I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: HEATHER LEIGH-“Soft Season” (2018).

At the end of every year publications and sites post year end lists.  I like to look at them to see if I missed any albums of significance.  But my favorite year end list comes from Lars Gottrich at NPR.  For the past ten years, Viking’s Choice has posted a list of obscure and often overlooked bands.  Gottrich also has one of the broadest tastes of anyone I know (myself included–he likes a lot of genres I don’t).  

Since I’m behind on my posts at the beginning of this year, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the bands that he mentions on this year’s list.  I’m only listening to the one song unless I’m inspired to listen to more.

Opening with a kind os squealing feedback and heavy bass and drums, it is pretty hard to believe that Heather Leigh is playing the pedal steel guitar but Lars assures us that’s what’s happening

Heather Leigh is among a group of artists who are reshaping the sound of the pedal steel guitar. [Her new] solo album stretches her noise/improv background into songwriting territory. With an elastic sense of time and a beguiling voice, Heather Leigh hears a new world drenched in aqueous echo.

After a brief opening Leigh starts singing–a kind of high operatic voice that works well with the feedbacking style of guitar she’s playing–like she’s almost singing along to the guitar melody, but not exactly.  The middle is quieter, more mellow, a “prettier more conventional sound.”  The song cycles through the original noisy sound, and back to the quieter music before ending on that feedback opening.  That powerful music crescendoes and then the song closes out with an a capella couple of lines.

You can her it and a couple other songs on her bandcamp site.

[READ: January 3, 2019] “Come In, Come In”

This story concerns a woman and her contractor, Louie.  He came highly recommended but he is taking forever.  Every time she assumes he will finish a project in her bathroom, he seems to have messed something up and needs to replace it.

The tiles were askew.  Even the tub was askew. He apologized and fixed it of course, but come on.

And if that weren’t bad enough, he had just sent her a text love letter.  “Lady Joanna, the more I see you the more I want to see you.”

She was annoyed at the absurdity “single woman + contractor = absurd.”

She wrote back sternly to nip it in the bud.

Her friends insisted he was a good man.  He was helping to build an elementary school which had burnt down–for free–after working on her house.

She was exhausted of the whole thing.  It had been months (I had to wonder why she didn’t fire him).

But he was there very day.  Sometimes he’d bring her her favorite food (he had asked her what her favorite food was).

Whenever she forgot he had feelings for her, she kind of liked him.

During the seventh (!) month of renovations, she had a text from her mother–her father was in the ER and it was very serious.  Her father was elderly although not as old as her mom.  She felt bad because she had not been around as much for him lately.  She told Louie that the bathroom had better be finished by the time she got back from staying with her parents for a few days.

I love the detail that at airport security she opted for the pat down–she always did.  It was the only human touch she’d felt in months.

Her father looked terrible and was on an oxygen tube. Although he did seem happy to see her.

Her parents had been married for 52 years.  He had been faithful until last year, “which satisfied her mother’s long-standing dread of betrayal for being twelve years older.”

Her bother was in there with their father. Chris told her that he couldn’t take the breathing mask off.  His oxygen level was at 85 because of the mask and anything lower could be deadly.  But he took the mask off when Chris left–telling her how much he hated the mask and that he wanted a drink.

While he was talking, Louie texted her with sweet nothings.   As she texted back with questions about the baseboard, Chris yelled at her for being on the phone instead of being there for their father.

Later while the siblings were with their father, his lover came in.  She was Italian and he had been learning Italian for her.  They forcibly removed her from the room to spare their mother.

When the main character returns home, it shows her having to deal with everything that’s waiting for her, which included a beautiful bathroom.

The ending is surprisingly sweet, with a funny last line.