I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BIG THIEF-Tiny Desk Concert #562 (August 29, 2016).

Bob Boilen absolutely loves Big Thief’s debut album (it made his top ten this year).  I think it’s really good, but I don’t quite love it the way he does.

But I think their first song, “Masterpiece” is really a great song.  And in this Tiny Desk Concert, they play it with a slightly different feel.  It seems to allow the sounds of the guitars to come through a little more.  Like the album, though, the harmonies are wonderful.

When the video started, the camera focused on just Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek, and since the first song starts with just the two of them I wasn’t even sure of the whole band was there.  They are, although it’s odd how isolated the rhythms section looks in this video.

“Paul” is a mellow song with a strangely subdued and yet catchy chorus.  It’s kind of funny to watch Buck Meek really getting down to what is a fairly mellow track–although his guitar parts are pretty cool blasts of music.

“Lorraine” also get a mellow treatment here.  For this version it’s just her singing and playing the guitar.  It works very well in this Tiny setting and her voice really shines.

[READ: March 1, 2016] “Awake”

This story is about a college Economics major who just can’t get enough sex.

Well, that’s how it starts anyhow.  Richard is lying in bed next to Ana.  He moves in close behind her, hinting.  But she moves away quickly (she is actually asleep, so that’s a reflex).  He is annoyed although he shouldn’t be–I mean they did it twice already that night.

So instead of thinking about sex he decides to think about something else.  But what?

He thinks about books.  Ana has a number of books that she loves (the story opens with Richard reading and paragliding her copy of The Odyssey).  She also loves War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov.  Perhaps, he thinks, because she is Russian.

They met when she was waitressing and he spoke to her in the few words of Russian that he knew.  She was smitten.

She wasn’t his type.  He thought it would be a fun few months and then he’d break it off.  But then he found he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

The more he thinks, the more he realizes that she must also know that he’s not worthy of her.  Unless she was trying to use him all this time.

Never makes serious decisions at 2AM, eh?