SOUNDTRACK: BARTEES STRANGE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #172 (February 22, 2021).
WXPN has been playing the song “Boomer” a lot. I really like it–it’s super catchy and fun. I hadn’t heard anything else by him, so I was delighted to see he had a Tiny Desk Concert.
Bartees Strange and his band are in a basement, surrounded by electrical wiring and DIY sound-proofing, but also green plants that no doubt have names. In Falls Church, Va., the indie rocker is a stone’s throw from the much-missed Tiny Desk space in D.C., yet offers a set just as cozy and crammed.
And he starts it right off with “Boomer” which is just so catchy, with that slinky bass line from John Daise and that outrageously catchy chorus. Dan Kleederman plays the guitar leads throughout while keyboardist Graham Richman plays rhythm.
The rest of his set proves that musically he is open to anything:
hip-hop bombast meets sprawling indie-rock riffs and mind-numbing electronic beats. “Sonically it doesn’t make sense,” Bartees Strange told NPR Music, “but it makes sense because it’s me and I think that’s like an important part of music – the person.”
For “Mustang” Richman hands Bartees his guitar and plays keyboard instead. He says that Mustang is about where he grew up–Mustang, Oklahoma. This time Bartees plays the pretty guitar riffs and Kleeederman adds slide guitar.
For his Tiny Desk, Bartees Strange keeps the bluesy rock and roll bravado of “Boomer” and the loping smooveness of “Mustang,” stripping down the drum kit to include a sheet music stand as an extra cymbal.
He answers the question of what has inspired him this year by saying he has been trying not not to pay too much attention to the transition, so he’s been focusing on music. He loves Yves Tumor’s Heaven for a Tortured Mind. And Aaron Dessner for being the Indie rock Michael Jordan.
It’s in the back half where Bartees Strange does the switch-up, as “In A Cab” flows seamlessly into “Flagey God.” On record, these are louder and noisier songs that explore very different sides of his 20-sided die, but here, they become laid-back jazz club jams, deceptive in their ease, but beautifully ornate as the arrangements open up to his world.
“In A Cab” opens with a quiet but cool drum pattern from Carter Zumtobel and a sweet combination of guitar lines. It segues quietly into “Flagey God” a more mellow song that has a great catchy guitar riff.
I’m going to have to check out the whole album.
[READ: April 15, 2021] Under the Pendulum Sun
I’m not sure how I heard about this book, but I saw a rave review and it inspired me to actually buy the book, sight unseen. I didn’t realize the book was put out by Angry Robot, a publisher I have been recently introduced to and which publishes esoteric and unusual fiction, that seems to have a religious aspect.
So this fit right in.
This is a long book and it is written in an old style–slightly formal with lots of biblical components. The writing at times felt stiff, but not unreadable. And, this is the weirdest part, I simultaneously felt like the book was moving too slow and yet I felt like I was flying through the chapters.
Each chapter opens with an epigram. Most of them are fictitious but there are some from real authors and these may or may not be real quotes.
The book opens with Catherine Helstone talking about how she and her brother Laon (how in the heck do you say that? It plagued me for the whole book) grew up fantasizing about new worlds. But neither one of the ever fantasized about Arcadia, the land of the Fae.
Now that they are older, her brother has left for Arcadia to become a Christian missionary–to convert the souls of the Fae–if they can even be converted. Several years later, Catherine has now set off to find him. She has a ship and his compass in hand. But the key to reaching Arcadia is to get hopelessly lost and then the entrance will appear.
Neat.
Suddenly there she was, being greeted by Ariel Davenport whom she had been communicating with. Ariel welcomed her and said she looked just like her brother. But Miss Davenport has unsettling news from the get go. She is not the real Ariel Davenport. Rather, she is her changeling.
She was a human child, I was a fairy-made simulacrum of a human child. We traded places. I grew up there and she grew up here.
She arrives where Laon is staying, but he is not here. He has not been seen for many months (they assure her that he is okay). But they will look after her, with the help of Ariel Davenport and Mr. Benjamin, the only Fae whom Loan has converted to Christianity (he’s quite serious about it, too).
Everything in Arcadia is weird. The sun is indeed on a pendulum (I really have no sense of how that was supposed to work–I don’t know if she didn’t describe it well enough or if I just didn’t care enough). The window to her room is opened every night even when she made she she locked it, hallways were always changing and poorly lit and she had to make sure she salted all of her food–that was a rule for all humans in Arcadia.
The longer she stays, the more she investigates and then she finds the Journal of Rev. Roche, he brother’s predecessor. They seems to be in an language she cant translate known as Enochian. She thought the book was a translation of the bible. She set about trying to retranslate the words so she could learn the language because the strange symbols appeared in unexpected places.
Over the course of the first hundred or so pages she has more and more questions but no one will give her a straight answer.
And then Laon shows up. At first he doesn’t believe she is there–he thinks she is a trick. But she convinces him that she is real and he is pleased to see her, but also concerned that she is there.
Among the fake epigrams is a real poem one from Percy Bysshe Shelly called Queen Mab. This coincides with the arrival of Mab, The Pale Queen as she returns to Arcadia.
The Queen causes all kind so chaos when she arrives. Everyone is afraid of her–most of the Fae refuse to say her name. She mocks the humans and “enjoys” Laon’s religious ceremonies and dinners.
This section of the book gets very religious, with a lot of bible quoting and defenses of Christianity. Mab attacks the ideas and Laon and Catherine argue back. There are also several crutch ceremonies. I was more than a little surprised by this turn of events, and I feared that the book was going to be a slow descent into Christianity. But boy was I wrong.
The Christianity section stays for quite a while, with Mr. Benjamin in particular asking detailed questions about Biblical passages and such. Laon is, after all, a missionary.
But he is no match for The Pale Queen. She seems to be here for the sport. She throws masquerade ball. Catherine was given a beautiful dress. The ball was well attended and she met all kinds of interesting Fae (including many who she realized were clockwork figures). But when the night abruptly ended, so did her magical clothing and she was left in her underwear in front of everyone. It was so humiliating–especially since in this book she is dressed in Victorian attire with layers of petticoats. So this exposure is almost unbearable.
The only thing that brought her out of her room was the Queen’s hunt. Every Ball should be followed by a hunt. And, shockingly, Queen Mab wanted to hunt Mr Benjamin!
Part Three of the book gets very exciting and very dark. Queen Mab tells Catherine that she (Catherine) is not who she believes she is. Then Miss Davenport confirms this.
This changes everything about her life, her memories are not what they seem. Her reason for being there is now faulty. It even changes her relationship with her brother. Things grow very strange between them and she now calls him Catherine Helstone’s brother.
At first she is inconsolable. But then things seems to take on a new urgency for her. She begins to work harder on translating Enochian and she spends more and more time with Laon.
The coolest part is when she and Laon go into a sea whale. There are many unusual creatures here, obviously, but the sea whale is the neatest. We have seen them before–they swim under the land. It is called a sea whale because it has a little bit of the sea inside of it It is made of wicker and is just fascinating. The shame is that they can only explore it because it has died. But it was a very cool sequence.
But as things move along and the story gets more intense. Cathy (she refuses to call herself Catherine) is involved in a murder and then Cathy and Loan make a discovery that they cannot undo. It changes everything for them.
In the Acknowledgements, Ng thanks al the Victorian writers who inspired her (and whose works she quoted in the epigrams). And then she thanks her family for reading the book and promises to make the next one “less creepy.”
There is a lot of creepy stuff in this one to be sure.
So I wound up enjoying the book even though the Victorian style was more off putting than engaging and even though I really have no idea what is going to happen going forward. The book does resolve itself, but are there going to be more missionaries sent there? Are they going to keep up the pretense of being missionaries?
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