jeremyfingertips

You laugh tonight and cry tomorrow

Eclectic Playlist Series 12.02 – February 2025

We said goodbye to the mighty Marianne Faithfull last month, as well as to the quiet genius Garth Hudson, wizard organist of The Band, who skillfully handled any number of other instruments as well. I need to remain mindful about working musical elders into these mixes while they’re still alive, as I am not trying to get all “In Memoriam” here. But these two deserve an appreciative word, a respectful moment of silence if you’re so inclined, and a place in the playlist, so you’ll find them here in 12.02.

Beyond that, so many things to tear one’s hair out about. Still hard to believe that we have turned the reins over to a convicted criminal, whose track record as a human being falls so short of humane all the possible ways. With this track record you wouldn’t hire him to babysit your child and yet here we are. The situation has inadvertently uncovered democracy’s foundational fatal flaw: in designing positions of power that people can attain via, essentially, a popularity contest, in the long run the evil people are going to win, for the simple reason that they are always going to want it more. And, because evil is as evil does, they will be willing to do what it takes, which will always eventually include subverting the very institutions and systems through which they attained the power. Me, I retreat into music, finding solace there, and community. I offer a heartfelt thank you to those of you who have written in with encouraging words. As I have said in the past, knowing that I’m making a genuine connection with a small number of people feels, these days, much more rewarding than seeing soulless statistics about clicks and visits. Ideally this might also reflect back onto you, knowing that you aren’t just a faceless one among millions. You matter here, as an actual person.

And with that, the songs:

1. “Até Ao Verão” – Ana Moura (Desfado, 2012)
2. “Ticket to Ride” – The Beatles Help!, 1965)
3. “Get It While You’re Young” – The Act (Too Late at 20, 1981)
4. “That’s What You Say (Every Time You’re Near Me)” – Gloria Scott (What Am I Gonna Do, 1974)
5. “Beaches” – Beabadoobee (This is How Tomorrow Moves, 2024)
6. “Army Of Me” – Björk (Post, 1995)
7. “Blue Skies” – Art Tatum (Art Tatum, 1950)
8. “Woman King” – Iron & Wine (Woman King EP, 2005)
9. “Nathan Jones” – The Supremes (Touch, 1971)
10. “Sunday Best” – Lauren Mayberry (Vicious Creature, 2024)
11. “You Keep On Lyin'” – The Hoods (Gangsters & Morticians, 1991)
12. “Look Out Cleveland” – The Band (The Band, 1969)
13. “Vendala Vida” – Dinosaur Feathers (Fantasy Memorial, 2010)
14. “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” – Marianne Faithfull (Strange Weather, 1987)
15. “The Narcissist” – Blur (The Ballad of Darren, 2023)
16. “He Can Only Hold Her” – Amy Winehouse (Back to Black, 2007)
17. “Better Must Come” – Delroy Wilson (Better Must Come, 1971)
18. “Change” – Tears For Fears (The Hurting, 1983)
19. “Walking Aimlessly” – Anna Ternheim (The Night Visitor, 2011)
20. “Life Is” – Jessica Pratt (Here in the Pitch, 2024)

Random notes:

* We’ll start with something a bit off the beaten path: Ana Moura’s splendid “Até Ao Verão.” Delicious, melodramatic chords anchor the heart of this deceptively brisk composition while lovely, front-of-mix guitar work dominates the accompaniment. Ana Moura is a Portuguese fado singer, but her 2012 album Desfado was somewhat controversial among sticklers, not being a pure fado LP. She actually recorded the album in the United States, employing the American producer Larry Klein. Fado or no, the Portuguese public didn’t mind at all; it now stands as the country’s biggest-selling album of all time. For the first time, Moura sings in English on a few songs on this album. But you don’t have to understand the lyrics to be moved by “Até Ao Verão” (which translates to “Until Summer,” according to Mr. Google); the song is gorgeous, with all the melancholy ache of traditional fado but with a modern spark igniting the performance.

* Okay so “Ticket to Ride” may be so familiar that your ear doesn’t really pay attention to what it’s hearing. But to me, this has always been one of the more magical Lennon-McCartney numbers. To begin with, it comes from a marvelous pivot point in their output, possessing at once the simple-seeming charm of their early hits while also displaying a depth of craft that will start to characterize their music moving forward. Listen to how the recurring guitar pattern and the drumming together conspire to defeat a strict sense of time. Note too the simple yet beguiling chord changes that link the verse to the chorus, and the striking intervals in the vocal harmonies at that same point. Things of course would grow ever more complex as the Beatles soon begin to use the recording studio itself as a kind of instrument. As a side note, some three years into their recording careers (Help! was already their fifth album), this was the first Beatles song to clock in at over three minutes.

* The trio Dinosaur Feathers had a minor moment in the online sun back when the music blogosphere was a dynamic thing. But their internet trail is pretty thin at this point–no Wikipedia page, a handful of likes on a Facebook page last updated in 2015, a Bandcamp page you have to dig through to find their full discography. “Vendela Vida” dates back to the days of good promise, in 2010, from the band’s debut album Fantasy Memorial; it was featured here that same year. The song’s connection to the writer Vendela Vida was and is unclear. Maybe it was just a fun name to sing. In any case this is still a fun song to listen to.

* “Nathan Jones” was, in 1971, one of the last top-20 hits for the Supremes after the departure of Diana Ross, who left the group the previous year. The three remaining Supremes certainly stayed busy in the immediate aftermath: the album Touch, where you’ll find “Nathan Jones,” was already the Supremes’ fifth Ross-free release. While Jean Terrell had taken over lead vocals, for “Nathan Jones” all three women sang lead together, an unusual and rather fetching maneuver.

* The Act was a British band plying their trade at the height of new wave’s power pop takeover; their one album, Too Late At 20, came out on Hannibal Records in 1981. The Act’s only minor claim to fame is being the band that Nick Laird-Clowes was in before going on to front The Dream Academy (best known for “Life in a Northern Town,” which Laird-Clowes co-wrote). That said, “Get It While You’re Young” is a pretty solid piece of vintage early-’80s British rock, an era and sound for which I will always have a soft spot.

* Lauren Mayberry is the lead singer of the Scottish band Chvrches. Vicious Creature is her first solo album, but she has made it clear that the band, while currently on hiatus, will be back together in the future. And if all else fails down the road, maybe she can fall back on her undergraduate law degree and master’s degree in journalism. But I’d say she’s not nearly through as a singer and songwriter. Her bright, pop-leaning sound is tempered, to my ears, by deft melodic acumen as well as activist-informed lyrics that range well beyond the purview of the typical Spotify hit.

* The Jessica Pratt song “Life Is” was selected as the best song of 2024 by the venerable Said the Gramophone blog, maintained all these years by the novelist Sean Michaels. Michaels can write circles around pretty much anyone who tries to write about music. His wide-ranging taste is not always mine; he finds treasure in the extremities of both pop and lo-fi that eludes my ears. But this one stuck with me. I like its strong yet leisurely beat and its sneaky melodicism. That post-chorus shift at 1:19 is inspiring, and leads into a second verse with a different melody than the first. The song is a glowing mystery, and a nice place to land.

“Consequences” – The Spectacular Fantastic

Semi-lo-fi semi-power-pop

“Consequences” – The Spectacular Fantastic

An early-era Fingertips favorite returns for the second time in, oh, 20 years. The Spectacular Fantastic are still up to their semi-lo-fi, semi-power-poppy ways, guitars and fuzz and melodies at the ready. Clocking in at a pop-rock perfect 3:33, “Consequences” is adeptly built, with a solid underlying chug that gives the incisive guitar work time to stretch out. Frontman Mike Detmer sings in a tone that sounds one part irritated and one part wounded; it’s a fine line sometimes. There are even some loud-soft and fast-slow dynamics at play here, a perhaps unusual touch for such a homegrown enterprise.

“Consequences” grabs the ear with its opening line–“What I do when I do what I do/Is none of your business”; after that things get charmingly elusive in terms of both structure and content. The lyrics sound half defiant, half apologetic. Consciously or not, this appears to be reflected in a song that seems to operate in a middle ground between verse and chorus, somehow not possessing either thing fully. There is basically one eight-measure melody–it ascends, descends, and then sort of resolves and sort of doesn’t. While you’re left thinking about that, there is space for the guitar, in all its nicely articulated glory, its tone calling to us from another time and place. For variation, the main melody at one point gets delivered, stripped down, in half time. As for hooks, there is (kind of) one–the recurring, repeated lyrical phrase “I don’t care”–and yet its very concept is undermined, humorously (I think!), by the song’s title. The guy is braying about not caring and yet the song is called “Consequences.”

The Spectacular Fantastic is a loose-knit, intermittently gathered project fronted by Mike Detmer, whose day job for the past four years or so has him running a neighborhood coffee spot with his wife in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the western outskirts of the greater Cincinnati metro area. (It’s called Funny Farm Coffee, another hint at the sense of humor Detmer deploys.) “Consequences” is a track from TSF’s forthcoming album, Fantasy Clouds, coming out later in February. Thanks to Mike for the MP3. By the way, all of the band’s releases–eight previous LPs and four EPs–are uploaded on the Internet Archive and are available there for free.

For those keeping score at home, the Spectacular Fantastic have been featured here three previous times: twice in the innocent days of 2005, and once more in the substantially less innocent year of 2016.

“Stereo” – Kendall Jane Meade

Exquisite singing, memorable melody

“Stereo” – Kendall Jane Meade

What starts as a precise bit of acoustic singer/songwriter fare transforms itself in the chorus into a memorable mid-tempo rocker. What pulls the listener in and through is Kendall Jane Meade’s beguiling singing voice. Soft and silvery, it’s the kind of voice that makes you wonder why some other people even bother to sing. Equally important here is the strength of the melody in the chorus. With the verse, the ear gets it, sure, she has a pretty voice; when the chorus arrives, by some deep alchemy the thing leapfrogs to a new level. The instrumental bridge with the ringing, distorted electric guitar (1:37) is an unexpected bonus. “Stereo” is not very long; the chorus only comes around twice. I put the song on repeat and left it there for quite a while.

The song had its origins in news in 2023 about Madonna canceling tour dates due to a health scare. Like Madonna, Meade is from Detroit and had always felt a kinship with the so-called “queen of pop.” The thought of potentially losing this hometown icon put Meade in a reflective mood, and “Stereo” was the result.

Meade was previously featured on Fingertips back when she was recording as Mascott, in 2013. I was as smitten with her voice back then as I am here in 2025. “Stereo” is a song from Space, Meade’s first solo album released under her own name, coming out at the end of February on Mother West Records.

“Cut Stitch Scar” – CocoRosie

Expansive, idiosyncratic art rock

“Cut Stitch Scar” – CocoRosie

As adventurous and idiosyncratic as ever, the Casady sisters are back with their singular brand of expansive, inscrutable art rock. Alternately heavy and restrained, changing rhythms and tones at will, “Cut Stitch Scar” traffics in one of CocoRosie’s superpowers, which is the capacity to be experimental and accessible at the same time. Even as it takes a while to get one’s arms around this one as a whole experience, the song’s initial urgency brings the listener in without hesitation. Bianca Casady sings with that child-like warble of hers, but rather than hesitancy it conveys authority. The lyrics urge us to “Take a leap of faith,” and that’s just what listening to CocoRosie demands. You’re not going to know what they’re singing about, you’re not going to anticipate or necessarily vibe with all of their musical choices, but it’s so clear that they know what they’re doing that I see no reason not to jump in with them.

That said, this song maybe needs a few listens. It starts blippy and glitchy, quickly acquires a satisfying percussive groove, and starts, lyrically, in the middle of some sort of dramatic, dimly understood circumstance, perhaps a dream. The tempo, and much of the instrumentation, disappears at the tail end of the verse and into the chorus. Electronics mix with heavenly backing vocals. The lyrics, as ever with the Casadys, may often baffle but they always always scan. The groove returns, vanishes, returns. Rubbery synths are heard. Vocals get distorted. But we never get too far away from satisfying chords. That may be one of the things that keeps the song legible to the ear, however weird it gets: those satisfying chords.

Bianca and Sierra–who identify as part Native American–had an unorthodox, peripatetic childhood, moving regularly, living in a variety of different states, and being exposed to a variety of bizarre, New Age-y experiences, some more disconcerting than others. Their history together as musicians is by now too long and involved to summarize, but you can read a little more about them via the three previous times they’ve been featured on Fingertips: in 2007, 2010, and 2017.

“Cut Stitch Scar” is a song from the forthcoming album Little Death Wishes, arriving at the end of March on Joyful Noise Records. It’s the duo’s eighth album, dating back to their 2004 debut.

photo credit: Kate Russell

You can never really tell

Eclectic Playlist Series 12.01 – January 2025

I fell a little behind in playlist production in 2024; here’s another one emerging a month or so later than intended. But, better late than really really late. And I guess it’s good that I hadn’t been making an overtly holiday-related mix. I did leave in a song associated with Christmas but in this version it feels more winter- than holiday-oriented, so still quite appropriate, if only for the title alone.

Otherwise, hello. Happy new year? We can always dream. Getting right into the music, this month’s mix features 10 artists who have not previously found their way onto an Eclectic Playlist Series playlist, even as we are now in year 12. I do strive to keep the newcomers coming in, while always enjoying the opportunity to mix them in with favorites old and not too old. And it is January, which, according to house rules, means that the library resets, rendering any previously featured artist now available. (The house rule, for the uninitiated, is that no artist may be featured in an EPS mix more than once in a given calendar year. The slate is wiped clean each January and we start again.) Three particular, all-time favorites are making an early appearance; newsletter recipients will know exactly who they are. (Have I ever mentioned that the newsletter version of this comes with bonus notes? Now you know!)

And here’s what you’re in for here in this particularly bleak midwinter:

1. “Earn Enough For Us” – XTC (Skylarking, 1986)
2. “Girl Don’t Make Me Wait” – Bunny Sigler (Let the Good Times Roll & (Feel So Good), 1967)
3. “But Not Kiss” – Faye Webster (Undressed at the Symphony, 2023)
4. “The Outsiders” – R.E.M. (Around the Sun, 2004)
5. “Sweet Little Truth” – Tasmin Archer (Bloom, 1996)
6. “Love is a Stranger” – Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), 1982)
7. “You Probably Get That a Lot” – They Might Be Giants (Join Us, 2011)
8. “Now is the Time” – Norma Tanega (I Don’t Think It Will Hurt If You Smile, 1971)
9. “On The Wrong Side” – Lindsey Buckingham (Lindsey Buckingham, 2021)
10. “Appalachia Waltz” – Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Mark O’Connor (Appalachia Waltz, 1996)
11. “Somebody Hurt You” – A Girl Called Eddy (A Girl Called Eddy, 2004)
12. “Stay” – David Bowie (Station to Station, 1976)
13. “I Belong In Your Arms” – Chairlift (Something, 2012)
14. “I See the Rain” – Marmalade (There’s a Lot of it About, 1968)
15. “Dragonfly” – Samantha Crain (single, 2024)
16. “Days” – Television (Adventure, 1978)
17. “Above the Treeline” – Jane Siberry (Jane Siberry, 1980)
18. “Buildings & Mountains” – The Republic Tigers (Keep Color, 2008)
19. “In the Bleak Midwinter” – Polly Scattergood and Maps (single, 2014)
20. “Better Git In Your Soul” – Davy Graham (Folk, Blues & Beyond, 1965)

Random notes:

* “In the Bleak Midwinter” is a Christmas song, but stripped here of its religious content, the song functions more broadly as a statement of seasonal resolve– we hear ongoingly of the “bleak midwinter,” the electronics provide a blizzardy whoosh, and singer Polly Scattergood, nearly but not entirely overshadowed, holds her ground. Scattergood here works with James Chapman, who does musical business as Maps; the two British musicians also had a one-off go-round as a duo, known as On Dead Waves, releasing one album in 2016. Both have been individually featured on Fingertips, Scattergood in 2013, Chapman even further back, in 2007. Scattergood’s most recent record is 2020’s In This Moment, while Maps released Counter Melodies in 2022.

* It’s possible that “Stay” is my favorite David Bowie song.

* “Appalachia Waltz” is calm and quiet and clearly unlike songs typically featured here. I invite you to slow yourself down to adapt to its pace and vibe. If you do, you may find that the composition works some kind of magic on your state of being, the deliberate, cycling and recycling melodies melting any resistance you might have to this kind of thing– whatever “this kind of thing” actually is. Once you meet the piece where it is you may find that, at 5:47, rather than seeming too long, it ends up seeming not long enough.

* Smoky-voiced singer/songwriter Erin Moran has been recording as A Girl Called Eddy since 2004. The records have been sporadic to say the least: there have been only three full-length albums to date, most recently 2020’s Been Around. An air of bygone songwriting styles and arrangements floats through Moran’s work; her professed love of the great Burt Bacharach audibly informs what she writes and sings. “Somebody Hurt You” comes from her debut self-titled album, released in 2004. Hat tip to George at Between Two Islands for the recommendation.

* As both a singer and guitarist, Lindsey Buckingham has an iconic sound, which was on full display on his most recent album, recorded in 2018 but due to the ongoing drama that forever is and was Buckingham and/or Fleetwood Mac, not released until 2021. The self-titled album got strong reviews but didn’t seem to muster a lot of attention. But, expertly crafted, catchy as hell, and intermittently odd, it’s just about everything a late-’70s/early-’80s Fleetwood Mac fan would want from a solo record of his. The artist’s conflict-filled history aside, this album is well worth a listen.

* Before she became a left-of-center indie pop diva, Caroline Polachek was co-founder of the band Chairlift. Chairlift began as a duo in Boulder, Colorado before moving to Brooklyn, expanding to a trio, and then shrinking back to a duo with the new guy replacing the first guy. (First guy had been Polachek’s boyfriend, then not.) “I Belong In Your Arms” comes from the band’s second album, Something, released in 2012. They would release one more album–Moth, in 2016– before going their separate ways. Polachek’s solo work has twice previously been featured in an EPS mix, in February 2022 and May 2023.

* Davy Graham was a pioneering figure in the history of British folk music. Known for his fingerpicking (also known as fingerstyle) guitar work, Graham introduced sounds from outside the UK (including the Middle East and India) into his arrangements and compositions. He is sometimes credited with inventing the folk guitar instrumental; his song “Anji” (sometimes spelled “Angi”) became something of a model and inspiration for a new generation of guitarists, including Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. You may in fact be familiar with it via Simon & Garfunkel, who put the song on their Sounds of Silence album. “Better Git In Your Soul” is Graham’s arrangement of a Charles Mingus song; it closes his 1965 album Folks, Blues & Beyond.

Kufsat Shimurim – Afor Gashum

Urgent, atmospheric, post-punk-ish

“Kufsat Shimurim” – Afor Gashum

At once urgent and atmospheric, “Kufsat Shimurim” churns post-punk-ishly, augmented by the canny use of random sounds and sound effects. The song takes its time to unfold, as the instrumental palette–guitars, bass, drum, noise–marks out a series of chords presented in a clipped, persistent rhythm. When they start (0:43), lead singer Michal Sapir’s pure, high-ranging vocals, in Hebrew, offer an effective counterbalance to the murk and clangor in the background. At the song’s midway climax, the instrumental break transitions from the legible to the abstract, as various electronic tones interject atonally but compellingly. Even without understanding a word of what’s being said I get a very 2024-ish sense of light struggling for footing in the darkness.

Based in Tel Aviv, Afor Gashum is a trio that self-identifies as a “long-standing and prominent member of Israel’s underground dissident music scene.” After a well-regarded debut cassette in 1989, the band, going their separate ways, did not record another album until 2013, but have been intermittently releasing albums ever since. “Kufsat Shimurim” is a track from their fifth album, Temperature, released last month. According to the band, the song grew out of Sapir’s participation in something called the Noise Agency, which was an artist residency program in Tel Aviv dedicated, broadly, to the art of sound. Sapir was specifically involved in a project that involved sending people out to make “various sound interventions” in public urban spaces. The song itself, says the band, “examines the possibility of a group of sonic agitators to introduce a different voice, foreign and subversive.”

And because I cannot directly understand the song’s lyrics, I will leave you as well with what strikes me as a powerful mission statement for Temperature, via the album’s Bandcamp page:

At a time when the struggle for justice and equality for all feels more urgent than ever, Temperature sets out to explore unstable harmonic territories, possible science-fictional worlds and transformative emotions, in a bid to imagine a different future – more interconnected, responsible, equal and just.

“Two Feet Tall” – Ciao Malz

Bright and slightly woozy

“Two Feet Tall” – Ciao Malz

“Two Feet Tall” is brisk and bright and slightly woozy; between the pleasant warble of the guitars and the off-center time signature shifts, the music here effectively mirrors the uncertain state of mind the song appears to be concerned with. Malz has a feathery voice that sounds natural and matter-of-fact, one of those singing voices that, while definitely singing, sounds like talking. (This is a compliment.) The music hustles along in the verse then gets a little whiplashy with that half-time chorus. The lyrics address a certain sort of failure to communicate, epitomized by the recurring line “But I can never tell, quite tell you stuff.” As this line, repeating later, shortens to “I can never tell,” the connotation is smartly complicated. The overall vibe is friendly and cozy and slightly befuddled. This is also a compliment.

Keep an ear on the dizzy guitars all the way through, but note in particular the short warped solo that happens between 1:08 and 1:19. That’s my kind of detail. Another: the abrupt ending, after a final “I can never tell, quite tell you stuff,” which is one last way that form and content echo one another here.

Ciao Malz is the stage name adopted by the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Malia DelaCruz. “Two Feet Tall” is a track from her cleverly named EP Safe Then Sorry, released earlier this month on the Audio Antihero label. She had previously self-released an EP called To Go in 2020. Check the new one out over on Bandcamp.

photo credit: Alex SK Brown

What are we coming to?

Eclectic Playlist Series 11.08

Honest, I started this playlist last month, intending to upload it in October. But plans changed, and now the post-Election-Day timing renders the opening song all the more haunting. The tracks that follow may or may not relate; you decide.

And I will otherwise spare the hand-wringing; there’s enough of that going around, and I for one aim to keep the deranged manbaby from invading my headspace over the coming weeks, months, (sigh) years. I will just note this: the election of a convicted felon, cheater, and predator who had previously attempted to overthrow an election indicates that there is something terribly wrong with our basic, collective ability to inform, organize, and govern ourselves. And that something has everything to do with unregulated capitalism and its various discontents, most specifically the widespread inclination to prefer revenue to virtue. Things fall apart precisely from there.

Anyway, the music:

1. “When the Devil’s Loose” – A.A. Bondy (When the Devil’s Loose, 2009)
2. “Pinned” – Unknown Venus (single, 2024)
3. “That’s the Way” – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin III, 1970)
4. “You Gotta Be” – Des’ree (I Ain’t Movin’, 1995)
5. “Cry Baby” – The Motels (Careful, 1980)
6. “Lorlir” – Kaki King (Modern Yesterdays, 2020)
7. “Play With Fire” – The Rolling Stones (b-side, 1965)
8. “Salt Eyes” – Middle Kids (New Songs For Old Problems EP, 2019)
9. “Black Star” – Gillian Welch (single, 2005)
10. “The Card Cheat” – The Clash (London Calling, 1979)
11. “Australia” – Manic Street Preachers (Everything Must Go, 1996)
12. “The Witch” – Kaia Kater, featuring Aiofe O’Donovan (Strange Medicine, 2024)
13. “Helplessness Blues” – Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues, 2011)
14. “Bring Back the Love” – The Monitors (Greetings!…We’re the Monitors, 1968)
15. “Half Asleep” – School of Seven Bells (Alpinisms, 2008)
16. “Cornerstone” – Richard X. Heyman (Cornerstone, 1998)
17. “In Between Days” – The Cure (The Head on the Door, 1985)
18. “Afraid of Everyone” – The National (High Violet, 2010)
19. “Swampland” – Alex Winston (Bingo!, 2024)
20. “I’m Going to Tear Your Playhouse Down” – Ann Peebles (single, 1973; I Can’t Stand the Rain, 1974)

Random notes:

* This is very likely the least classic-rock-y playlist on the internet that nevertheless manages to include songs from both Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

* Gillian Welch’s incandescent cover of Radiohead’s “Black Star” is a classic, presenting the song in a totally different setting while retaining and enhancing its poignant essence. I’ve poked around a bit and still can’t determine how she came to record this and why it exists as a standalone single but she did and it does and it moves me every time I hear it. I don’t think I’ve previously featured a live recording on an EPS mix but this only exists in a live version and it’s pretty much perfect as is.

* I am not inherently a fan of instrumental tracks but I can’t help being ongoingly fascinated by what the experimentally-minded guitar virtuoso Kaki King has released over the course of her iconoclastic career. Her 2020 album Modern Yesterdays was recorded just as COVID-19 was identified and lockdowns beginning; everyone who worked on the album came down with it (and recovered, thankfully). The album itself arose as a side effect of a planned live project called Data Not Found, which got scrapped due to the lockdown. While Modern Yesterdays finds King finger-picking in the Fahey/Kottke lineage, the album also expands into evocative electronic soundscapes, incorporating alternative guitar sounds and spacious synthesizer beds created by sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson. “Lorlir” offers King’s brisk finger work on top of electronics so gentle that they seem, somehow, part of the guitar itself. While the song’s title is a mystery–I can find nothing that explains it–other titles on the album bring the listener straight back to that disastrous time (e.g., “Can’t Touch This or That or You or My Face,” “Sanitized, Alone”)–a time which, I might add, seems to have been forgotten by the misled half of the US population who voted to bring back the cruel and inept leader who tragically bungled the country’s response (and pretty much everything else). In this context an instrumental seems about right, as words become inadequate.

* There exists an all but endless trove of R&B tracks from the 1960s that were not hits but one wonders why the heck not. “Bring Back the Love” has the melodic drama, confident vocals, and sure groove of a classic Four Tops tune–perhaps not a complete coincidence, as one of the four songwriters credited here is Brian Holland, the music-oriented Holland of the famed songwriting trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland (his brother Eddie did the lyrics). Those three were responsible for some of the finest songs recorded by the Four Tops–not to mention the Supremes, and Marvin Gaye, and a number of other first-tier Motown acts. This one sounds like a winner, even if it wasn’t.

* Not a lot of information is available online about the singer/songwriter calling herself Unknown Venus, which is probably (given the moniker) how she wants it in this day and age of intrusive, overzealous fandom. (Perhaps there’s a new generation of musicians arising who intend to forge a road back to some semblance of reasonable privacy.) In any case, what she has revealed online: her name is Annie Lancaster, she is based in Los Angeles, plays the harp, and has released five singles to date, most recently “Pinned.” The song is at once dreamy and straightforward, complete with an actual instrumental hook by way of the distorted guitar line that we first hear in the introduction. Who does this anymore? Not enough people, that’s who. Not enough people make this sort of well-constructed, effortlessly melodic music either, but they’re out there and I always aim to find them. Hat tip to the Luna Collective’s weekly, off-the-beaten-path playlist for this one.

* There are a half-dozen or more well-known, widely-regarded songs from the Clash’s seminal London Calling, and then there’s “The Card Cheat.” A loping, keyboard-driven song, launching off a decisive Hal Blaine drumbeat, “The Card Cheat” is pleasingly enigmatic in a Dylanesque sort of way–vague characters speak, specific locations are cited, you sense something important is going on but you can’t put your finger on it. A little burst of horn adds to the mystique along the way, and Joe Strummer’s urgent/friendly voice holds it all together. Perhaps part of my attraction to the song has to do with the fact that it isn’t as well-known as the album’s other highlights, but for one reason or another it remains a big favorite after all these years.

* Richard X. Heyman made an appearance here last year when I pulled the Doughboys’ oddly endearing “Rhoda Mandelbaum” out of obscurity for EPS 10.8. Heyman, the band’s drummer, was a teenager during the Doughboys’ late-’60s, garage rock heyday, but re-emerged as a power pop-oriented singer/songwriter in the late ’80s. He got as far as signing a deal with the prestigious Sire Records label, which released one album of his then dropped him for lack of sales. He had to finance Cornerstone himself, and played most of the instruments on most of the tracks. Since then he’s been releasing albums regularly on his own label, most recently 2022’s 67,000 Miles an Album. The man has a preternatural knack for melodic rock’n’roll, an appealing baritone, and, unhappily, little to no commercial appeal. But maybe he’s okay with that, doing his own thing for his own audience in his own corner of internet. (Some of us are.) Note too that the Doughboys have had a second wind in the 21st century, reviving their garage rock sound–fine if you like that kind of thing but I’ll stick with Heyman’s solo albums, which I aim to investigate further in the days to come.

“Candles” – Sunset Rubdown

Intricate and engaging

“Candles” – Sunset Rubdown

A dash of compositional complexity in an otherwise catchy song is my kind of good time. The Montreal band Sunset Rubdown, fronted by Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug, emerges from a long hiatus to offer this syncopated bit of what sounds like prog pop, which is apparently a (minor) thing. It’s intricate, engaging, and does its business in just over three minutes. Prog pop!

The first thing to notice is the stop-start-y keyboard lines, which both introduce and underpin the song. A heavy bass tone adds deep ground while the flowing, descending melody of the verse, working on top of and against the ascending keyboard figures, gives the song its signature feeling of compelling intricacy. Another feature that pits one characteristic against an oppositional counterpart are the backing vocals provided by keyboardist Camilla Wynne, which add warmth to Krug’s edgier tone. Just as you’re getting the hang of it, and perhaps noticing that there’s no guitar involved, the edifice pretty much breaks down halfway through (1:29) via a short, muddy bridge that makes a veiled reference to the pandemic. Order returns when the keyboard lines re-establish themselves (2:02) and accompany us to the end, with a cheeky few plinks on the piano seeing us out.

Spencer Krug first made his mark on the indie rock scene at the head of the band Wolf Parade, which launched back in 2003, and has been active as recently as 2022. He debuted Sunset Rubdown in 2005, initially as a solo project but soon enough as a band, only to put it to bed by 2009, despite critical acclaim for the three full-band albums. “Candles” was originally recorded in 2020 as a solo effort by Krug, but when the band found themselves reunited–minus a guitarist–they decided to give the song another go and this is what happened. “Candles” is the third track of nine on the band’s new album, Always Happy to Explode, which was released last month. You can listen to it, and buy it, on Bandcamp.

“Condensation” – Sports Team

Sloppy-tight vibe

“Condensation” – Sports Team

So here we’re back to a standard backbeat (see previous review for context)–although maybe not quite. The emphasis is on the two and the four, the very definition of a backbeat, but at the same time the beat also manages, somehow, to swing. I think this has to do with the way lead vocalist Alex Rice toys with the melody, regularly hitting his marks ever so slightly ahead of the actual beat. (Don’t try this at home; it’s harder to do than it seems.) Consider it part of the song’s sloppy-tight vibe–just like the lyrics themselves, in the verse, which spill out in something of a stream and yet, if you pay attention, scan perfectly with the energetic melody.

Somewhat unusually, Sports Team is a six-person band, and everyone is surely doing something here, in service of the crowd-friendly ambiance, although it’s difficult to know who’s doing what when. There are melodic leaps, horn charts, gang-style backing vocals, keyboard glissandos, you name it. (There’s even a reference to “fingertips,” which I can’t help hearing.) Enough is happening such that we only get the verse melody twice, as the song’s busy construction provides us with what sounds like not only a pre-chorus and a chorus but, potentially, either a two-part post-chorus (is that even a thing?) or a post-chorus and a bridge. We can leave the structural analysis to more exacting minds than mine; I’ll take the welcoming beat and agile melodicism and be quite happy.

Based in London, Sports Team was founded in 2016, when five of the six bandmates were studying at Cambridge University. “Condensation” is a track from their forthcoming third album, Boys These Days, slated to arrive in February.