Ted Leo: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Dec. 4, 2017 | Daoud Tyler-Ameen -- The Ted Leo who showed up to perform at our office this fall was no stranger to NPR Music; in fact, he’d stood on that very spot a few years earlier, trading verses with Aimee Mann in their collaborative project The Both. But he did seem like a changed man. In the seven years since his last solo album, Leo had been steadily reevaluating his relationship with performance, the business of music and even his own voice. Over the applause that followed his opening number, the bone-rattling slow burn “Moon Out of Phase,“ he smiled and explained the song was perhaps “a little heavy for noon — but, practically speaking, it helps me get the cobwebs out.“ How you listen to Leo depends on when his work came into your life. If you’re a back-in-the-day type you might rep for Chisel, his ’90s punk outfit born on the Notre Dame campus and bred in Washington, D.C. If you’re just tuning in, you may have witnessed his understated comedy chops in arenas like The Best Show on WFMU and a high