Bartees Strange: Tiny Desk Concert

Density is built into the music of Bartees Strange — he packs his tracks with lyrical insight and sonic gestures that, upon closer listen, reveal interwoven layers of story and sound. But the dude’s also an incredibly thoughtful and powerful live performer. At the Tiny Desk, he’s got the range, with crunching rock riffs, spitting bars and bringing us to the brink of tears.

Every song in this set comes from Horror, his third in a series of genre-agnostic albums that increasingly just sound like Bartees Strange and only Bartees Strange. His band gives a leaner and meaner version of “Wants Needs,” featuring a toy megaphone and whirring tape loops. “That’s the ripper,” I tell him beforehand, to which he responds, “They’re all rippers, man.” No lies detected. “Sober” has all of the power of an us-against-the-world Fleetwood Mac jam sung loudly from an old car, windows rolled down. “Too Much” swaggers so hard that, after a smooth funk break to rap, the band brings back the riff, but louder — you could feel the room vibrate.

But the best moment, for me, in a Bartees Strange song is when you can see him and yourself inside of it. I think that “17,” a vulnerable ballad that explodes at its humbling revelation, is the best song that Bartees Strange has written for that reason. “As you get older, you have these moments where you just have no idea what’s going on and you’re completely lost,” he explains in a post-show conversation we had about returning to that precipice of the unknown. “This song reminds me that I’ve been here before and there’s always a cool thing that happens after.”

SET LIST

• “Wants Needs”
• “Sober”
• “Too Much”
• “17”

MUSICIANS

• Bartees Strange: guitar, vocals
• Graham Richman: guitar, piano, keys
• TK Johnson: drums, vocals
• Daniel Kleederman: guitar, vocals
• John Daise: bass

TINY DESK TEAM

• Producer: Lars Gotrich
• Director/Editor: Kara Frame
• Audio Technical Director: Josh Newell
• Host/Series Producer: Bobby Carter
• Videographers: Kara Frame, Joshua Bryant, Mitra I. Arthur
• Audio Engineer: David Greenburg
• Production Assistants: Ashley Pointer, Dora Levite
• Photographer: Alanté Serene
• Tiny Desk Team: Maia Stern, Hazel Cills
• Executive Producer: Suraya Mohamed
• Series Creators: Bob Boilen, Stephen Thompson
• VP, Visuals and Music: Keith Jenkins

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