Fall is my season, a sunset in slow motion—light ceding time to dark, blazes of color as the air grows edges. The things you love become more precious for their sparseness, for the fact that they won’t last. Fall means the beginning of things for me—there was school for sixteen years there, of course, but since then I’ve also felt a certain digging in, a kind of okay-NOW-here-we-go-ness, an intake of breath.
Anyway, the mix of anticipation and melancholy suits me. Hope it’s been suiting you, wherever you are.
OK, so the Slow Q&A from August is actually the Sloooooooow Q&A. Here’s my reply for Kaoru of Rheinland, over in the forum.
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It occurs to me that when it comes to songs, good in the reviewer’s sense and good in the sense of mattering to someone are two different things. A critic is rightfully concerned with originality; a listener wants a friend. You can write the cheesiest most cliché-ridden love song in the world, and a cancer patient might have it on repeat as he goes through chemo. You can make an inscrutable new sound and be ignored by all but a few hipsters at the bleeding edge, who disdain anything anyone else has heard of.
These are the poles, of course: most critics are music fans and most music fans are critics, in varying degrees, and most songwriters are both. We all rejoice when something connects with us on a deep level, and shrug (or rant) when it doesn’t. But it does beg the question of what exactly I’m trying to do here. How do I know when I’ve made something good? When a lot of people like it, or when the “right kind” of people like it? And what makes them the “right kind?”
I know, I know: you’ve made something good when you like it. But let’s face it, that’s not the whole answer. Manuscripts have editors, plays have developmental readings, records have producers, A&R reps, rough mixes. There are points all along the way when you ask “Is this working?” and listen to what comes back. There are navigational tools other than your own compass. But which ones are reliable? More importantly, where are you trying to go, anyway?
This is all a roundabout way of saying that I’m still stuck, down here in my notebooks. These fragments are good for something but I don’t know what. I do have a growing sense that whatever it is, I’m not capable of it yet. So it’s time to become a student again: get up every morning and practice my instruments, pick up some new ones, sing a lot of other people’s songs, write a steady stream of lyrics and hold them up for scrutiny. This year’s nomadic existence hasn’t lent itself to that kind of discipline, so much. I need to live somewhere again.
Here’s the Q&A we did on Twitter last month, cleaned up for easier reading. Many thanks to Twitter users trialia, roofboy179 and kalenabear for archiving, formatting and sorting!
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I really like the clothes you wear at your performances and photo shoots, and was wondering what designers and stores you shop at. For example, I love the dress you’re wearing in this video and the outfits in this photo shoot.
-danseuse
Why thanks. Cleaning up nice has been an acquired skill for me, so that means a lot! After seven years of being in front of people and having lots of pictures/video taken of me, I think I finally enjoy shopping…
My 2008 New Year’s resolution was to buy only used, sustainably made, and/or independently designed stuff to wear. It’s not always cheap*, but I’m trying to put my money where my values are — especially since my consumption is, well, a bit conspicuous.
Etsy is one of my favorite places to shop: everything is handmade, you can search by keywords, most things are entirely affordable, and often you can get clothing tailored to your measurements. The flower hairpins I wear onstage are by Katinka Pinka on Etsy.
The dresses in the Inland Territory photo shoot are:
Sweetheart dress in black/moss, Thieves by Sonja den Elzen (hemp/organic cotton)
Kali dress in cream, EcoChic by Meadow (bamboo/organic cotton)
Lily dress in majolica blue, EcoSkin (bamboo)
The belt on the Kali dress is handmade by Traceybelt on Etsy.
Some other favorite eco-friendly labels:
Stewart & Brown
Undesigned
Lav & Kush
Loomstate
Good Society
Favorite independent but not (yet) eco-friendly designers:
Trashy Diva
Vfish
Butter by Nadia (I spent all afternoon with a mechanical engineer friend playing with this dress when I got it. I think we managed to make pants out of it at one point.)
Being a good Chinese kid, I tend to wait until things are on sale before pouncing.
As for dress in the Gravity video, I actually don’t know where it came from. Stylist Stacey Rayburn pulled it from somewhere in L.A. and sent it north, along with some safety pins in case it didn’t quite fit (it didn’t), and the black gloves (which she made by hand). I’d always wanted an excuse to wear crinoline…
* except for the time I rummaged around in Amber Rubarth’s going-to-Goodwill pile. Jackpot! Amber can be my big sister any day.
What was the electronic looping device you used? (brand, model, etc.) Would love to get one to play with—gave you lots of flexibility in the show.
-bill
What is that beautiful shiny red keyboard you tour with now-a-days? I did enough investigative work to figure out it was a Nord something or other.
- roofboy179
Here’s the gear I use onstage these days:
Electro-Harmonix 2880 Stereo Multi-Track Looper
This is my favorite toy at the moment. There are a number of more popular looping pedals out there, including the Line 6 DL4 (also a delay modeler—Alex and Ward both have one in their setups) and the Digitech JamMan, but the EHX 2880 is perfect for me. It seems designed to be operated mostly by hand, not foot—a problem for guitarists, but great for a piano player who needs to see what she’s doing, and who’s unaccustomed to pushing switches with her left foot. It can record much longer loops than the DL4, and the unique 4-channel design allows you to fade loops in and out, features that make it possible to do songs like “The Last Snowfall” and “1br/1ba”. The Reverse feature is fun (been using it to create backwards piano loops for “Gravity” lately), and I’d like to try hooking it up in stereo so I can pan different loops to the right or left of the stage. Also would be fun to have multiple instruments/musicians going into it. It is missing play-once and last-time (i.e. stop after this go-round is over) buttons, but you can’t have everything, I guess.
Right now I’m just using this as a compact mic preamp so I can use the EHX 2880 with a microphone. Hooked up to a keyboard via MIDI, this thing becomes a spookily realistic vocal harmonizer (think Imogen Heap’s vocoder masterpiece “Hide And Seek”—not written on a harmonyM, but something similar). If we ever put “Radio” on the setlist I’ll unleash its full powers.
Another fun instrument currently under-utilized in our set. I’m mostly using it as a substitute for a real Wurlitzer or Rhodes electric piano, occasionally employing the handy built-in effects/delay section. The Paper Raincoat, who borrow it a lot, take advantage of its keyboard split and synth features.
And in case you’re curious, Alex’s setup includes a Fat Congas Cuban bajo cajon, with a mic attached to the sound hole that runs to his effects pedals. (In other words, he’s not sitting on any ordinary box. Though “cajón” does mean “box.”)
[ Thanks to the authors of the YouTube videos linked above for taping the shows! ]
