SOUNDTRACK: CATE LE BON-Tiny Desk Concert #337 (February 18, 2014).
Cate Le Bon has a very interesting style of singing–it reminds me of Grace Slick in her enunciation, but also like someone whose speaking accent is very strong and is somewhat masked by her singing (like the way she sings “reason” as “ree-sun” as opposed to “reezun”).
The blurb explains that her “phrasing is completely tied to her Welsh dialect — in fact, her first record was in Welsh…. The enunciation is completely tied to the loneliness and the questioning.”
“Are You With Me Now?” has a very catchy chorus (with an “ah ha ha ha ha” part that makes it sound like an olde English ballad).
“No God” plays with very simple guitar lines (chords played very high on the neck of her guitar and a simple accompanying riff). Hawkline plays keys (and sings some great falsetto backing vocals) to flesh out this song. Everything is so clean you can hear each note from the guitar and her voice.
“Duke” opens with some interesting slightly off sounding from Cate while Hawkline plays a simple chord pattern (his fingers are enormous, by the way). Hawkline’s falsetto is almost as engaging as the vocal lines that match the guitar line which Cate plays. And when she says “I’ll see you here” in that unexpected pronunciation, it’s totally captivating.
I like Le Bon a lot and want to hear what she wounds like on record.
[READ: May 18, 2016] Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
After finishing Bob Boilen’s book and thinking about how I don’t really love music-based books, I immediately read Carrie Brownstein’s book. Carrie Brownstein is one of the two guitarists in Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag. She is also one of the leads (writer and actor) on Portlandia. And she wrote for NPR for a while, too. Basically, Carrie is the shit.
One thing I took away from this book is that I’ve read a few musician memoirs (Mötley Crüe and Marilyn Manson to name a few) and this is the first one I’ve read that was filled with so much sadness. Not “I was stoned and regret sleeping with that person with an STD sadness,” but like, real family problems and even a dead pet. And, as Carrie herself jokes, her stories of being on tour and ending up in the hospital are not based on drugs or other debauchery, but on anxiety and even worse, shingles.
The beginning of the book starts in 2006, around the initial break up (hiatus) of Sleater-Kinney. Carrie is in pain–emotional and physical–and she can’t take much more. She starts punching herself hard in the face.
And then we flash back to her childhood growing up in the Seattle suburbs. She always wanted to perform, to be the center of attention (she gives lots of amusing examples). She talks of her love of Madonna and George Michael and how their shows were amazing. But it took going to small clubs and watching people play instruments that let her know it was possible for anyone to do it.
Then she talks about her family. She and her sister got along (there’s a very funny/scary photo of the two as small girls with her sister pointing an (unloaded) gun at Carrie because, you know, that’s just what you did back then). And then there’s the sadness.
Her mother was anorexic and one day just left–they didn’t hear from her for a long time. And then her father revealed that he was gay.
The one problem I had with the book was that since it didn’t go in exact chronological order, it was hard to know when some of these events happened. She does talk about how she was already in S-K when he father came out, but I’m not sure exactly what the chronology was–perhaps I just didn’t pay close enough attention to the dates. It doesn’t really matter, but the emotional impact would be different at different ages.
And then its on to the music, because that’s what this book is mostly about. She talks about her first band (formed in junior high) called Born Naked and her first song called “You Annoy Me.” She was unhappy in school and in college and eventually convinced her parents to let her go to Evergreen College in Olympia, mostly so she could be near all of the great bands from there; Bikini Kill, Heavens to Betsy, Mecca Normal etc. (It’s amazing to me that I think of S-K as being one of the founders of riot grrrl and yet here’s Carrie being young and into Bikini Kill (of course it wasn’t that long after that she formed S-K).
Heavens to Betsy, by the way, was Corin Tucker’s band. It was just her on guitar and Tracy Sawyer on drums–how ballsy is that. They were a noisy two piece band way back then. And Corin’s guitar wasn’t full of effects and noise–it was just a clean loud guitar.
Carrie starting taking her music more seriously. She tried out for 7 Year Bitch (but didn’t make it) and then formed her band Excuse 17. Excuse are far more proto S-K than Heavens to Betsy was. And their album Such Friends are Dangerous is really good.
Part 2 of the book is all about Sleater-Kinney. They flew to Australia to get a drummer Laura Macfarlane and recorded their debut with her. Laura also recorded their second album Call The Doctor with them.
Carrie talks bout all of the personal trials and problems that went into the lyrics of these albums, but also how intense they were about recording and touring. They didn’t know much about touring–monitors, sound checks, or about being in the studio. They just went with their guts.
And then they met Janet Weiss. And I love this description: “Janet hit the drums harder than anyone we’d played with. She grounded the songs in a way we’d never heard, giving each of our guitar parts a place to go.” And that’s why Janet Weiss is awesome.
Carrie talks about her own sabotage of the band when it came to picking a label to sign with for Dig Me Out.
But despite that, each album brought more success. The Hot Rock was meant to be very different from Dig Me Out. They got a new producer and a new(ish) sound. And that tour is when Carrie first had terrible pain from touring.
For All Hands on the Bad One they returned to their original producer for kind of reset.
And then she puts a lot of quotes–offensive quotes that were not meant to be offensives–that were asked of them. Questions about being a woman, questions no man would ever have to deal with. It’s pretty amazing the sexism in music, even when you think a band like S-K was and above it, they were always right in the middle of it.
In 2000, Corin was pregnant and they took some time off. Corin is also awesome by the way, don’t let me forget to say that–her voice is utterly unique and her guitar playing is stellar. While Corin was having her baby, Carrie didn’t know what to do (Janet, since she is awesome, could find work anywhere). So she did civilian jobs–substitute teacher (can you imagine) and the like.
After Corin’s baby, they got back together to make their new album and the lyrics were torn between happy and dismayed/political. And that was the nature of One Beat.
She then tells us about some bands who opened for them and how many of them went on to be huge: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Gossip, The White Stripes (who then invited S-K to open for them when they got huge). And then she talks about opening for Pearl Jam and what a weird experience it was to play arenas. She knew and liked Eddie but wasn’t sure what it would be like to tour with this big rock band. But she found them all super nice and their crowds welcoming. And that’s why Eddie Vedder is still a fan to this day and vice versa (he has appeared on Portlandia).
The Pearl Jam experience emboldened them as well, and they decided to do something very different for their next album The Woods. They got a new producer and went to a new lace (upstate New York with Dave Fridmann. The album was very different and they liked it. But Carrie started having terrible medical problems–allergies to soy and shingles–and that’s where the book started.
Soon after the band decided to call it quits. She talks about the final shows they played and how bittersweet they were. Eddie Vedder introduced them (with his ukulele) on their final night in Seattle.
Aftermath is but 15 pages long. During the hiatus, she worked at the Oregon Humane Society and adopted many pets (there’s serious sadness in this section).
The Epilogue give the only mention of Portland (one line) and then talks about their new album and how reuniting was such a great feeling.
It’s interesting how this book is all about the past, not the present. Especially since her present is so positive. But this is an interesting look at how someone who seems like she has a lot of fame and success doesn’t have as much as we might think–and how she has to cope with things that you never think of musicians dealing with.
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