Shark Smile

 Last night Natalie had some friends over and they stayed kinda late. They were loud and just downstairs from our bedroom, so I needed to kill time in my study before heading to bed. Soccer has only half started back since the World Cup, so there was none of that to watch, except some old highlights from back in the day (France-Brazil 2006, with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Zidane, Kaka, Roberto Carlos, Thierry Henry, Patrick Viera, Frank Rivery and a few others. I did watch that and -- in the end -- I remembered watching the goal live all those years ago, a perfect pass from a free kick from Zidane to Henry that he volleyed into the roof of the net in an historic moment of perfection [Indeed, a few minutes of research shows that I blogged about that game in this post]).

But once the soccer was done, I had to move on to music, and I saw a Josh Turner video of him on the beach with one of the women he collaborates with often, doing a Big Thief song I hadn't heard before: "Shark Smile." I listened and liked it, so I decided to check out Big Thief doing it and, perhaps not shockingly, I was quite taken with it. Big Thief is a special band. Adrienne Linker, the lead singer, is a genius songwriter and a rare anomaly, someone who to hear her speak one would think was amongst the more fragile on the planet, but nonetheless able to front a rock band. She can both roar and squeak.

"Shark Smile" captivates in a rare way. It fits well into the tradition of car wreck songs going back to Dorsey Dixon's "Wreck on the Highway." I'd be very interested to hear Springsteen's take on it. 

After listening to a few versions I felt like I owed them some money, so I went to their merch store. I remembered that I needed long-sleeve T-shirts, as my current quiver is worn out from pandemic work from home overuse. So I bought one.