SOUNDTRACK: PAUL WELLER-Tiny Desk Concert #457 (July 28, 2015).
Paul Weller is a highly regarded and well respected elder statesman of rock. Some of his songs with The Jam are my favorite songs from the 80s. Weller hops from genre to genre quite a lot, and I did not care for The Style Council at all. So even though he’s been making music forever, I haven’t really paid him much attention. In this tiny Desk, he brings a fairly large band (6 people (4 guitars!)) to sing an acoustic collection of songs. There’s a drums (just a snare) and a percussionist too. And everyone sings.
His voice sounds fantastic—older but still really strong.
They play four songs. Three are from his new album Saturns Pattern. Like “Dusk Til Dawn” which is a delightful folk song. The band sounds really loud, or not loud but big, like there are really 6 people out there. This is especially true on “I’m Where I Should Be” which also has some great harmony vocals and percussive guitar techniques. I love how much the harmonies contribute to the song and the general song structure is great.
“Out of the Sinking” goes back to Weller’s most popular album Stanley Road (which I don’t know). It’s a wonderful song. It showcases Weller’s gruffer vocals and nice finger picking. There’s some more great harmonies from the bongo player. And the song has a real nice campfire song feel (it reminds me a bit of Van Morrison’s folkier songs).
For “Going My Way” Weller switches to piano. It’s a simple song with some great backing vocals and harmonies, (and hand claps), although I prefer the middle two songs.
I hadn’t really given much thought to Weller in the last few decades, but this set was really enjoyable.
[READ: August 7, 2015] The Wallcreeper
This is Nell Zink’s first published novel (she has another novel, 1998’s Sailing Towards the Sunset by Avner Shats) which I read about that I would love to find, but I don’t think it has ever been published).
I really enjoyed Zink’s Mislaid and wanted to see what her earlier work was about. There was an article in the New Yorker which gave an interesting background to this story which involved a long correspondence with Jonathan Franzen and resulted in a book that I would suggest is not completely unlike something he might create–expect that it is way shorter and slightly more erratic.
Zink does not follow conventional story structure exactly. This is not to say that the story is weird or avant garde, not at all. She just doesn’t like to set things up conventionally. For instance, the first sentence of the story is: “I was looking at the map when Stephen swerved, hit the rock, and occasioned the miscarriage.” (more…)
I Just Read About That... 