SOUNDTRACK: MAC AYERS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #118 (November 30, 2020).
I’ve never heard of Mac Ayers and while I respect the fact that he plays everything in this Tiny Desk Home Concert (and syncs things up nicely) and even wears different clothes for each instrument, this 15 minute set was pretty torturous for me.
If you were to ask what kind of singing do I hate the most, my answer would now be Mac Ayers. I hate the tone of his voice, I hate the way he does those whiny ooooooh at the end of his lines (note in the first song the first verse the way he says “you” and then the way he ends the rhyming word do (he even makes a face like it hurts him as much as it hurts me.
Obviously my opinion is not the popular one, because Ayers is apparently a big star. But not in my house.
The 23-year-old Long Island native shot this in his basement back in September (hence the ‘register to vote’ comment). Mac’s modus operandi lends itself to the Tiny Desk naturally. No over-produced beats, lots of live instruments and a stunning vocal range — and he handles all duties: guitar, bass, keyboard and background harmonies for three songs from previous albums and the premiere of a new song, “Sometimes.”
He plays “She Won’t Stay Long” and then fiddles on the keyboard as he introduces “Walking Home.” This song is a little bit more enjoyable for me. There are fewer grace notes. Although I do dislike the chorus.
He talks to us from his guitar to introduce the third song (I like that he’s mixing things up).
“Sometimes” is a new song. It reminds me a lot of Billy Joel (not his voice, but the melody–must be a Long Island thing).
“Easy” has some terrific harmonies, although I hate the lead vocals. I give him a lot of credit for being an exceptional musician, I just hate the music he makes.
We were well on the way to hosting Mac Ayres at our D.C. offices until we had to shut down and pivot.
I hope this Home Tiny Desk means he doesn’t have to do one in the office.
[READ: December 13, 2020] Modern Times
I saw this book at work and, given some of the blurbs, I thought it might be, if not fun then at least unusual to read flash fiction from an Irish writer. I also prefer this Australian cover (right).
The book starts out with a bang. “A Love Story” is bizarre and memorable. In a page and a half, Sweeney talks about a woman who “loved her husband’s cock so much that she began taking it to work in her lunchbox.” The story is bittersweet and outrageous at the same time. It was a great opening.
But I feel like the rest of the book lost some steam. Possibly because I assumed all of the stories would be this short. It felt like the longer stories dragged on a bit (which is strange for stories about 4 pages long).
Interestingly, “The Woman With Too Many Mouths” even addresses this (to me anyway) as the narrator says, “I could expend many pages recounting my time…. but you would become bored, and worse, you would forget all about the woman with two many mouths.” The woman with too many mouths had moths (among other things) fly out of these mouths.
“A New Story Told Out of an Old Story” is, as the title suggests, a story within a story. It feels like a fairy tale with a Woodcutter and a Miller’s Daughter. There’s even a Grandmother and a Wolf. In the internal story, the wolf attacks the grandmother. She survives, but the scar from the wolf makes her husband not want to look at her and the villagers treat her badly. When you get to the Grandmother’s story, she has a different take on things.
This book is very current and I am reading “The Palace” as being about the pandemic. Specifically, the outrageous bungling of the response by the current (and soon to be ex!) administration in the U.S.
The palace was sick no one believed it, but it was true.
In the story the palace physically deteriorates. The king patches it up but doesn’t actually do anything about the problem.
Soon reports of the sickness were breaking in the news on a daily basis. The king gave a rousing speech about battling the forces of evil that had created the sickness and people screamed ‘Long live the King’ until they were hoarse.’
(more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
