May 2011 – Page 2 – Fingertips

Fingertips Flashback: Trademark (from May 2005)

I haven’t plundered the back pages for a while, so here goes, it’s a new Flashback. This one comes from six years ago to the week, and is one of those songs that in another, better world than ours would’ve been a smash hit on the radio; hearing it now should be causing all sorts of Proustian nostalgia. But, alas, most of you will probably be hearing it for the first time right now. Nostalgia will have to wait!

Trademark

“Hold That Thought” – Trademark

[from May 2, 2005]

Resplendent electro-pop from an Oxford synthesizer trio that apparently wears lab coats onstage. While drawing obvious inspiration from bands like Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Trademark immediately announces its own presence with the opening synthesizer riff, featuring a deeper, buzzier, funkier tone than their ’80s forebears. The song swings along in a rapid 6/8 (maybe?) shuffle, and even as vocalist Oliver Horton’s blase, slightly nasal delivery recalls the likes of Neil Tennant (of the Pet Shop Boys), there’s something sturdier and more passionate going on here. Maybe because it was all new back then, and maybe there were serious technological limitations at the time, but ’80s synth-pop had a distinct air of preprogrammed relentlessness to it—as if the groups got going by pushing a button and letting the machines do the rest. Listen, by contrast, to the way the introduction here leads into the first verse: how the rhythm shifts and the three interweaving synthesizers are redefined around the vocals—how in fact they are played musically rather than electronically, even though they are, still, electronic instruments. It may sound on the surface like the ’80s but this is the ’00s we’re listening to, and a seriously wonderful new song. “Hold That Thought” can be found on Trademark’s debut CD, Trademark Want More, released in the U.K. last year on Truck Records. The MP3 is available via the band’s web site.

ADDENDUM: The band has not been extraordinarily active since 2004, but they still exist; they even have a Twitter feed. There was one more album after Want More—2007’s Raise The Stakes. The trio’s most recent release is the 2009 EP At Loch Shiel.

Free and legal MP3: Okkervil River (insistent rocker w/ dream-scrambled vibe)

Okkervil River

“Wake and Be Fine” – Okkervil River

Purposefully bashy and crashy, “Wake and Be Fine” offers an insistent tumble of lyrics in the verse, offset by the comparatively soothing waltz of the chorus, wherein front man Will Sheff assures himself, and us, that we’ll “wake and be fine.” The music itself reinforces the song’s theme and intention: the verses assaulting us with off-kilter semi-confusion, the chorus finding smoother footing, tapping into the consoling quality of the song’s partially disguised 3/4 time signature.

Normally uninterested in music videos, I will make an exception here and point you in the direction of the song’s visual presentation, below. It’s a stark yet dreamy black-and-white affair, with the lyrics, propaganda-like, commanding the viewer’s attention while the band, blurred and multiplied, plays in and around the words. Stay with it and you’ll see that the visual words begin to diverge from the sung words, which ingeniously enhances the song’s dream-scrambled chaos. Also interesting to note is that Sheff had the band play this song together, over and over, in a small recording space, waiting for a take in which no one made any mistakes at all, however slight. It took from 3 pm to 1 am, and I think knowing the determination and, even, slight desperation that informs the playing here adds to the vaguely surreal ambiance of the whole thing.

“Wake and Be Fine” is a song from Okkervil River’s new album, I Am Very Far, which due out next week on Jagjaguwar Records. This is the Austin-based band’s sixth album, and 13th year together. They have previously been featured on Fingertips in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008. MP3 via Jagjaguwar.

Free and legal MP3: Niki and the Dove (dark yet resplendent synth pop from Sweden)

At once sludgy and resplendent, “The Fox” thunders and sparkles, blending darkness and light in a most uncommon and indelible way.

Niki and the Dove

“The Fox” – Niki and the Dove

At once sludgy and resplendent, “The Fox” thunders and sparkles, blending darkness and light in a most uncommon and indelible way. Rock’n’roll advances rarely via the bolts from the blue most critics and bloggers seem to demand, much more often through absorption, and there is something in “The Fox” that reverberates with a number of classic influences, from Kate Bush (the fox reference is just part of it) and Siouxsie Sioux and Björk to David Bowie and Radiohead. This is good stuff. Theatrical too. Equal effort is paid here to catch the ear—to be “pop,” essentially—and to challenge it. Check out that abrupt segue between the lighthearted glissando that opens the song and the chunky, lagging, deep-voiced guitar (or guitar-like sound; no guitarist is associated with the band) it bumps into. That’s part of what the whole piece is about—interesting, off-kilter, carefully constructed musical moments, hung onto a sturdy framework of melodic and synthetic know-how. The song has great flow—it really pulls me in—and yet nearly any slice of it, all the way through, has its own singular DNA. Did I mention this is really good stuff?

Niki and the Dove is a Stockholm duo, featuring Malin Dahlström and Gustaf Karlöf, founded in February 2010. There have been no albums released to date; the band, furthermore, seems inclined to mystery and minimal information. What can be said is that they signed with Sub Pop in March, and “The Fox” is the first Sub Pop single. While the label is coy about it, there does appear to be an EP—also entitled The Fox —on the way in June.

Free and legal MP3: Golden Bloom (affable, Wilco-y rocker w/ structural depth)

“You Go On (& On)” has a comforting, familiar sound—think Tweedy in his Golden Smog phase; can the name in fact be a complete coincidence?—and if you don’t listen carefully you wouldn’t notice that the multi-instrumentalist doing business as Golden Bloom is up to anything curious.

Shawn Fogel

“You Go On (& On)” – Golden Bloom”

Shawn Fogel didn’t get the memo about verse-chorus-verse. How it’s supposed to go is this: sing the verse, repeat it with some new words, sing the chorus, go back to the verse, perhaps with some new words, and so forth. Maybe throw an extra section in about two-thirds of the way through and call it a bridge. That’s it, there’s your song, no need to fiddle with a proven formula.

Except maybe why not. “You Go On (& On)” has a comforting, familiar sound—think Tweedy in his Golden Smog phase; can the name in fact be a complete coincidence?—and if you don’t listen carefully you wouldn’t notice that the multi-instrumentalist doing business as Golden Bloom is up to anything curious. But check it out: after the intro, we get a verse (0:18), then we get something with a bridge-like feel and perhaps the song’s best hook (the “Look away from all that’s surrounding you” part, at 0:34), then we get something that feels like the bridge’s bridge, if there could be such a thing (0:50); and then we cycle through these same three melodically distinct sections—all with different lyrics this time—before we arrive at something that at least partially resembles a chorus (1:54), if for no other reason than that it delivers us the titular phrase at its conclusion.

And, actually, don’t overlook the introduction either: its stringed melody is a separate theme, independent of the four aforementioned melodic sections (verse, two maybe-bridges, chorus), and when it returns as a guitar solo at 2:06, you may then more fully appreciate its ELO-meets-George Harrison demeanor.

So this turns out to be pretty complicated and yet Fogel’s easy-going, ’70s-like sense of melody and unforced vocal style offer affable misdirection. Nicely played. “You Go On (& On)” will appear on Golden Bloom’s forthcoming EP March to the Drums, due in August. Fogel has one previous full-length Golden Bloom album, released in 2009.