I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: LORD HURON-Tiny Desk Concert #247 (October 25, 2012).

Lord Huron is one of those bands that I hear of a lot, but whom I don’t really know much about. I also think they are someone I like, but listening to this Tiny Desk Concert, it’s clear they are not any of the bands I think they are.

As far as this Tiny Desk Concert goes, Lord Huron proves t be a five piece folk outfit.  They have lovely harmonies

“She Lit A Fire” is a pretty standard folk song.  Although I like the way the song shifts gears to a faster guitar style.  I really like the way the one guy’s guitar sounds like mandolin, too.  “Time To Run” is a bit faster and catchier.  In fact, when the oh oh oh oh part comes in, it’s hard not to want to sing along.  And the middle part where it’s just guitar and bongos is pretty hard not to enjoy.

“Lonesome Dreams” opens with some echoed bass notes. It’s got some really catchy parts although I don’t really love the yodeling voice that he puts on.  The band does four songs (practically unheard of).  “Ends of the Earth” opens with that same yodeling voice, but once the harmonies kick in it sounds great.

I didn’t realize that Lord Huron had only released their first album in 2012.  They have really made a name for themselves.

[READ: July 20, 2016] “Primum Non Nocere”

I enjoyed this whole story except for the very end which seemed to turn the story into something else.  In retrospect that something else is also pretty interesting and it throws a whole new light on the story, but I enjoyed the story so much as it was that the twist really impacted the way I enjoyed the rest of the story.

The title translates as “first, do no harm” and the story is about a youngish girl and her mother–who is a psychotherapist. 

I loved the way the story began.  Jewel is totally embarrassed that her mother asks her patients if they are “Cell phoning.”  She says it all the time.  How lame.  Until she realizes that her mom is actually asking if they are “self-harming.”

Her mother was brutally honest about a lot of things and was, of course, right about everything.  One thing that her mother always said was “that no one ever gets beyond high school. It’s all high school for the rest of your life.” Not true, Jewel knew, yet also true.

Her patients loved her for that unconventional understanding. She stood up for them; she visited their homes and talked to their problematic relatives, went to the store with them, walked them along the river, allowed them to bring their pets to their therapy sessions. She came to her children’s defense, too, with teachers or friends or the parents of those friends. She was brutally honest, blunt.

Jewel was left along at home one afternoon when a woman came to the door.  She looked crazy or homeless or both.  The lady asked “where’s Claudia” (Jewel’s mom).  Jewel said she was at work and the lady “everything about her said ‘sigh'” told Jewel that she would just wait.

But she didn’t wait on the porch, because a few minutes later the woman was in the house. Jewel had left the back door open for the cat to come back in and the woman just walked right in.

And soon the woman, whose name turns out to be Joy reveals why she’s there.  She complains that Claudia “pretends to be your friend, to give a shit, and then? Totally blows you off.”

Claudia gave up on her. She didn’t care.  Joy had even given her a sweater which Claudia never wore. Joy surveyed the house scrutinizing every detail.

While they sit there the phone rings (a rotary land line of course) and the message is from Kenny, a boy who is relentlessly after Jewel.  He ends his message with Ad astra per aspera and Joy mocks her asking if he thinks speaking Latin is sexy.

Joy heads to the bathroom and stays there a pretty long time.  Jewel grows horrified at the thought of what she might be doing in there.

But she takes the moment to call her stepfather.  When Joy comes out, she has removed some under layers of clothing (including underwear Jewel realizes).  And soon enough she is back in the kitchen.  Jewel could see her tattoos and other body modifications:

not just tattooed but textured, as if objects had been applied to the skin, or under it, actually: a zipper there on her upper arm, elbow to shoulder, a ring of what looked like BB’s on her calf,

And that’s when Zachary (her stepfather) comes home.  And as soon as he walked in the door, Joy calmly pulled out a knife.

I loved the description of Zachary–much younger than Claudia, tattooed himself (he shows off one of his to Joy as a way to calm her) and always wearing cool band T-shirt (he is a masseuse among other calming jobs).  There’s so much great interaction in the middle here.  And then Eventually Claudia comes home for the big confrontation.

The twist comes at the end in which the story turns out to be more about Jewel than anyone else.  And I think that the way it is set up it’s perfectly written.  But I was just more interested in Joy and her story and the confrontation between the adults.  Nevertheless, Nelson tells a great story.