SOUNDTRACK: SNAIL MAIL-Tiny Desk Concert #650 (September 15, 2017).
It’s always encouraging that young musicians are still picking up guitars and writing catchy and interesting songs. I’d never heard of Snail Mail, but finding out that lead singer/guitarist Lindsey Jordan graduated high school last year is pretty cool.
I think that it helps to have some connections, though:
Jordan started Snail Mail at 15 and released the quietly stunning Habit EP via Priests’ in-house label last year. She’s quickly found fans in Helium and Ex Hex’s Mary Timony (who also happens to be Jordan’s guitar teacher) and just went on tour with Waxahatchee and Palehound.
They play three songs. On one it’s just her, but on the first two, she is joined “by what’s become her consistent live band (drummer Ray Brown and bassist Alex Bass).”
“Slug” has a propulsive verse and a cool thumping bridge. It’s an ode to a slug, in fact, but it also looks internally: “I have waited my whole life to know the difference and I should know better than that.” I really like the way the song builds and builds and then drops out for a second for a few curlicues of guitar.
Her lyrics are wonderful mix of maturity and teenager (I do like the “my whole life bit,” but I really like this couplet from the next song “Thinning.”
I want to face the entire year just face down / and on my own time I wanna waste mine.
spend the rest of it asking myself is this who you are / and I don’t know it just feels gross. (And her delivery of the word “gross” is wonderful).
From her reaction and this blurb, I guess the band is a bit louder than what they play here:
Because we often ask bands to turn down for the office space, she jokes, “I guess I don’t really know what we sound like because we’re so loud. Now we’re quiet and Ray’s using the mallets and my guitar’s all the way down — I was like, ‘We sound like this?'”
For the last song, the guys leave as she re tunes her guitar:
Jordan closes the set solo with a new song, “Anytime.” It is, perhaps typically for Snail Mail, slow and sad, but the alternate guitar tuning and Jordan’s drawled vocal performance gives this song about a crush an aerial motion, like acrobats sliding down a long sheet of fabric.
With just her and her guitar this song is far more spare and less bouncy but it works perfectly were her delivery. I also like watching her bend strings with her third finger while playing a chord–she has learned some mad skills from Timony for sure. I wish I had seen them open for Waxahatchee, that’s a bitchin’ double bill, for sure.
[READ: October 20, 2016] Diary of a Tokyo Teen
Sarah brought this book home and it seemed really fun. It’s a look at Japan through the eyes of a girl who was born there about 15 years earlier but then moved to the U.S. with her family. She is older and somewhat wiser and is delighted to have a chance to explore what is familiar and unfamiliar.
And it’s all done in a simple comic book style diary which she self published at age 17.
So Christine flies to Kashiwa, a small city outside of Tokyo to stay with her Baba and Jiji (grandparents). She says the best reunion (aside from her grandparents) was with her favorite fast food chain unavailable in America: Mos Burger (you eat the wrapper because it would be messy to take it out of the wrapper).
What I love about this book is that unlike a more formal guide book, Christine is a typical teenager with typically American experiences. So she notices that the people who work fast food are happy–or at least appear to be. She’s also aware right form the start how trendy the other kids are. And while an adult might not care, for a teen aged girl, that’ pretty devastating. (more…)
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Ex Hex is a kind of indie supergroup comprised of Mary Timony (Helium, Wild Flag) and Betsy Wright (from Bat Fangs who I saw and liked). The third member is drummer Laura Harris.
I Just Read About That... 