Partly, you suspect, because their music isn't terribly immediate – subtle, hushed and, given their youth, strangely mature, the songs on their eponymous debut album don't stun the listener so much as slowly work their way under your skin – and partly because they are so reticent and shy.
It reminded listeners not so much of Callas or Sutherland as of a Marine Corps drill sergeant.
It's no wonder people fall in love with singers; the listeners themselves bring so much to the table.
Nowadays, Lady Bunny's listeners come not so much to dance as to drink cocktails, gossip, and sway.
During his broadcast, he told his listeners, "I owe so much to all of you for your support in getting me this far.
But my young listeners liked it so much that a couple of them joined in, one girl playing clusters in the high register (absolutely in time with the beat), and the other playing tolling notes in the low bass.
As with all abstract music -- and despite its deeply rooted affinity with ancient musics of Asia, it is indeed abstract -- listeners do not so much "follow" the moment-to-moment progress as entrust themselves to its trajectory.
I have taught and written about poetry for decades; if I was stunned, what chance had the older gentleman, a retired cleric who is a regular at this weekly series, a well-read and earnest listener who wanted so much to like poems that didn't care at all for him?
I will always be a good listener, because for so much of my life, every conversation has required effort and focus.
Ingraham then tries to impress upon her listeners that Obama is not so much "capitulator in chief" as "manipulator in chief" – and this does not bode well, she worries, for GOP election hopes in 2012.
