SOUNDTRACK: MAGGIE ROGERS-Tiny Desk Concert #642 (August 7, 2017).
I had been hearing Maggie Rogers’ name on WXPN and have liked “Alaska” which they’ve been playing. But I didn’t know much else about her.
But reading the blurb reminded me of where I had initially heard of her:
Maggie Rogers became a viral star on the strength of a video in which Pharrell Williams raves about a demo of what’s become her signature song, “Alaska.” Since then, Rogers has signed a label deal, toured extensively and released a sweetly approachable, inventively arranged EP called Now That The Light Is Fading.
For her Tiny Desk debut, Rogers performed all three of the EP’s best-known songs, opening with the recent singles “On + Off” and “Dog Years,” the latter of which she calls “a song for all the pups.” Then, after dismissing her band, she treated us to a few warm words about public radio before introducing “Alaska.”
Maggie has an interesting voice that sounds similar to someone (it’ll come to me), but with a slight country twang. It seems like she could easily fall into the country umbrella but her songwriting goes in a slightly different direction. (I’m also astonished that she looks to be about 18).
She plays three songs (there are 5 on her EP),
“On+Off” starts with a piano intro and Maggie singing. When the middle section kicks in and she plays guitar there a much louder sound. It’s quite catchy. I really like the delivery of the “Ooohs” that she adds. There’s something about the way she does it that sounds very cool.
“Dog Years” is a slower, slightly more country-sounding song, but again the “ooohs” won me over. This time the ooohs are harmonized by her band and it sounds even better. She also demonstrated some wonderful high notes.
Her band leaves for the final song which she starts by telling everyone that “public radio has been a part of her musical discovery–since she used an NPR compilation to DJ her middle school recess.” She’s very sweet.
Th final song is “Alaska” which she says is a song about coming back into your body. It has a really pretty chorus–once again, her voice soaring to lovely high notes. I prefer the recorded version to this solo version, but she sounds great by herself as well.
[READ: June 27, 2017] “Crossing the River No Name”
I was a little concerned about this story because it was set in Khost, Afghanistan and I thought it was going to be an intense war story–and war stories, like sports stories, pretty much end one of two ways.
So it begins on a rainy night in March 2009. The narrator and his patrol are sent to interrupt a group of Taliban. They reached a river and Hal, the leader, called on the best swimmers to swim across and set up the guide rope. They made it across and secured the line. The rest of the patrol got across but when it was the narrator and Hals’ turn they hit trouble.
Hal was afraid of the water. He’d joined the Navy to get over that fear and it worked. Most of the time. He knew of one other example when Hal had had a brief freak out. But this was the second one. The river grew darker and they were pulled under.
The narrator sank to the bottom and lost sight of Hal. When the narrator surfaced, he saw the Virgin Mary. And that’s when I started to enjoy the story.
The next paragraph begins, “Doubters, listen: if she can appear at an underpass in Chicago, if she can appear in the bruise on a woman’s thigh at an E.R. in El Paso, then she can appear in a whirlpool of diammonium phospate , spinning on the surface of an unnamed river in Afghanistan”
Mary tells him that he is not saved because she’d already used a miracle on him once before. And he remembered it well.
It was a miracle on the football field back in Ocean City, New Jersey. And the flash back reveals some things about the narrator: his violent tendencies as a kid (involving mailboxes and a baseball bat), his sleeping with a teammates girlfriend, and his generally wayward past.
So there was to be no miracle for him, bit what about for Hal?
The story jumps back to reality and the narrator speaks of how Hal would deal with line of Taliban–this was their 7th time encountering a line of soldiers. I found the ending to be really satisfying in some ways and yet surprisingly elliptical in others.
But given that I assumed it was going to be just another war story I really enjoyed this a lot.
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