SOUNDTRACK: LIAM BAILEY-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #184 (March 23, 2021).
I had heard of Liam bailey but I didn’t really know anything about him. I’m fascinated by his voice because his British accent comes through as he sings (in the way that Billy Bragg’s accent is quite audible).
For this performance, Bailey teeters between belting and crooning, with emotions that ignite the screen from the top of “Fight” to the closing notes of “Paper Tiger.”
“Fight” is a short song that is primarily made of percussive chords and slaps on the guitar. For most of the songs, he is playing the chords and you can hear them change but there’s no ringing notes, just muted chords. Until the very last lines when the music resumes and he sings powerfully.
So it’s all about his voice.
Wiping the sweat from his brow between songs, he exclaims, “We don’t normally have these glaring lights in my living room. This is my front room by the way welcome. We’re not doing no studio productions. We’re keeping it real. Keeping it raw.”
I don’t know what “Vixit” means. He says he wrote this and the next song in upstate New York. The music is a little darker. Trying to figure out he lyrics:
I still have my memories I still hear your song. They were always so vindictive, you always got me wrong. I cherish every day now I’m happy to be alone. I get every thing I want and I still get stoned. I’m out of love, I’m out of love never seemed to make sense.
If only I had realized the other side was fine. If only I had realized.
“Paper Tiger” is another powerful song and once again, the guitar is the vehicle for his voice and lyrics. Which is not to say the song isn’t good, just that the melody is not as important as the words.
Perched atop an amplifier in front the peeling walls of his living room, he presents three selections from his latest album, Ekundayo, accompanied by one acoustic guitar. Ekundayo, which means “sorrows become joy” in Yoruba, fittingly describes the Nottingham, England, native’s music industry journey thus far. After various projects and record deals, he found it impossible to operate under the confines of a major label. He finally found the liberation he yearned for on Leon Michels’s Big Crown Records, which released Ekundayo last November.
This set is not even ten minutes long, but it’s really solid.
[READ: April 12, 2021] Parable of the Talents [2033]
2033 is a brutal year for Acorn and Earthseed. The end of the section was really hard to read.
As the year opens, our narrator, who we later learn is named Larkin Beryl Ife Olamina Bankole says that her mother should have left Acorn and gone to Halstead like Bankole asked. It makes it seem as though perhaps Bankole went without her, but he did not.
“Larkin” is a derivative of Lauren and from the Greek Laurel , “Beryl” was his mother–emerald is type of beryl. “Ife” is the Yoruba word for “Love”
Olamina dna Bankole had actually stayed in Halstead for a short time. A family was moving from Halstead to Siberia (!) for a better life. The election of Jarret was the last straw for them. Bankole is amazed:
If [when I was a boy] anyone had said that Americans would be giving up thier homes and their citizenship and going to make new lives in Siberia, the rest of us would have looked around for a straightjacket for him (130).
Olamina and Bankole stayed in the family’s house while Bankole was trying to decide if he should move there. Well, he knew he should, he was trying to convince his wife. She doesn’t want to move but says it was a good trip for her. Living in a modern house with plumbing. Being so close to the Ocean. She could see the appeal.
Bankole had told people that they were leaving. Or, more specifically, Marc was telling people they were leaving and the faithful were understandably freaked out. But she convinced them, and herself, that she wasn’t leaving.
When I started this year I was taking notes on things that interested me, but after having finished it and reading all the horrors, it seems bizarre to include little observations about things that made me smile. But I get to throw this one in because I am a cataloger for a library.
Olimani and Channa have been sorting and cataloging books for their library and Olamina hated to be interrupted, but not too much: “Still, cataloging is tedious” (137).
The first bad news comes from Marc. After he had been rescued by Olimani and taken in by Acorn, he decided that he wanted to preach his own Christian beliefs to the people. He was going to do it without asking his suiter, but Olamina found out and told him to preach at their next Gatehring. She warned him that he would be questioned about what he said and he was cocksure enough to go on with it. Continue Reading »
When Purity Ring cancelled their March 2020 dates due to COVID, they cleverly pushed their show back over a year. It wasn’t far enough. The duo has had to push their show to the fall now.
I Just Read About That... 