Sasquatch has a very shoegazery vibe–like a more sultry Cocteau Twins.  This concert has a vibrancy and bounce that I like quite a lot.  The first half of the show comes from their most recent album Civilian.  Singer Jenn Wasner’s voice has a deep resonance that makes it sounds like high notes are not easy for her, but she manages them anyhow.   The songs are mostly a kind of indie rock, with fuzzy guitars.  Although “Dogs Eye” is a lot heavier with an interesting keyboard sound tacked on top.

The older songs aren’t quite as dynamic or interesting, even in this setting.  The whole show flows really well, but the beginning is a bit more exciting.

The strange thing is that her speaking voice sounds so southern when they’re just from Baltimore.

[READ: November 28, 2012] “Member/Guest”

This story is about Beckett, a fourteen-year old girl, and her friends.  They are members at a resort in the Hamptons, a resort they have been coming to since she was little.  I rather liked this description of her friends, “They were like a favorite TV show that had gone all ridiculous, yet you stayed tuned, hoping that the silly plots would get better.”  But rather than getting better, the girls were talking about what was in the shorts of Brad Sawyer and Justin Miller.  Natalie, the sexual oracle, (she showed them a Trojan the other day) predicted that it would look like Barbie’s leg.

The girls are naughty and vulgar (and rather funny).  Clio says they should all get out their Barbies for practice–their moms would be so happy to see them rediscovering their childhood toy!  There’s another funny sequence when Beckett sees her parents.  Her dad calls her toots and her mom mocks him saying “I didn’t know we were suddenly at the Copa.”

The interaction with her parents and her parents’ friends leads to a discussion of what kind of vacations they should take in the future.  Beckett’s dad suggests Europe, although Beckett thinks Cambodia sounds better.  They figure she’s just bored.

The story is also about Beckett’s interaction with the man in khakis at the terrace edge.  His job is to keep beach-wandering non-members out of the members only area.  She wonders about the man who she has never spoken to before.  She asks him how he can tell who is a member and who is a guest.  He gets to know faces  he replies.  He has known of her for years.  She asks if he just sits there all day and says that that sounds boring   His reply: “You’re too you to know what boring is.”

The man points out her friends, and she runs off to them so they can all swim to the barrels–the edge of the acceptable swimming area.  When they get out there, they grill Beckett about the man.  Clio asks if she’s going “to blow job him.”  But Beckett has had enough of this and turns on Clio and her middle class life in Pound Ridge (in Westchester County NY).   And the story turns adolescent and nasty.  It’s an interesting look at bored teenage girls.  This story felt very real to me and I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Karen has an interesting take on the story (of course).  She was concerned about Beckett’s precocity, which I think is valid, although I suppose if you are rich and named Beckett you are almost destined to study Latin and make ancient literature jokes.