I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ALEX CLARE: Tiny Desk Concert #715 (March 7, 2018).

Alex Clare’s band is clearly having a beard-growing contest.  The drummer (Christopher Prendergasp) isn’t playing but everyone else suggests the stakes are high.  The bassist (Christopher Hargreaves) is winning.

Vocalist and songwriter Alex Clare is yet another soul disciple from the UK, and his visit to Bob Boilen’s desk is the perfect setting to bask in the power of his voice.

The first song, “Three Hearts,” is a love song dedicated to the moment he heard the heartbeat of his first child coming from his wife’s sonogram. Backed by a tight four-piece band, Clare’s tale of his family’s road to domestic tranquility captures the joy as well as the uncertainty of impending parenthood.

Lyrically it’s okay and sweet, it just sounds fairly typical.  Especially musically.  I thought we;d be getting 20 minutes of straight ahead soul with a little less charisma than The Commitments.

Next is “A song called ‘Love Can Heal.’  True story.”  The guitar (Jordan Peters) is far more interesting on this song.  In fact I found myself enjoying the guitar more than Clare’s voice.  I love the cool guitar licks at the end and the nifty harmonic note that ends the song.  Although, having said that, his voice is quite powerful.  And he shows it off even more on the next song.

In “Caroline,” he inhabits the words with passion and heartfelt pleading, bringing to mind some of the best soul shouters, completely lost in the sentiment of the lyric.

That is very true, he is completely swept up in this song (even he says it’s not about anyone in particular).

I really like the guitar on the final song “Open My Eyes.”   I like the whole vibe of this song–the way the song unfolds and the backing vocals as well.  Indeed I feel like each song has gotten a better as the show progressed.

While I found his music to be fine–nothing I’d go out of my way to listen to but I wouldn’t turn it off either. I found his backstory far more interesting:

The British singer-songwriter released his debut album, The Lateness of the Hour, on Island Records last summer. But the label soon discovered how serious Clare was about his faith [he is an Orthodox Jew, which I didn’t know when I made the beard contest joke] — especially when it came to the sabbath and high holy days, on which Orthodox Jews are forbidden to perform.

“When I signed to Island — you know, obviously a shomer Shabbos Jewish person — I don’t think they quite realized what that means,” Clare says. “I got offered a tour at Pesach, at Passover, and couldn’t perform.”

The offer Clare turned down was a slot opening for Adele. About four months later, he was dropped from Island’s roster, having failed to generate significant album sales or radio play. As Clare was figuring out his next move, he received a call from Microsoft, which was interested in using his song “Too Close” in a commercial. It was a deal that would make the song a hit and restart his career.

He doesn’t play that song here, which is too bad.  And the poor percussionist’s name is never given.

[READ: February 28, 2018] “Violations”

This is a story about writing stories and how autobiographical they are or are not.

It is written in close third person.  And the first sentence is really, really, really long.

It begins, “He had wanted to make sure she wouldn’t write about him…” and then it goes on in his mind about why he didn’t want to be written about and narcissism and all that kind of thing.  The short of it is that he never asked her not to write about him, but he never stopped craving assurance that she wouldn’t (and there’s a long entangled reason why not).

The “she” is his now ex-wife.  She moved out but he still gets her mail.  And she has not written about him.  He tries to get her mail to stop coming but he doesn’t cancel her magazines–especially the one that she always wanted to be published in but had never been.

He always looked at the magazines, especially that one, to see that she hadn’t been published.  And then one day, her name was in it!  A story called “It Wasn’t”(“A title that, he smirked to himself, wasn’t very good”).

He let himself read the first sentence which is convoluted and is equally as long as the first sentence of this story  [After reading The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, it was rather disappointing to see that the excerpted writing in the is story was written exactly the same as the rest of the the story whereas in Ashby the fictional writer was quite different from the writer of the novel].

But Lacey is aware of what she is doing and writes: “It was a long sentence–really, way too long and for no apparent reason….”  It goes on with him remembering how writing in that long-winded style was a crutch for her.

Then he continues to read and critique her story  “A little dramatic, Whiny.  Certainly no Hemingway.”  But it wasn’t directly about him at least (details are different).

After reading more he wondered if it was their story but she had just reversed the genders .

While he is reading, out of the magazine falls another piece of mail for her– a post card from France by Jean Marcel, a man he has never heard of.  In seven years she had never ementioned a Jean Marcel.

He was angry about that and called her.  She thought that he was calling about the story and told him it had noting to do with him–it was just words and ideas.  She is also somewhat offended that he didn’t actually finish the story yet

But when he reads the rest he is confused not only by what the story has to do with him, but what the story means in general  He thinks it makes no sense and plans to tell her so.

The ending is just as cryptic as the story within the story but the last line is a wonderful double meaning.