Rostam: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

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Rostam: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert with tags npr, npr music, national public radio, live, performance, tiny desk, tiny desk concert, tony desk, tiny concert

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.

Robin Hilton | June 8, 2021

My great-grandmother always used to say, "Life is a train. People get on. People get off." And it just keeps going. Watching Rostam's Tiny Desk performance, it's easy to imagine you're on that life-train, traveling around and around, catching glimpses of instruments and faces as they pass by, before coming back where you started. It's a clever, if sometimes dizzying nod to the overarching themes of Rostam's Changephobia, a collection of songs that simultaneously look to the past and the future.

Rostam and a group of backing musicians play two cuts from that album: the relatively breezy, escapist ballad "4Runner" and the reflective "These Kids We Knew." The group closes with "In a River," a one-off single from 2018 that sits perfectly alongside the newer songs as he recalls a warm night skinny dipping with a friend.

SET LIST

"4Runner"

"These Kids We Knew"

"In a River"

MUSICIANS

Rostam Batmanglij: vocals, guitar, harmonica

Julian McClanahan Calvert: guitar, mandolin, harmonies

Logan Kane: bass

Henry Solomon: saxophone, congas, harmonica, 808 sample pad

Benji Lysaght: guitar

Conor Malloy: drums, percussion

CREDITS