I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KRISTIAN BELL-3 Songs (Field Recordings, March 27, 2014).

This is one more Field Recording that was done at SXSW 2014 [One Wytch, Unplugged In A Sunny Backyard].

I am unfamiliar with The Wytches.  In fact, when I first clicked play on this, I assumed that the singer was a woman (the name Kristian is a little unspecific).  The blurb says

The Wytches’ furious, hair-flinging psych-rock isn’t the stuff of back-porch acoustic sessions: Both live and on the English band’s singles, the energy is so intense, it can barely be contained. But when NPR Music arranged a Wytches session during SXSW — held in the charming backyard setting of Friends & Neighbors in east Austin — singer-guitarist Kristian Bell stood in for the whole band, with just his voice and an acoustic guitar.

In these three songs from Annabel Dream Reader — due out this summer — Bell splits the difference between The Wytches’ wiry raggedness and the gentler side dictated by both the setting and his instrument. Surrounded by a small throng of locals and their kids, Bell proved worthy of the most bucolic setting he’s likely to play this year.

He plays three songs and you can certainly hear the heaviness implied in his guitar strumming.  His voice also strains as he sings-perhaps more notable in this quieter version?

“Wide At Midnight”  There’s some pretty picking on this song and his voice sounds a but like Billy Corgan’s but far less annoying.

It’s a pretty weird audience for him, no doubt.  Minimal clapping and lots of kids on laps.

“Crying Clown” features these lyrics

In his car she finally
Tampers with her sexuality
Scratching at each other’s minds till their in the nude
As for me, my loyalty
Is only sold illegally
To the pantomime crying clown
Cry for me whilst upside down
Salivating, bloody mouth
Or passionately bloody mouth
And graveyard girl, swinging a bag like a pendulum

which is very funny to see him singing in front of a bunch of moms sitting in a semicircle around him.

“All Of My Skin” has a lovely melody and some excellent guitar playing.  There’s some clever lyrics as well.

The amazing thing to me is that Kristian looks to be about 15 years old.  I wonder how old he actually is, because he handles himself like a pro.

[READ: January 22, 2018] “Is That You, Sister Marguerite?”

This excerpt is quite dark and rather disturbing.

A woman in a convent is asking Sister Marguerite about her newborn baby.

Sister Marguerite tells her that the baby died.

The woman asks if she can hold her dead baby for one minute.  Sister Marguerite is shocked by this and says it’s impossible.

She then explains that death happens often enough–she once had a dead dwarf child–they didn’t revive him but he came back on his own, which meant Sister Marguerite had to get rid of it herself.

Then she says she is not even sure if they baby is still down there–they burn them, you see,

The woman wonders why Sister Marguerite couldn’t lie about hat.  She doesn’t care about God or communion and wants Sister Marguerite to leave.

If your child is dead that means that the Good Lord has called him home. And that’s good.

Then the Mother Superiors comes in. She is furious that the woman refused Communion and is even more upset that there are flowers all over the room-“since you baby is dead what do you need with them.”  She says she’ll send the flowers to the Holy Virgin.  But the woman refuses.

The Mother Superior mocks her:

“She doesn’t even want to give a bouquet to our most Holy Virgin and she’s complaining? And she’s complaining that her child is dead?”
“I am not complaining. Get out.”
“I am the mother superior. I will get out when I feel like it. You aren’t  complaining? Then why do you cry all day long?”
“I feel like it.”
“And what did I just see on your table? An orange? Who gave you that orange?”
“It’s my dessert. It was Sister Marguerite”
“Here oranges are something we give to mamas.  To mamas who have their babies. And who nurse them. Here we don’t give oranges to just anyone, not us, let me tell you.”

Good Lord!

This was discovered among Duras’ notebooks.  She had delivered a still-born baby in 1942.

This was translated from the French by Linda Coverdale.