jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Port O’Brien (instantly likable but still slightly unusual)

“Sour Milk/Salt Water” – Port O’Brien

Strummy, lyrically insistent verses, with double-tracked vocals, alternate with a plaintive chorus, lyrics now moving at half the pace of the music, vocals still double-tracked but now in an almost Neil Young-like upper register. And while the whole thing is pretty simple sounding at one level it’s mysteriously compelling at another–both instantly likable and slightly unusual.

Or maybe it’s not so mysterious, just well-crafted. Even as the lyrics topple out in the mode of a one-note harangue (a la “Subterranean Homesick Blues”), the music actually shifts between two notes, one-half step apart–it starts on a B, goes up to C, then back to B. Check it out and try to focus on how the underlying chords, which go back and forth from major to minor, shift each time just ahead of when the note itself changes. The end result is a wonderful sort of musical sleight of hand, delivering at once the intensity of a one-note verse and the involvement of a melody. The effect is enhanced by the way the song takes advantage of how aurally distinct two chords can be that are built around notes separated by just a half step.

Port O’Brien is a quintet from northern California with roots in Alaska as well–founders Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin spend summers on Kodiak Island, Pierszalowski working on a commercial fishing boat with his father, Goodwin as the town baker. Suddenly the title of the song makes a bit more sense, eh? “Sour Milk/Salt Water” will be found on the album Threadbare, the band’s second full-length, due out in October on TBD Records. MP3 via City Slang, a Berlin-based label that releases a lot of American indie rock in Europe. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Joe Henry (deconstructed, slow-motion gospel blues)

“Death to the Storm” – Joe Henry

A dusty, deconstructed, slow-motion gospel-blues stomp. I consistently like Joe Henry’s music without really knowing why. His songs succeed through atmosphere, maybe, more than anything else, which with Henry involves a canny intermingling of his fuzzy-buzzy baritone–rich and weary in a fin de siècle sort of way–with an idiosyncratic mix of sounds and organic beats. This time around, I’m particularly enjoying Marc Ribot’s unmistakable guitar lines, with their dry ghostly twang, which imply a bunch of noise they’re not actually making; the subtle interplay of a tinkly piano with a quiet horn of some sort; and the continuous use of drum rolls, on at least two different types of drums, to keep things edgy and forlorn.

Each time Henry releases an album, music writers seem to knock themselves out talking about how different it is from his last one but to my ears, everything sounds entirely Joe Henryesque. However different the music may be–and in all honesty I’m not hearing the differences others are hearing–the voice and the warm, intriguing sonic amalgam is a strong constant. If you’ve liked his stuff in the past, you’ll like this; if you like this, go back and check out some of his older things. You’ll like them too.<

"Death to the Storm" is from the album Blood From Stars, to be released next week on Anti Records. MP3 via Spinner.

Fingertips Top 10, as of right now

The Fingertips Top 10, over on the main site, is an easy way to catch up with some of the best songs that have been posted here over the last few months. I haven’t blogged about it since April, and it’s turned over again since then, so here you have it, as of Friday August 7th. It’s something of a Scandinavian takeover, now that I think about it:

1. “What You Said” – the Decks
2. Trophy Wife” – the Winter Sounds
3. “Die Young” – the Sweet Serenades
4. “Miracle” – Sally Shapiro
5. “Goodbye” – the Argument
6. “Lalita” – the Love Language
7. “When the Devil’s Loose” – A. A. Bondy
8. “Tammie” – the Dø
9. “Gold and Warm” – Bad Veins
10. “Turning Into You” – Wheels On Fire

So let’s see, there are one, two, three, four Scandinavian acts in here out of ten, but I’ll let you figure out which is which. The next song slated for retirement (no song can last on the current top 10 list for more than three months) is “Die Young” by the Sweet Serenades (hint: from Sweden), which will head for the archives at the end of next week.

Like everything else on Fingertips, the Top 10 is idiosyncratic and synchronicitous. No research has been harmed, never mind consulted, in the construction of this list, which is simply my way of shining an extra spotlight onto ten particularly wonderful songs at any given time. Remember, however, that Fingertips only features carefully filtered music to begin with, so you can’t go wrong with any of the MP3s featured here at any time.

August Q&A: Brian Sendrowitz, of Beat Radio

The latest musician to sit down and answer a few questions about the state of music in the digital age is Brooklyn’s Brian Sendrowitz, front man and songwriter for the informal collective known as Beat Radio. The interview is now online; and if you go to the bottom you can also catch up on past interviews you might have missed.

Free and legal MP3: Bad Veins (nuanced indie rock w/ huge chorus)

“Gold and Warm” – Bad Veins

Propulsive and canny, “Gold and Warm” sneaks a huge, sing-along chorus into a multifaceted piece that sounds very little like standard-issue indie-rock-duo music in an age in which the duo has become oddly commonplace.

The dreamy, retro-y orchestral intro is an immediate clue that the song may not unfold as expected. While “Gold and Warm” drives with a determined beat, it also opens itself at various points to more delicate touches, and although singer-songwriter-guitarist-keyboardist Benjamin Davis pushes his voice through something of a Strokes-like filter, he doesn’t use that as an excuse to sing monotonously, which is something this particular effect typically encourages. The rich-toned Davis shows me a thing or two about the emotional range that’s still possible for a filtered voice, while partner Sebastien Schultz gives the duo the gift of a human drummer, grounding the band’s sound in something nuanced and organic, often putting his cymbal work more forward than the drumming in the mix. And then listen to him work the drum kit in the instrumental break that accompanies the instrumental interlude three-quarters of the way into the song (2:46)–that’s just some good, old-fashioned drumming the likes of which you might have heard from Ringo way back when: patient, spacious, self-effacing, and effective precisely because it doesn’t try to be intricate or show-off-y.

“Gold and Warm” is the second track on the Cincinnati-based band’s self-titled debut, released last month on Dangerbird Records. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Blueflowers (reverb-laced and twangy, w/ dreamy melody)

“I Wasn’t Her” – the Blueflowers

Relaxed, reverb-laced tale of woe from a Detroit-based quintet that’s new on the scene but features musicians with a lot of experience, including two–guitarist Tony Hamera and vocalist Kate Hinote (can that be her real name? “High note”?)–who had previously fronted Ether Aura, a dream pop band with a bit of a following in the ’90s. Not to sound like a broken record on the matter, but I continue not to understand music culture’s relentless focus on newcomers when music itself is so enriched by the background and experience of the players. I don’t think musicians can sound simultaneously so laid-back and so compelling without years of playing under their belts.

In any case, dream pop is ostensibly out the door this time in favor of an old-fashioned sort of Americana that offers echoes of hard-core country and western in its slo-mo twang and steel-pedal sorrow. And yet I’m hearing in the song’s central hook—when Hinote, silkily, sings “You weren’t everything that I wanted” in the chorus—something that comes from outside the genre in which the band appears to be operating. That is not by any means a country and western melody, and hearing it here makes me realize rather abruptly that there is in fact a musical place in which C&W and dream pop are not at all far apart, given both genres’ love of reverb and dolor. Being so personally against the over-genre-ization of music, I love when the borders grow foggy, and find myself drawn again and again to songs that can’t be given a simple genre tag.

“I Wasn’t Her” can be found on the band’s self-released debut album, Watercolor Ghost Town, released in June. ~~MP3 via Last.fm;~~ thanks to the blog Hits in the Car for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Slaraffenland (inventive Danish art-pop, w/ horns)

“Meet and Greet” – Slaraffenland

The enigmatic Danish art-popsters Slaraffenland return to Fingertips with a brisk, deceptively restless composition that incorporates some of the most delightful and inventive horn charts I’ve heard in a pop setting, not to mention some gratifyingly precise and rumbly percussion. This is the kind of song that, if you sink into it on its own terms, has you rethinking what a three- or four-minute rock song might be able to do. I don’t hear any standard hooks here and yet not for a moment does my attention or spirit sag.

And do check out those horns. There’s the splendid bit of syncopated layering we hear from them in their first concentrated appearance, from 1:14 to 1:36, but then listen to how they come back in the same extended instrumental section (now 1:48), this time playing in a blurry, sliding/pulsing sort of chorus, and yet still with their own rhythmic integrity. This is extremely wonderful, to my ears. Eccentric, but extremely wonderful.

For some interesting notes on the band’s name, read the review from the last time they were here. “Meet and Greet” is the lead single from the forthcoming album, We’re On Your Side, slated for a September release on the Portland, Ore.-based Hometapes label.

[The link is no longer direct, but the song is still available as a free and legal download, via Stereogum.)

Free and legal MP3: Yo La Tengo (churning, string-laden craftiness)

“Here to Fall” – Yo La Tengo

Half of the time I love what Yo La Tengo does, half the time I’m not sure I understand it. This falls squarely into the first half. After its odd, electro-echoey intro, “Here to Fall” simmers with that paradoxical low-level intensity that YLT consistently brings to the studio–a product, in part, of the juxtaposition of Ira Kaplan’s plainspoken, softspoken vocals and the churning noise the trio can produce. And yet the noise here isn’t really that noisy, featuring as it does, right in the middle of the mix, the unlikely but thoroughly agreeable addition of a small string section, which somehow brings to mind the sorts of strings we used to hear on old Elton John songs (Paul Buckmaster fans out there, anyone?).

But don’t overlook the guitar work, which is characteristically crazy brilliant without calling any attention to itself. And don’t overlook the additional crazy brilliance of the unadorned melody, barely differentiating verse and chorus, which, cycling inexorably forward, attains a dark grandeur as the guitars burn and the strings melodramatize around it.

“Here to Fall” is a song from the band’s forthcoming album, Popular Songs (their twelfth), which is slated for a September release on Matador Records. MP3 via Matador.

Free and legal MP3: the Dø (percussive, kitchen-sink indie pop)

“Tammie” – the Dø

So go ahead and listen to this song. Shrug and put it aside for two weeks or so. Listen to it again. Go: “Hm. I actually kind of like this! A lot, even.” Well okay, you don’t have to do any of that, but that’s surely what I did. Listening to music can be a flitty and unpredictable affair.

So, “Tammie”: kitchen-sink indie pop, sweetly nutty, with the large-scale energy of the Arcade Fire school of 21st-century rock, but achieved instead via a stripped-down, organic vibe driven by hand-claps and odd vocalizations and peopled by a simple (but multinational) duo—French/Finnish Olivia Merilahti and the Parisian Dan Levy. Where the song takes off, for me, is here: when the insistent, twice-repeated minor-key melodic lines of the verse resolve in the third iteration (first heard around 0:41)—such a smooth and unexpected chord slips in right there in the middle of all the staccato insistence. Check out the next time this comes up, with those invigorating harmonies (1:24, but keep listening). Another wonderful moment is when the repeated chant of the bridge, with all its percussive drive, morphs (1:47) into an orchestral interlude, featuring an enticing influx of woodwind-like sounds.

The Dø is pronounced like the first note of the scale (“‘do’ a deer,” etc.)—even though the “ø” (in languages that use it) is actually pronounced more like the “u” in “hurt.” And while the word “dø” means “die” in Danish and Norwegian, the band says the name comes simply from combining the letters of their first names. (D’oh!) “Tammie” can be found on their debut CD, A Mouthful, which was originally released last year in Europe, and given an American release this month on Get Down Records.

Free and legal MP3: Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions (satisfying, “Fade Into You”-ish ballad)

“Blanchard” – Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions

Fronting the ’90s band Mazzy Star, Hope Sandoval–she with the gauzy, achy, reverb-drenched vocals–made a much larger impact on music fans of a certain age (and gender) than the band’s status as a one-hit wonder (“Fade Into You”), not to mention her terminally shy personality, might suggest. The internet is crawling with people who love her, madly.
“Blanchard” will not disappoint them, but its graceful allure should extend beyond the hopelessly smitten, as it were. To my ears, Mazzy Star’s music blurred into a nebula of echoing, almost debauched gloom too often undisturbed by an actual melody, despite Sandoval’s resonant if downbeat charm as a singer. “Blanchard” echoes much of her previous band’s aura, but eases off on the druggy haze–the reverb is toned down, the pace less dreary. “Blanchard” shares its ghostly 3/4-time rhythm with “Fade Into You” (itself brighter-sounding than most Mazzy Star songs) but gives us what that well-known tune never did: a chorus with a nuanced but noticeable resolution away from the relentless, open-chorded ambivalence in which the band basked. Sandoval doesn’t dwell in the payoff, of course, but the shift at 1:36 is rich and heart-warming. As if, perhaps, to make up for the musical reward, the lyrics at that point become stubbornly unintelligible.
While Mazzy Star is still officially intact, it has not released an album since 1996’s Among My Swan. Meanwhile, Sandoval began recording with a backing band called the Warm Inventions in 2001; two subsequent EPs were released, rather quietly. “Blanchard” is the lead track from the CD Through the Devil Softly, which is scheduled to be out in September, on Nettwerk Records. MP3 via Stereogum (note: not a direct link).