“Blank Test” – Smothered In Hugs
So listen to that opening melody (beginning at 0:15), remove the primal drumbeat, and think about what this sounds like: it’s not merely based on the standard I-IV-V chord progression, but it’s rooted in an early-rock setting of that progression–three successive ascending notes, each a whole interval apart, each accompanied, in order, by one of those I-IV-V chords. The verse of the hugely popular and evocative song “All I Have To Do Is Dream” uses this exact pattern, in a swaying, Everly Brothers soundscape, but this was hardly the only example. Enough other doo-wop era songs grounded themselves in this simple structure for it to carry forever an ineffable air of bygone times about it.
Which is what, to me, helps make “Blank Test” so satisfying, somehow: it manages to conjure the past while presenting the melody in not one but two contemporary frames–the opening, percussive section and then the sped-up version (first heard at 1:23), after the song’s prominent tempo change. Interestingly, it was this second, faster version that first sounded most nostalgic, maybe because there was kind of a double-nostalgia at work, this speedier section likewise echoing the late ’70s via the Ramones and Blondie, bands which also mined ’50s and early ’60s melodies and chord progressions for use in their faster and harder-rocking compositions.
Smothered In Hugs (named after a Guided By Voices song) is a quintet from the picturesque and music-laced island of Prince Edward, way out there in the Atlantic Time Zone. “Blank Test” is the lead track on the album The Healing Power of Injury, set for release next month on Collagen Rock Records, a local collective that Smothered in Hugs has established with three other bands from the Maritimes.
Month: January 2009
Free and legal MP3: Alela Diane (sharply-written, sung with poise, presence, and melisma, plus plaintive fiddle)
“White as Diamonds” – Alela Diane
Alela Diane (born Alela Diane Menig) is associated with the so-called “psych folk” and/or “New Weird America” movements, but as with the previously featured Marissa Nadler, similarly associated, there is nothing freakish or discomfitingly idiosyncratic about this young California-raised, Oregon-based singer/songwriter. On the contrary, “White as Diamonds” strikes me as solid as a genuine folk song, with the added benefit of a great—if offbeat—hook. This hook isn’t part of the chorus (there is in fact no chorus), it’s not even a particular turn of phrase or melody; instead, it’s her ongoing use of what is officially called melisma, which is when a singer uses several notes to sing one syllable of a lyric.
Rooted in ancient, sacred music, utilized in classical music, and rendered histrionic by most American Idol contestants, melisma can be not only aurally engaging but emotionally powerful in the hands of the right singer. Diane nails it so well that, as noted, the melismatic recurrence is, really, the song’s great hook. Listening to her singing “white as diamonds” (0:16) or “I was sifting through the piles” (0:51) (melismas on “sifting” and “piles”) or “a tangled thread” (1:01) (check out that upward flutter as she stretched the second syllable of “tangled” out, briefly but indelibly), something inside me opens to her, completely. The song has both a homespun feel, accentuated by the plaintive fiddle accompaniment, and a solemn rhythmic throughline, almost like an old Civil War song, but—in part because of the repeated melisma—is buoyed by a curious sense of the unexpected, which comes to the fore during the bridge (2:04), when the song’s beat is overtly disrupted by a shift in the drumming.
“White as Diamonds” will be found on Diane’s To Be Still CD, coming out on Rough Trade in February. MP3 courtesy of the Beggars Group web site.
Free and legal MP3 from the Traditionist (guitar, harmonica, drone, and more; deceptively complex and affecting)
“I Know My Ocean” – the Traditionist
Guitar, bass, small drum kit, a harmonica flourish or two, an amiably insistent melody, a one-line chorus–turns out you don’t need that much to make an effective and affecting song. Well, okay, there’s also a banjo. Slide guitar too. And that droning sound beneath the mix pretty much the entire time. And those great lyrics, blending a stream-of-consciousness feeling with some startlingly focused observations.
What Joey Barro, in fact, has put together, hiding behind a name that looks like a word but isn’t, is a deceptively complex song hiding out as an easy-going one. Building upon sonic territory pioneered of course by Bob Dylan (guitar, harmonica, wordy lyrics crammed into tight musical spaces) and more recently explored by fellow Southern Californian Peter Case (whom he resembles vocally, somewhat, in a good way), Barro, working with friend and producer Tim Bluhm, has constructed a wide-open delight of a song, all forward-moving flow and evocative texture–it’s one of those songs that goes by in something of a blur, and yet every time your ear specifically tunes in, there’s something interesting going on.
Barro is based in Huntington Beach, California, and is better known around those parts as front man for the band the Antiques. His new album actually started life as an Antiques CD, but became something different over the course of an extended recording schedule. Season to Season will be out on Better Looking Records in March; “I Know My Ocean” is the last track, and a really nice last track it is. MP3 via the Better Looking site.
Free and legal MP3: Casador (shuffly, echoey, minor-key lament)
“The Puritans” – Casador
From Argentina by way of Italy comes a young man named Alessandro Raina, doing musical business as Casador. And moody-but-beautiful musical business it is–a shuffly, echoey, minor-key lament, with a crispness and sense of purpose not often found in independently produced debut EPs. And yes, “The Puritans” manages to be both echoey and crisp at the same time, which is not an ordinary accomplishment; indie rockers in the ’00s have tended to slop reverb on songs like whitewash on an old barn wall, boosting appearance without needing to clean anything up underneath. Raina instead uses an octave-lower harmony line to enhance his vocals in the verse, and maybe those lower vocals are touched up with a slight reverb, or maybe it’s that chiming, reverberant bass at the bottom, but the end result is a rich, spacious vocal sound without tramping mud all over the rest of the mix.
One sign of the sonic clarity is how naturally the song can drift back and forth between louder/faster and softer/slower without creating any aural jolt. The introduction offers a sonorous interplay between acoustic guitar and the aforementioned bass; they are joined first by the vocals, and then, kicking the volume and tempo up a notch, the drums. Keyboards arrive at the chorus (0:54), adding another notch to the song’s insistence, but right after that, at 1:34, we are taken back down to the quiet music of the introduction, which, with the addition of a few remarkably well-placed notes on a piano, feels almost thrillingly introspective at this exact moment.
“The Puritans” is the title track of Casador’s two-song debut EP, which is apparently based on the ancient tale of the sword of Damocles. Both songs are available on
Free and legal MP3 from Trentalange (noir-ish, upbeat lounge music, with twiddling synths)
“Fever” – Trentalange
More minor-key moodiness, but quite the different aura this time; with twiddling synths, a noir-ish surf guitar line, and an ominous dance beat, “Fever” sounds like the soundtrack to a spy movie starring the Bee Gees, with Annie Lennox singing lead. Okay not exactly, but that’ll get your mind working in the right direction.
Trentalange is Barbara Trentalange, former lead singer for the Seattle-based quintet Spyglass, and last heard around these parts in August 2006, when her first solo CD was released. Beyond the immediately successful mood established here, “Fever” works particularly well because the chorus delivers a payoff on the verse’s setup. Although nothing wildly different is happening in the chorus–the general mood and tempo remain the same–two particular attributes win me over. First, the vocals open up. While Trentalange sings with a smoky (and doubletracked, and maybe phased?) restraint in the verse, she gives herself more emotive freedom in the chorus, singing without obvious effects, and layering on the harmonies with just the right amount of drama (be sure to check out those Lennox-like howls she hides in the background). The other winning point in the chorus: the unresolved melody line at the end. And okay I’m kind of a sucker for unresolved melody lines, but even more so when they come in an unexpected context such as this upbeat, loungey rave-up (the song in fact seems to be taking place on a dance floor). That we are then led into a particularly noodly synthesizer line makes it sound like she’s winking at us, telling us that things after all aren’t exactly what they seem.
“Fever” is the lead track on the forthcoming Trentalange album, Awakening, Level One, scheduled for release next month on Coco Tauro Records, which appears to be her own label.
Free and legal MP3: Joker’s Daughter (pastoral folk pop, via the Twilight Zone)
“Worm’s Head” – Joker’s Daughter
If Gnarls Barkley can refer to themselves as the “odd couple” (as per their 2008 album), then what to make of this pairing of Helena Costas, a London-born singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist of Greek Cypriot extraction, and Danger Mouse (himself half of Gnarls Barkley)? A really really odd couple?
And what to make of this odd-couply music, part pastoral airiness, part Twilight Zoney strangeness? There are uncanny lyrics—“The horses turn into cows/And sheep lie on the edge of the road”—and an off-kilter heaviness to a beat that kind of wants to be lilting but isn’t, really. There are warm acoustic instruments and wayward keyboards and electronic effects that sound like a combination of a theremin and an old-fashioned radio dial trying to tune in a station. Through it all, Costas—a classically trained violinist, among other things—sings with an unperturbed, slightly breathy sweetness, almost as if no one has told her exactly what she’s singing about. Not that I have any idea either. And how short this is! Just when you’re ready to sink into the mystery of it all, it’s over. Rendering it all the more mysterious, I suppose.
“Worm’s Head” came out as a digital single in November, a 7-inch vinyl record in December, and will be on the debut Joker’s Daughter album, The Last Laugh, when it comes out in February, on Team Love Records. MP3 via Team Love.
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