I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: HOLLY MACVE-Tiny Desk Concert #630 (June 23, 2017).

If you were to ask me to pick all of the things I dislike about country music and put them into one artist it would be Holly Macve.

Her songs are slow, really slow (her three songs last sixteen minutes and she’s not chatty between them).  She sings with a thick country accent (which is especially strange since she is from England (!).  She’s got a yodeling quality to her singing which I also don’t care for.

I don’t like to bring appearance into a music criticism, but in this video, I can also say that it bugs me that he hair never moves and her mouth barely opens, which I find very disconcerting.

So she sings three songs.  On “No One Has The Answers,” and “The Corner Of My Mind” she plays guitar and sings.  “Corner” also features a slide guitar. For “Golden Eagle” she plays on piano which gives it a slightly different tone–more gospel than country, but good lord it was endless. I thought it was over and saw there were three more minutes left in the song.

She sang a South X Lullaby for NPR a few years back and I was on the fence but favorable.  But I said she might be too country for me.  And I was right.

The band: Holly Macve (vocals, guitar, piano); Tommy Ashby (guitar); Michael Blackwell (bass); David Dyson (drums)

[READ: June 26, 2017] “The Size of Things”

I really enjoyed this story although I found it surprisingly sad.

This is translated from the Spanish by one of my favorite translators Megan McDowell, but I’m not exactly sure where it is set.

The story is from the point of view of a toy shop owner.  He says that he knew Enrique Duvel had inherited a lot of money but also that he still lived with his mother.  He would often drive around in his convertible looking self-absorbed.  But then one night the narrator caught Duvel peeking into the toy store.

Eventually Duvel did come in the store and he bought a model plane kit.  Then he proceeded to come back every few days to buy another kit.  After some more time, Duvel appeared at the door as the narrator was closing up and, looking at he narrator, he said, “It’s best if I stay here.”  Duvel said his mother doesn’t want to see him again and repeated “I’d best stay here.”

He let Duvel stay the night and when he went to work the next morning Duvel had rearrange the entire store to be color-coordinated–it looked like a rainbow from outside.  The narrator was super annoyed–how would he find anything?  But the townspeople loved it–they stared in the window.  And they came in and shopped!  They found things that they hadn’t seen in years and the store was suddenly a huge success.

But it seemed that every time Duvel was “done” with something–if he played with it and seemed finished with it, he would put it and everything like it on a shelf.  First went the models, then the games, and on and on, so eventually stock was in order only at around eye level.

Soon Duvel started telling the narrator and his wife that he made his bed and cleaned his plate.  This was weird but fine. But one day when they saw Duvel grab a toy out of a boys arms and say it was his.  Now they knew something was wrong,

And that’s when Duvel’s mother made her first appearance in the store.

I loved the way that Duvel’s mother loomed over the whole story but didn’t really appear until the end, where we get to see if she confirms or defies expectations.