Author: jeremyfingertips

“Benton Harbor Blues” – the Fiery Furnaces

A brother-sister band known for idiosyncratic experimentation here delivers a delightful piece of almost classic-sounding pop (copping the keyboard and/or bass riff from the Four Tops strikes me as a neat touch). The fact that the Furnaces have revealed the capacity to spin out something this traditionally appealing (even if it is a remix) changes everything, to me. It’s just like knowing Picasso could draw beautifully when he wanted to; that he could and chose not to makes all the difference. In any case, everything else I’ve heard from the Fiery Furnaces (which I may go back and listen to again) has struck me as almost perversely odd (music critics like to call this “challenging”). But here they are, chugging to a keyboard-filled Motowny groove sounding both at home and still (if you listen closely) satisfyingly edgy. The drums have a pasted-on electronic itch to them that tells you this is more than a nostalgia trip, and singer Eleanor Friedberger’s delicious, drip-dry delivery has no reason to sound so good in this context but boy does it. Don’t miss the mini keyboard concert that arrives at around 1:56, which features both ghostly flourishes and an organ-like series of ascensions and descensions. “Benton Harbor Blues” is, from what I’ve read, pretty much of an anomaly on their latest CD, Bitter Tea, which was released in April on Fat Possum Records; the rest of the disc is apparently still odd, including the original version of this same song. The MP3 is available via Fat Possum Better Propaganda.

“Anti-Anti” – Snowden

Hard-driving and precise, “Anti-Anti” displays some characteristics of what is too typically (and unfortunately) called “post-punk” (its own sort of “town that makes no sense”), but I like the sonic elements this Atlanta-based quartet brings to the sound, including maybe most of all that beat-breaking synth-like guitar line (or is it a guitar-like synthesizer?) heard first at the end of the intro, and later on as well. Okay, perhaps it seems like a small and potentially random touch, but as it resurfaces it becomes its own sort of left-field hook in the context of the fuzzy, slashing, quasi-funk on display. Singer Jordan Jeffares sounds at once breathless and blase–an unusual, even uneasy combination–and the lyrical snippets that smack you as they go by only add to the vague tension. “Anti-Anti” is the title track to the band’s debut CD, scheduled for release in August on Jade Tree Records. The MP3 comes via the Jade Tree site.

“Death of the Party” – the Keene Brothers

Sounding like Michael Stipe’s long-lost brother, Robert Pollard has out-R.E.M.’ed R.E.M. with this lovely but typically inscrutable song. Just go ahead and try to listen to and make sense of the lyrics, if you can even understand them. But no matter at all: when the smoothly jangly verse opens into the chorus, it’s like being bathed by sunlight after a cool rain. Pollard, for the uninitiated, spent years as the prolific mastermind behind the Ohio-based proto-indie band, Guided By Voices. I couldn’t make heads or tails of those guys most of the time; I was pretty sure that among the 30 or so tracks on each of their 900 albums were buried treasures I’d never have the fortitude to discover. Since GBV disbanded in 2004, Pollard has merely gotten more spread out, but no less prolific, and no more understandable. “Death of the Party” is a song from the album he recorded with the relentlessly unknown but highly regarded Tommy Keene under the name of the Keene Brothers, entitled Blues and Boogie Shoes; this is however merely one of three collaborative CDs Pollard is simultaneously releasing this month as part of something he calls the “Fading Captain” series. He’s lost me logistically, but musically, for this one, I’m right on board–it’s a beauty. The MP3 is hosted via the old Guided By Voices web site, which still operates. Inscrutably.

In honor of Memorial Day here in the U.S., and honoring too a personal need to take some space and regroup a bit, there will be no weekly update next week (the week of May 28-June 3). The site will be up and running as of May 29 but I will use the week to tend to many things that need tending, taking the week off from the three-song update. The next “This Week’s Finds” update will appear on Sunday, June 4. Be sure to keep visiting for other updates and news!

“Lovers Who Uncover” – the Little Ones

The introduction is all I need with this one: the ascending, slightly distorted ringing guitar doing that fast alternating one-two rhythm thing–well, just forget the description, I’ve already mutilated the pop beauty of it all. And, sure, it’s simple stuff at its core, three adjacent notes, just me-fa-sol in disguise, but they ring out an eternal truth, and if you’re a high-quality pop junkie you know transcendence when you hear it. So okay yeah then there’s more to the song than the introduction of course, and the next thing I love to death are the vocals. I don’t really know who’s doing what, the Little Ones being an L.A. band that doesn’t relinquish a lot of personal information, but whoever is singing has that keening high-register voice that sounds full of substance, like a lower voice, rather than airy and irresolute, like many falsettos do. And what, class, is the most unusual thing going on in this shiny happy little number? There’s no chorus to speak of. Go figure: power pop with a killer verse, not a killer chorus. Who’d have thought? “Lovers Who Uncover” is a song from the band’s self-released debut EP; the MP3 is available via the band’s site. Thanks to Bruce at Some Velvet Blog for the lead.

“With My Eyes” – Our Lady of Bells

Another great intro, this one beginning with an acoustic guitar picking out alternately major and minor chords in three-quarter time, soon to be joined by what sounds like both an electric guitar and a bass, each plucking incomplete phrases in musical proximity, setting a subtly tense stage for a really nice lead guitar line, chiming out its syncopated theme with bittersweet majesty. Guitarist and songwriter Jules Gimbrone sings with an air of regret and entirely without pretense, letting the strength of the timeless, sea-charged melody pull us along, rough spots in her singing voice be damned. Her singing is but a part of an air of unpolishedness that hard-nosed lo-fi folks may actually see as a positive; I tend not to in general, but the material is compelling enough to keep me with it–the song acquires a weary and quite beautiful momentum as it rolls along. I suspect the group has much to offer moving forward. Based in Northampton, Massachusetts, Our Lady of Bells began in 2004 as a duo and has added three members along the way. “With My Eyes” can be found on the band’s first full-length CD, Forgetting the Way Home, released earlier this month. The MP3 is via the band’s site.

“Mountain” – 1888

So it’s cool introduction week, it seems. Check this one out: all beats and twitches, but as I listen it manages to sound, somehow, like electronica done by hand, with organic instruments. (It may not be, but the itchy, clicky vibe has a particularly hand-hewn quality.) We are thereby led into a song that presents, to my ears, one of the most intriguing uses I’ve heard of electronica-style beats and/or samples in a song that really doesn’t sound like electronica at all. On top of a precise blend of well-placed tweets and twiddles and buzzings is crafted something else entirely, although I’m not exactly sure what this something else is. The ultimate impression is the kind of sonic deconstruction that brings Wilco to mind, even though this doesn’t really sound much like Wilco either. Check out that lugubrious organ coloring the deep end; and as for singer/songwriter Brad Rosenberg, there’s nothing remotely techno about him–he sounds like a guy from a rock band who doesn’t understand something that happened to him (like many guys in rock bands). Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia, 1888 was almost a collective rather than a band in its early days (late ’90s), with a rotating series of players coming and going as required, as the spirit moved, to record in the studio. Solidifying as a quartet to hit the road as a live act, the band now plans to release its first full-length CD later this year; “Mountain” is originally from an EP released in 2003 called Panda. The MP3 is up on the band’s site.

“The Gate” – Sam Roberts Band

There’s something expansively old-fashioned about the Sam Roberts Band—five scruffy Canadian guys with long hair and any number of beards, they seem to be doing rock’n’roll like it used to be done (this is not a jam band, thank you very much), without sounding quite exactly like any classic rock outfit you can put your finger on. “The Gate” opens slowly, building from an organ sustain, a psychedelic bass line, and a glistening guitar that approaches steadily with spidery noodlings. Around 1:10 it bangs into place, driving forward with a late-’60s/early’-70s vibe; Roberts himself has something of David Gilmour’s haunting vocal depth, lending a Floyd-like oomph to the semi-Steve Miller-y proceedings (listen especially to the vocals in the quiet bridge section that starts at around 3:12). “The Gate” is the lead track from the band’s new CD, Chemical City, being released in the U.S. this week under the Secret Brain/Fontana imprint, which I can’t figure out at all. The MP3 is available via Filter Magazine.

“Malherido” – Juana Molina

The wondrously subtle, subtly magical Molina was one of the very first artists featured on Fingertips back in 2003; arrival of new music from this acclaimed Argentinian is big news here. I think you have to slow down a bit to sink into her soundscapes; throw too many things in the multi-task pile while you’re listening and the song—all rubbery synths, skittery boops, whispery vocals, and stray animal noises—might not register at all. The breathy but sturdy character in her voice is one hand-hold into her world: she sounds rather scarily like two of my top five all-time female singers put together (that’d be Jane Siberry and Kirsty MacColl), and there’s a whole lot in the musical if not vocal vibe that reminds me of another (Björk). “Malherido” is a song from Molina’s upcoming CD, her third; it’s called Son (in Spanish: “They Are”) and will be released in early June on Domino Records. The MP3 comes via the Domino web site.

“Too Much Space To Walk Away” – Avocadoclub

As smooth, catchy, and vaguely disaffected as an old Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark single. This has all the earmarks of a great floaty synth-pop hit but the really cool thing is they’re not really using a heck of a lot of synthesizers; the acoustic guitars are actually more prominent. Most of the effect, I think, is coming from the layered majesty of Bendrik Muhs’ vocals, and the use of a New Order-style lower-register lead guitar line. Muhs has the ability to sound both pretty and weary, like Ben Gibbard doing a Lou Reed impression; his aching delivery of the sweeping chorus is big-time pop heaven. Avocadoclub is an English-language band from Berlin; there appear to be two guys at the heart of it, but they’ve fleshed out into a five-piece band for the debut CD. “Too Much Space to Walk Away” was the title track on the band’s second EP, released in 2002; it has shown up as well on the debut full-length, entitled Everybody’s Wrong, which was released in March on Firestation Records. Thanks much, yet again, to Getecho for the lead.

“Thursday” – Asobi Seksu

Gorgeous gorgeous high-volume rock’n’roll—play it loud and feel your heart burst with pleasure and wonder. Yeah it’s pretty much that good (and be sure to go back after you’re done and re-listen to the quiet beginning; it’s there for a reason). While this talented NYC quartet owes some of its sonic foundation to Blondie’s indelible, pioneering sound, Asobi Seksu seem at the same time to have found something deep and moving within a place Debby Harry and company sought, mostly, irony and distance (not that there was anything wrong with that!). Lead vocalist Yuki sings with warmth and a sneaky range, moving seamlessly into a yearning, substantive falsetto for that great major-to-minor melody shift in the chorus. Her able bandmates both mirror and amplify her dynamic range—together, they’re not just loud, not just soft, not just pretty, not just noisy, but instead create a thoroughly engaging and skillful blend of different sounds, textures, and ideas. And while we may all yet get tired of the reverb-laced sound characterizing a lot of the best rock’n’roll of our new century, right now it keeps seeming to work, in this case contributing to a wash of heavenly sound out of which unfolds a gem that feels at once very familiar and, in its own way, pioneering. “Thursday” is a track from the band’s long-awaited (by me, at least!) second CD, Citrus, scheduled for release at the end of the month on Friendly Fire Recordings. The MP3 is available via Insound.

“So I” – Tobias Fröberg

While “Simon & Garfunkel meets Ron Sexsmith” might be a fast and reasonably valid way of summing up this song, I hesitate to offer it because I have heard a few too many bands or singer/songwriters over the past few years who have prompted comparisons to Simon & Garfunkel, typically based on the presence of delicate acoustic guitar picking and whispery harmonies. Too often however these musicians lack a crucial part of the S&G sound, which is (easier said than done, I know!) having memorable songs. To compare anyone to Simon & Garfunkel (or Ron Sexsmith, for that matter) who is singing a well-intentioned but (let’s be honest) boring song renders the comparison pretty much pointless. No worries here, however, as Fröberg manages first of all to be singing a memorable song–courtesy of its simple but appealing double-descending melody and a gratifying amount of subtle movement. I like too that Fröberg and collaborator Linus Larsson add some cool stuff of their own, like the forthright electric guitar used throughout as a sort of color commentator to the underlying drive of the acoustic picking. “So I” is a song from Fröberg’s CD For Elisabeth Wherever She Is (note S&G-related title!), released on Silence Records in Sweden late in 2004, and a winner of a national award for best singer/songwriter album in 2005. A new CD entitled Somewhere in the City will be released shortly in Scandanavia; apparently he has just been signed to Cheap Lullaby Records in the U.S., so we’ll see if that increases his profile here a bit as the year unfolds. Thanks to Hedvika at the recently renamed Getecho blog for the lead.

“Adventure” – Be Your Own Pet

Channeling Bow Wow Wow with great, vibrant, new-century spirit comes a group of teenagers from Nashville with the kind of glorious, in-the-moment song that proves absolutely nothing about their long-term talent or viability, nor should it. (Bow Wow Wow’s Annabella Lwin was herself 14 when that band broke; she’s 40 now, which is weird, but I digress.) Singer Jemina (yeah, -na) Pearl sings with the same sort of un-self-conscious abandon as Lwin back in the day, and apparently this song is reasonably tame for her. Not sure I’ll care much for the wilder, unrepressed punk-ish side of what these guys do, but in this case (am I repeating myself yet?) I’m hearing a really strong song underneath the okay-I-can-scream-and-curse bravado—an unexpectedly full and satisfying less-than-two-and-a-half-minute tornado of rhythmic hooks and gleefully slashing guitars. Beware, by the way, the dark energy of the hype/backlash cycle when it comes to Be Your Own Pet, which seems already to have swirled around and back if you spend too much time in the blogosphere (hint: don’t spend too much time in the blogosphere!); some part of their story has something to do with parents in the music industry, but me I just try as usual to listen with my ears, and my ears say: “Hey! Kinda cool!” Or they would if they had a mouth. “Adventure” is a song from the band’s self-titled debut CD, which was released in the U.K. in March on XL Recordings and is due out early next month in the U.S. on Universal (note the big record company, which certainly has something to do with the fury of the aforementioned hype/backlash cycle).

“Stay” – Marykate O’Neil

There have been at least four excellent songs with the same one-word title in modern pop history (I’m partial to Bowie’s, and the Blue Nile’s); it takes a bit of nervy self-assurance to offer up yet another, but as I listen to O’Neil’s voice, its rich tone equal parts passion and nonchalance, I’m thinking that here’s a singer/songwriter not lacking in nervy self-assurance. (I mean that as a compliment, by the way.) And why not another “Stay”?—the word, come to think of it, is one of the English language’s more emotionally resonant verbs, a four-letter subtext festival laden with implied connection, desire, and conflict. In any case, O’Neil’s “Stay” has the crisp, instantly likable propulsiveness of a classic pop hit, its sparkly, syncopated rhythm ably accented by a jangly guitar and, later on, an almost demonic violin. There’s something in the slightly nasally roundness of her voice that brings Aimee Mann to mind, which isn’t a bad thing; an even better thing is that the song has more open-hearted spirit than a lot of Mann’s able but same-sounding output has managed in recent years. “Stay” can be found on O’Neil’s new CD, 1-800-Bankruptcy, which will be released electronically tomorrow on Nettwerk Records, and physically on O’Neil’s own 71 Recordings imprint. The MP3 is available via O’Neil’s web site.

“Book of Matches” – A Passing Feeling

As the original punk era ricocheted into the original new wave era, this was the sort of song that was in the air: a short, triumphant bit of sweat and booze and bluster. My heart will ever have a big sloppy soft spot for songs with two separate hooks; that this NYC-based foursome delivers two great hooks in a song not even two and a half minutes long is all but insane. The first hook, 18 seconds in, starting with the words “So in taking you back to the scene of the crime,” has something of the unbridled melodicism of early Elvis Costello, fully utilizing all seven notes of the scale in a delightful four-measure outburst. (Think in contrast to how many pop hits of recent decades employ often as few as three or four discrete notes in their hooks, if you can call them hooks.) On the heels of hook number one, singer Brian Miltenberg spits out the second hook in the glorious chorus, which is, rather delightfully, a throwback melody straight from the ’50s, but sped up and thrashed through, as if the Ramones had attacked doo-wop instead of the Brill Building with their black-leather buzzsaw. For all of this song’s brevity there’s something monumental brewing in its sonic onslaught; I sure hope someone somewhere is blaring this out a dorm window on a blue, flowery day this spring. “Book of Matches” is one of five songs on A Passing Feeling’s self-titled debut EP, released back in December on 75 or Less Records. The MP3 is courtesy of the band’s site.

“Let’s Get Out of This Country” – Camera Obscura

While new bands are always a kick to discover, there’s something to be said for not-new-anymore bands as well. The Scottish sextet Camera Obscura has been around since 1996, and there’s nothing like a history together to give a band’s sound genuine weight and substance. “Let’s Get Out of This Country” wraps its arms around me with a winning combination of spaciousness and intimacy—the sound is ever so large, with those bashing drumbeats and sweeping waves of strings, all bathed in glossy reverb, and yet listen to how each melodic line ends with that introspective descending third, and listen too to the soft pretty ache in Tracyanne Campbell’s lilting voice. She sounds like someone spinning gently in her room, humming to herself. Often the swelling strings compete with her words—you know she’s there but aren’t quite privy to what she’s saying. Then, at a point when we might expect a bridge (from about 1:35 to 1:50), the music pulls back and we hear Campbell singing more or less alone against the drumbeat; the effect is particularly magical and melancholy. “Let’s Get Out of This Country” is the title track of the band’s forthcoming CD, due out in June on Merge Records.

“To No One” – Daylight’s for the Birds

Lush, swirly, airy noise in service to melody—call it shoegaze if we must (must we??), but I’d much rather dig into the sound than attach that odd (if apparently indelible) label to a sonic reality this deep and rich. The aural palette favored by this NYC-based quartet lends an immediate tension to the amorphous introduction, as two predominant sounds emerge, vibrate, and grow through the first drum-free, beat-free 45 seconds—one sounding like a synth-enhanced guitar, metallic and pulsing, the other a choral wash of keyboard. Listen carefully for two things arising from that: a submerged melody line by something that sounds like a faraway organ, and a flute-like synthesizer sound that flutters into being from the noise and eventually takes up the melody begun by the “organ.” I really like this flute-y thing, which seems so unexpected and yet weaves so organically into the ongoing texture (the storied “no lead guitar” sound characteristic of whatever we want to call this genre). The way the drummer drums skippingly around the beat through the verse is another indelible part of the airy soundscape, along with singer Amanda Garrett’s surprisingly strong voice: in lieu of the wispier vocal stylings often heard in this environment, Garrett sings with pop-like heft and character, even when she’s mixed back into the whorl of it all. Daylight’s for the Birds is a NYC-based quartet that features, among others, Phillip Wann, formerly of On!Air!Library! (which disbanded last year). The MP3 is available via the Deli, a fine online publication about the NYC rock scene.

“Firecracker” – the Hot IQs

Without frills or warmup, a stark, meaty guitar lashes out one of music’s most compelling progressions: a major chord alternating with the minor chord one-half step down. Laurie Anderson famously wrote a long, strange, avant-garde pop song (“O Superman”) that featured only this progression and nothing else; the contemporary composer John Adams has displayed his own recurring fascination with this simple, resonant interval. Pretensions to great art aside, these two simple chords sound just fine, thank you, when churned out by an actual rock band; the fact that the Denver-based Hot IQs are even a power trio (guitar, bass, drums) seems even more fitting. Let the minimalists seek meaning in inexorable repetition; me I’m happy that the song discovers a few other chords (I particularly like the Nirvana-ish progressions in the bridge, beginning around 1:35) and some incisive melodies as well. Singer/guitarist Eli Mishkin has a pleasing semi-nasal voice that rounds out nicely in its lower register, while drummer Elaine Acosta, refreshingly uninterested in pounding us into submission, has a marvelous way of letting the slashing guitar inhabit the bottom of the sound. As for bass player Bryan Feuchtinger, well, I don’t have much to say, but I didn’t want to leave him out. “Firecracker” comes from the Hot IQs’ debut CD, An Argument Between the Brain and Feet, which was released on a small Denver label late in 2004, and given a national digital re-release last week on SpinArt Records. MP3 via Better Propaganda.

“Springtime Can Kill You” – Jolie Holland

Rather than killing you I believe that spring is the perfect time of year for, among other things, a song this ripe and unhinged. Sounding like a lounge-based, accent-free Björk, Holland skates, slides, and flutters through the tune, all but deconstructing its wonderful melody—and making it all the Tom Waits-ishly more wonderful in the process. Holland by the way is actually making the opposite point her title implies, itself a neat songwriting trick: “If you don’t go get what you need/Something’s going to break on the inside”; springtime kills the part of you that needs to be killed, in other words; in other words, the blossoms and colors and scents and breezes force you to be as alive as you actually are all the time without realizing it, or at least try. The song, the title track on her new CD (released last week on Anti Records) features an upright bass, baritone horn, and Holland’s fun-house whistle, and it’s all crazy perfect. The MP3 is available via Better Propaganda. “So get out get out of your house,” she purrs. So saying, I will.

“What Do I Know” – Peter Walker

Sharp and assured, this song is enlivened by the juxtaposition of a tight beat and a relaxed melody. Despite a stark and itchy guitar-and-drum backdrop straight out of, I don’t know, an early Joe Jackson record maybe, Walker sings with a cool, deft calm that really centers this short song—he seems in fact to be singing perpetually off the beat; combined with how the lyrics tend to clump into three-syllable groups, Walker creates a sense of unexpected space in a rigorously marked 4/4 environment (each beat itself often slashed out by double-time rhythm guitar eighth notes). And in a song that’s not much more than two and a half minutes, I wouldn’t expect a kick-out-the-jams guitar solo, but I’m impressed by the sonorous and genuinely interesting 25-second turn Walker takes on his instrument, from which he gets a neat bagpipe-y sort of droniness. “What Do I Know” is the last song on Young Gravity, Walker’s second CD, which was released last week on Dangerbird Records. The MP3 is via Walker’s web site.

“Preludio” – Hacia Dos Veranos

Every now and then my non-instrumental-oriented ears glom onto an instrumental that they decide they like, at which point my brain has to kind of catch up and figure out why. Usually to no avail. All I can say here is that I find the combination of the mellow, vaguely Latin-sounding electric guitar and haunted-mansion organ unaccountably fetching. Every time the organ takes center stage—the riff first heard around 0:59—and then begins to sound maybe more like a haunted merry-go-round, I feel like smiling. When music makes me smile, I know I’m liking it, but usually, again, in a way my brain isn’t necessarily contributing to. And then, okay, just when I think I’m sinking into this brisk, semi-wacky vibe, along comes an organ sustain, at around 2:43, telling me something’s up, something new. When the organ finally releases its chord, almost a full minute later, what do we get? Crazy-loud-strident guitars, that’s what. Cool! Hacia Dos Veranos (“Towards Two Summers”) is a trio from Argentina; their debut EP, called Fragmentos de una tarde somnolienta (Fragments of a sleepy afternoon, perhaps?), was released was released in South America in 2005 on Muy Moderna Records and then in the U.K. in January 2006 on I Wish I Was Unpopular, an archly-named division of Unpopular Records. The MP3 is available courtesy of the band.

“Day OK” – Spiral Beach

Slinky spunky and skewed, “Day OK” sounds like no sort of music we might, pop-culturally, expect from four teenagers, even if they are from the musically advanced nation of Canada; but then again, I think teenagers in the 21st century have a whole other thing going on than either a) teenagers did in previous notable generations (i.e. baby boomer teens) or b) the current cultural stereotype (i.e. multi-tasking, iPod-addled techno-zombies) would have you believe. I love the ghostly, accordion-like keyboard riff that sets the jaunty tone, I love the gleeful syncopation, and I love the effortlessly quirky hook in the chorus, the repeated words bouncing what sounds like a minor third back and forth in a major setting, somehow. Singer Maddy Wilde has more depth of character in her voice than one often hears in singers quite literally twice her age (she’s got a great name, too). Whether this is a lucky early-career home run or indication of eventual superstardom–well, to quote Peter Walker from above, what do I know. The song is great, however. It can be found on the band’s new 10-song self-titled, self-released CD. The MP3 is available via the band’s site. Thanks to the very hard-working Largehearted Boy for the lead.

“Dislocated (London Version)” – the Playwrights

A splendid, dense, and affecting 21st-century amalgam of the Gang of Four and the Jam from an intense young British quintet. It’s the melodica, to begin with, that has me paying attention, playing its wistful refrain in the intro underneath the slashing siren-like guitar dissonance that everyone like to call “angular.” After that the song belongs to vocalist Aaron Dewey, a singer with a somewhat one-dimensional tone and not necessarily a great range but an arresting presence, at once matter of fact and disconcerting. Dewey doesn’t quite sing what it sounds like he’s singing, and doesn’t quite say what he’s actually saying (I strongly suggest you head to the band’s web site, click on “lyrics,” and follow the words as he sings; it really changes the experience of listening to the song). “Dislocated” has a closed-in melody, with one note rarely moving more than a step or two away from the previous note, and yet look at what Dewey does with it: in the chorus, for instance, when he sings “I am feeling”—it sounds like some great leap he’s taking between “am” and “feeling” and yet it’s just one full step. I’m fascinated by stuff like that. While music this urgent and serious-sounding can readily bog down in its own dire potency, the Playwrights save themselves by the poignancy they mix into the stark, slashing drive. (“This is what happens when people open their hearts,” Dewey sings at the end.) “Dislocated” was a song previously released on a CD single, and re-recorded (thus the “London version”) for the band’s first full-fledged, widely-released CD, English Self Storage, which came out in March on Sink & Stove Records in the U.K., and is set for release in the U.S. later this month.

“Cold December” – Matt Costa

Sweet-voiced Southern California-based singer/songwriter Matt Costa has done here what I had previously considered impossible: he’s taken today’s (overly) prevalent jam-band-fed, laid-back-singer-songwriter vibe and made a good song out of it. Nothing against jam-band-fed, laid-back-singer-songwriters (or their fans), mind you; they’re all (by and large) pleasant fellows (they’re all fellows) making pleasant sounds. But they tend not to write songs, according to what my ears want and need. They seem instead ever-so-groovily content to combine aimless melodies and a few sturdy chords while they do their whispery-lazy, just-loping-around act or their hyper-wordy-and-rhythmic act. Costa sounds cut from the same cloth, but he’s got a lot more going for him, in my opinion. I hear it right from the start: over an itchy acoustic guitar he’s singing a real melody, and he even lets the melodic line end in an unresolved chord. Next thing we know, the song shifts, and we get a full-fledged pop hook, bright and emphatic and redolent of some old ’70s AM radio hit or another. And yet we’re not even at the chorus, leaving some unnamed complexity in the air. When we get there, the song actually folds in on itself introspectively–another unexpected, song-conscious touch. “Cold December” is the first track on Costa’s new CD, Songs We Sing, released last week on (uh-oh! Jack Johnson’s label!) Brushfire Records. The MP3 is via his site.

“Inside of Me” – Starlight Mints

That opening cascade on the piano tells you a lot of what you need to know here. It comes at you from all sides, sounds like four people trying to do one glissando and half knocking the drummer off his stool in the process. It’s a great intro to a stompy, glam-infected rocker that maintains a slightly crazy edge throughout. I love it when a band that can get truly weird–as Starlight Mints can—choose to keep it more or less under wraps and offer up their version of a straightforward pop song; the weirdness still seeps out through the seams. That’s a good thing. I like in particular the portentous reverb-y guitar that rings out every so often, and those loopy ELO harmonies that kick in around 3:00. The lyrics raise an eyebrow as well, as much as I can make them out (“So come inside and be my skin and bones”?). What’s in the water out there in Norman, Oklahoma anyway? The Flaming Lips are from the same town as these folks. “Inside of Me” is a track off the band’s new CD, called Drowaton, which is due out later this month on Barsuk Records. The MP3 is hosted on the Barsuk site<.

“5 Verses” – Jeremy Warmsley

One part noodly-introspective bedroom rock, one part expansive pure pop, knitted together with fuzzy 21st-century beats, “Five Verses” wins me over more for its unfettered vitality and than for its closely-told boy-meets-girl story. (I’ll readily admit that I had to get past the “They met in a karoake bar…” opening; and yet I like to think that the singer/songwriter is more or less daring us to stick with him after that one.) Warmsley is a half-French, half-English troubadour, based in London, with a winning mixture of humility and cheek; his web site tells us that he “makes electronica with songs in them,” which is as brilliant a self-description as I’ve seen from a musician in quite a while. For me it’s the great swooping melody that rules this one–the steady dip down, the giddy leap up at the end of a couple of lines in each verse. And don’t miss the wacky little wordless bridge in the middle (around 1:40)–it’s literally an “ooh” and an “ahh” but what a great chord change that is. The song comes from Warmsley’s 5 Interesting Lies EP, released in November on Transgressive Records in the U.K. The MP3 is available via his site, thanks to a head’s up from Hedvika at the excellent Echo blog.

“In the Beginning” – the Stills

An exceedingly likable and well put-together song from this fine Montreal band. First we get one itchy electric guitar scratching out a gallopy one-two beat, the inherent tension of the sound accentuated by the background happenings–shimmery cymbals marking the beat while keyboards and guitars gather, seem ready to burst forward yet holding back in a drone-y, almost tuning-up sort of way. Then, at 0:39, bam: we get a focused, quickly memorable instrumental melody, the song now crackling with a great, swelling energy that I’m tempted to call “wholesome” for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint (perhaps because it sounds so organic, owing more somehow to folk music than rock’n’roll). I am particularly smitten with the section that links the verse to the simple chorus: first heard at 1:26, it couples the percussive guitar of the intro to a melody so friendly it’s actually rather inspiring; listen for the Hammond organ flourishes that add to the chewy texture. Note too how the false ending leads to an “outro” that nicely mirrors the intro. “In the Beginning” will appear on the Stills’ forthcoming CD Without Feathers, due for release in early May on Vice Records.

“Love Revolution” – All Mighty Whispers

Another song with a vibe at once friendly and polished, this one wrapping itself in an ineffable sort of groovy-’60s wash: the effortless melody, the bassline hook, the head-bobbingly agreeable beat (complete with real drums), and the busy but unidentifiable background fill combine to ooze an unbearable nostalgia for a past that never quite existed. On top of it all comes singer Peter Hill’s voice, a pleasantly reedy instrument given a wonderful double-tracked substance that helps make “Love Revolution” sound both as light as air and as solid as a big comfy chair. I can’t always identify a producer’s impact–and often his or her job is to sound like no one was producing it at all–but in this case I tip my metaphorical hat in the direction of Grzegorz Czachor, the Polish producer enlisted to create this spiffy piece of expert pop, and to the Norwich (U.K.) trio behind the music for enlisting him. “Love Revolution” is the title track of the band’s self-titled debut CD, released in Februrary. The MP3 is available via the band’s site.