Author: jeremyfingertips

“C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang” – Jane Vain and the Dark Matter

I like songs that bother to lay down a full-fledged instrumental melody—i.e. when an instrument (typically a guitar, sometimes a piano, sometimes something else) plays a melody that is not the same melody the lyrics have in either a verse or in the chorus. That’s what we’re greeted with right away here (0:00-0:14); and, as a bonus, we immediately get that same melody repeated by a high, squeaky, but somehow endearing instrument that is either a high-pitched guitar or a guitar-like synthesizer and as much as I keep listening I can’t tell which it is.

That high-pitched guitar-like thing returns at 1:42, when we are shown how the opening instrumental melody weaves into the main body of the song, which turns out to be in the verse. And while, okay, this sort of thing is not the be-all and end-all of songwriting, the craft and attention it takes to do something like this speaks of a band conscientious about the musical atmosphere it seeks to create. Atmosphere does seem to be Jane Vain and the Dark Matter’s specialty, from their fanciful name to the slidey, slinky rhythm to the smoky singing of Jamie Fooks (there is in fact no “Jane Vain”) to, most of all, the subtle dynamism of the musical landscape which unfolds along the way here. While the word “atmospheric” in music writing refers typically to spacey washes of psychedelia or shoegaze, these guys create atmosphere in a solider, truer sense of the word, via rhythm and harmony and texture and variety and a most satisfying, if somewhat dreamlike, acuity. The violin that adds some nifty drama between 2:55 and 3:05 had actually sneaked on the scene back around 2:20, without fanfare, and fades away afterwards without a trace. This is that kind of song.

Jane Vain and the Dark Matter are a quartet from Calgary. “C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang” is from the band’s debut CD, Love Is Where the Smoke Is, which was released in January.



“Volatile” – the Old Haunts

CBGBs may be dead and gone, but here’s a trio from Olympia, Washington that has at least one foot firmly planted in 1977. Combining the pretty-yet-prickly guitar lines of Television with the earnest-yet-comic punk drive of the Ramones, “Volatile” seems simultaneously well-crafted and slapped together, if such a thing is possible. What attracts me most about the song is its offhandedly industrious character: the band just keeps on plugging away, twiddly guitar leading the way, creating the most wonderful, busy-sounding thereness in the background that actually seems more the heart of the song, in a way, than do the melody and lyrics. This sensation is reinforced by the lyrics themselves, which aren’t really about very much other than the narrator assuring us that he’s “volatile,” and literally spelling it out to be sure we understand.

The stringy, nasally vocal stylings of singer/guitarist Craig Extine bring Tom Verlaine directly to mind, accentuating the Television-like sensibility; the fact that this anxious-sounding character, so clear about his emotional turbulence, bothers both to spell the word he’s singing (a concept usually reserved for more positive attributes like r-e-s-p-e-c-t and l-o-v-e) and take lovely little “ah-ah-ah” breaks in his singing is both charming and, basically, funny. The trio also includes drummer Tobi Vail, ex- of Bikini Kill, the pioneering ’90s “riot grrl” outfit. “Volatile” is a song off the band’s new CD, Poisonous Times, coming out this week on Kill Rock Stars. MP3 via Kill Rock Stars, which is in fact the name of a record company, if you were wondering.



“Sun Down” – Nik Freitas

From Kill Rock Stars to Team Love we go—Team Love being another unlikely record company name, pointing in the opposite direction, and co-founded by Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes). With its delicate but determined chug and wistful vocalizing, “Sun Down” is the sort of brisk, contemplative guitar and piano piece that you would have heard back on a Paul Simon record in the ’70s. Check out that evocative electric guitar he’s using—listen at 1:41 in particular; now that’s just a wonderful, decades-old sound you don’t hear much on a ’00s indie-rock platter (and I don’t guess I should be calling it a “platter” but that’s how nostalgic the sound is). This song offers pleasures which are so low-key they might have slipped right past me were it not for the song’s eminently pleasing center of gravity—I won’t call it a hook because it’s not quite that, but the way the melody takes that three-note ascent at the end of the verse (first heard at 0:24) is the kind of beautiful, slightly unexpected songwriting touch that goes a long way towards nailing an entire song into place.

“Sun Down” is the title track from Freitas’s forthcoming CD, his fourth, and his first for Team Love. Freitas–one-time staff photographer for Thrasher magazine–recorded the CD pretty much on his own, in a studio he pretty much built himself in a shed in his Los Angeles backyard. It’s slated to hit the streets next month. MP3 via Team Love.

“Big Sound” – the M’s

Giddily nostalgic and busily eclectic, “Big Sound” shakes and squeals to a tinny ’00s cavalcade of buzzy electronics, stomping piano, and echoey vocals, with a perky but disheveled horn section and some radio frequency sounds thrown in because, well, it’s a big sound. Neo-glam-garage-pop with an R&B chaser, or some such thing.

Most impressive of all is how this Chicago-based quartet mine rock history with such panache. With “Big Sound,” the M’s manage, almost uniquely, to evoke the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Stones pretty much at the same time, but with a magnetism that is independent of influence. This is one of those songs in which the chorus offers not too much more than a minor variation, melodically, of what we’ve already heard in the verse–and yet how compelling I find it, snaky guitar lines working with the pounding piano and nutty horns (listen to how the whole thing comes to a humorous halt for a moment at about 1:42) to drive us, with a sense of barely controlled chaos, towards, ultimately, well…complete chaos: the final minute of the song is a dreamy denouement of echoing feedback and tweedling guitars and electronics that feels oddly right and satisfying after the frenetic bustle of the previous three and a half minutes.

The M’s sound to me like the real deal. They’ve been around since 2000, recording since ’03. “Big Sound” is an advance track off Real Close Ones, the band’s third full-length CD, due out on Polyvinyl Records in June. MP3 courtesy of Pitchfork.

“Love Vigilantes” – Laura Cantrell

Nashville-born, NYC-based Laura Cantrell is a 21st-century anomaly–a country singer who falls neither into the syrupy, commercialized “country music” camp nor into the allegedly hipper and up-to-date-er “alt.country” camp. She seeks to sing something pure and folk-based that manages to sound at once very traditional and very present in the here and now. Her influences are clear to anyone who has tuned in to her acclaimed radio show, “Radio Thrift Shop,” a fixture on WFMU since 2000. There, she offers music from a wide range of often obscure artists (Pee Wee Crayton? Gitfiddle Jim?) from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, mixing down-home old-style jazz with western swing and plain old country–you are warned in advance that the songs are “often scratchy, swingy and stringy.” (RTS disappeared for a while in the ’05-’06 time frame; it has since returned in a biweekly, online-only format.)

Neither scratchy, swingy, nor stringy, “Love Vigilantes” is a plaintive, beautifully arranged reworking of a New Order song that was once upon a time a staple on “modern rock” radio. Cantrell sings with a straightforward tone, golden and nourishing, with a tincture of twang and ache, but without a trace of emoting. In direct contrast to commercially-motivated music, producers of which appear to believe that the straightest way to emotion is a combination of histrionic singing and overripe arrangements, Cantrell presents with true heart, and demonstrates the power of disciplined playing. Listen to the piano during the first 10 seconds–single notes, given their space–for an example. The fiddle, meanwhile, plays with such artful restraint, low washes coloring the mandolin, that you may not realize it’s there until it steps out for a sad, pensive solo at around 1:50.

First appearing on the soundtrack for the Iraq War documentary Body of War last year, “Love Vigilantes” is one of the nine songs on Cantrell’s new, digital-only CD, Trains and Boats and Planes. The songs are themed loosely around travel–perhaps natural enough for a woman who has been on hiatus from music for three years, taking care of her first child. Staying home with a baby is one of the surest ways to launch daydreams about seeing the world. Six of the songs are covers; three are new versions of previously released Cantrell songs. The album will be available digitally next month via Diesel Only Records.

“Sore” – Annuals

The relative youngsters from the North Carolina-based band Annuals (no “the”) are back with another dramatic aural landscape disguised as a pop song. As with “Brother,” from 2006, “Sore” starts gently, almost pastorally, but doesn’t stay there. The wondrous thing is that the louder, churning sections are nothing if not more gorgeous than the quiet sections. Also, this time, the song is not simply split into the “quiet first half” and the “loud second half”; the dynamics on “Sore” are more complex, and the end result is, I think, even more rewarding.

The beginning is certainly pretty, but subtly disquieting, as the time signature is hard to pin down, and rendered trickier when the drummer kicks in with a gentle, brushed swing rhythm at 0:32 that somehow fits on top of the existing structure even as it doesn’t seem as if it should. The subsequent two changes are cumulatively magnificent: at 1:14, when the music remains gentle but the new rhythm is now fully embraced; and then at 1:35, when the band erupts and lets loose. But not for too long, as a string-dominated instrumental section brings us back to a not-quite-as-quiet quiet section. The second time through, the verse is altered by some twitchy percussion, and leads more quickly back to the full-volume swing–alterations that keep our interest without causing us to lose our bearings entirely. Also, don’t miss the modulation at 3:30: it’s a simple trick but sounds so inevitable that when I go back to listen to the first half, I keep being surprised it’s not there also.

“Sore” is one of three Annuals songs on a new split EP the band has done with a group called Sunfold–a group which is, as it turns out, composed of the same six people who are in Annuals. In Sunfold, however, Annuals frontman Adam Baker steps aside and lead guitarist Kenny Florence does the writing and singing. The two Sunfold songs on the EP are apparently a bit more guitar-oriented than standard Annuals fare. The EP, called Wet Zoo, is out this week on Canvasback Music. The MP3 is yet another from Pitchfork. If you can overlook a certain amount of snooty (not to mention snotty) writing, Pitchfork has turned into a grand source for exclusive free and legal MP3s over the past couple of years.

“When Water Comes to Life” – Cloud Cult

Offbeat, earnest, eventually anthemic chamber pop from one of indie rock’s quirkiest outfits, the Minneapolis-based Cloud Cult. Assembled in the middle of the ’90s to support singer/songwriter Craig Minowa’s ambitious songs, Cloud Cult solidified into a band through the end of the decade and began, with the new century, to record regularly–the new CD, entitled Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), is the band’s seventh of the ’00s.

Launching off a gypsy-ish violin riff, “When Water Comes to Life” begins orchestrally, a variety of strings leading the way, both bowed and plucked. Even the drums, when they appear, sound like percussion in an orchestra more than someone banging on a drum kit. Minowa doesn’t start singing until about a minute and a half in, and when he does, he repeats a simple, four-line verse over and over, as the music swells and transforms underneath him. The lyrics, meanwhile, are biblical and vaguely apocalyptic (visiting angels, the swirl of death and life, etc.). When the drums become rock’n’roll drums for good, at 2:36, the piece receives a powerful kick, heightened no doubt by the cumulative effect of the repetition and the ongoing musical and lyrical drama.

Cloud Cult was a pioneer in the still-developing “green band” trend, working at a commendably high level of environmental awareness across everything they do (although they do not tend to sing about it). Despite early offers of record contracts with established labels, Minowa kept the band independent largely because no record company could guarantee the level of environmental friendliness, manufacturing-wise, that Minowa’s own Earthlogy Records could deliver (i.e. packaging from 100 percent postconsumer recycled, plus nontoxic shrink-wrap; oh, and for everything 1,000 CDs sold, Earthology plants 10 trees). In performance the band apparently offers quite the experience; two of the seven members are listed as “visual artists”–they paint onstage during concerts. Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is due out next month on Earthology, in association with the Rebel Group. MP3 via Pitchfork.

“Swimming” – Shelley Short

Chicago’s Shelley Short seems singularly able to combine an idiosyncratic approach to acoustic guitar-based songwriting with a warm, welcome, easy-to-listen-to vibe. This ain’t no freak folk, in other words. But Short’s music does have its subtler oddities, including dissonant chords, unexpected sounds, and offbeat arrangements.

Listen, for example, to the minimal accompaniment utilized in the verse—a series of deliberate, three-note patterns, based on the simple ascensions we hear in the introduction but continually blurred by unexpected harmonics. Throughout the song, when she sings the verses, the accompaniment sticks to these three-note patterns, without any other rhythm or flourish–a simple, unostentatious, but actually very strange way to go about things.

When we get to the chorus, the 1-2-3 rhythm of the three-note pattern is reflected now in the acoustic guitar strum, and the melody slows down to one syllable per triplet. And so without (I don’t think) changing the time signature, or the instrumentation in any major way, the chorus sounds like a whole different musical place than the verse did. Again, it’s subtle, but distinctive. And get a load of that burbly guitar sound she uses in the second verse, to add to the song’s watery setting. Very cool, but if you don’t listen carefully you might not notice.

And hey I guess I’ve got an unintentional watery theme going so far, as “Swimming” comes from the CD Water For The Day, due out next month on Hush Records. MP3 via Hush. (For those who might have missed it, check out too Short’s first appearance on Fingertips, back in February 2006.)

“Oh Yeah” – Morning State

End of watery theme, for those keeping score at home. Also, end of quirky theme, as “Oh Yeah” is about as straightforward as its title. Note that this does not mean it is uninteresting or lacking charm. Being unorthodox is not the only way to catch the ear.

This one works, for me, for its tight sense of pace and atmosphere, and for the unaccountably powerful chorus hook, which succeeds in large part via restraint. The verse–with its needly guitar line and steady bashing drum–feels itchy, and creates the sense that it’s leading somewhere large and explosive. We get the setup–that single drumbeat at 0:26–and then…we get the bass player, who come to think of it was missing in action till now. He gives the song a satisfying, Split-Enz-y bottom, but nothing otherwise busts out. Russell Ledford sings in succinct, mournful phrases; no yowling for him. And follow the guitars, if you will. They too remain reined in during the chorus, but begin to burst at the seams as they lead into and then accompany the second verse. No one should be surprised when they get to make some noise a bit later on, but even that retains an air of forbearance–after all, how bad-ass a guitar solo can you inject into a two-minute, forty-second song?

Morning State is a quartet from Georgia, based in Atlanta but also considered local in Athens. “Oh Yeah” is a song from the band’s debut CD, You Know People I Know People. It’s the band’s first CD, but, oddly enough, it’s the second version of the album. To make what is probably a long and painful story short and unemotional, Morning State spent four months on the album previously, and were four songs into the mixing process, when the record label they were signed with went belly up. The producer offered the band a deal but they couldn’t afford it; it was cheaper for them to go to Athens and record the entire album all over again. Which is what they did. The CD will be self-released in May.

“Torn Blue Foam Couch” – Grand Archives

This is one of those sweeping, evocative, thoroughly impressive songs that everyone more or less has to like—until, of course, everyone does like it, at which point there will be those who decide they don’t like it because too many people like it. You know the drill.

Lovely melodies are front and center in “Torn Blue Foam Couch”; they feel like bygone melodies, from another time and place, wafting through the window almost Twilight Zone-ishly—you’re sure you recognize them, but something seems a little off. There are some unusual instrument choices—the harp sound in the intro (might actually be a ukulele) isn’t something you hear every day, and that rubbery drum that kicks in at around 0:48 is not typically heard in a standard drum kit. But something else seems subtly awry as the song develops and after any number of listens I finally figured it out: this baby has a bizarre structure: it’s all verse for the first two-plus minutes, and then all chorus the rest of the way. The switchover happens at about 2:16, and you can really feel the shift in your gut at that point—it’s like you didn’t realize quite how much the tension was building until it finally released.

Lyrically the song escapes me—no matter how many times I listen, a combination of Mat Brooke’s pretty yet often unintelligible voice and some defiantly inscrutable lyrics continue to stymie. “Hey darling don’t you look fine/The dull look in your eyes/You’re terrified”: fascinating, but—huh? Brooke formed the Seattle-based Grand Archives in 2006, after leaving Band of Horses following their first CD for Sub Pop Records. Previously, he was in a band that has seemed retrospectively influential–the purposefully misspelled outfit Carissa’s Wierd, which also featured Jenn Ghetto and Sera Cahoone, and whose odd, neo-folk-rock sound presaged the likes of the Decemberists and Johanna Newsom. “Torn Blue Foam Couch” is from Grand Archives’ sort of self-titled debut CD, The Grand Archives, which was released last month, also on Sub Pop. MP3 via Sub Pop.

“Hush If You Must” – Brooke Waggoner

Brooke Waggoner may be the only singer/songwriter in Nashville who cites Chopin as an influence, never mind both Chopin and ELO. So she is not a typical Nashville musician; she’s from Louisiana but she’s not a typical Louisiana musician either. She seems, indeed, to have her eye on music that extends beyond any one regional palette—or any one genre’s palette, for that matter. “Hush If You Must,” while starting as a breezy piano ditty (the intro recalls “Daydream Believer” to these ears), quickly hangs a fuller-fledged, string-laden sound upon that original, recurring refrain. There are tempo changes and mood shifts throughout, centered on the basic dichotomy of the musically restrained vocal sections, featuring Waggoner’s double-tracked yet cozy voice, and the swifter, louder instrumental sections—which include one unexpected, tempo-shifting break, at 1:38, all honky-tonk and handclaps.

Waggoner has a college degree in music composition and orchestration, and is personally responsible for the string arrangements that play a central role here. But even when a soaring string display grabs your attention, I suggest keeping an ear on the piano. Waggoner has a sure touch at the keyboard–her playing has palpable personality, and not just during the honky-tonk interlude. I feel as if I can see her determined, playful, satisfied face as she nimbly hammers out her sure-fingered lines. Listen in particular to the extended piano solo she takes starting at 2:52—it’s not complicated, but it’s vibrant and personal in a way that more overtly virtuosic playing often isn’t.

Waggoner is 23, and has one EP to her name so far—Fresh Pair of Eyes, which was self-released last year. “Hush If You Must” is the lead track from the EP, and is available as an MP3 via SXSW, where Waggoner performed last week.

“Big Sky” – A Brief Smile

An exquisitely ambivalent song, musically speaking, “Big Sky” rings with unresolved chords, elegant dissonance, ringing harmonics, and finely-tuned noise–all hung on the unassuming frame of a sturdy little pop song. Succinct melodies, verse-bridge-chorus, you can even sing along. This is a marvelous accomplishment.

The chorus is a particular wonder; I can’t recall another song featuring such a blatantly unresolved musical setting in the chorus—normally the place where the song’s tension is released via melodies that come home to solid, grounded chords. None of that goes on here. The melodies lay out against a wash of chords that don’t match; the ends of lines leave us hanging musically until the very end, and even there, rather than a typical resolution we get an unexpected downward leap of six intervals—the aural equivalent of taking a last downward step on a staircase you thought you were already at the bottom of. You arrive surprised, unexpectedly reacquainted with gravity.

A Brief Smile is a five-piece band from NY and I’m just now stumbling upon them, and listening to this song, and liking it, and lookee here, it came out in September, and the band itself has been around long enough that they have “big fans” out there who apparently hang on their every note. Such is the unconquerable breadth and depth of the contemporary rock’n’roll scene. I will never get my arms entirely around it and neither will you or anyone else. The best we can do is work together to fill in one another’s missing pieces. “Big Sky” is a song off the band’s CD Now We All Have Horns, released on Wrecking Ball Music. MP3 via the band’s site.

“The Caribbean” – the Chocolate Horse

I find this very distinctive blend of homeliness and sophistication completely enjoyable. The Chocolate Horse are five guys from Cincinnati who give the impression of playing whatever instruments they feel like playing, in whatever style they happen to start playing. If “The Caribbean” has an island sound to it, we’re talking about a peculiar island—one that maybe grows both palm trees and cacti, on which cowboys on horses saunter down the beach in suede bathing trunks and everyone else is on vacation, but prefers to stay inside reading and listening to the radio, which only broadcast bands from Omaha pretending to be from Cuba.

Or something like that. Over and above the rhythm’s lazy sway and the eccentric interplay of trumpet, upright bass, and (dobro?) guitar, “The Caribbean” succeeds on the strength of Jason Snell’s oddly appealing voice. Half whispering, half growling, Snell sings with a historical sort of command, his voice echoing with the authority of some long-lost ’70s crooner, augmented with a ghostly falsetto and an indie rocker’s penchant for straying (winsomely) off pitch. A French horn and a saw are additional recruits in the Chocolate Horse’s instrument arsenal, although I’m not sure I’m hearing the latter in this song, and I may be imagining the occasional appearance here of the former.

“The Caribbean” is a song from the band’s debut CD, released last year and recorded when they were still officially a trio. Like every other band in the world, and every other music lover (truly, I’m sure no one is left around this week to read this except maybe you), the Chocolate Horse will be in Austin for SXSW. The MP3 is available via the vast SXSW MP3 collection.

“God Told Me To” – Paul Kelly

An old-fashioned folk-rocker with a new tale to tell: here, one of Australia’s most well-known living pop music bards sings, first person, as a terrorist, justifying his actions in our post-9/11 world. The canny, world-weary Kelly knows exactly how much his sociopath’s words sound like something an American president might likewise say (in our post-9/11 world): “The wicked need chastisement, you know it’s either them or us”; “God told me to/I answer not to them or you”; etc.

Kelly is often talked about as the Ray Davies/Bruce Springsteen (imagine them mushed together) of Australia, but he hasn’t been too successfully exported to the U.S. over the years. The closest he got to a certain sort of left-of-center recognition here came with his 1988 album Under the Sun, thanks to the appeal to “modern rock” radio stations of the song “Dumb Things” (in truth, a wonderful song, which still sounds great).
That album was recorded with a band called the Messengers (originally the Coloured Girls, changed for American export).

A classic single’s length (3:42), with an incisive guitar line and a haunting chorus, “God Told Me To” is nonetheless (obviously) as far from single material as could be in this country. So I’m not picturing a belated breakthrough for the estimable Mr. Kelly just yet. The artfully stark video could under the right circumstances get some YouTube love but then again it’s been around since the summer and has been seen only 8,000 times, mostly (I’m guessing) by Australians. But hey, the man’s playing at SXSW (see? everyone!), which is a mighty accomplishment for a 50-something musician. Stolen Apples, the 2007 CD on which you’ll find this song, has not been released in the U.S., but maybe the SXSW appearance is a harbinger of a domestic release? In the meantime, the MP3 is available via SXSW.

“Rooks” – Shearwater

     Shearwater is not only playing at SXSW this week but is based in Austin. The theme is complete. This song, however, is brand new, the semi-title track to an album called Rook, scheduled for release in June. On it, Shearwater continues both its penchant for lovely-ominous music and its avian fixation–the name Shearwater, you might recall, comes from a type of bird that flies close to the surface of the water; recall, too, that band leader Jonathan Meiburg has himself been an ornithological graduate student. While you’re at it, you may as well be reminded that Meiburg is a member both of Shearwater and a little band you may have heard of called Okkervil River. (OR’s front man, Will Sheff, is likewise in both bands, which is kind of cool.)

Meiburg sings with great, almost old-fashioned sweetness and his melodies are so gentle that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that “Rooks” is without question a tense, briskly-moving composition, marked by siren-like instrumental flourishes and cryptic but assuredly dark lyrics. When he lets rip the word “paralyzed” with uncharacteristic pungency (at 1:42; almost the exact halfway point), it’s as if we’ve been all but slapped awake only to fall instantly back into a new dream: the ensuing trumpet solo, underscored by distant, determined (bird-call-y?) “wo-oh-oh-ohs,” places us into a newly formed musical landscape. The dream, teetering on the borderline between interesting and nightmarish, continues.

Rook will mark Shearwater’s debut on Matador Records; its last few CDs were released by Misra Records. MP3 via Matador.

“Power to Change” – the Black & White Years

Perhaps there has always been a fine line in music between the idiosyncratic and the gimmicky, but I’m guessing never more so than here in the 21st century–an age in which worldwide musical genres are a mouse-click away, and a multi-million-dollar recording studio is no longer required to manipulate sound. And so, these days, bands can rather too easily seem the contrived result of combining, oh, say, South African music with an Upper West Side sensibility. For instance. Idiosyncrasy or gimmick?

The only way to tell, as far as I can see, is to do exactly what the music critics (and bloggers) almost never do: just listen, and stop thinking (and talking) so much. Take “Power to Change,” which bops and rolls to a ska-inflected, electronic-infected beat, guided by a split-personality vocalist who mashes glam-rock theatrics with jamband-style acrobatics. Whether this sounds in words like something I would enjoy is irrelevant; whether the music itself violates some or another “rule” about this genre or that one, also irrelevant. Relevant alone is the incisive, assured movement of the song, its engagingly crunchy vibe, its wistful good humor, and oh so cagey production.

For probably most of that we have producer Jerry Harrison to thank. Stripped-down-simple only does so much for me, usually; I definitely do not mind detecting the presence of an honest-to-goodness producer. Among many spiffy touches, I love the echoey electronics with which he layers Scott Butler’s vocals (particularly beginning at 1:44), and am tickled by the instrumental breaks Harrison (I assume) inserted into the song–check out the offbeat keyboard-like guitar (or guitar-like keyboard?) at 1:37, and the squonky guitar solo at 3:14. Harrison–a former Talking Head and Modern Lover–heard the Black & White Years at last year’s SXSW festival (the band is itself from Austin, in fact) and shortly thereafter whisked them off to produce their album in his Bay Area studio. That self-titled CD has just been released on Brando Records, a tiny Texas label. That’s where you’ll find “Power to Change,” while the MP3 is via SXSW; the band, not surprisingly, is returning to the festival this month. No longer in need of a producer.

“Drops in the River” – Fleet Foxes

“Drops in the River” is characterized by an aural depth of space not often heard in a rock’n’roll setting. Listen quickly and you might say, “Okay, sure, reverb, and a tenor–it’s Band of Horses, it’s My Morning Jacket.” But do yourself and the music a favor and attend more carefully. If so, you might hear how the Seattle-based quintet Fleet Foxes transforms reverb from a production strategy to a three-dimensional experience–via vocal harmony, percussion, and eccentric instrumentation, the band creates a vast, stone-vaulted sort of space in which one might picture monks, choirs, and thick white dripping candles.

Then again, on the band’s own MySpace page, they conclude, after attempting to describe their sound, “Not much of a rock band.”

The unusual accompaniment arrives right away: check out those Eastern-sounding stringed things we hear before anything else; they also arise intermittently throughout, as if from some ancient cranny. When the singing starts, it comes in multiple layers of vocal harmony–an unusual touch at the beginning of a pop song. From its soft and deliberate start, “Drops in the River” eventually offers up an impressive dynamic range, taking us on adventures in tempo and volume and instrumental involvement during its engaging four-plus minutes, sometimes turning on a dime in interesting and effective ways–for instance, the downshift from that clanging guitar that starts at around 2:00 into the subdued percussive section that begins at 2:18. And listen, in fact, to that clangy guitar and how it sounds like something one might in fact play in a large, dark, maybe a little damp cathedral. Along with some Eastern-sounding stringed things no doubt. “Drops in the River” is a song from the band’s Sun Giant EP, due out on Sub Pop in April. MP3 courtesy of Paper Thin Walls.

“One, Two, Three!” – I Make This Sound

Happy music from a band with a happy-sounding name. But it’s interesting-happy, not sappy-happy. Listen, first of all, to how the band takes the song’s basic three-beat measure and distorts it, via a jumpy piano refrain, hopping between the beats, to sound as if it must be some altogether new and different time signature. But, no, you can use the song’s title to count the beats: one, two, three, one, two, three. Lead singer Jonathan Price has a warm, pleasing (dare I say happy?) voice, and the way the female backing vocalists offer staccato punctuation between verses is another cheerful touch.

But there’s a “dark” section too, and how many peppy pop songs bother to do that? See how the time signature shifts to 4/4 at around 1:30 and then into, maybe, actually, some new and different time signature after all, because I can’t parse the section from 1:40 to 1:56 in any standard way. Then there’s a nicely resolving 4/4 section at 1:57 before we return, at 2:11, to the cheerful rhythm of the opening verse, complete with those perky background singers singing a countervailing melody.

I Make This Sound is from Los Angeles and there are seven people in the band, so my goodness, they’d better be pretty happy or they would probably be really miserable. There’s a lot of potential for drama there. “One, Two, Three!” is a song from their second EP, entitled Staring at Yourself, which was released in February. MP3 via the band’s site.

“Childproof” – Batteries

Slinky, dark, and peculiarly catchy, “Childproof” sparks such conflicting retro vibes in my music memory that I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was reminding me of—usually a sign that the influences are being integrated into something fresh and tasty. So I hung in there, kept listening, and sure enough some seductively—and chronologically—divergent sonic elements revealed themselves to my dissecting ear: there’s a ’60s garage rock feel to the guitar sound, yet also something spiky and Television-like (late ’70s); there’s a Doors-like organ (’60s again) and a Morphine-like saxophone (hmm: ’90s); and then there’s a lead singer (one Dave Frankenfeld) with a shivery, nasally, talky croon that sounds something like Stephen Malkmus (still current) trying to sing lead for a mid-’70s Steely Dan album. While somewhat recognizable when teased apart this way, the cool thing is how briskly and matter-of-factly “Childproof” weaves them together.

And what about that recurring “hide your eyes”/”hide and hide” part? That has a mysterious appeal to me in a this-is-really-familiar-but-not-quite sort of way that sometimes happens with new songs that stick in my head. When I first heard this song, in fact, I actually had to check to see if it was a cover version of an older song, such déjà vu was I experiencing. For all I know, this part in particular does come straight out of some older song but for the life of me I can’t place it. (Feel free to let me know if you know what I thought I was thinking of.)

A five-piece whose members come from the north country of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Batteries put out a debut CD late last year entitled That Great Grandsuck of the Sea—and no, I don’t know what that means, either. “Childproof” is third song on the album, which was self-released.

“Beyond the Door” – 13ghosts

Phased, psychedelic vocals mixed with crisp, George Harrison-y rhythm guitar give this one an immediate trippiness that might seem mere affect were it not for the terrific melody lurking at the heart of the chorus. For all its sonic largeness, “Beyond the Door” all but shimmers with focus and restraint. I like, for instance, how the chorus, when we first hear it, is delivered (0:29) as the instrumental accompaniment pulls back, everything seemingly run through the same distortion the vocals are undergoing. So we don’t actually receive the full effect of that great melody the first time it arrives–we hear it, but we don’t really hear it. This is a most excellent songwriting trick but it only works with an excellent song. (“Beyond the Door” qualifies without reservation.) And so, you see, when the chorus returns (1:12), its full power hits us all the harder. Note that the band still throws us a bit of a curveball—listen to that guitar line that drones through the first half of the melody in the chorus and feel the extra depth that dissonance can bring to music, at least when we’re in the hands of talented musicians. (Otherwise, alas, it may simply be noise.)

13ghosts, from Birmingham, Alabama, is one of those fortunate bands that contain two strong singer/songwriters–in this case, Brad Armstrong (who sang the last time Fingertips featured the band) and Buzz Russell. Russell is out front this time around, and his interest in swirly, spacey aural space is paired, happily, with unusually sharp pop chops. Normally, folks who want to take us on a space ride forget to give us something to sing along with. Russell, however, has melody, nice chord changes, and smiley-harmonies pouring right out of him here, all in the service of a song about death, and the possibility of life thereafter. The gracefully modulating “oohs” that you hear after the chorus, by the way, were, according to Russell, “supposed to create the effect of taking a Xanax or something to ease the anxiety”–the anxiety of facing the possibility of an afterlife, he says.

“Beyond the Door” is a song from the band’s forthcoming CD, The Strangest Colored Lights, to be released next month on Birmingham-based Skybucket Records.

“Regarde” – Monade

Bordeaux-based multi-instrumentalist Lætitia Sadier, one half of the band Stereolab, has had her own side project going now for the better part of the last decade (Stereolab, a “post-rock” pioneer, has been around since 1990). She calls it Monade in part for a concept taken from 20th-century Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, referring to the undifferentiated psyche (before the id, ego, and superego break apart), and also for how it is rooted in the word “mono,” which in turn is related to the word “stereo,” and thus neatly implies her working on her own, apart from her more well-known band. And right away, if nothing else, I appreciate the depth of a European education.

As for the music, the suave yet playful “Regarde” launches off an alternating minor/major chord motif, and unfolds as a kind of cool, Euro-march for the lounge crowd, driven by Sadier’s husky, Chrissie Hynde-meets-Brigitte Bardot voice (and yes, sports fans, Chrissie Hynde did in fact mention Brigitte Bardot in a song once; small world!). Plus, there’s a trombone, which is apparently one of Sadier’s main instruments. Halfway through, the song abruptly slows to a slumberous waltz (1:50), begins to pick up speed and orchestral drama (2:40), then melts precipitately back into the original tempo and rhythm (3:01) in a manner at once awkward and—I have no idea why—exceedingly charming. Don’t miss it.

“Regarde” is from Monade’s third album, Monstre Cosmic, which was released last week on Too Pure Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

“Parallel Lives” – La Scala

We can all use a big heaping dollop of melodrama with our pop every now and then, and La Scala is happy to deliver. (Even the name of this Chicago band implies something larger than life and over the top.) Up above the introduction’s searing, machine-gun guitar line and the ’80s dance beat, listen to that second guitar plucking out a homely, vaguely East European motif. Or maybe it’s not a guitar, as it sounds like a bouzouki or some such old country instrument; in any case, this is the best kind of musical melodrama—the kind that has you smiling for potentially unknown reasons.

Like for instance the verse. Listen, in the second half, to how singer Balthazar de Ley and one of the guitars “harmonize” in a crazy sort of way–the guitar plays a line completely in sync with the melody rhythmically, but squonking all over the place harmonically. It’s kind of wacky but also subtle–you might not notice, but, again, it creates an enjoyable mood. And then there’s that resplendent, two-part chorus, at which point this song truly sounds like some great early ’80s post-new wave hit, an impression furthered by de Ley’s familiar-sounding voice, which has the throaty warmth of one of those dreamy New Romantic-era singers.

De Ley by the way grew up both in Paris and in Champaign, Illinois, which may at least partially account for the intriguing, old-world sensibility laced into the band’s sound. La Scala was just formed last year. “Parallel Lives” is from their first EP, The Harlequin, to be released next week by the Chicago-based Highwheel Records.

<"My Father" – Raise High the Roof Beam

And now we get the antidote to sweeping, driving melodrama: the vulnerable, acoustic-based “My Father,” from singer/songwriter Thomas Fricilone, also Chicago-based, doing Salinger-inspired musical business as Raise High the Roof Beam. I find myself engaged right away by the broken descent of the opening riff—we begin with a standard downward progression but what’s less standard is how it stops and hangs out at the third note, two notes short of the resolution. We suspend there for the same length of time it took to get us there, and then the resolution is turned upside down: after hearing 5-4-3, and hanging out on 3, we then get 1-2 rather than 2-1. It’s all very simple and clear but interesting, and implies overturned expectations or unexpected conclusions, themes that bear out lyrically as the song unfolds.

Fricilone has a quavery voice that does not always stay on pitch, but in the particular musical setting he gives himself here the end result is gracious and affecting. For all that it may sound at first like a simple acoustic-guitar strummer, there’s actually a nimble array of instruments weaving together, including piano, ukelele, eletric guitar, maybe a melodica, and perhaps a synthesizer. Fricilone also double-tracks his vocals here, which I think gives them extra potency, and maybe compensates for the pitch variation, while maintaining the underlying fragility that serve the lyrics especially well: “My father told me I’d be late for life/That’s okay ’cause I think that waiting’s all right/I avoid the news for things that I might fear/My father tells me all the things that I don’t want to hear.”

“My Father” is a song that will appear on Raise High the Roof Beam’s Family EP, a work that is still in progress. MP3 courtesy of Fricilone’s web site.

“Pull Me Out Alive” – Kaki King

Dipping for the first time into the new SXSW MP3s, I’ve pulled out a plum, and an unexpected plum at that. Kaki King is a musician known initially for her ear-opening acoustic guitar virtuosity, which she has had a tendency to put on display in songs that are maybe a little complicated. Even as she has expanded her sonic palette over the past couple of years, and started singing on her songs, she has not previously focused her music quite so pointedly. But for her soon-to-be-released Dreaming of Revenge CD, King had producer Malcolm Burn at the board. Burn has worked with everyone from Bob Dylan and Patti Smith to Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers; he apparently told King, “If someone can’t be sawing a log in half and whistling along to the song, I don’t want it on the record.” Thus has King’s music taken a turn towards the accessible, shall we say.

And it doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me. Accessible doesn’t mean uninteresting, or bland. “Pull Me Out Alive” alternates itchy, idiosyncratically propulsive verses–check out the way her vocals are layered (starting around 0:29) to sound like a slightly out-of-sync conversation–with a drony, dreamy chorus that finishes on a wonderfully unresolved chord. I find the instrumental break at 2:10 particularly interesting; employing an intriguing blend of electric and electronic sounds, it nevertheless strikes me at its core as something she might previously have used at the center of one of her acrobatic and percussive guitar displays. While those who latched onto King for her instrumental mastery may be disoriented by a song like this, I kind of like it. And I assume she still does play the guitar now and then. I guess we’ll find out when the CD comes out next month. That’ll be on Velour Recordings. MP3, as noted, via SXSW, and this one may in fact be exclusive.