SOUNDTRACK: LULUC-Tiny Desk Concert #390 (September 15, 2014).
Bob Boilen has loved Luluc for a while. I never really appreciated them as much as I do on this Tiny Desk Concert. The duo is from Australia (and now Brooklyn), and I’d always felt that their songs were nice but nothing special. But you can really hear what’s going on in them. Zoë Randell’s voice sounds like a revitalized Nico and Steve Hassett’s accompaniments are really interesting.
“Small Window” starts with Zoë strumming a small acoustic guitar and singing. Steve accompanies on electric guitar. It’s a pretty song with a nice melody. And his solos accentuate the song. But when the song shifts gears to the “crystal waters” section and an unexpected chord change it becomes much more than a simple folk song.
For the second song “Without A Face,” Steve switches to bass. When Zoë talks, her speaking voice is gentle and somewhat high-pitched so when she begins singing she sounds even more shockingly like Nico. And the bass is wonderful on this song. He throws in a lot of little fills that really add a lot to the verses. And the “oh oh” section in the middle is wonderful with some great harmonies from each of them.
Zoë says they used to play with just two guitars and mics and they have added a lot more gear lately, but that they’ve they’ve stripped down for this show. For “Reverie On Norfolk Street” he plays electric guitar (cooly vibrato’d) and his gentle backing vocals on this song are a nice almost bass addition to the song. There’s even a guitar solo which after the song he says is “the quietest guitar solo in existence.”
Luluc really surprised me with this session and I may have to give their studio tracks another listen.
[READ: July 23, 2016] The Lost Colony 3
Book 3 ramps up the excitement quite a bit, and also a had a lot of flashbacks that fill in some story lines.
Like the other two, it also begins with someone lost saying “Dear God where the %$!* am I?” But this time he is a beautiful hunk of a man with gorgeous blond locks. He is Buck Swagger and he is transported to the island on the ferry because of a letter from Olympia Snodgrass (the Mayor’s wife and Birdy’s mom).
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