SOUNDTRACK: JULIEN BAKER-Tiny Desk Concert #690 (January 10, 2018).
Julien Baker joins a handful of artists who have now made a second appearance at a Tiny Desk Concert. (If they start inviting artists back regularly, they’ll never get ANY work done at the NPR offices).
I was quite enamored with Baker when I watched her first Tiny Desk Concert. And I was totally smitten with her when I saw her open for The Decemberists.
Julien plays three songs here. I’m intrigued that in the blurb Bob says “I reached out to ask if she would be willing to do something different this time around.”
It makes it sound as if she’s going to do some kind of dance/electronica show. But I guess the difference is that last time, she just played electric guitar and this time she mixes up instrumentation and adds a violinist.
The first two songs, “Hurt Less” and “Even,” were accompanied by Camille Faulkner, with Julien on piano for the opening tune and acoustic guitar on the second.
If Julien Baker sounds delicate with just her electric guitar, she’s twice as delicate on piano. But her voice sounds exquisite–powerful, honest and a little raspy, adding a slight edge.
I love seeing her sticker-covered acoustic guitar as she sings on “Even”:
Putting my fist through the plaster in the bathroom of a Motel 6 / I must have pictured it all a thousand times / I swear to God I think I’m gonna die / I know you were right / I can’t be fixed, so help me
She tends to play her guitar a little louder than the piano, so this one is a bit more dynamic. The violin adds some aching sounds over the top.
I love that she plays each song in a very different style:
For the final song, Julien put together an arrangement of “Appointments” that begins on electric guitar, which then was looped as a backdrop to her on piano and voice.
It’s always fun watching someone loop guitar melodies. And I like that she continues to loop long after it seems like the looping is done. This allows for some of her gorgeous ringing chords. They continue to ring out as she plays the piano. It’s even cooler that she can stop parts of the guitar looping while she is completing the song.
All along her voice, which seems so delicate when she starts proves to be really powerful, especially during “Appointments” when she builds to a powerful high. When I saw her live, she held a really long note that was quite impressive. Don’t be fooled by the quietness of her music, Julien Baker rocks.
[READ: October 27,2017] Threads of Blue
This is the sequel to Beautiful Blue World, a book I really enjoyed.
In the first book, Mathilde’s country of Sofarende was being attacked by Tyssia. She was sent to a special location to work on the war effort–they needed precocious children and she was picked for her empathy. As the book ended, Mathilde followed her empathy and, while their encampment was under siege, released a teenaged prisoner of war because she felt that he was a good person who was just caught up in the war.
This act caused her to leave her group (and her best friend Megs) and to miss the conveyance to safety.
As this book opens, Mathilde wakes up on a boat that is bringing her to the country of Eilean. She has secret documents and an order to be secretive.
The book picks up right where the previous one left off (I could have used a slight refresher, honestly).
When she lands on the island she is greeted warmly by an Eilean family. They lost two boys in the war but still have a daughter She and Mathilde hit it off and once the family realizes that Mathild is there to help with the war effort, they are very welcoming to her.
The father takes her to a detention center for all new arrivals (Soafrende citizens are fleeing to Eilean in droves). She has clearance but she can’t reveal too much. So they keep her there for a few weeks. She helps out in the kitchen–she is not a prisoner–and makes a friend.
Soon enough, she is released to Annevi who is so happy to see her and gets her clearance to get back to the rest of the kids whom she was separated from.
When she arrives she is so excited to see Megs, but Megs is devastated by the way Mathilde behaved back on the night they were separated. I have to admit I couldn’t remember all of the details of that nigh and wish they’d been recapped better. And frankly while I know that friends fight, this whole fight seemed way too intense for two people who grew up together and who no doubt missed each other and feared that the other was dead. Even when Megs gives her reasons later, it seems too intense.
Mathilde soon learns of the military plans–to attack Sofarende to drive out the Tyssians–essentially to bomb her homeland! She gets really mad and flees the site–she is lost once again! This time she is found fairly quickly and they tell her the full extent of the plans, which calms her somewhat.
I told Sarah that I hate when the second book in a trilogy is the real downer–when the friends fight for the whole book and we just can’t wait for the misunderstanding to be resolved. Well, this isn’t a trilogy, apparently, but it does take a pretty long time for the tension to be resolved.
The crew at the camp is working to make maps of Sofarende (for some military purpose). That’s when Mathilde reveals that there are lots of people at the detention camp who could probably fill in those maps for them. Mathilde is a hero. She and Annevi go back to interview some of the people there.
The information they’ve gathered helps and so there is one more final task that needs to be accomplished. It is quite dangerous.
Mathilde and two others are going to try to bring some secret documents back into Sofarende.
Sarah made a good point that the end of the book felt rushed. And while I didn’t feel it was rushed exactly, the pacing was so much different. It was very fast. Unlike the earlier part where she (and we) waited and waited, the end part all seemed to come together very quickly–the fear of the enemy seemed to be absent.
Which was I think what made the ending so traumatizing.
In the first book I noted: the opening scenes where the families are fearful for their lives are really powerful. I actually wondered if they might be too intense for a children’s book. The fear was palpable and LaFluer does an amazing job of capturing that emotion.
This time, when Mathilde gets back to Sofarende, she discovers that most of the houses on her block have been destroyed. Also, there are other people living in her house because they have no where else to go. Her parents have fled–where could they be?
Perhaps most astonishing about this book is that there is some serious death in it. Not serious in terms of violence or gore or anything like that. But people we actually care about die. As in, this is what happens in war. People we love are killed, other people are never heard from.
The ending is interesting and hopeful, which is something of a relief after all of the destruction and angst.
So I assume that this is the end of this series. The book wraps up nicely, but I can’t help but think that there are so many things unanswered that a third book could happen. I don’t know that it would be very interesting–more of an epilogue, I guess.
It’s also odd to me that these two books were printed separately. Each are 200 pages and they were both very quick reads.
I Just Read About That... 
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