SOUNDTRACK: ALEX ISLEY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #21 (May 15, 2020).
Alex Isley’s father is one half of the Isley Brothers, purveyors of some of the baddest-ass riffs in rock and soul.
So how strange is it that Alex’s song have literally no low end. Her voice is very high, her keys are soft and gentle chords and her rhythm is finger snaps. These songs are gossamer and will easily blow away.
From her Los Angeles home, Isley takes us on a tour of her discography, starting with “About Him” from 2013’s Dreams in Analog.
The blurb describes “About Him,” as opening with an “angelic riff,” but I found it more demonic than angelic. The song is like five minutes long and nothing happens. The melody just swirls around and she repeats a few lines a lot–yes, this song is about you.
“Into Orbit” is much the same although this song is about her grandfather I think–it’s really hard to focus on what she;s saying because it’s all so ethereal.
Before the third song she gives a shout out to 9th Wonder, apparently a storied hip-hop producer who produced her brand new song, “Rain Clouds,” This song actually has a drum beat on it and it’s short. There’s also a nice backing vocal track. This feels like an actual song.
She closed with her latest single, “Gone.” Even with a slightly interesting synth bass line, the rest of the song is so in the ether that it just seems to drift away.
And the whole show was forgotten just like that.
[READ: May 18, 2020] “The Afterlife”
There was a lot going on in this story but I really have no idea what it was. The fact that it was divided into short numbered passages really didn’t help in any way.
R. is on a shuttle bus to the afterlife. The building is unfeasibly large with side rooms. The place was crowded and he wondered if he’d see anyone he knew.
Then he hears people, his, people muttering nonsensical sentences. Until finally he sees someone writing something down. He hopes the man is a poet. But when R. talks to the man and asks if anything here adds up, the man says
“It doesn’t add up to anything at all. Not unless you saw the sequel.”
“The sequel?”
“Avengers: Endgame.”
What? Are you kidding me?
The only part of this story I enjoyed was R’s inability to get reality straight. He wants to know why people aren’t talking about better movies like Welles Orthman’s The Munificent Unpersons.
I enjoyed even more him trying to say the Marvel movie and calling it Revengers: Spendblame and Avoiders: Shamegame.
But you can’t build a story about making fun of a popular movie title.
Eventually he falls into a pit with lots of other people. And then it all seems to repeat.
There has to be more to this story than this. But I sure don’t know what it is.
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