February 26, 2024 Issue

Art is where you find it. This week Nick Paumgarten finds it in a hotel-room singing session of the vocal trio Tiny Habits. Paumgarten writes,

Still, with a couple of hours to kill, they were determined, or maybe just habituated, to make and post one of their signature short videos. They try to put out two a week. The space was snug, and, sitting cross-legged on the bed together in their socks, they exuded conviviality and ease. Rae and Khan wore parachute-y pants. Mayowa, the shy one, had a head scarf holding back all but a few of his dreadlocks.

Mayowa had chosen “Misty,” the Erroll Garner classic, with lyrics reluctantly furnished by Johnny Burke. First, they listened to Ella Fitzgerald’s version, then got to work arranging it into three parts.

Mayowa often takes the lower register, and Rae the highest, though they seem to weave around one another. On “Misty,” the melody fell to Rae. Sometimes they make a Google Doc, color-coding the parts, but this time they winged it.

Look at me

I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree.

And I feel like I’m clingin’ to a cloud I can’t understand;

I get misty, just holding your hand

Khan recorded voice memos of her attempts to perfect the landings on “tree” and “understand.” She touched her nose as she sang, as though she could hear through it.

That last line made me smile. Paumgarten’s account of the session continues for several more delightful paragraphs. It ends with a description of the group making a video of their performance:

They set up an iPhone on some pillows and scrunched together at the foot of the bed. Ten takes later, they still hadn’t got it.

They went at it again, making their singing faces. They nailed it this time, and Rae shouted, “That’s the one!” The process had taken an hour. They tinkered with the reverb, and then got ready to post.

“What’s a misty emoji?” Rae asked. They settled on an umbrella, then titled the vid “misty . . . in manhattan.” It was time to get ready for a big dinner out with their agent.

Paumgarten’s “Misty in Manhattan” is another in his ongoing series of music-related Talk stories: see, for example, “Skin in the Game,” “Banger,” and “Nice Things.”  I enjoy them immensely.