Mother Falcon: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

When it comes to Tiny Desk Concerts, we’re suckers for milestones at NPR Music: We’re gearing up to acknowledge No. 300, for example, and are constantly taking note of the first time a musician trots out a particular rare instrument or does something else no one has done in front of us before. The Austin chamber-rock band Mother Falcon recently scored a big distinction, at least as far as we’re concerned — one it shares with its fellow Texans in The Polyphonic Spree — as the largest ensemble ever to squeeze behind Bob Boilen’s desk. Unlike The Polyphonic Spree, though, everyone in Mother Falcon plays an instrument during this performance: There’s no chorus of backup singers among the 17 men and women who play guitars and horns and keyboards and woodwinds and strings here. Which made Tetris-ing each member behind Bob’s desk a bit of a challenge, but Mother Falcon knows its way around cramped spaces: At one point during SXSW this year, Bob and I saw the group give a concert as it