jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Christine Fellows

Joyful/serious protest

“Unleashed” – Christine Fellows

The plucky ukulele riff that opens this one, as steadfast and persistent as ukulele riffs often are, hints not at the muscular romp to follow. But after the intro and a preliminary uke-backed verse, the band kicks in, and drives “Unleashed” forward with a gleeful vigor. That terrific bit of syncopation she dishes out at the end of each short verse—spelled out first in the ukulele prelude, starting at 0:20—adds to both the glee and the vigor.

“Unleashed” appears to be about rising up in resistance to injustice, and if so, it is surely one of the friendlier-sounding protest songs I’ve heard. The ukulele helps, to begin with. But Fellows herself has one of those congenial singing voices, a singing voice with the approachable tone of a speaking voice. It’s actually perfect for a protest song; she makes you inherently want to join in.

The lyrics add to the welcoming vibe. She positions resistance to tyranny as not merely humane but joyful; one line that stands out, both for its tone and its content, is: “We enrage our enemies/With rousing elegies.” I could not help but think of President Obama here, how the right wing extremists could listen to his eloquent calls for justice and respond only with unheeding rage. Fellows frames this crazy-making situation with such good-natured zest that it reinforces the important idea that we are not responsible for the reactions of others, only for our own actions. Which means: keep it up with the rousing elegies.

If “Unleashed” is a resistance pep talk, the Winnipeg-based Fellows doesn’t, in the end, shy from somber reality. Her final words, over a portentous drone from the cello, are “And the tide is rising.” On the one hand, she may be referring to the tide of the resistance, but the words unflinchingly bring climate change to mind. In other words, the tide of resistance had better be rising, and soon. She can rouse us into action with a good-spirited zing of a song but let’s remember the stakes.

“Unleashed” is a track from Roses on the Vine, Fellows’ seventh album, in a recording career dating back to 2000. She was actually one of the earlier artists featured on Fingertips, appearing back in August 2004. Her new album, released last month, is available in name-your-price fashion via Bandcamp.

photo: Lesandra Dodson

I think there’s more of them like us (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.09 – Nov. 2018)

It’s hard to believe that after almost five years of these playlists, this is the first time I’ve managed to include a Neil Young song. Strange, but encouraging, as it goes to show how wide-ranging my concept here is, and how much, ongoingly, there is to explore. And yet the internet continues to force us into aural silos based on the reductive “if you like artist A, you’ll like artist B because they sound alike” model of listening. Then of course there’s the equally bankrupt “Listen to this because it’s got 49 million streams” model. Well, not here. As a matter of fact, reviewing this playlist, I realize that 13 of the first 14 tracks are from artists that haven’t had a song featured here previously. Music from the length of rock’n’roll history remains valid; you get nowhere in any pursuit either by acting as if the past doesn’t exist nor by denying the vitality of the present.

Some notes on this month’s mix:

* While I aim not to feature any one artist more than once in a calendar year, I’ve made no policy about songs, and as such, this month, I am featuring a song that was already on a playlist this year, performed by a different artist: that would be the fabulous and ever-relevant George Harrison song “Beware of Darkness.” George’s original landed in EPS 5.05, while here we get Marianne Faithfull’s nearly contemporary cover of the song, dating back to recording sessions she had in 1971, even as the tracks she made at that point didn’t see the light of day until 1985. Faithfull has always had exquisite taste in songs she chooses to cover, dating all the way back to her famous first hit single, “As Tears Go By.”

* If you don’t know Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club and have any fondness for rock’n’roll’s new wave moment, I’d urge you to check out the album. You can thank me later.

* A perceptive few of you may notice that I normally use the playlists to re-visit songs that have been previously reviewed on Fingertips; this month, there’s a batch of them, led by the Fauves marvelous, power-poppy “Dirt-Bike Option,” which was a 2000 EP track that resurfaced in 2007 on a compilation of this prolific Australian band’s B-sides and rarities and such. Another big-time Fingertips favorite is Shiv Hurrah’s “Oh Oh Oh,” a modestly-named tune combining DIY sensibility with one of the most satisfying melodies I’ve yet come across in my 15 years here.

* Gabriel Kahane’s song comes from his deep and touching 2018 album Book of Travelers. As a singer/songwriter who is also a contemporary classical music composer, his songs, however stripped-down instrumentally, employ musical complexities rarely heard in rock’n’roll. And what a fine singing voice he has, too. The album has a singular back story: right after the 2016 election, Kahane boarded a train and traveled nearly 9,000 miles over the course of two weeks, talking to people he encountered along the way, later turning their stories into a series of lovely if complex and often melancholy songs. Check it out via Bandcamp if you get a chance.

Full playlist below the widget.

“English Garden” – Bruce Woolley & The Camera Club (English Garden, 1980)
“Captain of Your Ship” – Reparata & the Delrons (single, 1968)
“Smart” – Nice Try (Nice Try, 2018)
“The Dirt-Bike Option” – The Fauves (Celebrate the Failure EP, 2000)
“Look Out For My Love” – Neil Young (Comes a Time, 1978)
“It Ain’t As Easy As That” – The Elektras (single, 1963)
“Oh Oh Oh” – Shiv Hurrah (Shiv Hurrah, 2010)
“When I Was a Boy” – Dar Williams (The Honesty Room, 1993)
“This Is The Day” – The The (Soul Mining, 1987)
“Body and Soul” – Erroll Garner (Gems. 1951)
“Bit of Tongue” – Mr. Gnome (Madness in Miniature, 2011)
“Window Pane” – The Real People (The Real People, 1991)
“Come Up” – Devics (Push the Heart, 2006)
“Long Away” – Queen (A Day at the Races, 1976)
“Love is Here and Now You’re Gone” – The Supremes (The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland, 1967)
“Absolute Beginners” – David Bowie (single, 1986)
“The Trick is to Keep Breathing” – Garbage (Version 2.0, 1998)
“Baltimore” – Gabriel Kahane (Book of Travelers, 2018)
“Beware of Darkness” – Marianne Faithfull (Rich Kid Blues, recorded 1971; released 1985)
“Balloon Maker” – Midlake (Bamnan and Silvercork, 2004)

Free and legal MP3: Johnny Marr (irresistible minor-key goodness)

“Hi Hello” – Johnny Marr

Do you sometimes want to hear somebody just make music? Somebody who’s been around and knows what he or she is doing? Do you want to listen to someone who isn’t trying to be the latest sensation, who isn’t after clicks and follows? If so, try this one. It’s Johnny Marr, it glides along in a lovely and slightly dark way, it’s got guitars, it’s in a minor key. What more do you need?

Johnny Marr as I assume you know used to be in the Smiths, and as such was the architect of their distinctive, minor-key-jangly-chimey sound. “Hi Hello” works a bit of that ground, but here the ground is knowingly smoothed over—mellowed with age, perhaps, and/or not as concerned with sounding so rigorously different as the Smiths were. But hell, by now, Marr has spent a whole lot more time not being in the Smiths than he spent being in them. A good amount of that time found him landing as a guitarist in a series of previously existing bands (The Pretenders, The The, Modest Mouse, et al.); outside of a 2003 album credited to Johnny Marr & The Healers, the solo efforts have only recently been sprouting up—one in 2013, one in 2014, and this new one in 2018. Which is all to say he’s still relatively new to the front-man role, still finding his I’m-the-center-of-attention voice. He does a good job here expanding his vocal range with an effortless leap into and out of falsetto that kind of slyly turns into the song’s principal hook. And I could be entirely imagining this, but the short instrumental motif we hear at 1:48 sounds like an oblique reference to the old hymn “Hey Ho Nobody Home,” which itself might not be completely irrelevant to the title and lyrics here. Or I could be entirely imagining this.

“Hi Hello” is the fourth track from Marr’s album Call the Comet, which was released in June. 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 get 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 only right.)

Free and legal MP3: Calva Louise (ferocious & fantastic)

Concise and ferocious, “I Heard a Cry” is almost ridiculously appealing—two minutes and sixteen seconds of crunchy guitars, headlong momentum, and subtle craft.

“I Heard a Cry” – Calva Louise

Concise and ferocious, “I Heard a Cry” is almost ridiculously appealing—two minutes and sixteen seconds of crunchy guitars, headlong momentum, and subtle craft that can reaffirm one’s faith in humankind, if that doesn’t sound too grandiose. But what the heck: we need it right about now. To my ears, there’s something Clash-like in the brash meeting of power and grace on display here, with the added bounty of Jess Allanic’s arresting vocals, in their varied guises, from garage-rock yelping to soaring “ooh-oohs” to sultry asides and smartly articulated pronouncements.

At the center of the proceedings are two things: first, a sing-song-y guitar riff, which we hear initially in a searing, almost bag-pipe-y rendering and then later, to keep us on our toes, in an acoustic translation; second, the demarcated five-note melodic descent that the verse coalesces around (first heard at 0:26)—a moment that each time seems nearly to stop the song in its tracks but instead launches it into further commotion. Keep listening and you’ll hear all sorts of other touches, including unexpected forays into interlocking melodies, sudden interjections (check out Allanic’s “Hey!” at 0:49), ear-bending guitar effects, and, even, a brilliant chord change in the middle of where you’d never think to find it (1:40).

Calva Louise is a new-ish band from London, and all but the definition of a 21st-century power trio. This is their second single. A debut full-length album is expected in early 2019.

Free and legal MP3: Annie Dressner (UK-based expat singer/songwriter)

“Falter” – Annie Dressner

Annie Dressner has one of those plainspoken voices that sounds like she’s singing and not singing at the same time. It works especially well with a song like “Falter,” which itself is simultaneously simple and maybe not so simple. An obvious complication is the time signature hiccup that Dressner employs in the intro and the verse, before allowing the song to slide into a more familiar groove.

Less obvious is the push/pull of the lyrical content. The song reads to me as a poignant testament to our imperfect lives. What might initially sound like a pep talk to the self (“Stop wasting time! Get to the finish line!”), comes across to my ears as a bittersweet recognition that there’s something inevitable to our falling short of our dreams, and that we go on anyway. The wisdom we gain through aging and perseverance may be more valuable than what we thought we wanted as young dreamers. Perhaps I’m reading more into it than is there? I’d like to think not. The hints I see suggesting the more complex reading are sprinkled throughout; if I try to explain in detail this would get too long, and potentially embarrassing, as I could well be off base. Let me just note that the title is, in fact, “Falter”: the apparent weakness itself, not the pep talk. Also, the chorus launches off the plaintive question “Can’t you get it right?”; expressed with the implicit negative, it becomes rhetorical: no, we can’t get it right. We’re human.

More to my usual concerns—I don’t often get caught up in lyrics but it could be that distinctive quality in her voice that focused me in this direction—the chorus is propelled by a wonderful feeling of musical inevitability, having to do with the unresolved chord at the outset, and the series of chords that bring it invincibly to resolution. I like too the unhurried, almost mournful guitar solo (starting at 1:58) that inserts itself between two iterations of the bridge, delaying the payoff of one last chorus, and (perhaps) adding subtle irony to the words “almost at the finish line,” since she ends up singing that twice.

Annie Dressner was born and raised in New York City; she moved to the UK in the early 2010s. Her new album, Broken Into Pieces, was released last week. You can both listen to it and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks to Annie for the MP3.

I will fear no evil (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.08 – Oct. 2018)

With Fingertips operational again it’s time for the latest playlist, which as always features a wide mix of genres and decades of origin. A random preponderance of songs under three minutes this time makes this one of the shortest EPS mixes to date, for those keeping score—not much more than an hour total this time. Easy listening! And speaking of keeping score, with this playlist, both Kate Bush and the Kinks now tie for the top position as artists who have at this point been featured once a year for the five years that the EPS has been doing its artist-mixing, genre-mingling thing. David Bowie, Björk, and Elvis Costello may yet join them before year’s end. These are either my favorite all-time artists or I just like putting their songs in playlists. Or, probably, both.

Some random notes:

* Try as I might I can’t be exactly sure when Hattie Littles recorded this version of “Come and Get These Memories.” It’s a chestnut from Motown’s early days; as recorded in 1962 by Martha and the Vandellas, it was in fact the first hit produced by the legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, charting in early 1963. Littles herself was on the Motown roster early on, but turned out to be one of those powerhouse vocalists who got overlooked and eventually dropped in favor of those considered to be more commercially viable. She recorded only one official single for Motown (and did open for Marvin Gaye on his first tour). After years out of the business, she was re-discovered in the 1980s and ended up releasing an album called The Best of Hattie Littles in 1996, which included a number of songs re-recorded from her Motown years, “Come and Get These Memories” among them. Let’s figure it was recorded in the vicinity of 1996, if not somewhat before.

* I have a lot of favorite Kinks songs but “Sweet Lady Genevieve” is one of my very favorite favorites, from the band’s otherwise troublesome Preservation Act 1 album (although not as troublesome as the seemingly related follow-up, Preservation Act 2). Apologies for the somewhat clunky segue from Sam Phillips here, I kept going back and forth between thinking it worked well and thinking it didn’t work at all, and by the time I figured it didn’t really work it was too late.

* Patti & The Emblems were from Camden NJ, and had this one hit, in 1964, which happened to be written by Leon Huff (one year before joining forces with Kenny Gamble). The group featured lead singer Pat Russell and three gentlemen backing vocalists. This is an unexpectedly great song, at once typical-sounding of the era and yet also somehow looser and grittier than the Brill Building fare that was still (but not for long) dominating the day.

* Véronique Sanson is a French singer, still active, who was married to Stephen Stills from 1973 to 1979. Her album Le Maudit was released in 1974, and recorded with a few members of Stills’ group Manassas.

* “For You To Do That” was a Fingertips featured song back in 2007, from an album that had come out a few years earlier. Mary Ann Farley only recorded two albums of music before veering off into a career as a painter. Still love this one.

* Speaking, earlier, of Holland-Dozier-Holland, we also dive here into the somewhat under-visited catalog of Mr. Lamont Dozier himself here. Dozier, now 77, has released a dozen or so solo albums over the years, all coming after the Holland-Dozier-Holland heyday of the mid- to late-’60s (and boy go look at the songs that team was responsible for if you want to be amazed, including 14 songs that went to number one on the Billboard chart). But he was no slouch on his own, if a good deal less commercially successful. One of my favorite semi-overlooked songs of his is “Invisible,” which was recorded by Alison Moyet on her first solo album, back in 1984 (and was featured on EPS 3.07 back in 2016, for those who, against all odds, are still keeping score at home).

* And if we’re talking about overlooked goodies, what about this entire album from T Bone Burnett? The Criminal Under My Hat is full of smartly-written, wonderfully accessible songs, but came out, in 1992, while Burnett was still laboring in obscurity, some years yet before the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack made him at least a little more famous. But he was from that point onward pegged as more of a producer than a performer, so much so that the next album he made, many years later, 2006’s The True False Identity, kind of just fell through the cracks without much notice, although also a good one. It’s not too late to pay attention, and give him his due.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Please Stand Up” – British Sea Power (Open Season, 2005)
“Billy Two” – The Clean (Boodle Boodle Boodle EP, 1981)
“I’m In Love” – Kate Pierson (Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney, 2011)
“Come and Get These Memories” – Hattie Littles (The Best of Hattie Littles, 1996)
“Strawberry Blonde” – Ron Sexsmith (Other Songs, 1997)
“Rainbows” – Dennis Wilson (Pacific Ocean Blue, 1977)
“Cloudbusting” – Kate Bush (Hounds of Love, 1985)
“Everybody’s Happy But Me” – Cheryl Williams (single, 1964)
“All My Friends” – Lens Mozer (single, 2017)
“I Want To Tell You” – The Beatles (Revolver, 1966)
“Troubled Mind” – Everything But The Girl (Amplified Heart, 1994)
“Playing For Keeps” – Lamont Dozier (Working On You, 1981)
“World On Sticks” – Sam Phillips (World On Sticks, 2018)
“Sweet Lady Genevieve” – The Kinks (Preservation Act 1, 1971)
“For You To Do That” – Mary Ann Farley (My Life of Crime, 2002)
“Seems So” – The Apples in Stereo (Tone Soul Evolution, 1997)
“Mixed Up Shook Up Girl” – Patti & The Emblems (single, 1964)
“Pure” – The Lightning Seeds (Cloudcuckooland, 1989)
“Le Maudit” – Veronique Sanson (Le Maudit, 1974)
“It’s Not Too Late” – T Bone Burnett (The Criminal Under My Hat, 1992)

Free and legal MP3: Hatchie

Catchy dream pop

“Sure” – Hatchie

Breezing in on a vibe that explores the overlap between the Cranberries and the Sundays, “Sure” overflows with melody and nostalgia. And yet, the magic trick here is that Hatchie mastermind Harriette Pilbeam manages to put forth her music in a crisp, contemporary package. Which doesn’t (thankfully) mean she’s pandering to any of today’s all-but-unlistenable trends (over-processing, mindless digital rhythms, affected vocalizing). This is as solidly constructed a piece of music emerging from the remnants of the pop-rock spectrum as one can hope to encounter in the ongoing nightmare that is the year 2018.

I’m hearing a coy type of syncopation as one of the keys to this song’s earworm-y success. After the chiming, guitar-filled intro, the drums kick in at 0:22, and if you listen you’ll see that we get a direct second beat but in place of an equally accented fourth beat (which would be the classic backbeat rhythm), there’s a stuttered, off-center accent. This manages both to move the song along and to play with the flow in an agreeable way. Added to this is the way the lyrics in the verse begin only on the second beat of the measure, which creates a pleasant, head-bobbing lag, the hesitation pulling us forward rather than backward. Resolution comes with the sturdy descent of the chorus, melody now planted on the first beat, even as the drumming underneath stays with its offbeat swing.

And hey that’s a rather wordy explication; I could also just say: it’s really catchy.

Pilbeam is from Brisbane, which partially explains her easy way with this type of melodic, history-embracing music—Australia is one of a handful of countries (Sweden is another) that has figured out how to maintain cultural interest in rock’n’roll’s organic development long after the combined machinations of the mainstream American music industry and fad-obsessed internet crowds have left it for dead. “Sure” was originally released as a single in November 2017, and became more widely available with the release of her Sugar & Spice EP in May 2018. Hatchie is finishing up a US tour as we speak, with dates upcoming this month in LA and Brooklyn, among other places.

Free and legal MP3: Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

Sharp, creative rocker w/ back story

“And You Are?” – Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

So this is a crazy-great concept, but also a crazy-challenging one: take an imaginary album, laid out track by track in a popular novel, and actually write it and record it. This is what Perry Serpa decided to do with the fictional album Juliet, from Nick Hornby’s popular and affecting book Juliet, Naked. The book involves a deep dive into music fandom, among other things, and centers around a reclusive singer/songwriter of Hornby’s invention named Tucker Crowe. Near the beginning of the novel, Hornby invents for us the Wikipedia entry for Crowe’s 1986 masterpiece, Juliet, which includes a track listing for the album. These are the songs that Serpa set about to write.

Not too intimidating a project, huh? Write music good enough to stand in for a fictional masterpiece? Plus there’s already been a movie made of the album, which came out earlier this year. (The movie, however, only created two of Juliet‘s ten songs.) “For better or for worse, I led a fifteen-plus piece band for almost twenty years, so I’m no neophyte when it comes to foolish, time-consuming, lofty creative pursuits,” Serpa told me via email. So here we go: “And You Are?” is the opening track on the imaginary album, so likewise opens Serpa’s. And what a wonderful, evocative piece of retro, semi-baroque folk rock it is. Seeking to create from scratch an album from 1986 gives Serpa all the artistic license he needs to willfully ignore that the 21st century ever happened to rock’n’roll; not always a bad thing, says me. Half Dylanesque harangue, half R.E.M.-like invocation, “And You Are?” swirls around an ascending string motif that adds a textured hook without taking away from the song’s electric edge; I especially like it when the guitar gains ground in the second half of the song, eventually mingling its own lead in and around the recurrent strings.

Not all the tracks from Juliet are specifically discussed in Hornby’s book, but some not only are described in one way or another, they are given a lyric or two. For instance, the first line of “And You Are?” was straight from the novel: “They told me talking to you would be like chewing barbed wire with a mouth ulcer.” The next line, however, is Serpa’s: “But you never once hurt me like that.” Serpa says this kind of writing was “fun as shit to do.”

The real album that Serpa has made based on Hornby’s imaginary one is, cleverly enough, entitled Wherefore Art Thou?: Songs Inspired by Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. And it’s even cleverer than you might think; the imaginary Wikipedia entry mentions a 2002 tribute album to Juliet that was called, yes, Wherefore Art Thou?—which was not merely a Shakespeare allusion but a reference to the fact that in this fictional world, Tucker Crowe had disappeared after he released Juliet, and more or less hadn’t been heard from since. One final, meta twist relevant to Serpa’s project: Scott McCaughey, who sings lead on the song I have for you here, was founder of the Minus Five, one of the bands Hornby mentions as recording a song for the imaginary tribute LP.

For the record, Hornby himself has said, of Serpa’s smartly-hewn creation, “I’m happy to think that my book has somehow produced work this good.” Serpa has announced that a portion of the sales of the album will go to the UK-based charity Ambitious About Autism, which was co-founded by Hornby. Wherefore Art Thou? comes out October 5; streaming and purchase links are here.

Lastly: Serpa’s aforementioned 15-plus-piece ensemble, The Sharp Things, have been twice previously featured on Fingertips, in 2013 and 2014.

photo credit: Margaret Gaspari

Free and legal MP3: Mikaela Davis (harp-based midtempo rocker; it works!)

Davis’s harp insinuates itself into “Other Lover” so naturally that I find myself smiling a great big smile.

“Other Lover” – Mikaela Davis

I can’t claim exhaustive expertise about harps in rock’n’roll. (And I mean harp harps, not harmonicas.) Basically all I know is 1) you don’t hear them very often; and 2) Joanna Newsom made a splash with the instrument back in the ’00s, which intimated that the harp was going to become the next hip thing but I guess it hasn’t. Now as much as I admire Newsom’s instrumental skills (not to mention her opinions about Spotify, which she has called “a villainous cabal”; you won’t find her music there), I have yet to acquire a taste either for her voice (it’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it things) or for her elusive songwriting tactics, and because she plays the harp and has that voice and writes those songs I’ve kind of intertwined all those things in my head to the extent that Mikaela Davis can come along, play the harp in an incisively crafted rock song and I almost can’t compute the circumstance. Doesn’t a harp have to involve all sorts of other idiosyncrasy?

Apparently not. After immediately making its presence known with a dreamy introduction that feels half sumptuous, half portentous (listen to the bottom of the mix), Davis’s harp insinuates itself into “Other Lover” so naturally that I find myself smiling a great big smile. Who knew a harp could work like this, could be the easy, arpeggioed backbone of a catchy, invigorating tune? There’s so much to admire here, beginning with the song’s basic structure, which draws us in through the ongoing push/pull of its half-time/double-time melodies—first two lines of the verse in half time, second two in double time, followed by a chorus in which the half-time/double-time change happens within each lyrical line.

Another sign of a well-built song: the second verse is put together against a subtly different backdrop than the first verse, underscored by a new harp technique, as Davis leaves off some of the arpeggios for a staccato plucking that calls more attention now to the bass line (which may not actually be a bass, but in any case delivers a heavier-sounding bottom this time). (Fun fact: the word arpeggio is derived from the Italian word for “play the harp.”) This is a sign of the canny production on display throughout. As merely one example, listen to the sounds accompanying the end of the chorus, on the repeated words “run away” (first heard around 0:54): we’re probably getting a harp’s natural glissando in there, but it sounds subtly augmented, and fully aligned with the lyrics. A more direct example of this is in the bridge, in which this wonderful swelling arises in the background starting around 2:34, which sounds mostly vocal, both involving the harp and imitating it.

Mikaela Davis is a Rochester, NY-based singer/songwriter. Classically trained, she spent four years playing in the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra before going to study at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music. Halfway through college, she decided she’d rather write and perform her own songs than play in an orchestra. After graduating, she made an effort to forge her path in Brooklyn, but eventually landed back in her hometown, where she found her footing and her voice.

“Other Lover” is a song from Davis’s first full-length album, Discovery, released on Rounder Records in July, available here. She has two previous EPs and one single available via Bandcamp. MP3 via The Current.

Back in the saddle

So I’m back.

And what did I do over my summer vacation? I spent oh let’s say a hefty portion of the last three months attempting to remove myself from promotional mailing lists, for one, and, secondly, deleting emails that arrive that via that feckless mechanism. It turns out that extricating oneself from a mailing list is not as easy as it should be, since PR folks have long since adopted the strategy of creating stand-alone lists for each of their projects; to remove myself from one of them does not often end the stream of emails arriving from any given PR person and/or agency. It’s wac-a-mole city.

And why have I been trying to reduce the number of emails I’m receiving? Because I’ve realized that it’s the endless, faceless avanlanche of promotion that has been getting me down, not the music itself. And—with apologies to all hard-working music PR people out there—I have also realized how very few times any of their emails have introduced me to a song I end up featuring here. Which is to say: among the many ways that Fingertips is out of step with the music industry in 2018 is the fact that it almost (but not quite) goes without saying that a band employing professional PR assistance is a band that is not going to interest me musically speaking. And let me immediately follow that up with the contrasting fact that there are a small handful of PR people who do, semi-consistently, promote music that I do in fact like. I’ve just finally been realizing that I can pay attention to them and ignore everyone else. I believe in the synchronicity that brings bands I like to the attention of PR people I like, and am at long last ready to act accordingly.

If, in eliminating bulk emails almost entirely from my life I miss out on maybe one or two songs I might otherwise feature, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. I feel much lighter in this regard than I did a few months ago.

As for the larger-scale question of whether it still seems useful and relevant to people to be featuring free and legal MP3s, I guess I’ll skirt that for now and just keep at it. I received enough heart-warming feedback back at the start of the hiatus for me to know that there is an appreciative audience for what I do. Not necessarily a large audience, but an appreciative one. Unlike the model of success presented to us by both the internet and, alas, by our tragically incapacitated US President, I do not need large numbers to prop up my sense of self. No one should; in any case, for me, ever and always, quality trumps (pun intended) quantity. Try it yourselves and see how it goes.

So, I guess I’m saying that things here will continue more or less the same as before. I will still be reviewing free and legal MP3s, and creating monthly(-ish) playlists. I may or may not decide to post the reviews in batches of three, as previously. I’ll see how that goes. It might be only one at a time, sometimes, or two. But the output here will more or less resemble what it was pre-hiatus. It’s my inbox that’s going to look and feel a lot different. Thank the lord.