SOUNDTRACK: CATE LE BON-Tiny Desk Concert #337 (February 18, 2014).
Cate Le Bon has a very interesting style of singing–it reminds me of Grace Slick in her enunciation, but also like someone whose speaking accent is very strong and is somewhat masked by her singing (like the way she sings “reason” as “ree-sun” as opposed to “reezun”).
The blurb explains that her “phrasing is completely tied to her Welsh dialect — in fact, her first record was in Welsh…. The enunciation is completely tied to the loneliness and the questioning.”
For this concert it is just her and her fellow guitarist H. Hawkline (both wearing super cozy sweaters). They share the guitar licks very nicely–it’s not always clear who is playing what–with her sometimes finishing his lines (I believe).
“Are You With Me Now?” has a very catchy chorus (with an “ah ha ha ha ha” part that makes it sound like an olde English ballad).
“No God” plays with very simple guitar lines (chords played very high on the neck of her guitar and a simple accompanying riff). Hawkline plays keys (and sings some great falsetto backing vocals) to flesh out this song. Everything is so clean you can hear each note from the guitar and her voice.
“Duke” opens with some interesting slightly off sounding from Cate while Hawkline plays a simple chord pattern (his fingers are enormous, by the way). Hawkline’s falsetto is almost as engaging as the vocal lines that match the guitar line which Cate plays. And when she says “I’ll see you here” in that unexpected pronunciation, it’s totally captivating.
I like Le Bon a lot and want to hear what she wounds like on record.
[READ: May 18, 2016] Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl
After finishing Bob Boilen’s book and thinking about how I don’t really love music-based books, I immediately read Carrie Brownstein’s book. Carrie Brownstein is one of the two guitarists in Sleater-Kinney and Wild Flag. She is also one of the leads (writer and actor) on Portlandia. And she wrote for NPR for a while, too. Basically, Carrie is the shit.
One thing I took away from this book is that I’ve read a few musician memoirs (Mötley Crüe and Marilyn Manson to name a few) and this is the first one I’ve read that was filled with so much sadness. Not “I was stoned and regret sleeping with that person with an STD sadness,” but like, real family problems and even a dead pet. And, as Carrie herself jokes, her stories of being on tour and ending up in the hospital are not based on drugs or other debauchery, but on anxiety and even worse, shingles.
The beginning of the book starts in 2006, around the initial break up (hiatus) of Sleater-Kinney. Carrie is in pain–emotional and physical–and she can’t take much more. She starts punching herself hard in the face. (more…)
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When Yeah Yeah Yeahs first came on the scene, I wasn’t impressed. They were overhyped and didn’t really do anything that amazing.
I Just Read About That... 