I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SAINTSENECA-Tiny Desk Concert #377 (July 29, 2014).

Like Highasakite, Saintesenca is another band who plays instruments that are unusual (and whose Tiny Desk Concert is way too short).  But before the music started, I was fascinated by the hair of the band.  Zac Little’s head is partially shaved and his beard is unshaven, but he also has an incredible mustache.  It’s so thick I couldn’t see his mouth moving when he started singing!  There’s also the co-lead singer, Maryn Jones’ hair which is equally fascinating.

And there’s also their instruments.  On the album, they play: banjo, baglama, bulbul, balalaika, bowed banjo, baritone ukulele, bass and bouzouki as well as a stomp box.  For the first song, “Happy Alone,” In this set there is a baglamas (played by Jones), while Little plays a Paul McCartney style bass.  There’s also drums and electric and acoustic guitars.

And their music is fantastic “Happy Alone” has a kind of Decemberists vibe.  There’s a great chorus (and two acoustic guitars accompanying).  The melody is catchy but by the time it comes around a second or third time, it’s a total ear worm.

Between songs they talk about the stompbox.  It’s a roughly 2’x2′ plywood floorboard meant for pounding the beat. The blurb says that “at a show just before this Tiny Desk Concert… Little put his boot right through that floorboard.”  There’s a hole in the box which Jones seems concerned about falling through.  The box also explains why Jones and Little both seem so outrageously tall at this show.

On “Fed Up with Hunger” Little plays a four-stringed guitar (I wish they would say what all of these instrument are).  He plays some wonderfully elaborate chords on it.  Jones sings lead in a very high-pitched delicate voice.  There’s an electric guitar added for the chorus but for the most part this is a stripped down song with some lovely harmonies in the end section.

The final song “Blood Bath” has three distinct parts and it is awesome.  Jones plays bass, Little plays acoustic and the other acoustic guitarist  plays a tiny triangular instrument (a balalaika?).  Little sings in a kind of broken falsetto.  After the first slow verse the whole band kicks in and the song really takes off.  But soon after, the whole band seems to deconstruct the song, playing a few seconds of utter noise before coming back in and following it with a really fast rocking and equally catchy section.  It’s pretty awesome.

I’m going to have to look for more from them.

[READ: May 5, 2008] “Them Old Cowboy Songs”

I was looking through older stories and saw that I had not finished a story by Proulx which was written in a June issue of the New Yorker in this ame year.  How did she ever get two stories within a month of each other?  (And they’re both really really long, too).

This story is dark. Very dark and brutal.  It is set in 1885 and looks at a young couple trying to make it out in the wilderness

Archie is a sixteen year old who lies and says he is 21 to try to get better jobs.  He works a cowboy in Dakota Territory.  In addition to being a hard worker, he is a consummate singer with a golden voice.  He marries a young girl (14), named Rose whose parents don’t approve of him or of her getting married at 14, and they settle in.  The narrator notes: “There is no happiness like that of a young couple in a little house they have built themselves in a place of beauty and solitude.”

There was a somewhat wealthy family in the area, the Dorgans, who would travel to Denver and wear the finest clothes (even though there were few people around to admire them.  Rose admired and despised the daughter, Queeda.

The winters are hard, but they do okay–killing deer (and eating nothing but deer for months).  They talk about getting a cow or a pig.  And then Rose gets pregnant.

But Archie’s boss, a mean son of bitch, laid everyone off.  So what is a man to do for money out here? Especially with a young pregnant wife. None of the locals would hire him, so he had to travel to Cheyenne.  And it is here the gets a job with a man named Karok.  Karok has only one rule–no married men.  So Archie has to lie about that and, of course, it’s pretty far, so he won’t be around when the child is born.

Archie tries to stay by himself, but he does manage to make a friend, sort of.

And then things go from bad to worse.  First they go bad with Rose and the baby.  Then they go bad for Archie on the job and then finally they just go bad for everyone.   The setting is bleak, the story is bleak and the life is bleak.  I can’t imagine willingly reading another story set here.

I haven’t read a lot by Proulx, but one of the things I noted with delight was the names that Proulx has given her characters: Bunk Peck, Queeda Dorgan, Sundown Mealor, Harp Daft, Sink Gartrell.  Crazy names that are really fun to read.