I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ZEE AVI-Tiny Desk Concert #36 (November 23, 2009).

Zee Avi is a Malaysian born singer songwriter who was discovered via YouTube.  After a few videos were forwarded around, she was signed and then released an album full of simple, delicate guitar driven acoustic songs.

“Honey Bee” is a very pretty, sweet song in which she accompanies herself on guitar.  The second song is a cover of a Morrissey’s “First of the Gang” and while it is far slower than the original, Zee sings it perfectly—her voice is very well suited to Morrissey’s style.  (I enjoyed that she swooned a little when she said his name).  She doesn’t play guitar on this one and there’s a funny moment where the guitarist doesn’t end when she does and she says thanks for giving me the heads up (he says was going to text her but…).

She plays the final song “Just You and me” on ukulele and as with anyone who plays the uke well, this song sounds great.  I don’t know much more about her but I’d be interested to hear what an album of hers sounds like.

 Check it out here.

[READ: February 12, 2014] Tombo

This is the sixth book in the McSweeney’s poetry series.  Even though the series descriptors talk about the beautiful covers on the books, this one is resolutely not beautifully covered, although it is a handsome volume.

Di Piero is a prolific author, with ten books of poetry, a column on the visual arts and several collections of essays.

This collection of poems seems to be about place.  There’s a lot of descriptors of locations and places, but none of them grabbed me strongly.  I enjoyed the last few poems in the collection much more than the early ones.

In particular I thought that the title poem “Tombo” was quite enjoyable because it was so concrete.  And the sequence with the hawk in the poorly named “So It Goes” was visually arresting as well. 

But I felt like a lot of the poems just didn’t do anything.  There was scenery, but it just felt nebulous.  Like in “Starting Over” “this place that’s not a place / its pepper trees, olive trees, lilac,/ narcissus, jasmine, here with me / and mock orange and eucalyptus and cypress flat-topped by sea wind.”  That last images is nice, but then, “Here are interstate concrete / desert dust, hardpan / here are cobblestones and steep brickly streets.”  You can picture it but only generically.  And while that may be the point, it doesn’t make for good reading.

Or in “The Running Dog” there is random detritus but it’s not impactful: “the things around us / this pigeon feather, acorn, / rinds and grounds and crusts, / any this or that.”  That sense of indeterminateness even creeps into a poem that seems very purposeful like “Earthquake Following Tsunami” with “it’s St. Patrick’s Day or Gay Pride, any parade.”  Although the end of the poem, with the “I think” refrain solidifies and makes it more enjoyable.

There wasn’t much in this book that I wanted to reread.