I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: WEYES BLOOD–Tiny Desk Concert #923 (December 11, 2019).

The new Weyes Blood album has been on many people’s best of the of year lists. I hadn’t heard any of it but I’d read that it was lovely.

When I first listened to this Tiny Desk Concert, I really didn’t think much of it–couldn’t imagine what made this simple folk music so special.

But on a second (and third and fourth) listen, I heard a lot of the components that made it quite a beautiful set.

Nataile Mering sings and plays acoustic guitar.  Her voice reminds me a lot of Aimee Mann.

The blurb says that this set is

simple and restrained — a strummed guitar, two-part harmonies, a brushed beat — but still managed to re-create the majesty and wonder of the band’s latest release, Titanic Rising, one of 2019’s loftiest and most layered albums.

The music here is simple and straightforward–“rooted in ’70s folk-pop traditions, with mystical themes of rambling on to find meaning and purpose.”

“Andromeda,” an astral ode to love, set the tone with the acoustic guitar.  After a minute and a half there is a really cool otherworldly-sounding guitar solo from Stephen Heath.  It is just a slide on an electric guitar but it sounds very cool amid the folky quiet.  There is a very traditional organ sound from Walt McClements  filling in the spaces, but I think what really makes the song transcend folk are the fantastic backing vocals from bassist Eliana Athayde.  Whether it’s oohs and ahhs or harmonies, her contributions are monumental.

“Wild Time” is next and Athayde’s oohs are there supporting Mering’s gentle leads.  Like the previous song the acoustic guitar sets the pace with the keys filling in the gas and Andres Renteria’s drums keeping pace.  This time the standout sound from Heath’s guitar is a buzzing e-bow–an otherworldly insect buzzing around the song.  Near the end, Heath turns that buzz into a proper guitar solo and there’s a brief moment where I think Althayde and Mering are singing different lines at the same time.  The end of the song rings of early Pink Floyd with the piano sound and Heaths now noisy scratchy e-bow filed soloing.

The final song, “Picture Me Better,” is “a heartbreaking remembrance of a friend who died by suicide while Mering was working on the album.”  It’s the quietest song of the bunch.  Renteria leaves and it’s just acoustic guitar and keys with gentle electric guitar notes and Mering’s voice.  This time Athayde’s backing vocals add an otherworldly quality as we get lost in this song of loss and yearning.

It’s quite a lovely set, and if this is stripped down, I do wonder what a full-on, layered album must sound like.

[READ: December 16, 2019] “Sevastopol”

This was a story about writing stories.

The narrator, Nadia, receives a postcard from Klaus.  The postcard is of Sevastopol, although Klaus has never been there–he probably got it from a site like easterneuropeanjunk.com.

Klaus had rented a theater space in São Paulo (the story was written in Portuguese and translated by Zoë Perry) and called Nadia to insist that she come and help him fix it up.

They had met at the museum where she works.  He led a drama workshop and since staff could take classes for free she decided to check it out.  Klaus had directed a play which ran in a local theater.  Nadia hadn’t seen it, but her friend said it was awful.  Nevertheless, Nadia liked Klaus.

She shared her work with him. She had written a story about a woman named Nadia an and man named Sasha.  Nadia was angry with Sahsa but the reader would never find out why.  Klaus said the story was lousy and would never work.  But he clearly took a shine to her.  When the class ended he asked her to help with the play he was working on.

He told her the play was historical, set during the siege of Sevastopol in 1855.  She didn’t know what he was talking about but nodded anyway.

Nadia had recently been dumped by her boyfriend and didn’t have a job so she spent a lot of her time with Klaus. Her dad said she needed a real job but that’s what dads always say.  It was clear that Klaus didn’t have many friends and didn’t trust many people.  Klaus was always looking for young men–he described their clothes, their hands, their bulges. There was one blond guy that Klaus kept following around that he knew that he would be perfect for the lead in their play.

The main character was a painter–Bogdan Trunov–born in 1818 who died in 1860.  His method was peculiar.  He made sketches with no plan, then he would marry two or more pictures together.   In one painting, two soldiers appear to be talking, but most likely they were painted separately and then mounted against a new background.

Nadia thought the play was boring–nothing happened.  Klaus assured her there would be a rousing scene when a solider knocked on Trunov’s door and asked  to be painted by him,  The man asked to be painted in a trench or on horseback with enemy fire on the horizon.

Klaus grew very busy with the work and so Nadia went back to her story.  She wound up changing a lot about it–she no longer set it in Russia for example.  She wanted Nadia and Sasha to be friends but believed they never could.  This made her sad.

When they finally stage the play, it is a flop.  She is devastated although Klaus doesn’t seem too upset.  This causes her to go back to her own story to see what she can do with it.

I often feel like I am missing something with Portuguese writers, and I feel like I missed something here, too.