SOUNDTRACK: COURTNEY BARNETT AND KURT VILE-Tiny Desk Concert #682 (December 8, 2017).
Kurt and Courtney were the unexpected hit pairing of 2017. Enough has been said about how they don’t exactly seem like they should fit but how well they do.
I’ve said that I wish the album rocked a bit harder, but really it’s live that this duo is terrific. We saw them a few months back and it was a lot of fun.
But this Tiny Desk Concert is twice as fun because of how unserious they are. As the blurb says:
Put your love of perfection outside the office door and come in for some office fun. This collaboration between Philadelphia’s Kurt Vile and Melbourne’s Courtney Barnett is more about newfound friends poking jabs, goofing around and having fun with words than reaching any new musical heights. It’s a much welcome injection of humor in the world of rock music and if you’ve heard their collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice, you’ll find this Tiny Desk performance musically even more casual. It’s akin to hearing friends play after a few afternoon beers, which is kind of what happened. (We actually had to page folks in the building hoping for some brew and were quite surprised at what the NPR staff had stashed in the fridge.)
They start with their hit “Over Everything.” It sounds great even if they are very casual about it. There’s lot of laughing between them, and their harmonies sound fantastic. After the song Kurt pops open a beer (clearly his second).
Courtney apologies for all the tuning they’ll have to do. “Good thing I don’t have all 12 strings.”
I love the sentiments and melodies of “Continental Breakfast”
Then Bob says, “Thanks to everyone who donated beer to make this concert possible.” Courtney: “Yea, that happened very quickly. Everyone has one beer hidden in their desk here.”
Kurt takes off his denim jacket and says, “Don’t mind my muscle shirt–I was working out.”
Kurt and Courtney tend to bring out the adolescence in one another, inspiring Kurt to pick out a song he wrote when he was roughly fourteen called “Blue Cheese” about, well, I’m not sure. But lines like, “I didn’t mean to cough on her/Forgot to add the fabric softener,” just make me laugh; and in 2017, in a deeply serious political landscape, I find that quite refreshing.
They joke their way through “Blue Cheese,” as you must. He plays a harmonica solo and admits, “that was terrible.” When it’s over he says, “I wrote that song when I was 12.”
The final song “Let It Go,” has Courtney on lead while Kurt sings some nice high backing vocals.
The whole show is light-hearted and fun, but they never make a mockery of the music. It’s just a casual good time.
[READ: November 1, 2017] Spinning
This is a memoir about competitive ice skating. But it is much more than that.
Interestingly, I found the intensity of the ice skating competitions to be a perfectly satisfying and compelling story in and of itself. So at first, when Walden began adding other things from her life, I wasn’t sure if these (rather important) aspects of her life could be shoehorned into a story about ice skating.
But it soon became apparent that the skating, which was such a big part of her life, was in fact, a rather small part of her life.
Of course, the fact that Walden is 21 and stopped skating when she was 18 shows just how big a part of her life the skating was. (more…)
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I saw Palehound three months ago at Johnny Brenda’s. This may be the shortest span between concerts for any band that I’ve seen.
I Just Read About That... 