I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TIGERS JAW-Tiny Desk Concert #629 (June 19, 2017).

I was in a sub shop the other day and saw a poster for Tigers Jaw playing (somewhat) locally.  That was pretty neat as I had just seen that they played a Tiny Desk Concert.  I hadn’t heard of them, but I was pretty excited to think that bands are willing to put up fliers around here.

The blurb says that the band “at one point, made yelping and earnest pop-punk before finding its way to intricate, and melancholy, pop.”

After the lineup shake-up three years ago, Ben Walsh and Brianna Collins both step into larger roles as the primary songwriters and singers, here playing songs from spin [their debut] stripped down to an acoustic guitar and keyboard.

They play three songs.

On “Guardian” the melodies are fantastic.  I love the simple but powerful keys that occasionally play over Ben’s strummed guitars.  And his chord choices are really interesting and unconventional.  He has a really good voice and when she sings her harmonies during the chorus it’s really very lovely.

On “June,” Brianna takes over lead vocals and there’s some more prominent piano in the verse as swell.  Her lead vocal voice sounds like a whole bunch of 1990’s female singers that I love and this song feels like it could easily have come from that era–Ben’s deeper harmonies are a nice addition.

“Window” has as simple but pretty piano.  They sing a duet and sound great together.

There’s nothing new or outrageous about this band.  They just play pretty music and sound great doing it.

[READ: December 15, 2010] “The Yellow”

I really enjoy a character who is judgmental and insecure.  And that’s what we get here.

The story begins with coyotes and babies, but it’s really about a woman, a recent mother, who is concerned about her marriage.  And a whole lot more.

She states:

Every real thing started life as an idea.  I’ve imagined objects and moments into existence. I’ve made humans.  I tip taxi-drivers ten, twenty dollars every time they don’t rape me.

But what has been keeping her up at night is that it has been 8 months since she and her husband had sex.  She quips, “I had great hopes that the threat of Lyme disease would revitalize our sex life: will you check me for ticks.”  But sadly for her, Lyme disease never really took off in California as it did on the West Coast.

She thinks about how men always say they want sex so badly–blue balls and all of that business.  But she herself has been burning for sex yet no one wants to hear about that.  Then she realizes that men think they are special because someone told them they were.

She says there are reasons why she and her husband don’t have sex.  One: maybe she kicked him out and she’s just imagining him here: “It can be hard to tell with men, whether they are here or not. Especially a man with smartphone.”  Two: maybe he is now gay.  Three: maybe he is molesting their children.  And four: maybe it’s because she is “drooling ignorance and breast milk.”  Or maybe he is having an affair–that idea comes as something of a relief.

Now that they are parents they moved out of the city and she has been encountering parents online. And nothing has been truer than this:

The plague of perfectionism on parenting blogs is rancid. Alice in Wonderland birthday parties; Spanish-speaking nannies; healthy children harvesting perfect blue chicken eggs from the back-yard coop; homeschooled wonders who read by age three; flat, tight bellies; happy husbands; cake pops; craft time; quilting projects; breast pumps in the boardroom; tenure; ballet tights; cloth diapers; French braids; homemade lip balm; tremendous flat pans of paella prepared over a beach campfire. What sort of sadist is running these Internets? And, more important, how do these blogs not constitute acts of violence against women?

She says a few days ago she was scrubbing the toilet (without latex gloves) and received a text from her husband that he thought was supped to be amusing.  She replied: “Or you could marry a woman and make her your slave.”

The end of the story brings her fears home: she hears a man coughing outside of her window.  And she asks her husband to check it out: “In the dead and dark of night, I send away the only man who has sworn an oath to protect me. I must be an idiot. I must be really scared.”

While he is gone it gives her time to think about motherhood (an author she heard spoke of child-rearing with great disgust), as well as other people who feel invisible in society.

Finally with her husband not returning she decides to risk things and check them out on her own.

The ending was confusing at first until you begin to put the pieces back together.  I really enjoyed this story and particularly the way it was written–Hunt’s voice was really fun to get into.