SOUNDTRACK: LAURA MARLING-“Walk Alone” NPR Lullaby SXSW (March 19, 2015).
From March 17-March 21, the SXSW festival raged on. And my friends at NPR Music were there so I didn’t have to be. In past years they have had a nightly recap of their favorite shows of the day. This year they upped the ante by inviting a musician to sing a lullaby. Most of these lullabies occurred in some unexpected outdoor location at 2 or so A.M. after a long day of music.
This late night lullaby was actually recorded much earlier than most (around 9:30P.M) because one of the gang had to leave early.
Marling has become one of my favorite new (to me) voices. I love the way she sings. It feels unconventional or unexpected somehow. The way she doesn’t follow the melodies of her guitar playing is really cool and exiting. And when she drops into a nearly spoken word it’s quite arresting.
This song is from her soon to be released new album Short Movie, and it is as enchanting as anything she’s done. You can check it out here.
[READ: March 23, 2015] “Nina”
This issue of Harper’s featured five essays (well four essays and one short story) about “Growing Up: five coming of age stories.” Since I knew a few of these authors already, it seemed like a good time to devote an entire week to growing up. There are two introductions, one by Christine Smallwood (who talks about Bob Seger) and one by Joshua Cohen who talks about the coming of age narrative.
This is a story of meeting a bad person and getting sucked into her life. There’s nothing terribly original about this. However, the characters (her name has been changed) are not your typically teenage angsty college students. Set in 1981 at NYU, the narrator is Indian and the girl sitting next to him is Latina. It’s cool to have a familiar story told with slight differences like this one does.
The girl asks him for help with her computer. He fixes her problem and she asks to get his number so they can keep in touch. She is very pretty. He couldn’t resist calling her, so he invited her to a play and she agreed. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 