jeremyfingertips

An endlessly upward world (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.08 – Sept. 2017)

Rules are not necessarily “meant to be broken,” as the odd saying goes; but, sometimes, a rule might be meaningfully circumvented. And so this month, I give you two songs from one artist as we open and close with Steely Dan, in honor of the recently departed Walter Becker. A hat tip along the way to obscure soul songs resuscitated by the internet, to the unhinged and brilliant “Twin Peaks” revival, and to a handful of well-known artists who wandered into the list this month with some lesser-known material. I should note that the Skip Drake song is as of yet unplaceable chronologically–it surely sounds like the ’60s but nowhere can I find confirmation. What year is this, indeed?

Full playlist below the widget.

“Kid Charlemagne” – Steely Dan (The Royal Scam, 1976)
“Nvr Surrender” – Rumble (Rumble ep.1, 2015)
“Wrapped Around Your Finger” – Skip Drake (Eccentric Soul: The Cash Label, 2014; originally 196_?)
“Laura” – Billy Joel (The Nylon Curtain, 1982)
“Hot Blood” – Lucinda Williams (Sweet Old World, 1992)
“Maybe After He’s Gone” – The Zombies (Odessey and Oracle, 1968)
“Blood and Chalk” – EMA (Exile in the Outer Ring, 2017)
“Slow Motion” – Blondie (Eat to the Beat, 1979)
“Felicidade” – Astrud Gilberto (Look to the Rainbow, 1966)
“Understanding Jane” – The Icicle Works (If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy, Sing His Song, 1986)
“I Have Laid in the Darkness of Doubt” – Mazes (Mazes, 2009)
“Water Song” – Hot Tuna (Burgers, 1972)
“Shiny” – The Decemberists (Five Songs EP, 2003)
“Falling” – Julee Cruise (Floating Into The Night, 1990)
“Can’t Live Without Your Love” – Janelle Monáe (The Electric Lady, 2013)
“L’Accord Parfait” – Autour de Lucie (L’Échappée belle, 1994)
“Southern Girls” – Cheap Trick (In Color, 1977)
“You Got Me” – The Roots (Things Fall Apart, 2004)
“The Hymn of Acxiom” – Vienna Teng (Aims, 2013)
“Third World Man” – Steely Dan (Gaucho, 1980)

Free and legal MP3: Alvvays (tuneful, attentive, irresistible)

Some alchemical mixture of voice, texture, and melody puts me in my happy place when I hear them.

“In Undertow” – Alvvays

All music fans, I’m pretty sure, have certain sounds that are so irresistible to them that bands who manage to hit that aural sweet spot have a more or less limitless appeal—just about anything they record sounds terrific. The Toronto-based quartet Alvvays (pronounced “Always”) is one of those bands for me. Some alchemical mixture of voice, texture, and melody puts me in my happy place when I hear them.

It all begins with Molly Rankin’s voice, with its enchanting blend of purity and depth, her honeyed tones retouched by the flawless application of reverb. Add in the band’s knack for finding contemporary homes for nostalgic melodies and I am smitten. Beyond these immediate characteristics, the band delivers likewise at a deeper level. Check out the juxtaposition of the staccato bass line with the ongoing wash of guitar noise, the bass guiding the ear through the indeterminate din that floats just beyond the surface prettiness; “ice cream truck jangle collides with prismatic noise pop” is how the band describes the general ambiance and sure, why not.

Then we have Alvvays’ ongoing attentiveness to the words employed within their sonic environment of choice. Despite the reverb and the noise, Rankin is rarely mixed beyond comprehension, which allows us to appreciate her heedful language. Note the way the words in the second part of the second verse mirror the words in the same position in the first verse, but altered into slant rhymes: “metaphorically” for “rhetorically,” “psychology” for “astrology,” “mood” for “moon.” Another sign of attention to language is the title selection—rather than rely on the most repeated phrase, which would be “no turning back,” the band names the song after a phrase heard (just barely) once. And speaking of “no turning back,” one of the few places in which Rankin muffles her words is here. With its delivery broken this way—“No turning/There’s no turning/There’s no turning back”—the phrase, at first, to my ears, sounded like “There’s no teddy bears.” Whether she did this on purpose or not, and I suspect she did, it adds poignancy to a tale of a love that’s disappeared.

Alvvays was previously featured on Fingertips in November 2014, some months after their debut release. The band’s second album, Antisocialites, comes out in early September on Polyvinyl Records. You can check out one other song from the new album, and purhase it, on Bandcamp. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: Juana Molina (spritely, rhythmic parade of sound)

Leave it to the mistress of mysteriously appealing electro-acoustic experimentation to find such a lovely, hypnotic groove in 7/4 time.

“Cosoco” – Juana Molina

The world would be a plainer, paler place without odd time signatures. Leave it to the mistress of mysteriously appealing electro-acoustic experimentation to find such a lovely, hypnotic groove in 7/4 time. Propelled by some of the most softly satisfying percussive sounds I have ever heard, “Cosoco” is a sprightly off-kilter dance that blossoms, at 1:40, into an even tighter, richer, more intriguing parade of sound and rhythm, led by Molina’s charming, multi-tracked vocals. The effect is of something at once complex and free-spirited, intricately woven and yet easy to follow. On the one hand, we get a “solo” from the sort of loopy electronic sound that is her ongoing signature (2:20) (even as each song seems to present us with a different variation). But then, straight away, arrives a short, plump bass solo (2:42), pretty much its ambient opposite. The bass stays front and center through the next section of the song before steering us into one more iteration of our main musical setting.

Then, at around 3:48, a magical mystical coda begins, with the entrance of a swirly, wind-like effect that emerges in tandem with the drumming that now sounds more and more organic. “Cosoco”‘s closing minute is as engaging as it is amorphous: there are no particular melodies, or even any chord progressions, just the ever-energetic pulse of the 7/4 rhythmic riff that has provided us with the song’s foundational characteristic from beginning to end, accompanied by the curious synthetic squiggles that Molina manages to rope into pop coherence.

Once upon a time a sitcom star in Argentina, Molina, long ensconced on the Fingertips “Most Often Featured” list, has been written about here three previous times: in June 2003, May 2006, and September 2008.

“Cosoco” can be found on Halo, Molina’s seventh album, released in May on Crammed Discs. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks again to KEXP for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Shout Out Louds

Satisfying, full-bodied indie rock

“Oh Oh” – Shout Out Louds

A sparkling nugget of melodic, full-bodied rock’n’roll, 2017 style, “Oh Oh” is a good example of a song in which my ear is caught more by a “moment” than an all-out hook. For me, it happens in the pre-chorus, first heard at 0:47. After the long descending melody of the verse, the music here feels inordinately satisfying, an effect boosted by lyrics that shine with both denotation and connotation: front man Adam Olenius sings “Don’t say that it’s over/’Cause nothing ever is,” and it pops with both energy and poignancy in this setting.

As for actual hooks, “Oh Oh” has them, but they’re sneaky. We actually get the main one in the introduction—it’s the guitar riff/”Oh oh” combination heard at 0:15—but, interestingly, it doesn’t come across as a hook right there; the guitars are subtle, deeper down in the mix than your classic guitar riffs tend to be. This hook requires context, it seems. When the riff returns (1:03), it feels closer to completion. When it finally gets reassembled, with the “Oh oh”s on top (1:57), well what do you know? I think we have ourselves a hook.

All that is semantic, of course: hooks, moments, riffs, whatever—I’m just trying as ever to put words onto what is going on in a piece of music, trying to translate the listening experience into writing. Dancing about architecture, in other words. As usual.

From Stockholm, Shout Out Louds have been together since 2001. The band was featured previously on Fingertips in 2009, for the dramatic, slow-building “Walls.” “Oh Oh” is the first single from the band’s upcoming album Ease My Mind, their fifth, due out on Merge Records in September. ~~MP3, one more time, via KEXP.~~

Dancing us from darkest night (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.07 – Aug. 2017)

Veal was a Canadian band that hung around off and on for nearly 10 years as the ’90s bled into the 21st century. “Judy Garland” comes from their third and final album, and is as accidentally great a song as I can think of, dropped in the middle of an obscure album by a forgotten band. Front man Luke Doucet remains active in Canada as a solo musician. “Judy Garland” was an early Fingertips find and all these years later I love this song to pieces.

“Kellyanne” is sadly self-explanatory. Juliana Hatfield sounds like an old friend calling out of the blue.

What a beautiful and unexpected little song is “I Fall Down,” still.

“Shilo” is way better than a song about an imaginary friend should be as well as better than I tend to think a Neil Diamond song is going to be (but I’m often wrong about that; he had some serious chops back in the day).

I could feature the Kinks every month and not run out of amazing songs; it’s only my self-imposed “no artist more than once a year” rule that keeps them away. We’ll get back to them in 2018, provided we’re all still around.

And Kirsty MacColl. Sigh.

A couple of outside credits this month. “Girls Girls Girls” came to my attention via the amazing Emma on the ever-engaging Said the Gramophone blog. It comes from a 2008 compilation of recordings put together around 1967 in East St. Louis by the veteran musician and producer Allen Merry, who at that point was working with young men at a community center, aiming to keep them off the streets and out of gangs. You can read more about the project, and listen to the whole album, here.

Secondly, the wonderful Mexican singer/songwriter Carla Morrison floated into my inbox via “Off Your Radar,” a newsletter featuring one weekly album recommendation, accompanied by a dozen or so reviews of that one album from their stable of music writers. OYR had recently recommended Morrison’s 2012 album Déjenme Llorar, which led me to dive into her catalog. She’s a terrific singer and an engaging personality; I’m happy to know of her work and will continue to familiarize myself with her catalog in the coming weeks.

And yes Kate Bush’s cover of “Sexual Healing” is odd in a number of ways but something about it charms me and moves me as it develops. Maybe when all is said and done it’s nothing more or less than the ineffable profundity of her singing voice. Her version of Marvin Gaye’s final classic was originally recorded in 1994 and intended for an album by the Irish musician Davey Spillane (whose uillean pipes are featured throughout), but it ultimately was left off. Bush finally released it as a b-side to “King of the Mountain,” the first and only single from her 2005 double-album Aerial.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Judy Garland” – Veal (The Embattled Hearts, 2003)
“Kellyanne” – Juliana Hatfield (Pussycat, 2017)
“Tainted Love” – Gloria Jones (single, 1964)
“Novocaine for the Soul” – Eels (Beautiful Freak, 1996)
“Wives and Lovers” – Cécile McLorin Salvant (For One to Love, 2015)
“I Fall Down” – U2 (October, 1981)
“Back to Black” – Amy Winehouse (Back to Black, 2007)
“Second Hand Store” – Joe Walsh (But Seriously, Folks…, 1978)
“Girls Girls Girls” – The Young Disciples Co. (single, 1967?)
“You Don’t Know What You’ve Got” – Joan Jett & The Blackhearts (Bad Reputation, 1981)
“H>A>K” – Jane Weaver (Modern Kosmology, 2017)
“Another Girl, Another Planet” – The Only Ones (The Only Ones, 1978)
“Shilo” – Neil Diamond (Just For You, 1967)
“All I Ever Wanted” – Kirsty MacColl (Electric Landlady, 1991)
“Nutty” – Thelonious Monk Quartet (Misterioso, 1958)
“Un Beso” – Carla Morrison (Amor Supremo, 2015)
“Strangers” – The Kinks (Lola Vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, 1970)
“Beating of Hearts” – XTC (Mummer, 1983)
“Hello” – Poe (Hello, 1995)
“Sexual Healing” – Kate Bush (b-side, 2005)

Free and legal MP3: CocoRosie (featuring Anonhi)

Elusive, ear-catching protest song

“Smoke ‘Em Out” – CocoRosie (featuring Anonhi)

“Smoke ‘Em Out,” when released back in January, was positioned as a protest song, timed as it was to coincide with the massive Women’s March on Washington, the day after the U.S. president was elected. And you can surely sense righteous and rightful anger and frustration here. But as protest songs go, this one is elusive at best. The lyrics, as often with CocoRosie songs, scan as randomly associated words (but scan they do; the Casady sisters are masters of rhythmic authenticity), and together add up to little more than an intriguing mystery. But hell if they say this is a protest song, I’m all in. We need as many of them as we can muster.

We also need as many talented and idiosyncratic musicians as Bianca and Sierra Casady as we can encourage. Doing musical business as CocoRosie since 2004, the sisters have consistently trafficked in a quirky but captivating sound that blends a dizzying variety of musical elements together into something unusually gripping. While pundits like to point out their proclivity at creating an unusual mix of the lo-fi and the tightly produced, the amalgam of theirs I find personally gratifying is their simultaneous commitment to eccentricity and accessibility. This strikes me as a rare treat in today’s musical landscape, which has tended to polarize towards the almost fascistically formulaic on the one hand and the blatantly outre on the other.

Glitchy percussion, child-like synth lines, appealing chord washes, “Smoke ‘Em Out” has all of that just in the ear-catching introduction. When the lyrics start, the song incorporates Bianca’s rap-like delivery into a beautifully sculpted aural environment. The Casadys’ long-time friend Anonhi brings her distinctive voice to the impressively succinct chorus, but I think it’s actually Bianca’s lines after Anonhi sings (first heard at 1:42) that seals this song’s triumph. Her singing voice is here processed in an old-school, megaphonic way, and while mimicking the precision of her rapped verses in her first sung line, in the second line she holds back and releases her words exquisitely behind the beat; that this lyric coincides with a sneaky musical resolution has a lot to do with how satisfying the song feels.

Based in France, CocoRosie has been featured on Fingertips twice previously: in March 2007 and in April 2010. Longtime friends with Anonhi, the sisters previously worked with her on 2013’s Tales of a Grass Widow. Their most recent album was 2015’s Heartache City. “Smoke ‘Em Out” is so far a single only. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: The Rebel Light (anthemic summery goodness)

This a great, must-hear summer song, now that we’re smack in the middle of summer here in the northern hemisphere.

“Where Did All The Love Go” – The Rebel Light

This a great, must-hear summer song, now that we’re smack in the middle of summer here in the northern hemisphere. The minor detail is that this song came out last summer—it fell through the cracks here, as music often does, due the unprecedented volume of recorded musical activity that entreats us in the 2010s. Apologies up front to the fine fellows of The Rebel Light, who have been dolling out delightful indie rock goodness since 2013, and were previously featured here in October 2014.

“Where Did All The Love Go” is upbeat in a languid way, has happy string riffs, is easy to sing along with, and is all about love: perfect summer song, yes? What seals the deal is that the song is not lyrically cheerful, but shot through with wistful ruminations. What is a summer song without a shot of wistfulness? Barely a summer song at all, in my book.

I like how effortlessly this trio call forth bygone musical times without caving in to pure nostalgia. There is nothing frozen here as they call forth a’70s-in-California sound; instead, they tap into the heart of anthemic pop music that knows no time or space (although has been too often kicked to the curb since the mid-’00s or so). To accentuate the song’s sing-along quality, the band gives us two different versions, lyrically, of the same chorus, and it works because they have landed on a classic-sounding melody here, leaking all sorts of references out its sides but asserting itself as its own new thing right here and now.

“Where Did All The Love Go” is a track from the band’s most recent effort, a five-song EP entitled, appropriately enough, A Hundred Summer Days, released last August on Dualtone Records. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3:Coincidence Bizarre (sleek, sonorous hip-hop)

A concise and atmospheric number from an anonymous Los Angelese-based ensemble.

“Invisible Man” – Coincidence Bizarre

“Invisible Man” is a concise and atmospheric number from a group or ensemble or collective that calls itself Coincidence Bizarre. Outside of their location in Los Angeles, the folks behind this effort are keeping themselves purposefully hidden. Meaning, I can’t even paper over my congenital lack of hip-hop knowledge with information about the artist. With an upfront understanding that my musical affinities are rooted in melody and therefore my ears have always felt at sea in the hip-hop world, I find myself engaged by the sleek and sonorous “Invisible Man.”

Why? Not exactly sure. I like the gentle texture of its careful construction, the way there is always something of aural interest happening but without melodrama or turgidity. I like the wit on display. Even just the way it starts, with something resembling a jazz guitar noodle, gives me a good feeling. As a bonus, my ear notes not one but two hooks, one with lyrics (the “Skip along, Sam” part) and one instrumental (the little run on that same guitar, immediately following [e.g., 0:42]). And I do not at all underestimate the simple power of an appealing voice in this context. For better or worse (and it’s probably an age thing), the aural character of what strikes me as a typical rapper’s voice has been a longstanding turn-off for me. The sound to my ear is bratty and self-involved. (Just for context, I didn’t much like the bratty and self-involved vocal character of someone like Johnny Rotten either.) The rapper here, whoever he is, conveys depth and spirit, humanity and complexity. I want to listen to him, and he layers his voice within a cunning amalgam of samples, effects, and surprises. Don’t miss the eerie insertion of something choral-sounding in the mix (around 1:56) as the song trips along to its conclusion.

“Invisible Man” is the A side of a single released in mid-May. It is the only Coincidence Bizarre release to date.

Quite clearly I don’t have a clue (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.06 – June 2017)

A lot of big names slipped into this month’s playlist. It’s a summertime thing. Speaking of which, I find “Girls In Their Summer Clothes” to be as majestic and beautiful a song as Bruce Springsteen has ever written, and in my mind the one absolute classic he’s recorded in the 30 some-odd years that have passed since Born in the USA made him a stadium star. (Note: while I appreciate it emotionally, I found The Rising kind of ponderous and self-derivative musically speaking.) It came out on the 2007’s generally underrated Magic album and is a must-have on any summer playlist; if you happen to have never heard it before, you’re welcome.

One you almost certainly have not heard before is the odd little Patti LaSalle nugget, “How Many Times,” which was made available this month on an intriguing compilation that just came out last week called Mid-Century Sounds: Deep Cuts From the Desert, via Fervor Records. Given that I am a sucker for anything that says either “mid-century” or “deep cuts,” I could not pass this one by. The overall quality is erratic but the story, which you can read about here, is interesting, and there are a few goodies buried in here for those willing to dig into the hot desert sand.

And talk about buried goodies, how awesome is “I Stand Accused (Of Loving You),” from the The Glories, a criminally overlooked trio fronted by Frances Yvonne (Frankie) Gearing? This was the only song of theirs to crack the Billboard charts (for a mere two weeks); their other seven singles disappeared without a trace, at least until Goldenlane Records put them all out on a CD called The Glories: Soul Legend, in 2011. Many of them, now, sound good enough to have been hits, and have been embraced by Northern Soul fans, this one perhaps most fondly of all. But, sheesh, The Glories have slipped through the internet’s cracks for sure—they don’t even have a Wikipedia page, probably because there’s no reliable source material otherwise online.

Meanwhile, I finally found a place for Todd Rundgren on one of these playlists, and “Long Flowing Robe” is a terrific example of a lead track that was not a single, the kind of thing FM radio loved to play back in the day (there were no notable hit singles from Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren; maybe because they never released this one?). And let’s not overlook the glory that is Dean Friedman’s “Ariel,” which was in fact something of a hit in 1977, coming in at number 87 for the year on the American Top 40 year-end chart. Although long since faded from the mainstream scene in the U.S., Friedman has all these years been recording and touring, and released the album 12 Songs just last month, as luck would have it. Take that as a reminder that luck does, sometimes, against the odds, have it.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Long Flowing Robe” – Todd Rundgren (Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren, 1971)
“Almost” – Sarah Harmer (All Of Our Names, 2004)
“Strange Relationship” – Prince (Sign O’ the Times, 1988)
“Contessa” – Mice Parade (Candela, 2012)
“Tell Me When the Whistle Blows” – Elton John (Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, 1975)
“Maricela” – Los Lobos (Colossal Head, 1996)
“Thrasher” – Casey Dienel (Imitation of a Woman to Love, 2017)
“I Stand Accused (Of Loving You)” – The Glories (single, 1967)
“London Rain (Nothing Heals Me Like You Do)” – Heather Nova (Siren, 1998)
“Gates of Steel” – Devo (Freedom of Choice, 1980)
“Ariel” – Dean Friedman (Dean Friedman, 1977)
“Start a Little Late” – Annie Hayden (The Rub, 2001)
“Everything Now” – Arcade Fire (pre-release, Everything Now, 2017)
“How Many Times” – Patti LaSalle (single, 1960)
“Fast Buck Freddie” – Jefferson Starship (Red Octopus, 1975)
“Black Sails in the Sunset” – Elvis Costello (originally unreleased, 1980)
“Couldn’t Love You More” – Sade (Love Deluxe, 1992)
“Girls In Their Summer Clothes” – Bruce Springsteen (Magic, 2007)
“The Magic Touch” – Melba Moore (single, 1966)
“Over There” – The Connells (Boylan Heights, 1987)

Free and legal MP3:The Cairo Gang (knotty, charming pop rock)

Funneling sounds and melodies born in the power pop origin years of 1967 through 1974, “Real Enough to Believe” combines Byrdsian jangle and Beatlesque chords with the melancholy, inside-out tunefulness of Big Star.

“Real Enough to Believe” – The Cairo Gang

Emmett Kelly, the L.A.-based singer/songwriter doing musical business as The Cairo Gang, has a preternatural knack for pop rock at once knotty and charming. Funneling sounds and melodies born in the power pop origin years of 1967 through 1974, “Real Enough to Believe” combines Byrdsian jangle and Beatlesque chords (um: 2:18!) with the melancholy, inside-out tunefulness of Big Star.

Interestingly, Kelly combines these archetypally ear-friendly elements into a song that is neither power pop nor catchy in any obvious way—the pace is a bit too relaxed, the verse melody too spread out, and the chorus too subtle, what with its 10/4 time signature. Full of lovely melodic turns but resisting efforts to sing along, “Real Enough to Believe” feels, somehow, like the embodiment of thought, and not just because the lyrics are generally difficult to understand. Many songs are inscrutable lyrically but retain a sense of narrative or action. This one feels to be floating in the realm of reverie in such a way as to be somehow commenting on the process of thinking itself. Maybe I’m being influenced, or misled, by a handful of phrases that do make themselves heard—“thinking only of the time”; “it’s too far off to be real enough to believe”; “with some people it’s plain to see”—but I sense this as an unusually introspective song. To my ears, the music, with its gentle knobs and declarative intervals, reflects the rumination in a nuanced and gratifying way.

“Real Enough to Believe” is a track from The Cairo Gang’s second album, Untouchable, released in March. You can buy the album via Bandcamp. The Cairo Gang was previously featured on Fingertips for the song “Ice Fishing,” one of my favorites of 2015. The MP3 comes, as will two others this time around, from the generous gang at KEXP.