SOUNDTRACK: THE DECEMBERISTS-Tiny Desk Concert #135 (June 20, 2011).
NPR has loved the Decemberists for years, so it’s no surprise that they made it to Bob Boilen’s office for a Tiny Desk concert. And yet they are probably one of the biggest bands to appear at the Tiny Desk, so I was quite excited to hear this show. They play 3 songs, all from The King is Dead: “Down by the Water” (naturally), “Rox in the Box” and “The June Hymn.”
Colin is in good chatty form (after almost getting hit in the face by a violin bow) and makes a very funny comment about thinking that everyone would be working while they played. He also—I think a first in Tiny Desk history—screws up a song (“The June Hymn”) and has to restart the whole thing—it’s a very minor flub, only noticeable if you listen a few times, but he noticed and clearly felt bad (and didn’t curse either).
The songs sound great even if they’re not radically different from the recorded version (the harmonica solos are the big “improv” moments). And this set confirms what a solid bunch of songs The King is Dead is.
[READ: July 7, 2011] Wildwood
I had this book signed by Colin and Carson at BEA. I was so psyched to see that they were signing there, that I got up super early, took the bus into Manhattan and got to the convention center before it opened (I thought they were signing at 7:30, but it was actually 8:30). Of course, I didn’t see the fine print that said I needed a ticket to meet the author and illustrator. In fact, I didn’t even realize that people were holding tickets until I was next on line. I asked the nice BEA worker if I could still go. She said they wouldn’t sign a book, but that I could say hello.
I told Colin and Carson that I loved their stuff and I gushed over them like a little fanboy (even mentioned having a Tarkus album) and they gave me a copy of the book anyway (signed by them both). How cool!
So this book is an older children’s book (I would say on a level of The Mysterious Benedict Society–which the book reminded me of because Carson did the illustrations for that series as well, although the books are nothing alike in content).
I have always loved Colin’s lyrics (yeah, he signed my book, we’re on a first name basis now). They are fantastical and fantastic, and he has a great vocabulary, pulling out obscure words for rhymes. There’s a generally accepted tenet in writing that poetry is more powerful than prose because poems are typically honed with perfect word choices, whereas prose tends to be a bit lazier because there’s so many more words to play with (ideally, prose should also be finely honed, but it’s much more noticable in poetry). And so given this, I guess it’s no surprise that Wildwood is not as impactful as Colin’s songs. There are couplets from Decemberists songs that run through my head all the time, but there weren’t any great phrases in the book that really stuck with me. Of course, at 540 pages you wouldn’t expect too many phrases to jump out at you (images and scenes and chracters yes, but phrases, no).
All of this is a long way of saying that I really enjoyed the story, but I wasn’t blown away by the language of the book.
The story follows Prue McKeel, a young girl who is pretty ordinary. She lives in Portland (the Wildwood of the title is in Oregon, not New Jersey, which isn’t surprising since they’re from Oregon, but a Jersey kid can hope), goes to school and has a pretty happy home life. Her mom and dad are nice (I love that her parents are suffused with all the trappings of hippie Oregon–it’s like Portlandia in print!) and her baby brother, Mac, is pretty okay too. The image that will stick with me is of Prue taking her brother for a bike ride: she transports him through the most peculiar (and reckless and dangerous) way I can imagine–she attaches a Radio Flyer wagon to her bike and plops him in the wagon. I just have to ask–how did he not fall out??
The story immediately announces itself as fantastical when a murder of crows swoops down out of the sky and grabs Mac from the ground and flies away with him. Now, Prue was supposed to be watching Mac, so although it’s not her fault a bunch of birds grabbed Mac and flew away with him, it is her fault, you know? So Prue hops on her bike and follows the birds through the city (a very exciting scene of reckless bike riding). She skids to a halt when she sees them fly into The Impassable Wilderness. (more…)
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