SOUNDTRACK: MUZZ-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #162 (January 29, 2021).
I had not heard of Muzz before this set. They are a project of Interpol singer Paul Banks.
Paul Banks and Josh Kaufman have known each other since childhood. You likely know Paul Banks as the singer for Interpol; Josh Kaufman is a producer and one-third of Bonny Light Horseman. They are both friends with drummer Matt Barrick, who played a Tiny Desk concert in 2012 with his band The Walkmen.
The trio plays three songs from their self-titled debut album. I’m not sure what the record sounds like (Barnes suggests that at least one of the songs is more rocking), but this is a mellow gathering.
Josh Kaufman told me via email that “Paul was stuck in Glasgow and Matt and I were quarantining with families in Philadelphia and Brooklyn, respectively. At the very end of a long couple of days of rehearsal and taping, we — very late at night, Paul jet-lagged and the rest plain exhausted — stayed awake a little longer to try a campfire style strum along to some of the songs from our new LP. The result here is our Tiny Desk.”
All three of them are wearing masks and Barnes can sing no problem–people need to lighten up about the masks.
“Bad Feeling” has one guitar from Kaufman and quiet malleted drums as Banks sings. I don’t really hear Interpol in this at all, it’s much folkier
“Knuckleduster” is kind of a rock n roll song but they’re playing it rather quietly. It doesn’t sound any different in this format except the drums are heavier and there are some deeper chords.
Barnes picks up a guitar for “Trinidad” and plays the opening melody. Having the two guitars playing harmonies is really nice. The drums are just brushes rubbed on the heads. It has a very campfire feel.
As they prepare for the last song, Barrick brings his drum mic up front. It takes a moment or two (no edits, Banks jokes). “Summer Love” has a drum machine and Barrick playing a very quiet synth. It, too is a pretty, quiet song with a delicate solo from Kaufman.
[READ: March 10, 2021] “Family Furnishings”
One of the great things about Alice Munro stories is the way she fully fleshes out the characters. In this story, the plot (such as it is) is one thing, but Munro adds in so much detail about the characters–details that give you a fuller picture of them, but which don’t really have an impact directly on the plot–that you feel like you are fully a part of this world. We learn that the narrator was married twice an we learn a bunch about her first and second husbands. None of this has any direct bearing on the story, but these details give you the most complete picture of the narrator and helps to flesh out the decisions she makes.
This is the story of a young woman who grows up to become a writer and how her father’s cousin had an unexpectedly big impact on that career trajectory.
When the narrator was little her father’s cousin Alfrida (Freddy) was a dramatic and dynamic person. She worked for the newspaper and was part of the collective of writers who contributed to “Flora Simpson Housewives’ Pages” (there was no Flora Simpson, just a photo of a woman). She also wrote the “Round and About Town” column which allowed her to give her opinion on all things local.
She was appropriately full of herself but she was always a delight to have around. The rest of her family was quite dull and formal and the narrator felt like Alfrida loosened everyone up.
Indeed, it was Alfrida who first got the narrator to smoke–right in front of her parents. “Do you want a ciggie-boo?” She was fifteen and took the cigarette. Her parents pretended it was a joke. Her mother said “Ah will you look at your daughter? I’m like to faint.” But smoke she did.
The moment was amazing as if her family had been instantly transformed into something they were not.
But then things changed. Alfrida visited less–although there were still Christmas cards. But when the narrator’s mother got sick, Alfrida did not come. This was alright with the narrator as she didn’t want to see anyone anyhow.
The narrator then went to college (on a scholarship) in the town where Alfrida lived. Alfrida invited her over several times but the narrator kept making excuses. Finally the invitations stopped.
The narrator found herself thinking disdainfully on Alfrida. The narrator now went to the library and read literature with her college friends. Whereas Alfrida looked down on books like that “Hot shot reading” she’d call it and said that English students were the worst writers at the paper. Of course she also agreed with Senator McCarthy but couldn’t support him because he was Catholic.
After two years, the narrator was about to get married and move away, so she figured she would stop in to see Alfrida. Her place was small and overcrowded with things. The meal was okay and only a little uncomfortable. Alfrida had a man, Bill, who didn’t speak much but when he got going he was hard to stop. He was nice enough. He was also married.
Alfrida explained that most of the things in her house–all of the overcrowded furnishings were from her family and she couldn’t part with them. Then she told the story which the narrator had heard meany times about Alfrida’s mother’s death–an oil lamp had exploded in her hand and scalded her. She did not survive and Alfrida was not allowed to see her before she died.
The narrator’s mother (and her aunts) all seemed to secretly relish this story–like it was a horrible treasure to them.
To listen to them had always made me feel as if there were some obscene connivance going on, a fond fingering of whatever was grisly or disastrous,
Then Alfrida told apart of the story the narrator had never heard before–something from Alfrida’s perspective. And this comment germinated an idea in the narrator’s head. One that came out in a story. A story that upset Alfrida. Although she never told the narrator that.
When the narrator’s father died, she learned a bit more about Alfrida–a secret she never knew and a retelling of another story she had always known from her childhood. In this story, her father and Freddy heard the bells in town ring out to signal the end of the first World War. She’d heard this story many times, but at the funeral a new angle was put on it.
It’s amazing how much this woman affected her even as she tried to avoid her.
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