jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3:Mattiel (irresistible, retro-current indie rock)

“Keep the Change” is a high-energy stomper that has the air of an instant classic about it, straddling with flair and sly humor that often fine line between where we’ve been and where we’re going.

“Keep the Change” – Mattiel

Featured here previously last April, Mattiel is back with another irresistible slice of retro-current indie rock. “Keep the Change” is a high-energy stomper that has the air of an instant classic about it, straddling with flair and sly humor that often fine line between where we’ve been and where we’re going.

The recurring, six-note motif that launches the song through the intro is an apt aural symbol of the slightly off-kilter fun to come: on the one hand it’s got a Springsteen-esque grandeur, on the other hand it’s being plinked out on what sounds like a xylophone. When the drums join in at 0:14, the momentum is literally unstoppable, the drummer hitting every beat equally through the entire song except for a brief deviation in the pre-chorus, as lead singer Mattiel Brown sings, “When I throw my weight/I never throw it crooked/I always throw it straight” (itself an obliquely amusing thing to say). Another curveball arrives via the decision to call the song “Keep the Change,” in defiance of standard practice, which would derive the title from the song’s most often heard phrase (in this case that would be “Wasted all my time”). “Keep the change,” on the other hand, is a lyric we hear just twice (starting at 2:53) in the song’s late-arriving bridge.

And don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing laugh-out-loud funny going on here; the humor is more of that special, smile-inducing kind that music alone can create. If anything, Mattiel herself appears to favor humor of a particularly dry kind. The video for “Keep the Change” is a good example, featuring her setting about, blank-faced, on a series of inscrutable tasks, by herself, in an industrial site that has no recognizable purpose. The biggest clue that she’s having fun comes from the title she’s given the album where you’ll find “Keep the Change”—that title being Satis Factory. It took me a moment to register that. You can listen to the whole thing, and buy it in a variety of formats, via Bandcamp.

The album, her second, was released in June. She still seems to be employing Mattiel as a band name, even as her Facebook site doesn’t list band members. She/they is/are based in Atlanta. MP3 via The Current.

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

Free and legal MP3: Marti West (gauzy surface, robust depth)

Underneath the gauzy surface lies a robust and rewarding composition.

“Give Me Light” – Marti West

It might nearly be its own genre: music featuring delicate male vocals in an acoustic setting. I am not inherently a fan of this sound—which can get too whispery-slight for my ears—but it turns out I’m a big fan of “Give Me Light,” because underneath its gauzy surface lies a robust and rewarding composition.

The song launches with urgent finger-picking, strings held relatively high up on the guitar neck; the aura is of reverberant glass. West adds vocals at 0:17, in a tenor register mirroring the spangly guitar line. The verse melody is concise and potent, circling towards a solid but unresolved end point, which leads in turn to a chorus (0:49) pitched around the same melodic space, with now the added sway of percussion. And listen here to how carefully the lines this time build one by one into a firm resolution (the steps proceed from 0:55 to 0:59 to 1:03), so satisfying in its payoff precisely because of the subtle uncertainty propagated by the earlier unresolved melodies.

Another thing I appreciate here are the careful harmonies West provides for himself, which begin in the chorus. Note how they start as same-note harmonies, then separate into beautiful, affecting intervals as the phrase “Give me light” unfolds, twice. Note too how the harmonies then draw back into the melody on the closing phrase (first at 1:03 and then, as the chorus repeats melodically, at 1:17). In an elegantly crafted song like this, these harmonies provide their own gorgeous hook. Yet more elegant craft: the electric guitar that floats in, twice, as structural support (1:24, 2:45)—and, all the better, each guitar break is its own construction, not just one solo repeated.

Born in England, West lives in Göteborg, Sweden. He has previously released two EPs and one eight-song mini-album. “Give Me Light” is the first single to be released off his next EP, coming later this year. You can listen to everything, and buy what you like, on Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Monster Rally (splendid cut-and-paste tropicalia)

Feighan constructs his tunes by mining old records for sounds to cut and paste together, and you can surely hear bygone decades in the instrumental tones—those saxophones all but scream 1940s to me, in the most delightful way.

“Menagerie” – Monster Rally

And then there are sounds I’m so fond of that I love a song from its opening notes, and willingly follow it wherever and however it goes. If you want a more detailed idea of what Monster Rally is about and why I like this so much, you can read what I wrote when I first featured the project back in September 2013. All still holds true for me, despite the years that have passed and the dismal situation we find ourselves in since then. Though I suppose here in 2019 there’s an added air of escapism attendant to the tropical amalgams served up by Ted Feighan, the singular musical brainiac behind Monster Rally.

In any case, listen to this and just enjoy the heck out of it, from the funky tropical groove (those splat-y bass notes from what sounds like a tuba are priceless down there at the bottom of the mix) to both of the two lead melodies (the upward/downward swing of the saxophones; the smooth-as-silk answer from the trombone), to the clunky thump of percussion holding it all together. Feighan constructs his tunes by mining old records for sounds to cut and paste together, and you can surely hear bygone decades in the instrumental tones—those saxophones all but scream 1940s to me, in the most delightful way.

“Menagerie” is the lead single from the new Monster Rally album, Adventures on the Floating Island, coming in September via Gold Robot Records. Note that the project’s previously featured song, “Orchids,” also made its way onto an Eclectic Playlist Series mix (5.07, September 2018), for those keeping score at home.

Free and legal MP3: Pure Bathing Culture (glistening indie rock w/ notable guitar work)

“All Night” – Pure Bathing Culture

I’ve got one more artist with a Fingertips track record for you this month, as the Portland duo Pure Bathing Culture returns with another glistening piece of indie rock, this their third feature here, dating back to 2012. Whereas in previous incarnations the duo presented their guitar-based material wrapped in a cloud of hazy electronics and constructed beats, they are now embracing their inner Fleetwood Mac and going all in on sprightly riffing and buoyant melodies. (Seeing them in person definitely adds to the Buckingham-Nicks vibe, Sara Versprille white-gowned and witchy up front, Daniel Hindman working guitar magic under a balding, curly-haired pate.)

“All Night” is as upbeat as these guys get; the song’s momentum receives an added push thanks to its persistently on-the-beat melody—in the verse in particular, there are a limited number of quarter or eighth notes, and little in the way of syncopation. Over time this lends a subtle breathlessness to the proceedings, reinforced by Versprille’s recurring yelp in the chorus at the end of the lyric “Till black in the sky turns blue.”

Most of all the song in particular, and Pure Bathing Culture more generally, presents an ongoing affirmation on the power and purpose of the electric guitar, despite its relegation to the scrap heap of history by 2010s mainstream pop. Sure, Hindman still tucks his licks in and around a glossy bed of bounce and reverb, but if you have any questions about the intensity of his instrumental commitment, even here in 2019, listen closely to the last 60 seconds of this song, where he out-Buckinghams Buckingham and maybe even out-Knopflers Knopfler in the process. Personally, I think he gets faded out a bit too gently and too early but even in those closing seconds you can feel the heat of his playing.

“All Night” is the sixth of 11 tracks on the band’s album Night Pass, their third, which was released in April and produced by Portland crony Tucker Marine. Listen to it and buy it, in your format of choice, via Bandcamp. There’s even a tote bag for you tote bag fans. MP3 once more via The Current.

Nothing surprises me anymore

Eclectic Playlist Series 6.07 – July 2019

“Polaroids” is as majestic and affecting a song as a singer/songwriter could hope to write and record, complete with an ear-catching rhyme scheme, emotive vocal work, and nimble interplay between the hypnotic melody and a chord pattern so elegant that its unanticipated gambits register as predestined. Together these elements transform a leisurely-paced six-minute narrative into a spellbinding classic, albeit a classic not a lot of people may know a quarter-century after its release.

Ideally that’s a good part of what I’m offering here–lost classics of one kind or another, from this or that genre, flecked with the intermittent crowd-pleaser for balance and character. I sometimes think of this–whimsically, if not especially accurately–as an exercise in aural feng shui, where the interaction is between the ears and the music rather than the body and physical space. The goal, however, isn’t good luck or bad luck, it’s a sense of aliveness and potency, of the subtle kind that one song, certainly, can offer but I think a disparate and well-blended group of songs can deliver with extra power and, I hope, delight. A playlist should delight, shouldn’t it? Delight is often fostered by a sense of the unexpected. But how unexpected can music be in the context of a single-genre playlist? You see where I’m going with this. I’ll be quiet now and let the music do the rest of the talking.

Random notes:

* I loved “Indian Ocean” from the moment I heard it back in 1996; it struck my ears as an unusually successful modern (at that point) update of the power pop I’ve long held dear. And yet I never ended up learning much about the unusually-named band that recorded this gem, outside of knowing that The Frank & Walters came from Cork, Ireland. By the 2000s, I had assumed they had disbanded without a trace, but now that I’ve belatedly investigated, it turns out that they are still an active band, although more of a regional than an international outfit. I just listened to a song called “Stages,” from their 2016 album Songs For The Walking Wounded, and wow, they’re still doing what they do, still creating music with a distinctive but accessible air about it. The band was originally formed by brothers Paul and Niall Linehan; Paul still fronts the band, while Niall left in 2004. But the beat goes on. Time for me to go back and listen to more of their stuff.

* So in the process of constructing this playlist I discovered that “Midnight Confessions,” a song I’ve had a soft spot for since pre-teenager-hood, was not a Grass Roots original, but a cover of a song recorded the year before by a band called The Ever-Green Blues. Although slightly slowed down from the original, the Grass Roots’ version employed a strikingly similar arrangement, and had the benefit of Hal Blaine, Carol Kaye, and the Wrecking Crew as backing band. You can check out the Ever-Green Blues version on YouTube if you’re curious. While the original version went nowhere chart-wise, a year later the same song became the Grass Roots’ biggest hit.

* So “The Stand” has a needlessly complicated history, made more complicated by robotic internet misinformation. The song came out as a single in April 1983, and then was wrapped into the band’s debut eponymous EP in June that same year. In 1984, a longer version of the song was released on a 12-inch “maxi-single” called The Chant Has Just Begun. And then in 1990, this longer version was released on a compilation album called Standards (“Stand-ards”; get it?). But a good portion of the internet is fooled by the presence of a one-minute, fifteen-second song called “The Stand (Prophecy)” that appears on the group’s full-length 1984 release, Declaration: on YouTube, the long version of “The Stand” comes accompanied by the Declaration album cover, and on Wikipedia, “The Stand” is identified as a single from the album. The super-short version on the album–not the single–seems to be a glimpse at the more acoustic-based way the song was originally written. The lyrics by the way were inspired by the post-apocalyptic Stephen King novel of the same name, and intended as a heartfelt protest against nuclear proliferation. Some things never get old.

* You had of course the Beatles and the Stones, Hendrix and The Who, and all sorts of other iconic artists that come to mind when you think of the music of the 1960s. But for me, in my own childhood memory of that time, probably nothing says “the ’60s” to me as potently as the music of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Ridiculous? Maybe, maybe not. Look at the facts: between 1965 and 1968, the Brass released seven albums; five of them went to #1 on the charts, the other two peaked at #2 and #4. If you happened to be a musically impressionable youngster at that exact moment in time, the stuff just imprinted itself on your psyche. There, it seems, it remains, for some of us.

* And then there’s Lene Lovich, a singular star in the new wave firmament of the late ’70s and early ’80s, who rose and faded abruptly, her quirkiness at once her advantage and her undoing. “It’s You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)” comes from her neglected 1982 album No Man’s Land, which I picked up a while back for a few dollars on vinyl in the discount crate of a local record store. As it turns out, after many years away from the music scene, Lovich released an album in 2005 called Shadows and Dust, which I missed entirely; she started actively touring again in 2015. She is now 70, which causes me mein own kind of schmerz. Time time time. You can by the way, rather unexpectedly, check No Man’s Land out on Bandcamp.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Indian Ocean” – The Frank and Walters (Indian Ocean EP, 1997)
“Nova” – Baula (Nova, 2017)
“Was I On Your Mind” – Jesse Baylin (Firesight, 2008)
“Stand!” – Sly and the Family Stone (Stand!, 1969)
“Loneliness” – Horslips (The Man Who Built America, 1978)
“Polaroids” – Shawn Colvin (Fat City, 1992)
“More and More Amor” – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass (Going Places, 1965)
“It’s You, Only You (Mein Schmerz)” – Lene Lovich (No Man’s Land, 1982)
“I Wasn’t Her” – The Blueflowers (Watercolor Ghost Town, 2009)
“Joanne” – Michael Nesmith (Magnetic South, 1970)
“Motion Sickness” – Phoebe Bridgers (Stranger in the Alps, 2017)
“Something to Believe In” – The Ramones (Animal Boy, 1986)
“How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” – Al Green (Let’s Stay Together, 1972)
“Pot Kettle Black” – Wilco (Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2002)
“Midnight Confessions” – The Grass Roots (single, 1968)
“Not Too Soon” – Throwing Muses (The Real Ramona, 1992)
“Ponteio” – Astrid Gliberto and Stanley Turrentine (Gilberto With Turrentine, 1971)
“I Already Forgot Everything You Said” – The Dig (Midnight Flowers, 2012)
“The Stand” – The Alarm (long version; single, 1984)
“Adventure” – Be Your Own Pet (Be Your Own Pet, 2006)

Keep your eyes open

Eclectic Playlist Series 6.06 – June 2019

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

Random notes:

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

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

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

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

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

Full playlist below the widget.

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

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

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

“Wires” – Alejandra O’Leary

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

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

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

Free and legal MP3: Middle Kids

Terrific new song from top-notch band

“Real Thing” – Middle Kids

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pretending He Was You” – Claude Fontaine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Capacity” – Charly Bliss

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

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

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

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

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