I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: beabadoobee-Loveworm (2019).

beabadoobee is Beatrice Kristi Laus, a 19 year-old singer-songwriter who was born in the Phillipines and lives in London.  She has released some six EPs since 2018 and has been played on the radio on WXPN.  I see she’s also headlining a small tour over here in the Spring.

Yesterday I listened to the bedroom version of this EP, and here is the original release in all of its glory.  Interestingly, the sound isn’t all that much bigger, but there is a lot more instrumentation.  And some of these songs definitely rock harder.

“Disappear” is played on a gentle electric guitar with swirling keys and a simple drum clicking sound.  When the bass comes in after the first verse, the song feels really full (with a sprinkling of keyboard sounds added on top, too).  The middle third has a nice little section with bells as everything else fades out for a moment.

“1999”s guitars sound a bit more downbeat, deeper.  The middle has some lovely overdubbed guitar parts. I really like the repeated guitar melody that flows all the way to the end,

“Apple Cider” is wonderfully upbeat in this version.  Bouncy guitars, more bells and her soft vocals make this sound like a perfect 90s alt-rock song.  Just as I was about to say this song was perfect, it added some “oohh la las” which don’t quite fit.  However, the crazy guitar solo(s) are very cool and more than make up for it.

“Ceilings” remains a quiet ballad with some nice falsetto vocals and trippy backing sounds that turn into a synthy solo.

“Angel” sounds different on this record too, with some staggered guitars and a fairly complex drum pattern.  There’s some noisy electric guitar on this song too.  I love the way this song rocks out at the end.  The rocking continues on “You Lie All the Time” (which still sounds a bit like Juliana Hatfield).  It rocks all the way through to the end,

The final song “Soren” is a slow ballad.  With the two guitars it does actually sound quite different from the bedroom version, which is kind of cool since they are for the most part pretty similar.

I enjoyed both versions of this EP, but I like this one more. There’s more variety and the songs rock a bit more.  I’m curious what her first full-length will sound like.

[READ: January 10, 2020] The Babysitters Coven

I don’t usually read books like this, but the cover caught my eye (I love judging a book by its cover) and I’m so glad I read it. It was fun and funny and mashed up ideas from existing stories into something all its own.

Esme Pearl is a babysitter.  She and her best (and only) friend Janis started a Babysitter’s Club back in junior high. There were of course four of them in the club and each girl paralleled one of the girls in the original series.  [I have never read those books, so I don’t know how much is taken from that series.]

I enjoyed Esme as a character for a number of reasons.  She was a believable seventeen year old, but a shy and kind of solitary one.  She uses some abbreviations, but the whole book is not littered with them.  Lines like “the number one perk of babysitting is OPP–other people’s pantries” is a good example.  Esme has a great tone of being above her school while still being unpopular (but not hugely so).  She lives in Spring River Kansas home of the Bog Lemmings (“apparently by the time they’d gotten to Spring River all the good mascots had been taken”).  About the cafeteria food: “I’d never seen a food that wasn’t brown.”  Later she grabs what she things is curry but which turns out to be gravy.

She and Janis coordinate outfits every day.  [I love the detail that Janis’ full name is Janis Jackson].  They don’t wear similar things at all, they just discuss the night before what their fashion choices will be and then show them off the next day,  They both love going thrifting, so their outfits are unique.  If I had one complaint about the book it’s that there’s no way a backwater town like Spring River would have such amazing thrift stores.  Anyway, today “Janis was ‘Denise gets a step-daughter’ and I was “Sylvia Plath goes to prom.'”

Esme loves babysitting and she takes it very seriously–she does not wan any other kind of job, like where you wear a uniform–and she has built up a reliable collection of clientele.  She and Janis really are the only game in town.

As the book opens, Esme is babysitting Kaitlyn, a demon baby.  Not literally.  She is just a wild girl who is high maintenance. But Esme thinks of her as baby Satan (Kaitlyn managed to get a Sharpie and draw all over the wall while Esme was peeing).  But usually once Kaitlyn is asleep, she’s down.  This night things are different.  Esme heard a loud thunk and went upstairs,  The door was locked–Esme would never lock the door.  She somehow got the door open an saw that the bed was empty and the window was open.  She looked out the window and saw Kaitlyn on the roof.  Esme managed to get her back to safety.  When Esme asked what happened, Kaitlyn described a guy who looked like David Bowie’s character in Labyrinth. She knew that Kaitlyn watched a lot of movies so she assumed it was a nightmare. But there was so much unexplained….

But that was forgotten the next day with news of the new kids who just moved to town  There was the new girl in their class Cassandra Heaven and her gorgeous older brother Dionysus (Dion).  No one knew where Cassandra would wind up in the clique chain, although she was very pretty, which usually means popular.  Esme was shocked when Cassandra came up to her and said “You’re a babysitter right?  I want to join your club.”

What pretty teenager wants to join a babysitting club?

Things had been going weird already this week, so this was not the weirdest thing that happened.  Esme told her they were having a meeting that night (really a meeting is just her and Janis hanging out) and invited her along.

What other weird things had happened?  She is in Driver’s Ed class.  I love that she doesn’t have her license yet.  Her dad had plans to teach her to drive but he never got around to it and she missed the deadline as a sophomore.  So, she was a junior with all the sophomores.  When she gets behind the wheel after one of the jocks in the back farts something really foul, the car seems to put itself into reverse and runs into a tree.

Later in gym class, her sworn enemy, Stacey Wassner, a big hulking girl who had it in for her, threw a dodge ball at her head and somehow it avoided hitting Esme and returned right at Stacey’s face giving her a bloody nose (and making Esme even me fearful of Stacey).

Her dad is the only parent at home with her.  It take awhile before Esme explains that her mom went “crazy” and is in an institution.  She and her dad visit her mom twice a week, although there’s rarely and kind of reaction from her.  Her dad is cool but pretty clueless.  Of course he wants her to pay for the car damage, but he is pretty understanding.  He also love high school football (which Esme doesn’t care about at all) probably because his best friend is the school’s football coach.

Coach Brian doesn’t really interact with Esme, but they see each other once in a while.  He’s always nice,  It’s funny later when you find out he has a secret.  And another secret.

A few chapters in, Dion and Cassandra talk to Esme.  Cassandra says she knows that Esme has powers–she heard about the driver’s ed car and the dodge ball.  And then Casssandra shows that she has powers too–powers that are so cool that it makes Esme pass out.  She wakes up in Cassandra’s house.  Turns out that Cass and Dion’s parents died in a car crash when the kids were young.  When Dion turned 18 he learned that this house in Spring River was willed to him.  There wasn’t much in the house.  Although there was was a note for Cass that said Find the Babysitters.  Love, Mom.  And there was a picture of Cassandra’s mom holding her standing next to Esme’s mom holding her.  What?

One Esme can wrap her head around things, they practice their powers and learn that some of the other cryptic notes that Cass’s mom left were, in fact, spells.  The spells are simple to cast.  I’m glad that having trouble trying to cast a spell wasn’t a part of this story.  In fact, I loved that the spells are automatically updated to modern ingredients so the caster is not spending all her time looking for roots or whatever.  One of the spells that she tries out makes her dog Pig talk.  The conversation they have is hilarious.

While this is going on, Janis is unaware of this new bonding.  Esme doesn’t blow her off of course, in fact, they still hang out every day.  One night when Janis is baby sitting someone dressed like Voldemort breaks into the house.  Janis calls Esme for help and when she and Cassandra arrive, they inadvertently reveal their powers to Janis (and save the child).

Soon enough, Esme and Cass (but not Janis) learn that they are Sitters–a line of girls who are charged with saving the world.  Esme asks the he Guy who reveals all of this to them if he is like Giles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s never seen it (hilarious).  There’s also a few references to Halloween and other movies where the babysitter is killed (or wins).

There is to be training and learning.  Esme is excited to try out her powers and, once again, takes the issue very seriously.  Cassandra, meanwhile, is pretty happy to use (and abuse) her powers for her own desires.  Who is going to stop them?

It’s pretty obvious from the get go that Esme’s mother’s craziness is somehow connected to whatever magical power is involved with the Sitters.  But I didn’t expect the way it was revealed and dealt with.

The end of the story has a big battle scene.  Since there ha been no real training (it’s playoff season) the girls have to take care of things themselves.   And there are all kinds of interesting revelations.

This book was really funny and very exciting.  It was an easy read and I flew through the end to find out what happened.

I’m really looking forward to the next book in the Fall.  And I’m very happy that the first book didn’t end on a cliffhanger that’s dependent on the next book.   Rather, it just sets us up for more adventures.