Month: May 2009

Free and legal MP3: the Sweet Serenades (happy/sad indie pop from Sweden)

“Die Young” – the Sweet Serenades

Despite the bright guitar line, winsome beat, perky synthesizer, and, even, bongos(!), this melodic toe-tapper is poignant through and through. (Sad lyrics to happy music is a perpetually satisfying pop music trick.) The band’s Martin Nordvall here trades vocals with guest Karolina Komstedt from Club 8, and the story is a wistful, disconnected one: smitten, he sings how he loves to linger in the morning and watch her breathe; she, forty seconds later, “not looking for love,” sings, “In the morning/You stay a little too long.” Ouch.

One of my favorite moments happens early, as the song is still setting itself up: when Nordvall sings “I haven’t been myself lately” (0:35), the words “been myself” form a sort of triplet, the second two syllables each coming ahead of the beat while—this is the cool thing—underneath, one of the guitars slashes three evocative chords precisely in rhythm with all three parts of the syncopated phrase. Okay, subtle, but it’s the kind of thing that to me signals a song of merit and purpose. I like too how one of Komstedt’s two heavy introductory sighs—before you actually hear her begin singing—come right ahead of that lyrical line.

Based in Stockholm, the Sweet Serenades are Nordvall and lead guitarist partner Mathias Näslund, who have apparently been inseparable since finding one another wearing the same then-hip Soviet CCCP hat and riding similar bikes as teens in 1991. “Die Young” is from the band’s full-length debut, Balcony Cigarettes, released last month on Leon Records.

Free and legal MP3: Deer Tick (gruff but lovable quasi-Americana)

“Easy” – Deer Tick

For a band with roots in Rhode Island, this one has something of the big, lonesome prairie about it, provided that you put a garage somewhere in the middle of that prairie and plugged a guitar or two into it. We’ll need a drum kit too. And a carton of cigarettes.

After the spaghetti western surf rock of the rumbly introduction, the immediate thing that will impress you (or, not) about “Easy” is the roughened—well, okay, strangled—tone of front man John Joseph McCauley III. Perhaps an acquired taste, or perhaps something you won’t want to hear for more than three or four minutes at a time, but I urge you to ride this one out because the thing that ultimately gives this song its power is, I think, the juxtaposition of McCauley’s sore-throated rasp and the urgent poise of its simple, well-crafted music. Listen to how the galloping verses leave you aching for resolution and how well the rock-solid chorus delivers it: an uncomplicated melody perched upon a flowing guitar line, everything shot through with the deep-seated authenticity of folk music, along with a shot of un-self-conscious ’70s southern rock.

Deer Tick began in 2004 as pretty much just McCauley, supported by a variety of side musicians. The band became a duo in ’07, and has evolved since then to a full-fledged quartet, now based in Brooklyn, like everybody else. “Easy” is the lead track off Deer Tick’s second album, Born on Flag Day, which will be released next month on Partisan Records, also based in Brooklyn. MP3 originally via Partisan, now via Better Propaganda.

Free and legal MP3: God Help The Girl (gorgeous Belle & Sebastian side-project)

“Come Monday Night” – God Help the Girl

Me, this is the voice I most feel like hearing after McCauley’s. I love that last song but listening to it makes my throat hurt. “Come Monday Night” is a delicious lozenge.

God Help the Girl is the name of a side project by Stuart Murdoch, the principal singer and songwriter of Belle & Sebastian. B&S fans will clearly hear the Murdochian touch here in terms of the lilting melody and the general (for lack of a better word) twee-ness. After the dreamy, wordless vocal introduction, featuring a spare piano and a touch of strings, “Come Monday Night” picks up speed and lushness as vocalist Catherine Ireton sings with a sweet but solid presence—her tone is pure but not sugary—and that place in the verse where the melody takes a gentle turn upwards, three times in a row (the phrase we first hear starting at 1:01): isn’t that just meltingly gorgeous? Each successive upward turn is a whole step above the previous one, and Ireton’s voice makes the expanding leaps with airy aplomb; this phrase is the song’s distinct hook, and a mighty example of Murdoch’s melodic gift. Who plants hooks so casually in the second half of a verse? There’s no chorus in the song; he didn’t need it.

Described as “a story set to music,” God Help the Girl is name of both the group and the album; it’s a project Murdoch has been working on intermittently since 2004. Ireton, from Scotland, is lead singer on 10 of the 14 songs; the vocalists were initially recruited via an internet ad in 2007. Ireton is otherwise one half of the duo Go Away Birds (Murdoch sings on one of the songs on the band’s EP); she is also the woman pictured on the sleeve for “The White Collar Boy,” a B&S single. There’s a nice video introduction to the whole thing on the project’s web site (scroll down). The album will be released next month on Matador Records; MP3 via Matador.