SOUNDTRACK: BASIA BULAT-Live at Massey Hall (July 10, 2014).
Baia Bulat is an adorable singer. She plays autoharp and ukulele and seems incredibly upbeat. She also has a soaring, delightful voice.
About Massey Hall she says, “It’s not a stadium or a club, it feels huge and intimate ta the same time.”
She opens with “Run” in which she plays the autoharp (and you can actually hear it amid the other instruments).
Next up is a new song “Five, Four” with Basia on guitar with a cool almost sinister bass line.
For “Wires,” she stays on guitar. This song is almost aggressively upbeat and is much more upbeat. It also has a fun middle section in which she sings an Ooooh melody (like a solo) into a microphone with a distortion that makes it sound a bit like a kazoo. Its super catchy. She even takes that microphone and walks around, ultimately hopping of the stage and sitting in the front row (and the guy next to her of course pulls out his phone) to continue with the oohs.
“Tall Tall Shadow” is a slow moodier song with a great big chorus. They leave the stage and come back (I’m surprised they left in the whole encore scene).
When they comeback she says, “We’re on a curfew so we’re going to try to not get in trouble.” For an encore it’s her and two other women. One is playing a small 8-string ukulele as they sing “Before I Knew.”
When it’s over she asks, Am I allowed to sneak one more in? Try not to get kicked out of Massey Hall! She gets out the ukulele and plays that wonderful melody of “It Can’t Be You.” Then she walks away from the mic and sings her heart out. You can’t always hear her that clearly, but you can hear her hitting the soaring notes.
It’s funny that she worries about curfew and then sings a rather long song.
But it’s a great collection of songs and a beautiful set.
[READ: March 15, 2018] Beautiful Music for Ugly Children
I really enjoyed Kristin Cronn-Mills’ book Ugly Fake which was kind of novel/graphic novel hybrid. This is one of her earlier stories and it is all novel. It is about music and teen angst and high school.
And it’s about a girl named Elizabeth who is in fact a boy and wants to be known as Gabe. He has recently revealed this to his parents and his best friend, Paige. Paige has been nothing but supportive. His parents are a little more mixed about it. And of course he hasn’t told anyone at school. But since he dresses gender-neutral he has always been made fun of a school–where they know that he is Elizabeth. He is somewhat surprised that the boys make fun of him more than the girls–calling him he-she-it. Undoubtedly they are threatened by his looks.
But he is a senior, and school is almost over. He can certainly cope until it’s time to move away to the city.
In the mean time, he has a DJ gig that is the best thing ever. (more…)
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