Remember Wim Faros.
It Makes a Sound is a serial fiction Podcast from the Night Vale Presents network, written by and starring Jacquelyn Landgraf as Deirdre Gardner, a nostalgic childhood fan of local musician Wim Faros, who uses her amateur radio show to wax rhapsodic over his life and work in the hopes of revitalizing Rosemary Hills, the podunk, declining hometown where they both grew up.Sound airs biweekly on Sundays beginning September 24th, 2017 and can be found on iTunes
, [1], RadioPublic, Google Play, YouTube, Stitcher and the [2] website. An official soundtrack album featuring authentic cast performances of all the songs was released January 2019 to iTunes, Amazon, and Bandcamp.
The second season of the show, independently produced by Jacquelyn Landgraf, began May 8th, 2022
Contains examples of:
- Bittersweet Ending: Deirdre gets arrested when she and the others trespass at the old golf club and will need a a lot of help to cope with her mother's mental state. Also, her mother will probably be going to an assisted living facility. However, a video of her and the others playing a reconstructed Wim Faros song goes viral, ensuring that the music she tried to immortalize will find a larger audience.
- Casting Gag: In the final episode, Roberta Colindrez voices a detective, a subtle nod to her role as "the police woman" from Alice Isn't Dead.
- Character Blog: Deirdre's website www.itmakesasound.rocks is as ambitious in promise and endearingly slapdash in execution as her show. (The crayon and cardstock background she's provided has coffee stains on it.) She invites her listeners to contact her through it, to send her their completed "Unpacking the Attic" freewriting exercises, and information on where to find a cassette tape player.
- Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: Deirdre and Rob to Deirdre's mother.
- Dramatic Irony: Deirdre created her radio show to remember Wim Faros. Too bad she didn't remember his real name, Tim Farris.
- Large Ham Radio: When Deirdre gets going, she positively evangelizes musician Wim Faros in the most florid, ecstatic terms, as though she were the preacher in a church.
- Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Deirdre's show appears minimally scripted, and her halting speech, dysfluencies, mumbled asides and off-mic interruptions only serve to underscore a beginner's lack of planning, though she makes up for it in sheer melodramatic zeal for her subject.
- Scatterbrained Senior: Deirdre's mom is heavily implied to have some form of dementia, or possibly suffered a stroke, especially judging by her attempt to speak into Deirdre's mic while she's away.Deirdre's Mom: "Who's there? I'm in the hole. Yes, I'm n-the sixteenth hole. If you can find, wined and dime it...*clapping noises* I am the hole-holy smokes..."
- Show Within a Show: It Makes a Sound is Deirdre's rather unprofessional, hyperlocal radio show dedicated to the love of all things Wim Faros.
- The Stoner: Hinted at by the cannabis seeds in Wim Faros's time capsule.
- Stylistic Suck: Deirdre doesn't necessarily seem to have planned out the production of her show very well, as she interrupts and corrects herself, appears to freestyle segments on-the-fly, and hasn't soundproofed her workspace, so that environmental animal sounds (likely from an open window) and fellow residents of her house can be heard. At the end of her first episode, she stumbles over deciding on an official email address in real-time.
- Suburbia: Deirdre lives in a townhouse in Rosemary Hills, a dying gated golf course community, which, in the quarter-century since Wim Faros' first concert, has seen its Nineties development boom go bust. Deirdre reads an entry from what is heavily implied to be her own childhood diary, where she vents splenetically about the loneliness of trick-or-treating in a neighborhood where the median age is sixty (Werther's and Rolos are all that can be expected), and the process involves navigating intercom security systems and ten minute walks between houses.
- Tagalong Kid: Cody.
- Unreliable Narrator: Let's just say Deirdre's impression of Wim Faros doesn't quite match up to Tricia's. Or anyone else's.
- Wham Episode: Episode 4 is the first time we hear about Wim Faros from the perspective of anyone other than Deirdre - and it's not as flattering as Deirdre would have hoped. Apparently, Wim did not have the reputation of universal genius that Deirdre would hope, with Tricia recalling him as a local Cloud Cuckoo Lander, and playing the guitar unasked at a birthday party she was basically forced to invite him to.
- What Are Records?: The first episode features Deirdre's extremely detailed description of what a cassette tape is. Clearly she doesn't expect her audience to have any idea about them.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: At no point is Rosemary Hills' location specified in the podcast.
