March 2011 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: The Unthanks (brilliant folk revivalism from the UK)

Pleasantly off-kilter and yet still lovely folk revivalism from a pair of sisters from the English countryside.

The Unthanks

“Queen of Hearts” – The Unthanks

Pleasantly off-kilter and yet still lovely folk revivalism from a pair of sisters from the English countryside. “Queen of Hearts” is a traditional song, first recorded by Cynthia Gooding in 1953 and brought to a wider audience by Joan Baez 10 years later, and the Unthanks honor the song’s heart but expand its soul with their uncanny gift of arrangement.

From the glockenspiel’s carefully tinkled opening notes (and note the odd tension the trumpet quickly introduces) it is clear that we are in exquisite musical hands. Keep your ear on the bottom of the mix, as it’s the drumbeat—resolutely minimal, reinforcing the song’s rapt sway—and its bass partner that lend the song its peculiar sense of magical menace, or maybe menacing magic. The interaction of the players—piano, trumpet, strings, percussion—is all but three-dimensional; they sound like they’re playing with each other both musically and spatially. Notes and chords are both thrillingly precise and yet seemingly just come upon. (A favorite moment: the chord that appears on the word “my” smack in the center of the song, at 2:13, on the line “If my love leaves me what shall I do?”)

And let’s not forget the central lure, which is the two sisters’ voices. Becky takes the lower road, Rachel, eight years senior, the higher, and the intertwining is such that they are hard to separate. Thankfully there is no need to. Unthank is their actual last name, by the way. And also the name of a village near where they grew up, west of Newcastle.

“Queen of Hearts” is from the album Last, the Unthanks’ fourth, which will arrive on the Rough Trade label in the US next month. MP3 via the Beggars Group. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: TV on the Radio (half stompy, half mellow)

Alternating between a stompy, fuzz-tinged verse and a silky groove of a chorus, “Caffeinated Consciousness” may well be aiming to reproduce the very feel of being juiced on caffeine: there’s the oh-wow-hey-pay-attention part and then there’s the I’m-just-gliding-along-as-smooth-as-can-be part. And they kind of fit together and kind of don’t.

TV on the Radio

“Caffeinated Consciousness” – TV on the Radio

In any case, it’s a curiously addictive vibe. As soon as the ear gets tired of the harsh, riff-heavy, sample-fueled first part, we slip with relief into the groovy second part, with its happy blend of mellow-funky guitars and pipe-organ-y synthesizers. When that gets maybe too easy-going (I’m wired, man, I need to bust up something), squonk we go, back into the noise. But it’s kind of a happy noise in its own way—“I’m optimistic!” sing/shouts Tunde Adebimpe, over a delightfully rubbery bass and (wait for it; it’s in the second half of the verse, not the first) a stuttery, metallic, low-register guitar melody that (okay, maybe I’m hearing things) wouldn’t sound out of place on a Grateful Dead record.

TV on the Radio has been doing musical business out of Brooklyn since way back in 2001. They were one of the earlier bands featured here on Fingertips, in 2003, for a song off their first EP called “Staring at the Sun,” back when they were still a duo. (And hey, it’s still available!) They are five men strong these days. “Caffeinated Consciousness” is a track off the album Nine Types of Light, the band’s fourth full-length, due out in April on Interscope. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: The Ladybug Transistor (fleet & melancholy, nostalglic & timeless)

Always with a vaguely nostalgic sound, The Ladybug Transistor by now operates kind of meta-nostalgically, since the band itself dates back to an entirely different musical age—born out of the Elephant Six Collective in 1995: pre-Napster, pre-MP3, very nearly pre-WWW.

The Ladybug Transistor

>”Clutching Stems” – The Ladybug Transistor

Always with a vaguely nostalgic sound, The Ladybug Transistor by now operates kind of meta-nostalgically, since the band itself dates back to an completely different musical age—born out of the Elephant Six Collective in 1995: pre-Napster, pre-MP3, very nearly pre-WWW. They disappear for such long stretches at a time that I’d pretty much forgotten what an appealing sound they have, all sad-sprightly and ’60s-pop-influenced. Belle & Sebastian comes to mind also; although different bands in many ways, there’s a common vibe, both atmospherically and melodically, between this Brooklyn ensemble and Stuart Murdoch’s Scottish gang. Both bands offer up a powerful kind of nostalgia that remains somehow, also, both of-the-moment and timeless.

What has me in love with this song in general is the juxtaposition of the rapid pace and the melancholy air, which is not a natural combination. The song’s fleetness also disguises its unusual construction: it seems to be built around a meandering, two-tiered chorus, without any otherwise repeating element in the song. I don’t hear a verse. What has me in love with this song in particular is the aforementioned chorus, which stretches beyond something simple and immediately singable, accumulating a quiet sort of grandeur as we are led to a truly wonderful melodic moment: front man Gary Olson singing, “And now that I’m not/It’s all coming apart” (first heard at 1:07). This is worth the price of admission. More goodness: the striking titular image, which implies an entire story in those two concrete words.

Always something of a free-floating outfit, the Ladybug Transistor has experienced any number of lineup changes over the years. One of them was tragic, as drummer San Fadyl, on board since 1997, died of an asthma attack in April 2007. The band has not recorded since then, until now. (Their last album, released in June 2007, had been recorded with Fadyl.) Three new members have joined three LT veterans; the end result is Clutching Stems, due out on Merge Records in June. The band was previously been featured in 2003 and 2007. ~~MP3 via Merge.~~

Spamalot (Or, New Adventures in BitTorrentland)

It was only a matter of time, here in the digital age, before someone invented the spam album.

Leave it to the folks over in BitTorrentland, forever in search of something for nothing, to have inadvertently done just that. It’s kind of like the way Post-It Notes were invented by mistake, by an engineer who initially thought his new glue just wasn’t sticky enough.

In this case, the BitTorrent gang first thought they had created a platinum download. The headlines started breaking late last week.

“Indie Band Tops a Million Downloads, Breaks BitTorrent Record,” said the blog TorrentFreak on Friday. By Monday, similar headlines had sprouted around the web, including this one, from Prefix Magazine:

“Sick of Sarah Go Platinum Through BitTorrent.” (This headline had originated at Hypebot, which at least had the sense to put the word “platinum” in quotes.)

But it turns out this isn’t about “going platinum” at all. It is rather about the unfortunate lengths people will go either to promote music or to justify piracy. Or both.

And the end result? The spam album.

Let’s start with the facts.

The Minneapolis-based all-female punk-pop quintet Sick of Sarah released their new album, 2205, for free, via a partnership with BitTorrent Inc. on February 15. Within 18 days, it had been downloaded, freely and legally, by a million people, according to TorrentFreak. The figure stands at 1.44 million as I post this on March 24.

The partnership with BitTorrent involved the bundling of the Sick of Sarah album with the download of popular clients (i.e. programs that manage the upload/download process using the BitTorrent protocol). Meaning that everyone who downloaded the uTorrent or the BitTorrent Mainline application for an entire month automatically downloaded the album. They specifically had to opt out not to receive it with the software they were purposefully downloading.

“Opt out” (rather than “opt in”) is widely considered an underhanded marketing practice; its premise proves its deviousness, since opting out preys on either laziness or ignorance (or both) and naturally yields greater numbers than opting in. And yet this aspect of the Sick of Sarah story has been downplayed. Here’s Prefix Magazine on the matter:

“Those numbers are sort of inflated—anyone who downloaded uTorrent or Mainline got the album too—but it’s still a massive number for a small band.”

“Sort of inflated”? Try very inflated. “A massive number for a small band”? No. It becomes irrelevant whether it’s a small band or a big band if the numbers were cooked by an opt-out option on an unrelated download. The album arrived on hundreds of thousands of computers as spam. This is news, for sure, but of a different sort than the headlines indicated.

TorrentFreak likewise blinks not an eye at the spammy nature of the Sick of Sarah giveaway. It succinctly reports that the million-plus downloads “would never have been possible” without the opt-out bundling.

The fact that BitTorrent is in the first place sending out press releases and pushing this story as some sort of file-sharing milestone is additionally dubious. There’s this element of “See? The world loves file-sharing!” about the PR, which overlooks the fact that the Sick of Sarah album, unlike the overwhelming majority of music downloaded via BitTorrent, is free and legal.

The press release furthermore sidestepped the opt-out nature of the album download, saying merely that the album was “offered to new users during the installation of the BitTorrent Mainline and uTorrent software.”

In the end, this story proves nothing except the fact that a million free downloads, even if actively versus unintentionally sought, are not the same as a million sales, not by a long shot.

And here’s why: getting something for free involves no friction at all. The paradigm of the marketplace changes from “I really have to want it” to “Sure, why not?” Or, to “I didn’t even know I was getting it!” Comparing statistics from one paradigm to the other is both silly and deceptive.

And let’s take this a step further. If getting something for free involves no friction, the exchange itself is inherently meaningless. Life is about friction, about contact. If you don’t have to invest money, or time, or thought, and you get it anyway, what have you really gotten?

In the land of the free and excessively convenient, the line between what is significant and what isn’t is carelessly erased. We gain things but lose meaning.

Fortunately, meaning is wired into human nature. This—far more than economic theory or music futurist smoke-and-mirrors—tells me that freeloading has no mainstream future.

By the way, look how easily the spam album slipped into the freeloading system, and look how it was embraced. They say you can be known by the friends you keep. Pirates and spammers—joint inventors of the spam album—get along quite cozily, as it turns out: one wants things for free that aren’t, the other wants to give you free things that you don’t want. This looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

But I don’t think either of them deserves a voice in the shaping of our actual digital future.

Free and legal MP3: This Year’s Model (Swedish band w/ lean & worthy sound)

This Year’s Model is a Swedish band that does not sound like a Swedish band, even though there is no one way a Swedish band sounds.

This Year's Model

“No Miracles” – This Year’s Model

Brisk and anthemic, “No Miracles” launches into place via a Stax Records beat, all bass and drums (and yeah there’s a keyboard somewhere in there too). Within six seconds, front man Niklas Gustafsson joins in; he’s got that Martin Fry-like gravitas/melodrama thing going. His breathing is part of his singing. The melodies seem all tops and bottoms. “No Miracles” quickly and unassumingly establishes a presence, a central core of lean and worthy sound; we are paying attention; this is sneaky good stuff.

And then the chorus: pure pay dirt, with its descending-melody hooks, at once plaintive and powerful, and its mixture of blurred and concrete lyrics that both grab your ear and leave you guessing. This Year’s Model is a Swedish band that does not sound like a Swedish band, even though there is no one way a Swedish band sounds. The quintet seemingly takes its name from Elvis Costello but doesn’t imitate him in any apparent way; they make music, instead, that has learned from him—perhaps the truest tribute of all.

“No Miracles” is from the band’s second album, We Walk Like Ghosts, released in February on Marsh-Marigold Records. MP3 via the band’s site. Thanks to visitor Gustav for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Steve Halliday

Haunted, well-crafted acoustic ballad

Steve Halliday

“Alive Anywhere” – Steve Halliday

The voice is pure, haunted, and dramatic, the guitar playing crisp and stark—a recipe, for me, often, to hit the “next” button. Call me grumpy but I don’t usually like this sort of thing. So what is London’s Steve Halliday doing here that lifts the music out of the realm of overly earnest singer/songwriter fare and into something pretty wonderful?

A few things, I’d suggest. I like, right away, the major-key start to the minor-key song—always a nice and knowing touch. I like, too, the way the opening arpeggios operate at their own pace, slowing down and speeding up based on an expressive rather than a rhythmic imperative. Halliday continues this tempo variation—what in classical music might be called rubato—to great effect throughout the song. Paradoxically, the key to its success is that you don’t even necessarily notice it unless it’s pointed out.

In a subtly related matter of song craft, the lyrics themselves are asymmetrical, using little direct rhyme and in some cases, such as in the opening verse, no rhyme at all:

You were so long ago
You were driving me back
You’re crying, what’s so wrong?
Keep your hand on the wheel

There’s something simultaneously jarring and lovely in this. Whether consciously done or not, the musical and lyrical nonconformity jointly offset the “earnestness” factor rather well. I’m on board.

“Alive Anywhere” is the title track to Halliday’s debut album, which he home-recorded and self-released back in 2009; more recently it made its iTunes debut in January of this year. Thanks to the artist himself for the MP3, which I have permission to share here.

Free and legal MP3: The Heavenly States (smartly crafted, smile-inducing)

Even though thumpy and clappy and light-hearted, “Model Son” also unfolds deliberately, with an exquisite sense of sound and accompaniment.

The Heavenly States

“Model Son” – The Heavenly States

Even though thumpy and clappy and light-hearted, “Model Son” also unfolds deliberately, with an exquisite sense of sound and accompaniment. The precisely-picked acoustic guitar line that we hear in the introduction lays the slightly-skewed groundwork for this smartly-made song. Without ever quite knowing what’s going on lyrically, you are likely to find a smile on your face through the cumulative force of happy music. This sounds like XTC and CCR joining forces to enter a Modest Mouse songwriting competition.

The level of detail at nearly any moment is splendid and endearing (example? that penny-whistle sound that wiggles oh-so-briefly to the forefront at 0:58). In the hands of the Heavenly States, a section of the song that might otherwise be like treading water—some wordless backing vocals over a steady beat, tying the end of the chorus to the beginning of the next verse (beginning around 1:00)—becomes its own charming adventure. Violinist Genevieve Gagon is another matter entirely, shredding everything in her path when her solo arrives (2:19).

Currently a trio (although the picture on the Oakland-based band’s home page still shows four; see above), the Heavenly States have been recently in the news because they are, somehow, and bizarrely, the only American band ever to have played in Libya, which they did in 2005; Gagon and front man Ted Nesseth were interviewed on CNN about the experience earlier this month. She and Nesseth, by the way, are married; her brother Jeremy is the band’s drummer.

“Model Son” is from the EP Oui Camera Oui, due out next month on Hippies Are Dead Records, a label founded last year as an offshoot of the blog of the same name. MP3 via HAD.

Free and legal MP3: Marissa Nadler (torchy & reverbed, but also sharp & immediate)

Marissa Nadler

“Baby, I Will Leave You in the Morning” – Marissa Nadler

Torchy, reverby, and nostalgic, but also sharp, disciplined, and genuinely dramatic. Not to mention gorgeous.

Pay attention to how the reverb in Nadler’s creamy voice blends seamlessly with the spacey, Pink Floyd-ish guitars which soar in the distance below. This is why the song doesn’t get bogged down in echoey mud—there’s a lot going on outside the reverb that keeps the ear grounded in immediacy. The crisp acoustic guitar that emerges with a tinkling chord every now and then is a case in point; it is recorded so immaculately that you can sometimes hear fingers on strings (check out 0:58 if you don’t believe it).

Meanwhile, the composition’s abiding drama is built on a structure that has the song modulate upward with each return to the home melody, a musical fact that gains sly lyrical support near the end as Nadler sings “I am getting higher by the moment” (2:55).

“Baby, I Will Leave You in the Morning” is a track from her forthcoming self-titled album, which was funded via Kickstarter. This will be the fifth full-length release for the Boston-based singer/songwriter, who turns 30 in early April. She was previously featured here in 2007 and 2009.

Free and legal MP3: One in a Googolplex (clattery electronics, gleeful melody energy)

Full of tweaky and and clattery and glittery and rubbery electronics, “Lilly” also bursts with such infectious melodic energy that I for one don’t really care what odd sounds Sebastian Zimmer wants to throw into the mix.

Sebastian Zimmer

“Lilly” – One in a Googolplex

Full of clattery and glittery and rubbery electronics, “Lilly” also bursts with such infectious melodic energy that I for one don’t really care what odd sounds Sebastian Zimmer wants to throw into the mix.

Not that you necessarily see the brilliance coming. From the intro through the opening verse, “Lilly” bounces modestly along as a two-chord shuffle with a vaguely island-like feel. Close listeners might enjoy the crafty dissonances one of the synthesizers insists upon carving in the soundscape, but more casual ears may remain unengaged until 0:46, when the electronic equivalent of a car crash launches us into the bubbly chorus, full of vocal leaps and dives that sound spliced together rather than sung through. But damned if the cut-and-pasted melody line isn’t its own kind of oddball hook—there’s an energy unleashed by the mashed-up-sound, accentuated by Zimmer’s feathery tenor, that transcends its electronic trappings. And then, as a sort of counter-balance to all the artifice employed to create the song’s core, we get at 2:04 an instrumental bridge featuring what sounds for all the world like honest-to-goodness stringed instruments (but are probably still synthesizers).

“Lilly” is the a-side of a digital single released this month on Alchemist Records. Zimmer has been recording as One In A Googolplex from the German state of Saarland since 2009. The name comes from the third Back to the Future movie. In his own words, Zimmer is “constantly trying to compose his songs as universally as possible in order to be able to enjoy the music even in some thousand years from now or on a different planet, where there is no money, no television, and no heartache anymore.” I want to go to there.

Free and legal MP3: The Extraordinaires

Wry rocker w/ old-timey, theatrical feel

The Extraordinaires

“The Big Show” – The Extraordinaires

With the oompah feel of a music-hall standard, “The Big Show” dresses its quizzical take on 21st-century life in a ramshackle aural stew as musically charming as it is lyrically caustic. Look no further than the opening salvo to see what we’re in for:

We say it like it’s true then watch it put down its roots
And blossom from the gossip into truth
We’re in the weeds up to our knees
It’s hard to tell the poison from the fruit

The chorus, meanwhile, has an uncomfortable resonance with the news we’ve been watching this week:

Look out below
The whole damn thing’s about to blow
Gone are all the good days but hey
At least we get to watch the show

We’ve got here a corollary to the happy music/sad lyrics phenomenon that pop can handle like no other kind of music—this is more like comic music/tragic lyrics but the underlying incongruity is the same, as well as the appeal. Singer Jay Purdy has the air of a mischievous master of ceremonies, and a voice somewhat resembling John Linnell from They Might Be Giants. Which adds to the whimsical vibe. Oh and be sure not to miss the last 40 seconds, which sounds as if we have landed in a cartoon. All we need to top it off is Porky Pig saying “Th-th-th-at’s all, folks!”

The Extraordinaires began as a duo in South Philly in 2004. They had expanded to a quartet by 2007, and in 2010 solidified into a five-man band. They have previously released albums that were produced as books bound in masonite (think of what a clipboard is made of; that’s it). “The Big Show” is a song from the band’s new three-song EP, Postcards, released on the Philadelphia-based label Punk Rock Payroll.