SOUNDTRACK: MITSKI-Tiny Desk Concert #467 (August 31, 2015).
Some recent Tiny Desk Concerts have been running long, but Mitski Miyawaki plays 3 songs in 8 minutes.
Her songs are simple—three chords at most. And she is unaccompanied here (her recorded versions are much more fleshed out)–just her voice and her electric guitar. But it’s the intensity of her lyrics and her delivery that really dominate the show.
“Townie” is the most rocking song The way her voice rises and almost breaks as she sings “I’ve tried sharing and I’ve tried caring and I’ve tried putting out” is really heartbreaking. And the follow-up “but the boys keep coming on for more, more, more.” It’s all of 2 minute long but it packs a punch.
“Class of 2013” is almost a capella. She plays a chord and lets it fade away while she sings.
Mom, am I still young? / Can I dream for a few months more? / Mom is it alright if I stay for a year or two…and I’ll leave once I can figure out how to pay for my own life too.
Interestingly, se plays an open-stringed guitar (it must be a special tuning). One loud chord that rings and fades. Even in the most unsettling moment, when she plays a chord and then screams the lyrics into the pick-up of her guitar–giving it a far-away and tinny quality as the chord echoes to a close.
The final song “Last Words Of A Shooting Star” has some simple opens string finger picking (again, must be an alternate tuning). As she sings quietly she seems to be exposing every ounce of herself.
One would be concerned for her psyche and yet she seems pretty happy and smiling when the show is over.
[READ: October 19, 2016] Understanding the Sky
This book is a long-format version of a short article/essay/something-else-entirely that was published in Afar in 2015.
This book reminds me of the publication of David Foster Wallace’s This is Water in that it is a brief essay/story spread out over hundreds of pages. Most often with one line per page. The difference between this and Water is that Water felt like a weird cash grab and this feels like a chance to show off more of Egger’s photos (there are not many in the article).
There is a photo on each page–most often with text–but sometimes without. And it works rather well.
The narrative is structured as a dialogue–each “person” is on a facing page, so the right page answers the left page. And it is done in a kind of removed third person. Thus it begins: “Who is this man?” “He wants to fly.” In this opening section the pictures are presented very thin–less than an inch wide in total but stretching from top to bottom of page in the center of the spread. (more…)
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I haven’t had that much exposure to Mitski. I loved her Tiny Desk Concert and had heard great things about her live show. So I was pretty excited to see her. I was amazed that she sold out Union Transfer (and every other date on her tour!) so quickly. She even added a second date in November and that one sold out, too. Good for her!
I Just Read About That... 