SOUNDTRACK: SUMMER WALKER-Tiny Desk Concert #903 (October 18, 2019).
I have never heard of Summer Walker. This is who she is:
A 23-year old singer-songwriter with an uncensored pen and brown-liquor vocals, Walker has become something of a patron saint for colored girls who’ve considered bossing up when heartbreak is too much. With the release of her official studio debut Over It, she made history last week by racking up the biggest streaming week of any female R&B artist ever. Meanwhile, the first lady of upstart label Love Renaissance (LVRN) is lowkey leading a sonic revolution in Atlanta that’s turning the trap capital back into an R&B town. Her team was equally insistent on tricking out the Tiny Desk space by hanging lights that brought a diffuse glow to Walker’s creative set.
It’s funny to read this blurb and all of the glowing praise and “fan favorites” for a person I’ve never heard of and whose debut album came out the week before. And yet, apparently she is in high demand.
For an artist who rarely grants interviews and admittedly dreads the public spotlight — despite an Instagram feed that clearly shows off her humorous, exhibitionist flair — Walker’s Tiny Desk is revealing. In the span of 15 minutes, she performs fan favorites (“Session 32,” “Wasted,” “Riot”) and the song that made Drake hop in her DMs, “Girls Need Love,” before ending with current single “Playing Games.” Even behind the bright lights and oversized eyeglass frames, her unadorned soul shines through.
I’m quite delighted with how restrained this entire performance is. I don’t know if her recorded songs are similarity stripped bare (I assume not) but I really like how understated and chill this is.
For the first song, “Session 32” Summer plays guitar along with Elijah “Jah” Whittingham as she sings quietly.
Seconds before the cameras started to roll, Summer Walker showed just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her day at the Tiny Desk: She clipped her nails. It wasn’t an aesthetic choice but a pragmatic one. Not even her love for a fresh set of bedazzled acrylics would get in the way of her strumming the soul out of her six-string Fender electric.
The songs fills out nicely with a gentle bass from Stox and simple drums from Remey Williams. By the end of the song there some twinkly keyboards from Slim.wav and in 2 and a half minutes, the song is over.
Summer puts the guitar away for the rest of the set (was it worth cutting her nails for less than 3 minute of strumming?) and just sings.
“Wasted” is a bit more slinky and sultry, with a groovy bass and some piercing electric guitar lines. This is probably the fullest song complete with her backing vocalists. And yes it makes me smile that her name is Summer and one of the backing vocalists is named Autumn (with the unlikely last name: Autumn Tuesdae) while the other is Angel White.
The third song, “Girls Need Love” is the one that made “Drake hop in her DMs” (whatever that means). It doesn’t sound all that different from the other songs until you listen closely to the lyrics. Never has a verse like this sounded so gentle and sweet:
I just need some dick
I just need some love
Tired of fucking with these lame niggas baby
I just need a thug
Girls can’t never say they want it
Girls can’t never say how
Girls can’t never say they need it
Girls can’t never say now
It’s hard to believe that the woman who sings this is actually quite shy
“Look, I’m really freaking excited to be here but I have social anxiety like a mother******,” Walker told the NPR crowd at the end of her set, barely mumbling the expletive in an attempt to censor herself. “I’m freaked the hell out, I’m sweating, but this is so exciting for me.”
After band introductions, she introduces “Friend”
The guitar wasn’t the only thing she’d brought with her from Atlanta. In her lap sat “Friend,” the pink stuffed animal who no doubt provided a bit of emotional support during a five-song set that forced the shy enigma out of her creative shell.
I really enjoy that “Riot” is just her and Jah’s electric guitar. Similarly her singing is understated. There’s no over-the-top R&B caterwauling–she just sings really nicely. I hope that her singing style will inspires more singers to sing like her–dial it back, huh?
And it’s less than two minutes long. Amazingly, all of the songs are short. The first three songs were finished in 8 minutes.
The final song “Playing Games” fills out the sound again. Even though everyone seems to kick it up a notch, it is still understated.
I found that I really liked Summer Walker quite a lot.
Out of curiosity, I listened to the recorded version of “Riot” and was delighted to find that it is indeed 2 minutes long and is just her voice and one guitar.
Understated beauty.
[READ: October 23, 2019] “The Bunty Club”
I continue to really enjoy Tessa Hadley’s stories. Even though nothing ever really “happens,” I love the depth she gives her characters.
This story was a little different because the narrator inhabits all three sisters at one point or another and we see through all of their eyes for a time. Although it is really Serena’s story.
The story opens on Serena, the youngest sister. She is awake before the other two and is enjoying the garden which is “much more lovely now than when it had been scrupulously cared for.” The house they were in is a stolid Victorian villa. They had all grown up in this house but had outgrown it.
The eldest sister Pippa and the middle sister Gillian were in the house, reliving some childhood incidents.
All three sisters were back in Fern Hall because their windowed mother was recently hospitalized. They were taking turns to drive the forty five minutes to the hospital. (more…)
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