SOUNDTRACK: ALDOUS HARDING-Tiny Desk Concert #640 (July 28, 2017).
Aldous Harding is a singer from New Zealand. Her second album, Party, is full of deeply personal songs with memorable melodies and spare instrumentation. Aldous Harding’s musical partner for the Tiny Desk is Jared Samuel Elioseff .
I was mesmerized by her performance right from the start. Her voice is deep and sultry like Nico’s, and I imagined that she was French the way she enunciated. There’s something about her face–she seems to be filled with what…? disdain? emotion? as she sings these song. She grits her teeth, protrudes her lower jaw, makes fascinating expressions all to convey her meanings.
The first song she performs,”Imagining My Man,” is about what she calls the “tender and frightening thoughts that come with being in love,” and what you witness while watching her are often painful, pensive expressions that are as important to the song as the notes being played.
I really like this song a lot–the simple melody, the fascinating delivery and the wonderful touch of a strange little zip sound after each singing of “all my life….” The way she sings “if you get down” introduces yet another strange expression and an even stranger vocal delivery. It all borders on comical, but she is not funny she is baring emotion.
In introducing “Blend” she gives Jared the guitar and says “I’m really sorry for what you’re about to see me do, but it’s all for the good of the song.” And I genuinely can’t tell what she’s talking about. She doesn’t do anything expect change the drum sound on the keyboard. This song is whispered and the guitar plays gentle picked notes.
For the final song, “Horizon,” she takes away the guitar, stands up and says “thanks for watching” with a smile. She stands singing the final song which I think is my favorite. The expressions she uses as she delivers the first few lines is really intense–almost like a verbal threat:
I broke my neck dancing to the edge of the world, babe
my mouth is wet, don’t you forget it, don’t you lose me
The fact that she stands straight, dressed all in white–unmoving except for some hand gestures–just adds to the subtle intensity of her performance.
[READ: August 1, 2017] “Eric Duncan”
Philip Roth retired from writing in 2012, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t get more new material from him (although this isn’t exactly new, since it is from 2008). This excerpt comes from remarks he gave at his 75th birthday celebration and will be collected in a forthcoming volume.
This is his recollection of the first things he ever wrote on his mothers Underwood typewriter. In 1943, Philip’s mother was teaching him to type–white keys with black letters and number which “constituted all the apparatus necessary to write in English.”
He says that as soon as he mastered touch typing, he wrote his first title: “Storm Off Hatteras.” But he says that instead of writing his own name, he wrote by Eric Duncan: “There’s little that can bestow more confidence and lend more authority than a name with two hard c’s in it.” (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: The Believer June/July 2007 Music Issue Compilation CD: Cue the Bugle Turbulent (2007).
The 2007 Believer disc smashes the mold of folkie songs that they have established with the previous discs in the series. The theme for this disc is that there’s no theme, although the liner notes give this amusing story: