Looking for great 'annoying' music heard on NPR.

January 15, 2010 11:33 AM

I'm looking for a musician I heard profiled on NPR recently.

I'm sorry the details are few, I was driving at the time and caught only a bit of the story. Here's what I know:

-Female folk singer who plays ukulele, among other things.
-Her new records is highly acclaimed
-Much of the source material for the recording comes from field recordings she recorded while in Africa. She melds her own songs with these recordings.
-She said she wants her recordings to 'annoy people.'
-Recordings are very low-fi, with no one component taking any sort of real prominence (i.e. the vocals are sort of in the background sounding, if that makes sense)
-They referred to her work as being very pomo, fwiw.

Help?

posted by Lutoslawski to media & arts (9 answers total)

Do you know which NPR show this was on? Might help narrow it down.
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:39 AM on January 15, 2010

Merrill Garbus, recording as tUnE-yArDs.
posted by dlugoczaj at 11:39 AM on January 15, 2010

Link

I just googled "npr ukelele annoy people"

Those words probably don't appear together too often...
posted by jckll at 11:39 AM on January 15, 2010

it was on All Things Considered. I think it was Tuesday when I heard it? It was sort of awkward because it sort of sporadically followed breaking news segments about Haiti.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:40 AM on January 15, 2010

Is it Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs?
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:40 AM on January 15, 2010

Got beaten by a minute!
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:41 AM on January 15, 2010

As always, you guys are the fucking BEST! Thanks (and how embarrassing that I didn't think to google 'npr ukulele annoy people')!!
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:42 AM on January 15, 2010

I found it searching for "folk singer npr ukulele field music." Of course now the first result for that string is this Ask page. Google is fast!
posted by haveanicesummer at 11:48 AM on January 15, 2010

I left out NPR in my googling--it was "singer ukulele annoy people." I figured that would rise to the top.
posted by dlugoczaj at 12:04 PM on January 15, 2010