SOUNDTRACK: KATE DAVIS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #59 (August 4, 2020).
I hadn’t heard of Kate Davis before this Home Concert.
Her songs are simple and straightforward with a real timeless quality. She reminds me a lot of Kathleen Edwards. Turns out that she also co-wrote Sharon van Etten’s “Seventeen.”
Like so many artists, Kate Davis was to be on tour during the spring and summer of 2020. She was scheduled to play a concert at my desk in May. Sitting by her desk at home, Kate Davis is marking time by writing new music…. She’s an extraordinary lyricist. Her 2019 album, Trophy, was a sharply worded collection of songs, many about growing up and a powerful tune about her father’s death.
“Cloud” has a great melody throughout, and the chorus is great–with her falsetto moment an unexpected bonus. The slow middle section is also a really nice surprise.
“Open Heart,” the second song performed for her Tiny Desk (home) concert, is about a broken heart. It’s a subject tackled by many, but her lyrical prowess sets the scene in the hospital, where the doctor cuts her open, sees her critical condition, and takes out her broken heart. She sings, “Put the pieces back together, looks like it’s been shattered by a bad love,” later adding, “You’d rather feel this pain than have a broken heart.”
This song features another great delivery as she sings the lyric high but then adds a lower almost spoken word during the bridge “deep…breath.” The song builds and builds to the end and I love that the chugging guitar chords ends with a slightly-off-ringing note that adds a cool amount of dissonance to a song about a broken heart.
I guess these songs sound different on the record since the blurb says:
Hearing these songs stripped to their essence–just Kate Davis and her guitar–exposes her charm and wit.
“I Like Myself” is a finger-picked style of playing–sounding quite different from the other songs. The lyrics are very thoughtful:
I kind of like myself
Cause she likes me
And since I think the world of her
And she of me
Then I’m exactly who and where I want to be
Who and where I want to be
“Ride or Die,” was written before quarantine and its perspective has changed since. The chord structure and vocal melody is unusual and very cool. I especially like the way she adds a really slow section in the middle–a picked melody (of more unusual chords). This is my favorite of her songs and I’m looking forward top hearing more.
Davis looks at the camera a lot during this performance–making her seem very confident, which I gather she is.
[READ: August 1, 2020] “Dalton’s Box”
I loved this story. It was fast and colloquial. It was funny and dark and I want to read more stories like it.
The story is basically a conversation between two brothers. The one brother asks if the other remembers Mick Dalton. He does.
A few months back, Dalton won the Lottery. Not a huge amount though, about 3,000 quid. And Dalton, who is usually in trouble for some petty crime or another, says he’s going to invest it.
That means a get rich quick(ish) scheme selling contraband. But this time Dalton is smart, you see. He’;s going to sell contraband Marlboro cigarettes (I have no idea how that’s going to work). (more…)
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I was supposed to see Kiwi Jr. open for Nap Eyes back in 2022, but the show was cancelled.
I loved Glaspy’s album Emotions and Math and I really wanted to see her perform it live. Turned out she had played in Philly a couple of months before I first heard the album.
I Just Read About That... 