jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3:The Mynabirds (protest song more relevant by the day)

The easy glide of the music, propelled by a melodic, rubbery bass line, disguises the open-ended harmonics on display, as melodies manage to flow and lack resolution at the same time.

“Shouting at the Dark” – The Mynabirds

Laura Burhenn, doing musical business as The Mynabirds since 2010, has emerged as one of indie rock’s fiercest truth-tellers, and this song, although released in August, becomes more relevant by the day.

I’d rather have cuts on my knees
Than blood in my mouth
From biting my tongue
And keeping it down

“Shouting at the Dark” is one of nine songs that Burhenn wrote and recorded in the immediate aftermath of January’s inauguration and the Women’s March that followed. The title alone speaks volumes as the United States has been plunged into an amoral miasma that seems now the inevitable consequence of capitalism finding its most reliable partner in widespread stupidity. Anyone with a heart still beating in his or her chest is shouting at the dark for the better part of the day these days.

The easy glide of the music, propelled by a melodic, rubbery bass line, disguises the open-ended harmonics on display, as melodies manage to flow and lack resolution at the same time. Guitars blend effortlessly with synthesizers, with a human touch consistently reasserting itself into the groove—I like, as an example, that little three-note background tweak we hear at 1:12. I like too the thoughtful, scaled-down guitar solo we get instead of a full catharsis at 2:28. Throughout I have the sense that Burhenn is at once welcoming and challenging us, much as she does in a video that dares to show the singer/songwriter dancing with a troupe of women who neither move nor look like professional dancers but (god forbid!) real-life women.

“Shouting at the Dark” is a track from the album Be Here Now, released in August on Saddle Creek Records. You can listen to some of it and buy it (including on vinyl) via Bandcamp. Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxbG_Ili0NM MP3 via KEXP. This is the Mynabirds’ fourth appearance on Fingertips, dating back to 2010.

Free and legal MP3: Soltero

Swift, slinky, quirky & engaging

“Western Medicine Blues” – Soltero

As slyly engaging and unsettling as a song entitled “Western Medicine Blues” rightfully should be, this one is three minutes and forty-one seconds of quirky goodness. One of my longstanding sweet spots is music that straddles that elusive line between odd and familiar and that’s definitely part of what’s happening here. The oddness comes in a variety of flavors, from Tim Howard’s quavery voice, which commands through its unwillingness to command, to lyrics which weave in and out of comprehensibility, to a brisk, sparse arrangement that welcomes a subtle variety of sounds into the mix, from stray guitar blips and bass runs to piano fills and what might even be a saxophone blurt or two. And, one of my favorite offbeat moments: the stopping point we hear at 1:59 and the offbeat, almost church-like instrumental break that follows.

All of this works, mind you, based on the underlying strength of the song itself. “Western Medicine Blues” takes the classic rock’n’roll backbeat and unpacks it into a swift, slinky skeleton of its usual self. There is a verse, a chorus that you don’t realize is the chorus until it repeats later, and then an ear-grabbing middle section, with lyrics that open incisively (“Everything I’ve ever done/Is out of fear of medicine”) and lead quickly down a series of elliptical pathways, ending with the music and lyrics all but deconstructing. Cue then the church-like instrumental break, then the chorus comes back, and this curious but compelling song either completely wins you over or you’re just not listening.

Soltero is the performing name used by Tim Howard. He’s been featured here three previous times, starting all the way back in 2004, and reappearing in four-year intervals after that. “Western Medicine Blues” is the title track from the new Soltero album, which was released in November. You can listen to the whole thing and purchase it via Bandcamp for whatever price you’d like to pay.

In his non-musical life, Howard is the executive producer and editor of the very smart and appealing podcast Reply All. He is based in Brooklyn.

Free and legal MP3: Tristen

Graceful, well-crafted rock’n’roll

“Glass Jar” – Tristen

From its opening instrumental gestures, “Glass Jar” reveals itself to be exactly the sort of graceful, well-crafted rock’n’roll that I, personally, need right now. No posturing and no processing here. We get instead a straight-ahead blend of organ and guitar, and an infectious groove led by an agile bass line. And then, on top, we get Tristen Gaspadarek’s lovely, decisive voice, singing unflappable melodies that lead adroitly to the chorus’s simple, subtle brilliance:

You put me in a glass jar and tap, tap, tap
To see how I move

These lines work with a musical and lyrical synergy not often seen. First, the lyric presents us with an incisive relationship metaphor, with built-in layers of meaning that I feel I will only detract from if I attempt to unpack. Just think about it for a while, noting how beautifully the music reinforces the lyrical strata, boosted by Jenny Lewis’s backing vocals, and coalescing around the hammering conveyed by the on-the-beat clockwork of the “tap tap tap” line. And then note the music’s refusal to resolve at the end of the lyrical line; it takes that chugging little organ line in the background to bring us to some kind of end point. That organ line in fact has been an understated star of the show since we first heard it answering the lyric “They’re all assassins” in the first verse (0:32)—it’s just the kind of instrumental motif that a good song will volunteer effortlessly.

The Nashville-based Tristen (she uses her first name only) is a singer/songwriter who makes me simultaneously hopeful and despondent about the state of music. Hopeful for the realization that smart, nimble rock’n’roll is yet possible here in this “barbaric slaughterhouse known as humanity” (as per Wes Anderson); despondent for how easily something this good can slip past any kind of widespread recognition. “Glass Jar” has been out for months. It’s been posted by exactly four other blogs on Hype Machine before this post. And this a song enhanced further by the vocal presence of the aforementioned Lewis.

The sad truth is that in this viral-sensation-oriented online culture we’ve aided and abetted collectively for the past 15 years or so, smart and graceful doesn’t tend to generate the clicks. Draw your own conclusions but me I’m fucking fed up with the whole thing. Nothing good comes of mob action, whether in the physical world or the digital one. And nothing attracts a mob quite like viral attractions. And the web has been calibrated to foster viral attractions.

Anyway: “Glass Jar” is a song from Tristen’s album Sneaker Waves, which was released in July. The MP3 is via KEXP. Tristen was previously featured here on Fingertips way back in 2010, for the irresistible song “Baby Drugs.” And if you’re in the holiday mood, here’s a bonus stream, from 2011: Tristen doing a lovely, Spector-esque cover of “Frosty the Snowman.”

Try to understand (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.10 – Nov. 2017)

Perhaps the least cool band that can possibly be imagined to 2017 ears, the British outfit Renaissance had its moment in the ’70s, with a distinctive, quasi-Baroque approach to the progressive rock that ruled the pre-punk day. Once musical fashions changed, rather abruptly I might add, Renaissance, like prog-rock compatriots Yes and Genesis, attempted to re-jigger their approach towards trimmer, catchier exercises. Because the underlying musicianship was so strong for most of these bands, some of this actually worked, and to me, few better than “Northern Lights.” The melodies here are so unfaltering as to seem pre-existing—verse leading unstoppably to chorus, chorus resplendent beyond reason. It became a top-10 hit in the U.K., and got a certain amount of play on the album-rock stations that ruled the American airwaves in those years, but lord knows if any but the band’s stalwart fans remember it. Such treasures await anyone willing to dig through the past 60 years of popular and semi-popular music. Spotify just can’t find them all for you.

What else this month? I guess it’s all over the place, as usual, from a solo jazz pianist to a one-hit wonder, from the Monkees to Lene Lovich, from the sublime Laura Marling to the recently departed, sadly neglected Fats Domino (a weirdly effective segue, I might add). But it’s not all over the place, not really, because the music absorbs it, the music supports it, and the idea that your ears are too tender to find coherence in a playlist that doesn’t stick to one genre or one era, well, that’s a stupid idea fostered by misguided entrepreneurs and the venture capitalists who feed them, and reinforced by cultural forces that even at this late date resist the manifest truth that diversity is our natural state. Enjoy the adventure, and see you for maybe a bit of a holiday thing in a few weeks.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Lullaby of the Leaves” – Art Tatum (Solos, 1940)
“The Mermaid” – Kate Rusby (Life in a Paper Boat, 2016)
“Ride Captain Ride” – Blues Image (Open, 1970)
“There Goes The Fear” – Doves (The Last Broadcast, 2002)
“Northern Lights” – Renaissance (A Song For All Seasons, 1978)
“Grace” – Jeff Buckley (Grace, 1994)
“I Want Something to Remember You By” – Marvin Smith (single, 1967)
“So Here We Are” – Gordi (Clever Disguise EP, 2016)
“Swamp Thing” – Chameleons UK (Strange Times, 1986)
“Stillsane” – Carolyne Mas (Carolyne Mas, 1979)
“The Girl I Knew Somewhere” – The Monkees (b-side, 1967)
“What Can I Say” – Brandi Carlile (Brandi Carlile, 2005)
“New Toy” – Lene Lovich (New Toy EP, 1981)
“Vapour Trail” – Ride (Nowhere, 1990)
“No Sugar Tonight” – The Shirelles (Happy and In Love, 1971)
“Ta Douleur” – Camille (Le Fil, 2005)
“I Believe” – Tim Booth & Angelo Badalamenti (Booth and the Bad Angel, 1996)
“Someone Up There” – Joe Jackson Band (Beat Crazy, 1980)
“Soothing” – Laura Marling (Semper Femina, 2017)
“Let The Four Winds Blow” – Fats Domino (Let The Four Winds Blow, 1961)

Free and legal MP3: Jessica Lea Mayfield

Haunting and resolute

“Sorry Is Gone” – Jessica Lea Mayfield

Powerhouse song from the talented Nashville-based singer/songwriter, and merely one track on a fierce new album. From the opening riff, a casual but purposeful series of descending notes on a fuzzed-out guitar, “Sorry is Gone” has a haunting presence, from its mantra-like chorus to the engrossing, unresolved melodies of the verse. Gliding by in a subtle, velvety cloak of reverb, the song wraps up in a concise 3:21, and if Mayfield didn’t consciously select the launch-like run time, let’s call it serendipity.

It’s painful to review the circumstances of both this song and album—Mayfield’s art here is rooted in a frightful experience of ongoing domestic abuse during her three-year marriage that she has had the courage to speak about publicly. In other places, the album doesn’t flinch from some of the graphic details; the almost light-hearted “Sorry is Gone” presents more of a blanket statement of liberation and self-assertion. Make of this lyrical nugget what you will:

It’s nice to have a guy around
For lifting heavy things and opening jars
Should we really let them in on the beds?
Chain ’em to a little house outside

“Sorry is Gone” is the title track to Mayfield’s fourth solo release, and was produced by John Agnello (Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady, Dinosaur Jr.). MP3 via KEXP. But buy the album, either via ATO Records (where you can also get vinyl or cassette) or Bandcamp (digital only). It’s terrific. Hat tip to Glorious Noise for the video capture.

Free and legal MP3: The Luxembourg Signal

Artful, guitar-oriented dream pop

“Laura Palmer” – The Luxembourg Signal

With a hypnotic groove grounded in organic drumming and a slightly off-kilter chord progression, “Laura Palmer” doesn’t reveal its Twin Peaks connection readily—I for one can’t make heads or tails out of the lyrics—but over the course of its almost six minutes, I do hear allusions to Angelo Badalamenti’s iconic musical landscape. Listen, for instance, to the protracted synth lines that float above the briskly moving foreground. Listen, as well, to the ominous rumble of guitar noise that rears its head down below after the 2:20 mark. And in general there’s a melancholy that weaves itself through the song that surely conjures the at once melodramatic and tragic fate of David Lynch’s mythological victim.

This is one of those fortunate longer songs that creates such a seductive atmosphere as to feel, still, rather too short than too long. To my ears, it’s the artful amalgam of voice and guitar that carries “Laura Palmer” to such an exquisite place. At first the meet-up is mostly between Betsy Moyer’s voice and one finger-picked, jangly-toned electric guitar; even though I have referred to the song’s “groove,” let me note that the feel is all gentle and melodic here, not rhythmic or beat-based. More of a wall of guitar sound emerges as the song develops, but even as the texture grows in density, an overall feeling of delicacy persists. As with Twin Peaks, the song seems to exist in its own time and place. (This isn’t nearly as weird as the TV show, however.)

The Luxembourg Signal is a seven-piece band based in Los Angeles. Various members have their roots in the band Aberdeen in the ’90s, and vocalist Beth Arzy was last seen passing through these parts as a member of Trembling Blue Stars (featured here way the hell back in 2004, for the similarly woozy, name-inspired song “Helen Reddy”). “Laura Palmer” is a song from the album Blue Field, the band’s second, released in October on Shelflife Records. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Wolf Parade (passionate, Bowie-ish L. Cohen tribute)

“Valley Boy” presents with a sonic depth and acumen that belies its pop-song length.

“Valley Boy” – Wolf Parade

The well-regarded Montreal quartet Wolf Parade went on an indefinite hiatus in 2010. This fall they returned, and these were the first words from them we heard:

The radio’s been playing all your songs
Talking about the way you slipped away without a care
Did you know that it was all gonna go wrong?
Did you know that it would all be more than you could bear?

The song was written about a year ago, after two profound, near-simultaneous occurrences: the death of Leonard Cohen and the election of the 45th President of the United States. Wolf Parade has ably if enigmatically linked these two adjacent events in the rolling, quirkily anthemic, Bowie-esque rocker “Valley Boy.” With a theatrical quaver, vocalist Spencer Krug sings words that conceal more than they reveal, but the opening verse, repeated once at the end, blazes with clarity and pathos, providing a foundation of meaning for an otherwise inscrutable song. I have certainly yet to figure out the centrality of the “valley boy” reference, but I’m working at it, because it so clearly means something. The best I can surmise is that the song is wondering if, after death, Cohen has finally been able to release himself from the existential angsts he spent his life pondering. It may not be the writer’s intention but it kind of works, for me.

Musically, “Valley Boy” presents with a sonic depth and acumen that belies its pop-song length. There are dissonant motifs and churning textures; there are also moments of clearing, and some attentive, Television-ish guitar interweavings. Krug has been quoted as saying, intriguingly, that “the band itself is almost a fifth member of the band,” as a way of describing and/or explaining the group’s authoritative sound. I like that.

“Valley Boy” is from the new Wolf Parade album Cry Cry Cry, the band’s first since 2010. It was released early last month on Sub Pop. MP3, again, via KEXP.

Don’t be so mean (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.09 – Oct. 2017)

For a musician who sold so many records and who meant so much to so many people, Tom Petty still in the end managed to be somehow underappreciated. Maybe it was just his being that half-generation removed from the Mt. Rushmorean figures in rock history (Beatles, Dylan, Stones, etc.) that kept him flying somewhat below the radar when talking about rock’s monumental representatives. Or maybe it was the fact that his music, while cumulatively his own, wasn’t really pioneering, it was just incredibly effective. Anyway, Petty now sets a new if unfortunate template: for the musician who has to leave this world for us to take full note of his beloved place in it. I mean, it’s always something like that, but in this case I felt it keenly. Tom Petty was always just out there somewhere, being Tom Petty. And now he’s not. The time of course will come for all of us. Let’s do our best in the meantime to listen: to our own hearts, and to each other’s, and to the knocking of the door, and the growing of the grass. No more time for bullshit. The nightmare will end, the emperor will stand naked, and we won’t be lost if we stand by each other.

Full playlist below the widget.

“When the Time Comes” – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (You’re Gonna Get It!, 1978)
“12 Bellevue” – Kathleen Edwards (Failer, 2003)
“Theme From ‘Danger Man’” – The Red Price Combo (single, 1961)
“Tips For Teens” – Sparks (Whomp That Sucker, 1981)
“When I Was Your Girl” – Alison Moyet (The Minutes, 2013)
“Wanted” – The Cranberries (Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, 1993)
“What Good Am I Without You” – Darrow Fletcher (single, 1967)
“No More” – Julie Doiron (Woke Myself Up, 2006)
“Now That You’ve Gone” – Chicago (Chicago V, 1972)
“Tear The Whole Thing Down” – The Higsons (single, 1982)
“Hear You” – Waxahatchee (Out In The Storm, 2017)
“I Hear You Knockin’” – Smiley Lewis (single, 1955)
“This Heart” – Nanci Griffith (Flyer, 1994)
“Lost” – Frank Ocean (Channel Orange, 2012)
“Nightmare” – Artie Shaw (single, 1938)
“Life In Dark Water” – Al Stewart (Time Passages, 1978)
“Somewhere Sometime” – Roseanne Cash (King’s Record Shop, 1987)
“I Can Hear the Grass Grow” – the Move (single, 1967)
“Villain” – CocoRosie (Tales of a GrassWidow, 2013)
“The Emperor’s New Clothes” – Sinéad O’Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990)

Free and legal MP3: The Roseline (Wilco-like charm)

Launched off a sneaky, descending riff, “How To Be Kind” exploits the underutilized tool of the interrupted verse.

“How To Be Kind” – The Roseline

So immediate is this song’s command that it feels familiar and fresh simultaneously, right from the opening bars.

Launched off a sneaky, descending riff, “How To Be Kind” exploits the underutilized tool of the interrupted verse. Check it out: the first verse begins with an amiable echo of the intro’s riff, and proceeds melodically through a standard four measures. At 0:24-0:25, the vocals resolve the first section and launch directly into what sounds like a repeat trip through the same melody with new lyrics—standard operating procedure in a rock song, or pretty much any song for that matter.

Only here, after two measures, the verse melody is interrupted (0:29) as we transition without fuss into what appears, upon reflection, to be the chorus, although when you first hear it it sounds like an intriguing augmentation to the verse. And here is where “How To Be Kind”‘s low-key Wilco-ness turns up a notch. Front man Colin Halliburton doesn’t sound like Jeff Tweedy per se but projects a charming Tweedy-like aura as the song ambles its way along, all soft piano fills and drumming that finds an edge between gentle and bashy.

In the end, that edge speaks for the song as a whole, as it achieves through vibe and craft an appealing balance between geniality and purpose. It was, again, Wilco that most notably pioneered the use of the language of Americana to transcend the genre. These guys aren’t going that far, necessarily, and there’s no saying that they have to or need to. But I am feeling something of that nonchalant vigor in the air, of music with a depth that belies its laid-back surface.

The Roseline is a five-man band from Kansas. “How To Be Kind” is a song from their fifth album, entitled Blood, which is coming out in this week.

photo credit: Stevie Jackson

Free and legal MP3: Work Drugs (smooth electronics, understated urgency)

All smooth electronics on the surface, the song creates an understated urgency in a few ways.

“Alternative Facts” – Work Drugs

A splendid marriage of vibe and craft, “Alternative Facts” is not the latest release from Philadelphia’s prolific Work Drugs, but is the one that has stuck with me most thoroughly.

All smooth electronics on the surface, the song creates an understated urgency in a few ways. First, there’s the recurrence of a simple, descending, two-note motif: it’s the notes the vocals start on, with the phrase “Get away,” and it’s repeated in four incarnations in the first 16 seconds. The song goes on to offer neither the comfort of an identifiable chorus nor an obvious resolution. Notice too the rhythmic structure: while the emphasis is the “on” beat (one and three) versus the backbeat (two and four), the beat is driven by a syncopated triplet rhythm with an accented second (oneTWOthree), which keeps the ear unbalanced and forward leaning. The place to hear this most clearly is right in the intro, before the vocals start, but that basic syncopated pulse continues throughout.

One last destabilizing point is how the recurring refrain is a repeat of the phrase “I’m not your happy ending,” articulated so the word “ending” is, ironically, all but inaudible—you have to realize it’s there to hear it. And when you do hear it, you may also notice that it is an echo of the repeated two-note motif previously discussed.

I do hope my efforts to bring some analytical concepts to the aural reality of a song don’t end up sounding pedantic. I’m just fascinated, in a lifelong way, by what makes music good, and refuse to believe it’s all a subjective matter, any more than are facts themselves, to bring us back to the subtle theme.

Work Drugs have been here before, featured on Fingertips in both March 2015 and September 2016. They are the duo of Thomas Crystal and Benjamin Louisiana and, as noted, they put out a rather ridiculous amount of music, as you can see if you wander over to their Bandcamp page. Additionally, if you head to SoundCloud page, you’ll find a nice assortment of their songs available for free download.

Thanks to the band for the MP3.