SOUNDTRACK: NICOLE BUS-Tiny Desk Concert #882 (August 21, 2019).
Nicole Bus is from Amsterdam. Everything about her makes it seem like she has been around for a while. Her style of music, her raspy voice (which makes her sound older than she is) and her choice of instrumentation (the horns and flute melodies sound old school). But she is an emerging artist:
Nicole Bus’ sound is nostalgic. It’s reminiscent of vintage R&B, yet still feels current, and can transcend age and demographics.
Her style is R&B, but her singing style is far more reggae influenced. It’s really fascinating. The first song, “You,” opens with spooky piano from Eugene “Man Man” Roberts and slow horns from Chris Stevens (trumpet) and Aaron Goode (trombone). I love the addition of the flutes from Korey Riker. More and more I can’t get over how good flutes sound in rock. Her delivery is quite reggae until she lets out with her powerful raspy voice. The song is really catchy.
Nicole followed by premiering a new song about women’s empowerment, “Love It.” Drummer Mark Thomas starts with drums and then switches to hand drums. Anthony DeCarlo adds acoustic guitar while Jasmine Patton sing high note backing vocals. I love in the middle of the song when Eugene “Man Man” Roberts play a very 70s-sounding fill on the keyboards. Riker adds more great flutes.
She ends the set
with “Mr. Big Shot,” an up-tempo banger mixing high-energy rhythms with ragga-influenced vocals.
Nicole plays acoustic guitar and there’s a cool, catchy four note bass riff from Ray Bernard that propels the song along. Lamarcus Eldridge joins Patton for some great backing vocals. This melody has been stuck in my head for days now.
I’d never heard of Nicole Bus, but I really enjoyed her set and her energy.
[READ: September 1, 2019] Paper Girls
This book turned out to be so much more interesting than I imagined.
The title was strangely puzzling and the cover had a kind of 1980s look to it.
It didn’t occur to me that “paper girls” meant newspaper delivery girls.
It’s coincidental that this book starts out with the main character, Erin, getting up at 4:40 to deliver papers since that’s almost exactly the same way as Middlewest in which Abel gets up at 4:30 to deliver papers.
Anyhow this story is quite different form that one because it has a cool feminist attitude, although it is also supernatural.
It begins with Erin asleep and dreaming of Christa McAuliffe in heaven. Then she wakes up at 4:40 and gets ready to deliver the Cleveland Preserver. It’s also November 1 (1988) as evidenced by The Far Side calendar (nice touch). The calendar has “hell morning” written on it.
Why? Because at 4:40 on the morning after Halloween there are still hooligans roaming the streets. One dressed as Freddy Krueger harasses Erin immediately. But while he is giving Erin a hard time, three girls pull up on bikes and harass right back. One girl uses some very inappropriate language which Erin (who goes to Catholic school) chastises her for. The girl, Mac, waits for a thank you. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 