SOUNDTRACK: ANGELICA GARCIA-Tiny Desk Concert #968 (April 15, 2020).
I saw Angelica Garcia open for Phoebe Bridgers. Her show started off okay but she totally won me over by the end. She played guitar, she looped her voice and synths and was really impressive. She also sang some songs in Spanish.
Well, two years later, Angelica Garcia is very different.
The biggest change is the amount of color she has added (when I saw her she was in a black floral print dress). She is also embracing her heritage a bit more than when I saw her. It was present then, but it is way out in front here.
Angelica Garcia decorated the Tiny Desk with colorful fabrics, orange flowers, a fuchsia dress, and a great deal of pride in what she calls her “Salva-Mex-American” heritage. Her song “Orange Flower” got my attention back in 2016, but I thought of her only as a Virginia rock and roller. Not anymore. Angelica Garcia’s music in the 2020s embraces her heritage, her life growing up in Los Angeles, and the ranchero music she heard from her family.
The show opens with a sample of a high pitched voice (presumably hers) saying “I wanna be like her.” It works as a repeated sample in “Guadalupe.” In this song
Angelica expresses respect for La Virgen de Guadalupe, the patron saint of Mexico, singing “I wanna be like her.” Guadalupe inspires her to declare that “power isn’t defined by your physique.”
But power comes from the loud rocking guitars from John Sizemore (what a great raw sound). Josh McCormick plays big electronic drums, including some electronic cowbells. In between the power chords, the melody is provided by a quiet and interesting keyboard sound from Ryan Jones
And let’s not overlook Garcia’s impressive voice. She has power and a lot of diversity in her delivery. She might even sound better than she did when I saw her.
The middle of the song has a breakdown where she and percussionist Kenneka Cook sing together a kind of scat. Anchoring all of this is really great bass sound from Chrissie Lozano.
For “Valentina in the Moonlight” Angelica plays the quieter guitar melody (she’s really good).
This song is slower and quieter, a love song. When the whole band kicks in, the song gets really full, with quiet guitar chords from Sizemore, while Garcia plays the main melody. You can clearly hear Lozano’s nice bass sound in this song.
Angelica moved to Virginia at age seventeen. The songs she sings at the Tiny Desk, all from her album Cha Cha Palace, reflect the way she was seen, or more to the point, not seen, in her new home. “Jícama” captures that feeling of invisibility:
“Jícama” starts out with cha cha sounds. Angelica sings with a pronounced accent. I really like the splash cymbal sounds that accent her song. When the whole band kicks in there’s a real Tex-Mex vibe which feels like a children’s song melody, perhaps the best way to get the message across
“I see you, but you don’t see me
Jícama, jícama, guava tree
I been trying to tell ya but you just don’t see
Like you, I was born in this country.”
Angelica Garcia has definitely changed. And for the better.
[READ: May 2, 2020] Strong Female Protagonist
Strong Female Protagonist is a webcomic which is on hiatus (although I don’t know for how long).
We’ve had this book floating around the house for a while and I’ve been meaning to read it. I loved the title–so simple, so terrific. I finally grabbed it off the shelf and decided today was the day.
I didn’t really know what the story was about and I found myself very surprised. This proved to be a superhero story with a difference–a huge difference. Both the origin story of the superpowers and the exploration of the ethics of superpowers are handled in a very different way.
One oft he big differences right up front was the language–these people say bad words… a lot. It’s while reading this book that you realize you’ve never heard Superman or Spiderman say “fuck.” But then these superheroes are not superheroes in the conventional sense. (more…)
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SOUNDTRACK: hiatus.
I Just Read About That... 