SOUNDTRACK: PWR BTTM-Tiny Desk Concert #519 (April 4, 2016).
PWR BTTM are the most fun Tiny Desk concert to come along in a long time. They are a two person—drums and guitar only–queercore band. The two guys are Ben Hopkins and Liv Bruce. They are punky and brash and a lot of fun.
Ben plays guitar for the first three songs and they switch off lead vocals.
“Ugly Cherries” opens with an excellent, complex guitar riff played on a very distorted acoustic guitar. I love that that complicated riff runs through the song and ends with an awesome harmonic’d note. It’s two minutes of pop punk fun. And the opening lyrics sets the tone for the song (and the band): “My girl gets scared, can’t take him anywhere.”
Between songs Ben and Liv are full of jokes and chatter. Liv says “This is my favorite show that we’ve ever done…its cool to be someone’s lunch break.”
For “Dairy Queen,” Ben switches guitars. He has an electric guitar this time and Liv sings lead. Interestingly, this guitar is less distorted than the acoustic. This is a funny song with the refrain of “right now I’m in the shower.” There are lots of ideas about things they could do if he wasn’t in the shower like “We can go to Disneyworld and fuck shit up,” At the end of the song Liv moans that he had planned to change Disneyworld to NPR because it is the same syllables, but he forgot.
“Nu 1” returns Ben to lead vocals. It is a slower song with a simpler guitar riff. Although once the chorus comes in it’s loud and brash with backing vocals from Liv. The opening line “God damn everyone’s dumb” is pretty great. The end of the song has a guitar riff that is similar to the first song, but played in a very different style.
For the final song “C U Around” they switch places with Liv moving to guitar and lead vocals. As Ben heads to the drums Bob comments on his nail polish and Ben looks over and says “Bob… up here” pointing to his eyes. While everyone is laughing and Liv is tuning, Ben says
When I was 15 and didn’t think a queer person could ever be in a band…. I never thought I’d get to throw shade at Bob Boilen. This is my biggest dream come true.
Then Ben asks how is Liv doing up there and Liv shouts “Guitars are hard!” His guitar playing is very different–more strumming than Ben’s manic style. The song is slow with a plucked guitar riff and I like the way near the end he starts strumming really hard and gets a cool fuzzed out bass guitar tone while retaining the regular sound of the guitar’s high end.
As you can see from the photo, PWR BTTM dress outlandishly. Ben is in a bright red dress with sparkly nail polish and really garish facial makeup (with his beard showing through) and swim goggles on his forehead. Liv is a bit more subdued although when he steps to the front mic you can see that his lipstick is really quite striking. A few months back Bob said they put on his favorite live show. If I loved the fifteen minutes of this one I can only imagine how great a 90 minute extravaganza of PWR BTTM would be like.
[READ: March 25, 2016] “A Resolute Man”
Since I’ve read a few pieces by Proulx recently I felt like I knew her M.O.: bad things happen to people who seem innocent, but might not be–usually by strangely named people. And all set a long time ago.
This one is not far from that description, although it does change things somewhat. And I enjoyed it a lot more.
I found the beginning to be a little slow going (but that may be because I was anticipating a long slog). We learn about Captain James Duke. And this time I marveled at Proulx’s descriptive sentences; “Duke, at fifty, was complicated, dark-haired, and somewhat handsome”. That’s a lot of things in a few words. We learn about Duke’s history and then we learn that he has inherited a parcel of land in Boston (he currently lives in England).
The parcel is from his estranged father. He intends to refuse the parcel until a lawyer writes him to explain that his father wanted to make amends and was giving him the entire estate. How could Duke refuse?
There’s an amusing story aboard the ship as Duke befriends the Captain and then drunkenly gets a gift from the man (much to the Captain’s chagrin upon sobriety).
And then he arrives in his new mansion, complete with a maid named Tubjoy. He meets his neighbors, Mr and Mrs Winthrop Brandon. And when he pays a visit he hears screaming and what sounds like fighting. He believes that Winthrop is beating up his wife and he tries to interrupt things. But Mrs Brandon looks fine, and in fact Mrs Brandon seems to be rather strong. Then he sees Mr Brandon peek in through the window–looking terrified–and then run away.
We learn the saga of Mr Brandon. He was struck by lightning and has since been a rather hopeless individual.
Mrs Brandon is very helpful to James, though–assisting with the property and helping him to coordinator some work with the lumbermill he has inherited. They wind up spending a lot of time together, and he begins to fall for her. If only her husband weren’t still around….
Okay so there’s the set up. How will he get rid of this man? There are several possible ways.
Once Mr Brandon is out of the picture–in a rather dramatic way–Mr Duke proposes to Mrs Brandon. And the story takes an unexpected (although not out of the blue or anything) turn into a very funny, dark, scenario,
This was the most lighthearted (even though there was still death and unhappiness) story of Proulx’s that I’ve read, and I enjoyed the moments of lightness.
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