June 2019 – Fingertips

Keep your eyes open

Eclectic Playlist Series 6.06 – June 2019

I thought last month’s mix was one of the better ones I’ve concocted, and yet there it was, with the meagerest number of listeners to date. Good thing I’m not doing this for fame and fortune! Thanks to the loyal core here–you know who you are. I believe in the value of creative work, and in the value of our culture’s diverse musical legacy. If 2019’s hyper-capitalist, click-centered world is screwed up beyond the ability to separate the worthy from the worthless, the delightful from the despicable, well, how surprising is that? Elizabeth Warren says, rightfully, that capitalism without regulation is theft; I would add that capitalism without human values is, well, capitalism. Where we have ended up, with the failed steak salesman as leader of the free world, is pretty much the logical end result of an amoral system. A microscopic audience for quality playlists is the least of my worries. But, if you’re here, I hope you enjoy the ever-eclectic mix….

Random notes:

* The accepted story is that the Strokes lost their magic after their first two albums, but here’s a song from their 2011 album Angles that stands up to anything else they’ve recorded, to my ears. I have no idea what Casablancas is singing about, of course, but “Under the Cover of Darkness” nevertheless acquires so much delightful musical momentum as it unfolds that it makes me want to jump out of my seat with glee by the time it’s halfway through.

* I recently saw a short video essay by Jeff Tweedy in which he extolled the benefits of listening to music that you don’t like. He says he’s learned that his initial reactions to music can be based on preconceived notions and/or aversions that may be irrational, and that it’s worthwhile to make an effort to overcome these things. Which brings me to Rush, a band I definitely used to have an aversion to, preconceived notions about, you name it. These were formed when I worked in college radio, caught up in a cohort as passionate about music as we were unintentionally close-minded. I still don’t love Geddy Lee’s voice but I have to admire the musicianship on display, and the band’s efforts to pack complexities into radio-friendly material. As soon as I was able to open my little mind up to the possibility that I didn’t hate everything they recorded, a song like “Limelight” was able to reveal its charms.

* Brenda Kahn, back in the ’90s, gave us one of the sharpest and most distinctive singer/songwriter albums of the era. Epiphany in Brooklyn, released in 1992, had enough muscle and momentum to break through to alternative-rock radio stations (remember “I Don’t Sleep, I Drink Coffee Instead”?), and enough craft and spirit to promise great things to come. Then her record company–a Columbia Records imprint–folded two weeks before her follow-up release. She continued touring and releasing records independently through the ’90s but without the mainstream notice the first record garnered. Eventually she left music behind, to concentrate on raising her children. I only recently discovered that she’s been making music again here in the 21st century; I entirely missed Seven Laws of Gravity when it came out in 2010, but happily stumbled upon it a couple of months ago.

* Cate Le Bon has the distinction of being the answer to a trivia question no one asks, which is: have I ever, by mistake, featured the same song by the same artist twice within the Eclectic Playlist Series? Turns out I have: the Cate Le Bon song “Are You With Me Now”?” ended up both in EPS 3.03 in March 2016 and in EPS 4.05 in May 2017. Go figure.

* Graham Parker, on the other hand, I haven’t managed to feature until now. He fell into that category of “hard to choose just one so I won’t choose any” artists. And, to be frank, despite how vital and wonderful many of his songs remain, his overall sound just doesn’t seem to want to blend in to an overall mix, somehow. I’ve tried many times, for instance, to work the amazing “Discovering Japan” in and it just won’t go. “Something You’re Going Through” has its pseudo-reggae-ishness going for it in the context of a eclectic mix, plus its perennially useful advice, which I’ve borrowed this month for the title.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Under the Cover of Darkness” – The Strokes (Angles, 2011)
“There’s Nothing Else to Say” – The Incredibles (single, 1967)
“Falling is a Form of Flying” – Pal Shazar (There’s a Wild Thing in the House, 1995)
“Something You’re Going Through” – Graham Parker & The Rumour (Heat Treatment, 1976)
“St. Thomas” – Sonny Rollins (Saxophone Collosus, 1956)
“The Consequences of Falling” – k.d. lang (Invincible Summer, 2000)
“Limelight” – Rush (Moving Pictures, 1981)
“Chelsea Morning” – Joni Mitchell (Clouds, 1969)
“I’m On My Way” – Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi (there is no Other, 2019)
“Guitar Swing” – The Winks (Birthday Party, 2006)
“I Wish I Was Your Mother” – Mott the Hoople (Mott, 1973)
“Regular Job” – Brenda Kahn (Seven Laws of Gravity, 2010)
“Wheel of Evil” – In Tua Nua (The Long Acre, 1988)
“I Really Love You” – The Tomangoes (single, 1968)
“The Crying Scene” – Aztec Camera (Stray, 1990)
“Black Hearted Love” – PJ Harvey (A Woman A Man Walked By, 2009)
“99 Miles From L.A.” – Art Garfunkel (Breakaway, 1975)
“Daylight Matters” – Cate Le Bon (Reward, 2019)
“Moment of Weakness” – Syreeta (With You I’m Born Again [import], 1990)
“Grey Seal” – Elton John (Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, 1973)

Free and legal MP3: Alejandra O’Leary (squonky midtempo rocker, w/ melodic twists)

Combining an assured employment of squonky guitars with satisfying melodic momentum, “Wires” quickly brings the ear back to the heyday of early ’90s alternative rock at its most accessible.

“Wires” – Alejandra O’Leary

Combining an assured employment of squonky guitars with satisfying melodic momentum, “Wires” quickly brings the ear back to the heyday of early ’90s alternative rock at its most engaging. This feels like a nice thing to hear with a fresh coat of 2019 paint. And, as with some of the best material from that era (think Belly, think Garbage), “Wires” isn’t content staying exactly in one place and phoning it in from there. Hang in through the chorus (0:50-1:05) and you get an even higher level of songwriting payout, as the melody there expands in buoyant, unexpected directions.

I love how the song feels slightly unhinged and tightly controlled at the same time, with O’Leary’s clear-toned voice steering us through its twists and turns. You may notice that the verse disappears after its second go-round, replaced by a repeating bridge-like section (1:51) that offers its own hooks. And if you’ve been patiently waiting for those crunchy guitars to break out, your dividend arrives at 2:45, when O’Leary leaves off in mid-lyric for a few moments of concluding instrumental frenzy.

O’Leary is a half-Colombian, half-Irish singer/songwriter based in Portland, Maine. “Wires” is the lead track from Everest, which will be released next week. You can listen to the album, and buy it, via Bandcamp. Her back catalog of three albums and an EP are also there and worth investigating.

Free and legal MP3: Middle Kids

Terrific new song from top-notch band

“Real Thing” – Middle Kids

The gifted Australian trio Middle Kids is back with a follow-up release to its superb 2018 album, Lost Friends; we remain in excellent hands.

“Real Thing” pulses with an off-kilter rhythm section, navigated with nonchalance by smoky-voiced frontwoman/guitarist Hannah Joy. The melody starts casually, on the second beat of the measure, much of it double-time, comprising a lot of words but only a couple of different notes. I get from this a sense of escalation, which gets suspended by a verse extension in which the melody slows down and expands, right on the resonant phrases “hopeless romantics, anxiety magnets” (0:25). We retreat briefly into the opening melody before advancing into what we’ve been waiting for: the killer chorus. Middle Kids are in fact masters of the killer chorus; for evidence look no further than the song “Mistake,” from Lost Friends (and featured here on at the beginning of the year on EPS 6.01), which still gives me goose bumps.

What makes the chorus here work so well feels like a magic trick. It neither attempts to pound a simplified musical phrase into your head nor relies on a flagrantly memorable chord change. The most noticeable thing it does is alternate double- and single-time lines; the other prominent feature is its asymmetry: the way the third line doesn’t directly mirror the first line, as the ear expects, but extends an extra measure. And right there, somehow, is the hook, when Joy sings, “Are you like me, do you lie awake thinking?” (0:44) The line illustrates an ongoing feature of Joy’s presentation, which subtly fluctuates between phrases that seem slightly slurred or indistinct and those that jump out with precision. The chorus finishes with some wordless vocal leaps that now show how much more elastic Joy’s range is than you might initially expect (0:50-1:00). Somehow, altogether, the effect is brilliant.

Lastly, note the guitar work throughout. The band presents as a trio but uses an extra guitar in the mix, and when performing live. As you listen, it’s worth reminding yourself that this is a completely guitar-based band; all the heft and drive of their sound on top of the rhythm section comes from guitars. They’re kind of a glorious anomaly that way here in 2019, with no laptop twiddling or sampling going on. And look, I’ve got nothing against technology per se but dislike when sounds become fads and in any case look to music as something requiring intellectual, emotional, and physical skill, generated by vibrations arising from three-dimensional reality (plucked or hammered strings; breath disturbing the air). These guys, to quote their own song, are the real thing.

You’ll find this track on Middle Kids’ brand-new six-track mini album New Songs For Old Problems, released last week. Grab it for just $5.99 at Bandcamp, where you’ll also want to buy Lost Friends if you don’t already have it. MP3 via The Current.

(Note that MP3s from The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the iTunes standard of 192kbps, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on standard-quality equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to download the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I still urge you to buy the music. It’s the right thing to do.)

Free and legal MP3: Claude Fontaine (hazy neo-bossa nova)

“Pretending He Was You” – Claude Fontaine

“Pretending He Was You” sweeps you immediately into a world in which hazy neo-bossa-nova feels like a natural, contemporary means of expression—a world in which a dreamy, whispery female singer commands so much unequivocal authority you wonder why anyone ever has to shout.

The vibe is impeccable, and so is the songwriting. Heeding not in the least today’s call to truncate songs for battered attention spans, “Pretending He Was You” lopes to a sultry beat, its languid melody line spreading itself out over 15 measures—notable both for its general length and its ability to wrap itself up so smoothly at that odd moment, structurally speaking. (Most melody lines in rock’n’roll genres carry on for four or eight measures, or very occasionally for 16.) The effect is beguiling and effortless.

A singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles, Fontaine discovered vintage tropical music by accident one day in a record store while living in London for a year, and it literally changed her life. The store was Honest Jon’s, on Portobello Road, and, as she tells it, she began badgering them daily to play for her as many records from tropical genres and sub-genres as they had. Which led her, first, to start writing songs in bygone styles like rocksteady and tropicalia; and then—a testament to her obsession—she enlisted, to record with her, session players with authentic experience, including, for instance, on this track, drummer Airto Moreira, who played in the ’70s with Astrud Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim, among many others.

“Pretending He Was You” is the sixth of 10 tracks on her very groovy self-titled debut, released in April. The record is consciously divided into the Jamaica side (first five songs) and the Brazil side (second five). “I hope this record will transport people,” Fountaine has said. “I wanted it to feel like those lost records, like it got lost in the bottom bin of some world music store in London because that’s how I felt when I walked in to that record store. I wanted it to be its own world.”

MP3 via KEXP. Do yourself a favor and listen to the whole album, via Bandcamp. You can buy it there too, including a vinyl version, which I am feeling very tempted right now to indulge in.

Free and legal MP3: Charly Bliss (enticing, contemporary pop rock)

To show you I’m not averse to music sounding rather more up-to-the-minute, here’s a three-minute, forty-two-second slice of 2019 pop goodness from the Brooklyn quartet Charly Bliss.

“Capacity” – Charly Bliss

To show you I’m not averse to music sounding rather more up-to-the-minute, here’s a three-minute, forty-two-second slice of 2019 pop goodness from the Brooklyn quartet Charly Bliss. Of course my idea of pop goodness in 2019 is not necessarily what appears on your basic “Top 50” Spotify playlist, but whatever. The public wants what the public gets, as Paul Weller tartly framed capitalism’s fatal flaw some 40 years ago.

In my little world, the public gets something like “Capacity,” and wants it. From the start, the contrast between the buzzy heft of the synth bass line and Eva Grace Hendricks’ girl-ish vocal style arrests the ear. (She has self-described her vibe as “overgrown teenybopper.”) The song then leads you through three distinct sections, each more enticing than the last, culminating in a chorus that hooks us, somewhat unusually, by slowing things down (0:49), with Hendricks luxuriating in a dreamy melody line with a gratifying resolution and a punctuating drum roll worthy of an arena rock band.

There are in fact any number of engaging production touches fortifying the composition from beginning to end. I like how the active, noodly synthesizer that enters after the song’s first section proceeds to weave in and around Hendricks in the song’s double-time second section. Or how about that one strummed guitar chord that acts as the gateway to the chorus (0:48), which is at once out of the blue and just kind of wonderful? No doubt we can credit a lot of this to the band’s bringing Joe Chiccarelli on board as producer; he’s a veteran who has worked with an incredible variety of artists over the years, from Elton John and U2 through to My Morning Jacket, the Strokes, and the Shins. Expertise!: what a concept.

The four members of Charly Bliss, meanwhile, have known each other quite a long time for relative youngsters—Eva H.’s brother Sam is the drummer; bassist Dan Shure is a friend from childhood; and Shure introduced relative newcomer Spencer Fox, the lead guitarist, to the others back in the second half of the ’00s.

“Capacity” is the lead single from Young Enough, the band’s second album, released earlier this month on Barsuk Records. You can buy it in a variety of formats via the record company. MP3 via Barsuk.