SOUNDTRACK: IRENE DIAZ-Tiny Desk Concert #380 (August 9, 2014).
Virtually no infomation is given about Diaz in the blurb for her Tiny Desk Concert.
“My Sweetest Sin” opens as a one minute acapella song before she sits down at the piano and is accompanied by Carolyn Cardoza strumming away intently on ukulele for “Crazy Love.” Her voice sounds lovely by itself but it sounds even richer when accompanied by the spare instrumentation.
“Lover’s Sway” goes through several genres. It opens with a jaunty showtune vibe and then slows down for the verses. And then indeed it gets jaunty once again, in a very different way.
For the final song, “I Love You Madly” she switches to guitar. She says it was her first love song because she used to write a lot of depressing songs. This is a pretty, mellow song and she at times sounds a bit like a country singer and a bit like Natalie Merchant. It’s a little too slow and long for my tastes, but it is very pretty.
Diaz is quite a talent with a nice range of styles.
[READ: February 24, 2016] “East Wind”
This is the story of Vernon, who had moved to an unspecified busy waterfront town just a few months earlier. A recent spate of vandalism had caused some beach huts to be burned down. The town was horrified, but he didn’t mind so much because it improved his view to the sea.
He is sitting in a restaurant, and when the waitress asks if he’s done he replies with the cryptic, “All the way from the Urals.” When the waitress is understandably confused he says that’s where the wind comes from.
The waitress, a strong-looking woman, pronounces it Oorals. He assumes she is Eastern European, perhaps Polish. He jokes with her that they should o for a swim. She replies, no swim, although he hadn’t actually meant it.
He became a regular there. And on another occasion he said to her that they should run away and live in a beach hut. “I do not think,” she replied. But then he asked her out and she said yes. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 