SOUNDTRACK: JOHN GRANT-Tiny Desk Concert #372 (July 13, 2014).
I know and like John Grant from his albums after this one. These three songs perfectly encapsulate Grant’s pop sensibility with his acerbic wit. His later albums are also a bit more dancey, so it’s interesting hearing these as straight up piano and guitar songs.
On “Where Dreams Go to Die,” he plays piano in a very dramatic fashion and sings in his slow sometimes whispered baritone voice. The song is pretty and then the lyrics come in: “I’m willing to do anything to get attention from you dear.” But it’s not until the chorus (with acoustic guitar added) that the melody gros even more catchy and the lyrics grow even more dark: “Baby…. you’re where dreams go to die and I regret the day your lovely carcass caught my eye.” There’s great bass riff on the piano that he plays during the end of the song which ups the drama even further. It’s quite a song.
In introducing “Sigourney Weaver,” he says that when he was 12 he moved from Michigan to Colorado and he hoped the move would erase his homosexual feelings. He changed his mind about that “when he got the hang of it.” The song doesn’t have anything to do with Weaver except as simile: “I feel just like Sigourney Weaver when she had to kill those aliens.” Although I think the follow-up simile is even better: “I feel just like Winona Ryder in that move about vampires and she couldn’t get that accent right and neither could that other guy.”
“It Doesn’t Matter to Him” is about the inability to deal with the sudden absence of love. It features the great lyrics: “I am no longer as awkward as I was when I was younger I guess I’m one of those guys who gets better looking as I age.”
Grant is a marvel and his songs, while caustic, are quite fun.
[READ: February 15, 2016] “Raj, Bohemian”
I really enjoyed this story a lot.
I enjoyed the way the story began with a bunch of wealthy city kids doing all kinds of debauched things with no repercussions. None of them worked, but somehow they were trendsetters. “We went dancing whenever we felt like it and watched illegal pre-releases of Hollywood blockbusters… By the time the world caught up we usually got bored and moved on.”
They are smug asses, but they aren’t obnoxious about it–“we despised trendies–fashion kids who tried to hard,”
And then we met the narrator’s friend Sunita who throws the best parties. She had a gorgeous apartment and lived there rent free (for complex reasons). For this latest party, which promised to be her best, she cryptically said “dress sincerely.” (more…)
I Just Read About That... 