I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SHARON VAN ETTEN-Tiny Desk Concert #899 (October 7, 2019).

It was Sharon Van Etten’s 2010 Tiny Desk Concert that introduced me to her.  I was blown away by the songs from Epic.

When Sharon Van Etten made her Tiny Desk debut back in the fall of 2010 [with about fifteen people in the audience], her voice exuded fragile, gentle grace. Performing songs from that year’s Epic, she huddled around a single acoustic guitar with backup singer Cat Martino to perform a set of tender and evocative folk-pop songs.

Sharon released a couple more albums and then took some time away from music.  She returned this year with the appropriately named comeback single “Comeback Kid.”  The big difference was that now there were synths!

Cut to nearly a decade later. One of only a handful of artists to get a repeat headlining engagement at the Tiny Desk [that handful is getting bigger and bigger it seems]. Van Etten has spent the last few years purging her bucket list: She’s become an actress (appearing as a guest star on The OA), released a string of increasingly aggressive albums (the latest of which is this year’s synth-driven Remind Me Tomorrow), toured the world, performed on Twin Peaks, written music for films, become a mom, gone back to school and popped up in collaborations with everyone from Land of Talk to Jeff Goldblum.

I had no idea that these things happened.  So good for her, I guess.

It’s only natural that this Tiny Desk concert feels different; you can hear it before Van Etten and her band even show up onscreen. Its pace set by the ticking beat of a drum machine, “Comeback Kid” is in full bloom here, with a swaying arrangement that fills the room before Van Etten opens her mouth.

“Comeback Kid” is super catchy.  It sounds similar to the recorded version although a little smaller, perhaps.  There’s also a few extra keyboard flourishes from Heather Woods Broderick (who played the Tiny Desk as a member of Horse Feathers way back in 2009).  Charley Damski plays the synth washes that fill the room.  Sharon plays acoustic guitar and sings with serious intensity.

“You Shadow” starts with bass (Devin Hoff) and a drum machine (Jorge Balbi).  There’s no guitar on this track, but Sharon’s voice sounds great:

 the singer performs with considerable intensity here, seething through “You Shadow.”

She quietly thanks everyone and introduces the band.  This moment of thanks and appreciation in no way prepares you for the intensity in which she sings the set-closing “Seventeen.”

The song also starts with synth and bass.  Sharon sings but doesn’t start playing acoustic guitar until after the first verse.  Everyone adds gorgeous backing vocals for the chorus.  Then Sharon starts getting intense while singing.  Normally “la la las” are kind of upbeat, but she comes out of them with a fire as she sings “with a scream that slashes through the office air.”

Her voice almost breaks and she seems to be quite moved by the performance.  It’s really tremendous.

I admit that I like her earlier stuff better–the way she sang, the way her backing singers complimented her and the intensity of her music.  But after seeing her live this summer and now watching this, her intensity is still there–it’s just used more sparingly and appropriately.

The only downside to this Tiny Desk is that Heather Woods Broderick–who is an amazing backing vocalist–is pretty subdued here.  It’s appropriately subdued in this setting, but it’s a shame to not hear her in full.

Here (left) is a picture from Sharon’s first Tiny Desk Concert.

[READ: November 7, 2019] “The Flier”

This story was very cool.

I really loved the way the entire story totally downplayed “one of the most wondrous occurrences in the history of humankind.”

It begins with the narrator explaining that his wife Viki had invited their friends Pam and Becky over: “short notice–but there’s something we’d like to talk over with you.”

As he describes the meal he’s made, in quite a lot of detail, Pam and Becky arrive.  The narrator hears them talk about him and he acknowledges that his illness has made him small and light.

After the pleasantries are over, Viki says matter-of-factly that the narrator “has developed the ability to fly.”

Obviously, confusion and surprise.  But then he shows a video of him levitating–floating around the room and touching the ceiling.  They didn’t believe, or maybe accept what they had seen so he demonstrates in the room.

Then, in continuing with the tone of the story, Viki says “We can’t explain it, either.  We can only think it’s connected to his illness.  Are we ready for some soup?”

Over the meal they talked about Becky and Pam’s trip to Maine.  Finally, Becky has to stop and say that this is to much for her right now.  Pam looks at them seriously and says “He’s going to need insurance.”

This had all started with him three weeks earlier. He leaped over a pile of snow and accidentally sailed across the street (nearly killing someone).  He showed Viki after about a week and she took it surprisingly well.  Quite matter-of-factly.  Although it was agreed that he couldn’t go out or really let anyone else know.  (I get this attitude, but I find it surprising as well).

But here’s the weird thing about this story. There’s so much else going on that pushes the flying aside.  I loved this paragraph about being a stupidist.

Stupidism is the theory that people are stupid in the measure of their most powerful agency.  The’re stupid precisely when we need them not to be stupid. Much as I didn’t want to be a stupidist–it’s dispiriting, for starters–I recognized that it improved my grasp on things … The world makes a lot more sense when you accept that it’s run by dingbats. … Stupidity isn’t inevitable or constant of course, but in the long run, it almost always prevails.

I loved that paragraph and somehow O’Neill ties it back to the story: “There was something downright stupid about a flying human being.”

They decided not to be stupid, so they took Pam’s advice and talked to Naomi Patel about insurance.  She took notes on their case and then “a little ironically, it seemed to me, she checked her notes” confirmed that he had the power of flight. They filled out paperwork.  It seems nothing can proceed without filling out a form.

The whole story makes it seem like the narrator is of no consequence to really anyone–at dinner they don’t really talk to him, its more about him.  At work, during a break, two women start talking about rather personal details as if he is not there.  He says he thought a masculine presence would inhibit them, but one woman jokes to the other that “it’s been a while since I saw a penis.”  They don’t even notice when he hovers three feet off the ground and floats back inside.

Soon though, the story is taken over by a far more pressing concern.  Pam tells them that Becky had physically attacked her.

It turns out that Viki knew Becky from college (they were part of a Thomas Aquinas study group they called “the old theology gang.”  Pam wasn’t part of the gang.  Becky began dating her years later.  But Viki and the narrator both liked Pam quite a bit “in all honesty, we soon preferred her company to Becky’s, not that anyone was making comparisons.”  And yet even if Pam was more fun, she was more detachable…. it would have been easier for Viki if it had been Pam who was the one doing the beating up.”

Pam showed her phone–that there were 27 missed calls from Becky.  While they are talking, Becky arrives at the apartment and asks to be buzzed in.  Pam reveals that Becky probably has Pam’s gun.

A bit of deus ex machina arrives in the form of Viki’s sister Maya who tends to pop over unannounced.  Maya also knew Becky of course.

However, Maya also had sense of extrasensory perception.  She has reported people having a funky aura or bottling up negative energy.  Viki is convinced that Maya will know what to do about Becky.

The story ends with him saying that that was nearly two thousand mornings ago.  The real world sometimes takes precedence over the supernatural one.

There were so many interesting facets to this story, I really liked the whole tone.