Premiere: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, “Know Better Learn Faster” MP3
- story Matthew Schnipper
- photo Stefan Jora (F52)
In our Gen F on Thao Nguyen way back in issue 52, Alex Wagner wrote of her then upcoming tour, saying that all the places she plays will be “all the lovelier for having seen her footprints.” This has been our prevailing image of Nguyen: chipper folk warmly doled out song by song on a trusty acoustic guitar. The amount of times we’ve listened to “Beat (Heath, Life and Fire)” is almost embarrassing. But it turns out she’s got a bit of melancholy in her, with “Know Better Learn Faster,” the title track from her new album. It might brighten the path in Ireland or anywhere else you might slip on some dewy moss and need to unwind with thick beer. Andrew Bird plays fiddle (and whistles!) on this track, and that could explain the wistfulness. It can’t explain the giant pig heart-looking piñata on the cover of the album, though. That just doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Download: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, “Know Better Learn Faster”
Video: The Portland Cello Project f. Thao, “Tallymarks”
- story THE FADER
God we’re feeling so sensitive after watching this video. Our knees are jelly-fied. We wanted to hate because the chorus is “we dropped tears like tallymarks” and there are all these cellos getting swanlike all over the place, and our hearts are hardened and stuff like that is not really in our purview right now because today is crappy and there’s no summer in sight. But we cannot resist the soothing salve that is Thao Nguyen’s voice. So basically we’re gonna go in the bathroom and cry now before we go to East Village Radio. Bummer styles.
Live: Thao Nguyen In The Afternoon
- story THE FADER
We don’t know about you, but when we were young, we used to try to think of sentences that had never been said before and say them so we could be the first in the entire universe to have done a thing. “Peanut water concrete giftboxes delivered by flying squirrel via cell phone radiation sun screen is agitating and momentous on my 48th birthday.” Or whatever. And while someone has probably said “Sorry, I was thinking about boobies” before, that person probably was not Thao Nguyen apologizing to her band and crowd for a false start. While there is a context for that, you should make up your own. It’s better that way. But what you cannot make up is the little hip/ankle twist-shake she does, or the jazz snare drummerman snaps into place, or everyone drinking white wine straight from the bottle at three in the afternoon on Sunday at Soundfix in Brooklyn. We just had some chamomile, extra pep for “Beat (Health, Life and Fire),” to which they added some extra cha-cha handclaps. That song is on our iTunes Top 25 Most Played, and it’s definitely not even number 25. Jams!
Gen F/Video: Thao Nguyen, “Bag Of Hammers”
- story THE FADER
For whatever reason, we haven’t really talked about Thao Nguyen much on this website, even though we jammed We Brave Bee Stings And All on the regular and um, did a Gen F on her for FADER 52 (which you can check out after the jump). Anyway, this video features lots of real basic claymation guys playing in a band and then that weird in-camera filter that the Beastie Boys used on “Watcha Want” pops up for the closing credits.
