Local and Amazing.

I heard this song about a year ago, and I thought it was beautiful, but I had no idea who the artist was, and it just sort of got lost as a passing thought at an inopportune time.  Then, after I started dating the Mrs., I discovered who this mystery artist was: one of her favorites: Dessa. 

On her album, A Badly Broken Code, Dessa has a number of spoken word/rap/folk-pop songs that I love, among them is Bullpen, a song that I couldn't find a video for on YouTube, and The Chaconne, which is at http://www.youtube.com/user/nerdsgethunk#p/u/26/gPDdb1LZ9fs.

Here are the lyrics:

Bullpen:

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

it's been assumed I'm soft or irrelevant
cause I refuse to down play my intelligence
but in a room of thugs and rap veterans
why am I the only one
who's acting like a gentleman
good form bad taste
pity what a waste
all that style, not a thing to say
looks to me like
a little of your true school
is at the shallow end of the typing pool
all cloak, no dagger
just smoke and swagger
I hope that your battery's charged
cause I found this here ladder
now your ceilings don't matter
check me out,
now I got glass floors

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

they love me, they love me not
pulling pedals off my bike
you gotta strike while the irony's still hot
no telling what the kids might like
and I love this job, but ah, good god
sometimes I hate this business
it's all love backstage but then the boys get brave
gotta say, I hope your mother doesn't listen
excuse me, where you going
Doomtree, Minnesota
population's growing all the time
and if you feel this
you know what the deal is
grab a chisel tip and add one to the number on the sign

forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
walk with a switch, fire in her fist
biting at the bit
swing at every pitch
coach put me in like
forget the bull in the china shop
there's a china doll in the bullpen
it's all in the wrist, fire from the hip
talk a little shit, roll thick,
whole clique
let's begin

Her use of metaphor paints an immediate picture (the"bullpen" is the world of hiphop and rap music, the music industry in general, and life at large, and she is the "china doll"--a delicate, slim female artist in a man's world and generally male-dominated genre), and (without it being an actual word, as such--more how she puts a staccato, rapid-fire accent on the beginnings of words) onomatopoeia--she sounds like she's exploding onto the scene, a woman in a man's genre, and is taking no prisoners just by the way she can spit.

The other song I loved most was "The Chaconne," which was the song that I heard a year ago that I wondered about idly.  Here are the lyrics:

 

The Chaconne

 

now the bough breaks

the books i read
said you were a fragile kid
just as I imagined it, your story goes
another nosebleed,
roses on the pillowcase
the fever breaks
and you're back on earth again
you rehearse
in the living room
the nursemaid
comes mid-afternoon
to say you've practiced
long enough today
she takes your bow, it's suppertime
but oh, your only appetite
was fixed on the chaconne
you'd hoped to play

so soon you're off
to the academy
the honors
and the accolades
first a darling, then a marvel
when we met, I was still a young girl
but you had changed
already famous
your name was a contagion
you were vain and hard to take
all the same, I was brazen

how the tides rise

I don't suppose you'd tell the truth
so I won't ask you anymore
oh the things that we all do
to pass the time between the wars
I don't regret a single day
heard your chaconne
on every stage
but your love sleeps in a velvet case
so what'd you bring me,
bring me for
what'd you bring me,
bring me for

I hear you keep
your pretty wife alive
on only brie
they say a dozen years ago
she could have passed for me
she doesn't trust you with the baby
maybe better that way
safe in your study
going grey

you're at your best
when you're alone
above the fray
with your chaconne

now the bells toll

Her lyrics in this song tend toward hyperbole ("first a darling, then a marvel," "your only appetite," "your name was a contagion."--They intimate that the person who she was writing about was an incredible artist at some stringed instrument, and that she viewed this person in superhuman terms), and I love how she makes these beautiful musical phrases, basing her chord progression and her basic pattern for the song off of the muscial pattern of the chaconne, which is a way of repeating something throughout a piece in slightly different ways.  (A rudimentary explanation, but it'll have to do for now.)

 

I hope anyone reading this goes to the URL above--everyone should get to know Dessa and love her. :)