SOUNDTRACK: LAU NOAH-Tiny Desk Concert #823 (February 11, 2019).
Lua Noah is a Spanish singer/guitarist with a fascinating story. She sings mostly in Spanish (with subtitles!).
Lau Noah’s journey as a songwriter and guitarist occurred by happenstance. She was born in Reus, Spain barely a few hours drive from Barcelona. She speaks and now sings in Catalan, Spanish, English and sometimes Hebrew. She’d played piano growing up (never guitar) and left Spain for New York City five years ago while in her late teens.
On a visit to Montreal in 2016, Lau hoped to go to a Patrick Watson concert with friends. But the performance sold out and she was left alone in an apartment while her friends went to the show. Then a snowstorm ensued. The apartment had two guitars and, with nothing else to do, she picked one up and began to play. She wrote her first song, “Pequitas,” which means “Little Freckles.”
Her songs are quite short. “El Jardinero (The Gardener)” is barely 2 minutes long. She plays complex chords but not in an elaborate way–just making lovely sounds in beautiful patterns. The speed of her singing is somewhat at odds with the gentle playing, but it all works, as if she needs to get these passionate words out.
There’s a magical aura that surrounds Lau Noah as she sits behind my desk and embraces her guitar with one foot propped unnaturally high on a stool. As melodies pour from the strings, she sings these words in Spanish: “On the verge of the soul, there is a red petal, attached to the skins of mortals.” A few lines later in the song she continues, “a fragile petal that drinks the water of the most cruel stories: children who have never heard a fairytale, lovers who love, dressed in regret.” This is the sort of poetic tale that captured my heart amongst the thousands of entries I watched during the Tiny Desk Contest in 2018. Her song she submitted for the contest is called “La Realidad.”
I love the way in “La Realidad (The Reality)” she returns to a part where she plays a low note that rises and falls while everything else stays the same as she sings.
She says thats she is from Catalonia and was always afraid to sing in Catalan, so she sang mostly in English. She is very happy to sing the next song “L’Adéu (The Goodbye)” in Catalan. It has a beautiful melody and sounds very differrent from the other two songs.
She re-tunes her guitar for “La Belleza (The Beauty)” which has a very different fingerpicking style–faster and a bit more intense. The melody rises and falls both from her fingers and from her voice. It’s a mesmerizing song.
Before she played her final song, “Red Bird,” (in English) she quoted Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from his novel Don Quixote: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies,” Lau said, reading from her notes. “Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams is madness. And maddest of all: to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
She sounds just as lovely singing in English as she does in her other languages.
[READ: February 11, 2019] One Day a Dot
I don’t normally post about children’s picture books. But this one has two things going for it. It’s published by First Second and it’s pretty awesome.
This is, as the cover says, “the story of you, the universe, and everything.” All in 40 pages.
It begins: One day a dot appeared. And it was so excited to be there that it burst.
And that is the children’s version explanation of the big bang. (more…)
After releasing five new albums in 2017, KGATLW spent 2018 re-releasing their first five releases. These were out of print and hard to find. And now they’re back.
I Just Read About That... 