© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
NPR Music: Tiny Desk Concerts
Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

John Grant: Tiny Desk Concert

By Bob Boilen
Published July 13, 2014 at 6:03 AM MDT

John Grant's songs don't mess around: The music isn't complicated, while the lyrics function as darts of retort and thought. His album Pale Green Ghosts is decorated with synthesizers, his voice often drenched in reverb; those tools and textures help make the record strong and everlasting.

So when Grant came to the Tiny Desk with just an acoustic guitarist — and wanted to play piano himself — I feared that the power of the songs I'd come to love wouldn't translate amid such bare sounds. I was wrong, and his music was just right. The lyrics rush forward and hit hard. Try this line from the first song he performs, "Where Dreams Go to Die":

Baby, you're where dreams go to die

I regret the day your lovely carcass caught my eye

Grant is known to some as the singer from the Denver band The Czars, but these days he lives in Iceland. He recently helped translate the best-selling Icelandic album from Ásgeir Trausti into English. Pale Green Ghosts is his second album on his own, though he did have help from the band Midlake when he recorded Queen of Denmark in 2010. The two solo records and much of his writings are deeply personal, touching on his sexuality and his battles with drugs and alcohol. Stripped to its core, this material gets even stronger — and here's proof.

Set List

  • "Where Dreams Go To Die"

  • "Sigourney Weaver"

  • "It Doesn't Matter To Him"

    • Credits

    Producers: Bob Boilen, Denise DeBelius; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Denise DeBelius, Olivia Merrion; Production Assistant: Alex Schelldorf; photo by Alex Schelldorf/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

    Tags
    Tiny Desk Concerts
    Bob Boilen
    In 1988, a determined Bob Boilen started showing up on NPR's doorstep every day, looking for a way to contribute his skills in music and broadcasting to the network. His persistence paid off, and within a few weeks he was hired, on a temporary basis, to work for All Things Considered. Less than a year later, Boilen was directing the show and continued to do so for the next 18 years.
    See stories by Bob Boilen
    Related Content
    • Moon Hooch: Tiny Desk Concert
      Bob Boilen
      Two saxophonists and a drummer call what they make "cave music" — but it's just as powerful at the Tiny Desk. See the trio blend elements of jazz, rock and aggressive dance tracks.
    • The Foreign Exchange: Tiny Desk Concert
      Bobby Carter
      Watch the Tiny Desk turn into a church, comedy club and neo-soul spot as the band performs songs from its latest album, Love in Flying Colors.
    • Lydia Loveless: Tiny Desk Concert
      Stephen Thompson
      A 23-year-old singer-guitarist, Loveless performs gritty, countrified blues-rock in the NPR Music offices. Her three subdued but seething songs paint a picture of a smart, no-nonsense talent.
    Load More