The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It's the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.
It's a testament to Brittany Davis that this Tiny Desk home show feels like a true live concert — one with real live energy, as if it's playing out in front of a massive crowd you can't quite see or hear. It's hard to replicate the spirit of the Tiny Desk outside of the NPR offices: You don't get the visual sense of place, you don't get NPR engineers managing the sound mix onsite and you don't get the exchange of energy between musicians and audience members who are often excitedly discovering your music for the first time. Still, this set swims in that much-missed alchemy where everyone in a given room is carried forward by the same sounds.
A blind, Black, nonbinary musician from Seattle, Davis presides over a backing band that features six hard-hitting women. Together, they fuse rock, soul, hip-hop, pop and R&B in four songs — all drawn from Davis' debut EP, I Choose to Live — that teem with insights about identity, injustice, authenticity, motivation and power. Each song in this set moves at a different pace, from the righteous hip-hop fury of "I Choose to Live" to the plaintive slow burn of "Loud Loud World." But all four convey a clear sense of purpose.
Davis is signed to Loosegroove Records, the hometown label co-founded by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, and Gossard has already figured prominently in Davis' career: The two share a supergroup called Painted Shield, which also features folksinger Mason Jennings and drummer Matt Chamberlain. If this set is any indication, Davis may well become the biggest name of them all.
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