SOUNDTRACK: 
CHELSEA WOLFE-Tiny Desk Concert #507(February 12, 2016).
I know Chelsea Wolfe from my fiends Liz and Eleanor who are fans of her. I have her album Pain is Beauty, which is atmospheric and gothic and reminds me of Siouxsie and the Banshees.
For this Tiny Desk, she strips away all of the band and noise and plays just her electric guitar (with some major fuzz) and sings (with some looping as necessary). I’m especially intrigued that one of her strings seems to be ever so slightly out of tune, which brings a really interesting tone to her echoed guitar playing.
Her voice is really pretty. On the record I’d been trying to think who she reminded me of. I hears Some Siouxsie Sioux, but in this set it’s someone else and I just can’t quite place it.
“Maw” really showcases her voice as she sings a lot of lines that soar, ever so briefly, and her voice sounds really powerful. There’s a whole goth kind of tone going on with her low guitar and her echoed voice. I especially like the end of the song where she wordlessly sings as her guitar echoes to a close.
She doesn’t talk between songs. And immediately she begins “Crazy Love.” This song has a beautiful melody and great singing but with a very dark overarching feel. I saw that her music was described as “doom folk” which certainly makes sense.
I like “Iron Moon” best. The slow riff in the beginning and the way her voice seems to want to crack but never does, it’s really powerful. And the way she always sounds great while she hits those big notes. It’s a great set and a rather unique sound for her.
It’s also nice to hear her talk at the end, just to know that she actually spoke to the people there.
[READ: February 27, 2016] Journey into Mohawk Country
Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert was only twenty-three in 1634 when he ventured into Mohawk territory in search of the answers to a pressing question: where were all the beaver skins that the Indians should have been shipping down the river? And he wrote a journal of his experience of traveling into the future-New York State in the dead of winter accompanied by the delegates from the Mohawk tribe.
George O’Connor has taken van den Bogaert‘s diary and used it word for word (after being translated by Charles T. Gehring and William A. Starna in 1988) to create a visual representation of this journey. I know O’Connor mostly because he is the editor of First Second’s Fables and Fairy Tales collections. I gather he is also an illustrator, although this is my first exposure to him. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 