Nico
Muhly,

So, MySpace. I have it, but I will confess that until the last few months, I haven’t really used it as a method of hearing great new music and have, instead, used it to spy on people I don’t know. And, also to listen to genius things such as “All on my MySpace,” which is very meta. But, a newfound clarity of e-purpose led me to browsing for new music, and I came upon something so divine. This is Puzzle Muteson, who, upon shallow investigation, appears to be a singer-songwriter from the Isle of Wight. I loved what I heard on MySpace, so I bought the album using PayPal, and I urge everybody to follow the links to do the same. This song “A Tightrope Dance” is so endearing. I tried to figure out what exactly it is that makes it so lovely, and I think the answer is the suspension in the first bar of the guitar loop that defines the verses ““ an A suspended over a C^#chord; check it out, below.

a rough transcription outlining the Thing I Like

Then there are little details about how the chorus, which is just two notes (which I’m all in favor of, by the way) avoids the pitches the guitar is playing. Check it out and then go buy the thing if you like it.

[audio:06 A Tightrope Dance.mp3]
Puzzle Muteson A Tightrope Dance

There’s something about the guitar playing that reminds me of that Ali Farka Touré & Ry Cooder album Talking Timbuktu, the cassette copy of which was our only entertainment on a long family trip around the Anza-Borrego desert. Also, when I went to the Grizzly Bear/Feist show, she played guitar in a similar choked, weirdly-amped North African fashion.