I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: LUCIUS-Tiny Desk Concert #261 (January 7, 2013).

I’d published these posts without Soundtracks while I was reading the calendars.  But I decided to add Tiny Desk Concerts to them when I realized that I’d love to post about all of the remaining 100 or shows and this was a good way to knock out 25 of them.

This Tiny Desk Concert has a wonderful blurb:

We brought Lucius to the Tiny Desk because I fell in love with one joyous, catchy song: “Don’t Just Sit There.” That’s all I had to go on — I’d never seen the group live — and though I expected fun, we also got fabulous. Not only are Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig a winning singing duo, but their charisma and charm helps turn good pop songwriting into an endearing performance.

The two singers are dressed identically–although they don’t really look much alike, they appear almost identical up there (and I’m not sure who is who).  The three men in the band: Danny Molad, Peter Lalish and Andrew Burri fill out the group with guitars and drums and are also dressed identically–in crisp white shirts and suspenders.

“Go Home” starts out slow with a rattling slide guitar and simple percussion.  The two women sing slowly over the bassline.  It’s a pretty, nice song.  And then the chorus kicks in and while the song doesn’t really get all that much bigger, their voices soar incredibly, in close harmony. It is a remarkable change in texture in the song and they instantly won me over.

It segues into “Don’t Just Sit There” which is a beautiful song with a slightly faster quiet section.  But again, the chorus “did you find love” just soars with their great harmonies.  I can see why Bob fell for them.

“Turn It Around” starts out with an “aha ha” and claps and a more poppy singing style.  And I find that while I like Lucius overall there are parts that I really don’t.  Like the beginning to this.  And yet, once again, when they get to that chorus “looking through the wrong end,” the song is super catchy and wonderful and I find myself singing that part a lot.  Even with the minimal backing guitar and drums, it sounds great.

After the third song, they get high-fives and Bob asks if they want to do another.  Usually, they edit out this type of thing, but it’s really fun to watch the band discuss what song they should play as they sort their percussion parts out.  I loved watching them go through Bob’s box of interesting percussion instruments until they found good ones.

When they finally get around to the song, “Genevieve,” it is a bouncy percussion-filled fun song.  Of the four, it’s my least favorite but that’s because it doesn’t really soar like the other ones do.  But it’s still fun.

[READ: December 21, 2016] “Circumstances Of Hatred”

Near the end of November, I found out about The Short Story Advent Calendar.  Which is what exactly?  Well…

The Short Story Advent Calendar returns, not a moment too soon, to spice up your holidays with another collection of 24 stories that readers open one by one on the mornings leading up to Christmas.  This year’s stories once again come from some of your favourite writers across the continent—plus a couple of new crushes you haven’t met yet. Most of the stories have never appeared in a book before. Some have never been published, period.

I already had plans for what to post about in December, but since this arrived I’ve decided to post about every story on each day.

There’s a fantastic plot point in this story that I don’t want to spoil.  And that makes it really hard to talk about the story.

But I really enjoyed it a lot.  And I can reveal the basic setup.

It had been 17 years since Nicholas was in his grandfather’s house.  And now that his grandfather was dead, Nicholas was willed the man’s property.  So he and his new wife Ann leave their current place in Victoria and head out to Halifax to make a new life in their new house.

Ann hated Halifax–the cold, the gray, the wilted produce.  And she hated the house.

The house was cluttered and dusty.  She spent much of the first month on the phone with family and friends back home.  He even heard her say “I don’t know why I even came.”  And then there was the refrigerator.

The narrator’s grandfather was a scientist.  As they cleaned up the place, they found sketches on onion skin paper, chemistry formulas, an article about cryogenics.  They also found a sociology thesis from 1976 entitled “The Circumstances of Hatred.”  Much of this junk they had tossed out, but some things they’ve kept.  But the fridge was something else.

The will stipulated that they would keep the machine attached to a power source and to guard the lock on it.  Nicholas’ grandfather came to live with them in Victoria when Nicholas turned ten.  His grandfather had come from Argentina and brought the fridge with him–hooked up to a power source the whole time.  Nicholas says he was the only one who was curious about the contents of the fridge.  He would ask his grandfather about it, but the man never revealed anything.  He would only say things like “Is the ability to trust others a virtue or a fault?”

Ann and Nicholas joked about what might be in the fridge: embryos, Chinese dragons, alien eggs, the heads of the kids who made fun of him in school.  But they refrain from opening it, ensuring that it is always running.

And then one day they come home to a horrible smell and a wet floor.  There had been a power failure.  So they decide to open the lock.   Ann is pretty freaked out but she is not ready for what they see inside.

I won’t spoil the surprise.  (And that’s less than half way into the story).

But I do want to say that although the revelation could lead the story into an obvious/cliched conclusion, Trunkey does some amazing things with the story.  In addition to a kind of sci-fi element (what with the fridge) there’s a wonderful psychological component as Ann and Nicholas try to cope with what they have found.

I’d love to say more, but it would spoil too much.

This is the third story in a row that I really loved from this collection.