jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Ride (return of notable ’90s outfit)

A keen bit of melodic, reverb-y rock’n’roll from a reunited shoegaze pioneer.

“Charm Assault” – Ride

Once the youthful leaders of Britain’s burgeoning early-’90s shoegaze movement, the band Ride went dark in 1996, thanks to compounding acrimony between their two guitarist/vocalists, Andy Bell and Mark Gardener. But with age, often, comes perspective; in 2014, the band began playing together again. And now arrives the first recorded material from Ride in 21 years.

“Charm Assault” is a keen bit of melodic, reverb-y rock’n’roll, the noise inherent to Ride’s signature sound hinting at itself around the edges, but adroitly restrained. The verses are guided by a chiming, flowing guitar line; the chorus, punctuated by time-signature shifts, acquires a psychedelic vibe. At 2:37 we veer into an extended if unsettled break—50 seconds of subdued, droning guitar over an impatient high-hat that hadn’t otherwise made its presence known.

The song is also an unexpectedly pointed piece of political protest. The band is addressing the noxious pandering that led to Brexit but may as well be talking on behalf of caring and tolerant people the world over:

Your charm assault
Has scarred the world
It looks so ugly
As your lies begin to unfurl

That’s a somewhat optimistic take, of course; so far in this country, anyway, the people taken in by the “charm assault” (which hasn’t really been too charming) seem incapable of seeing either ugliness or lies when it comes to the words and behaviors exhibited by their preferred leader. But there has been much unfurling in any case.

“Charm Assault” is from the forthcoming album Weather Diaries, the band’s fifth, due out in June. MP3 courtesy of KEXP.

The part that isn’t thinking (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.04 – April 2017)

A certain number of big names and kinda-big names made their way onto this month’s list, and yet it still feels quirky and off-center to me somehow. And just so it’s clear: I have nothing against big, “popular” names; I just feel they should arrive in sprinkles rather than floods. I would have little interest in listening to a playlist that was all Led Zeppelin but getting one well-chosen Led Zep song in a multi-decade mix? That’s what I’m here for. You too?

And I have to say, while I obviously have no objective perspective at all here, this playlist makes me particularly happy in some elusive way. A few of the segues are inadvertently awesome (Snider to Radiohead, Ace Spectrum to Poliça, to name two), and it always seems to be a bit special when They Might Be Giants show up, especially the disconcertingly metaphysical “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go,” a perennial personal favorite.

But what do I know? I keep making these very humanly curated lists, and if a few of you kind folks show up and listen, I’m happy. In some elusive way.

Other random notes:

* “The Lotus Eaters”: As gorgeous and effecting an amalgam of contemporary classical and non-classical music as I have heard.

* “Pyramid Song”: Forget all the internet explanations as to this song’s time signature. My ears tell me there is precisely no time signature at all for this song, which adds to its subtle miraculousness.

* “Don’t Send Nobody Else”: The half a hit from the one-half-hit wonder Ace Spectrum, this song was written by Ashford and Simpson, for those keeping score at home. Never all that popular during their recorded lifespan (1974-1976), Ace Spectrum have had a second life in the world of Northern Soul, which has rescued untold numbers of great songs from semi- and/or complete obscurity.

* “Troubles Won’t Stay”: The great Sam Phillips remains great.

* “St Agnes and the Burning Train”: This is a Sting song, so allow me briefly to defend Sting against his many and varied detractors. Whatever his personal and interpersonal flaws might (or might not) be, there is a talented musician and composer at least sometimes alive in this man. I think he has often let lazy Sting do the work but when he’s on his game he can be brilliant. Thanks to Radio Paradise for alerting me to this particular version, which isn’t that different from the original, but the strings add some oomph, and the cover version will allow me to offer up the Stingster himself later in the year here if I so choose.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Quick Painless and Easy” – Ivy (Apartment Life, 1997)
“I Surrender” – Eddie Holman (b-side, 1969)
“Both Ends Burning” – Roxy Music (Siren, 1975)
“She Turns to Flowers” – The Salvation Army (The Salvation Army, 1982)
“The Lotus Eaters” – Sarah Kirkland Snider feat. Shara Worden (Penelope, 2010)
“Pyramid Song” – Radiohead (Amnesiac, 2001)
“La Dolce Vita” – Sparks (No. 1 in Heaven, 1979)
“Speed the Collapse” – Metric (Synthetica, 2012)
“See a Little Light” – Bob Mould (Workbook, 1989)
“Amanhã” – Luciana Souza (Brazilian Duos, 2002)
“Don’t Send Nobody Else” – Ace Spectrum (Inner Spectrum, 1974)
“Lime Habit” – Poliça (United Crushers, 2016)
“Where Your Eyes Don’t Go” – They Might Be Giants (Lincoln, 1988)
“Hard Lesson” – Suddenly, Tammy! (We Get There When We Do, 1995)
“I Got Love” – Viola Wills (single, 1966)
“All These Things That I’ve Done” – The Killers (Hot Fuss, 2004)
“Troubles Won’t Stay” – Sam Phillips (Human Contact is Never Easy EP, 2016)
“St Agnes and the Burning Train” – Soweto String Quartet (Zebra Crossing, 1994)
“D’yer Mak’er” – Led Zeppelin (Houses of the Holy, 1973)
“Tres Cosas” – Juana Molina (Tres Cosas, 2004)

Free and legal MP3: Toma (ear-grabbing, integrative 21st c rock’n’roll)

When will the critics understand that rock’n’roll was never about being original; it’s about being good. “Going Nowhere” is very good.

“Going Nowhere” – Toma

For a while there in the late ’90s and early ’00s, until it more or less died as far as the hipsters are concerned, rock’n’roll was increasingly taken to task for not offering up anything “new” or “original,” as if this most derivative of musical genres was ever truly about being new or original. Lazy critics yawning that this band or that wasn’t doing anything you hadn’t heard before was always beside the point. Good rock’n’roll was never really about being new or original; it was about being good. Much of rock’s goodness has always been grounded in visceral impact: does a song grab you? Does it work precisely because you don’t need to analyze it or philosophize about it or fit it into this or that intellectual construct? If at the same time a rock song can integrate its influences in ear-catching ways, then, well, we’re moving beyond good to great.

And so here comes the Austin quartet Toma, doing precisely this: taking a variety existing aural elements, integrating them in engaging ways, and crafting a song that grabs the ear quite firmly. I might even partially contradict what I just said and note that a band can in fact sound if not original then at least semi-original if it manages to combine its influences in new-seeming ways—although this point is always going to be difficult to demonstrate conclusively. But with “Going Nowhere,” my ear hears a bracing amalgam of ’80s synth pop, up-to-date production, and classic rock’n’roll (“it’s got a backbeat, you can’t lose it”). And the synth pop vibe is really more a feel than a particular sound, as you will no doubt notice that “Going Nowhere” ends up being anchored in solid guitar lines.

As for this so-called “up-to-date production,” I’m referring both to the vocal effects and the background electronics the band works into the fabric of the presentation without unduly disrupting things. There is no particular way to describe this with any specificity, but it could be the thing that makes me happiest about “Going Nowhere.” The ability to use tools as tools rather than gimmicks is one that just might organically arise here in the later ’10s, as a kind of natural corrective to the overkill with which digital tools have been used by the mainstream music industry. Or, it might not. Lord knows I’ve been wrong before.

“Going Nowhere” is a song from the band’s debut album, Aroma, which is due out this week. MP3 via Magnet Magazine

Free and legal MP3: Echo Ladies

Muddy, soaring Swedish shoegaze

“Nothing Ever Lasts” – Echo Ladies

“Nothing Ever Lasts” starts cranked to 10 (or maybe 11), equal parts commotion and grace, and never lets up. I like how much the song accomplishes, dynamically, despite the sonic onslaught. In and around the foundational wall of sound, there is freight-train percussion below, a minimal, anthemic synth line above, and Matilda Bogren’s buried but endearing vocals.

Even with her voice mixed down, as the genre usually demands, Bogren steals the show for me, with a few astute moves. First, note the unexpected deviation in the verse—the way the she finishes the first two lyrical lines with an unresolved upturn (first heard around 0:24). In my experience, this kind of shoegaze or dream pop or whatever we might call it is happy enough enshrouding a sing-song-y melody in mud and volume, pushing aside the need for any further songwriting tricks. So that caught my attention. And check out, too, how crisply she manages to enunciate the last syllables of each line in the verse, despite how muffled the words. I may be easily amused but that’s kind of fun.

And then, one more subtle device arrives, first at 0:46: the repeated use of a wordless vocal tag (that is, the “ah-ah-ahh/oh-oh-ohh” part). This, again, strikes me as unusual for the genre. Normally, when a band opts for noise on top, melody below, there are actual words it seems to want you to strain to hear, or not hear. I find the “ah-ah-ahh”s in this context not only charming but a little cheeky.

Echo Ladies is a trio from Malmö. “Nothing Ever Lasts” appears to be their second single, and arrived as a 7-inch last week via the Swedish label Hybris. Thanks to indefatigable Powerpopulist blog for the head’s up.

photo credit: Ebba Ågren

Free and legal MP3: Hideout(enticing & relentless)

“See You Around” moves me in some mysterious way. Every time I re-listen, I seem initially to forget anew what it was I saw in it, only to remember again as the song takes off.

“See You Around” – Hideout

An odd, enticing chugger of a song, “See You Around” has the relentlessness of a run-on sentence, packing a lot of action into a short amount of time.

We begin with a bass solo, which doubles as an introduction; when the singing starts, at 0:12, the first line is “Words keep pouring from your mouth”—and from that point, front man Gabriel Rodriguez sings without pause until 1:20. There don’t seem to be verses, and there’s no apparent chorus, just an edgy flow of words that hook you in through a few well-placed harmonic shifts (0:38, for one; 0:55 another). After Rodriguez finally takes a break, he starts up again with the more accurate observation “Words keep pouring from my mouth” (emphasis mine).

“See You Around” moves me in some mysterious way. Every time I re-listen, I seem initially to forget anew what it was I saw in it, only to remember again as the song takes off, and in particular when it arrives at the first shifting point, from 0:38 to 0:40. The song in that moment acquires some ineffable emotional capital that proceeds to grow as it careens to its early finish.

Rodriguez is a Manhattan-based musician who has played for years in the live version of the band Cults. He released his first album as Hideout in 2014. “See You Around” is from the new Hideout LP, So Many Hoops/So Little Time, released in February on Small Plates. “See You Around” is not the single, or featured track, but it’s the one that caught my ear. You too can listen to the whole album, and buy it, via Bandcamp.

With incredible mistakes

Eclectic Playlist Series 4.03 – March 2017

The Sara Bareilles composition, “Seriously,” written at the behest of the formidable public radio show This American Life, imagines the thoughts Barack Obama might have been thinking as the 2016 presidential campaign came to a climax. Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. sings. It speaks for itself, and demands to be heard, maybe even more so now than in October.

But hey everything feels political right now, doesn’t it? Seeking the meaning of life, trying to stay grounded in love, honoring a rock’n’roll icon, even just grooving to a retro beat, anything done mindfully feels like a defiant gesture when the occupant of the White House is so willfully ignorant, so apparently devoid of empathy, so blind to both beauty and mercy. The world doesn’t owe us a thing but each individual human being owes any other human being a recognition of their inherent dignity. Well, what goes up must come down. I have no idea what becomes of us collectively with this awful specimen of human being daily defacing the office he holds, but I know that in the end, he will personally fail, and fall, hard. Gravity is an implacable mistress; may we all fly forward into the light, sooner than later.

Full playlist below the widget.

“I’m Happy But You Don’t Like Me” – Asobi Seksu (Asobi Seksu, 2004)
“Seriously” – Leslie Odom, Jr. (2016)
“What Is Life” – George Harrison (All Things Must Pass, 1970)
“The Universal Song” – Kim Carnes (Café Racers, 1983)
“Tennessee” – Arrested Development (3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of…, 1992)
“Nadine” – Chuck Berry (single, 1964)
“There Isn’t One Way” – Patty Griffin (Servant of Love, 2015)
“Oh Really” – Goldheart Assembly (single, 2009)
“United State” – Daryl Hall & John Oates (Voices, 1980)
“I Love You” – John Coltrane (Lush Life, 1957)
“Gravity” – Terri Hendrix (Wilory Farm, 1998)
“Public Image” – Public Image Ltd (Public Image, 1978)
“Aviation” – The Last Shadow Puppets (Everything You’ve Come to Expect, 2016)
“Alone Again Or” – Love (Forever Changes, 1967)
“Slave to the Rhythm” – Grace Jones (Slave to the Rhythm, 1985)
“No Need To Cry” – Neko Case (Furnace Room Lullaby, 2000)
“Hall of Tragedy” – Linnea Olsson (For Show EP, 2017)
“The World Don’t Owe You a Thing” – Freda Payne (Band of Gold, 1970)
“Miss America” – David Byrne (Feelings, 1997)
“Tomorrow on the Runway” – The Innocence Mission (Befriended, 2007)

Oh boy. Right again. (Eclectic Playlist Series 4.02 – Feb. 2017)

This is the 33rd playlist in the Eclectic Playlist Series; there are only three artists in this month’s mix that have been featured here before, in one of the other 32 lists (and each has been featured only once previously). There’s really that much music out there, folks. That so much of it is squandered by the relentless reductionism of internet algorithms…well, let’s just say it’s a shame, and that if you’re reading this you’re in luck because it doesn’t happen here. This month’s playlist is another case in point, ranging reasonably far and wide in genre and decade, but also dancing through some serendipities of sound, feel, and outlook. The segues are occasionally challenging but I did my best to have the songs make sense even if they initially seem to be bumping into each other. And it’s all okay in the end because of the twin, Spector-ish culmination: the Ronettes into “Just Like Honey.” First we get an epic with as heart-rending a resolution, musically speaking, as has pretty much ever been written; then we can float off, Scarlett-Johansson-ly, to the indeterminate tones of The Jesus and Mary Chain. Everything, in the end, is lost in translation, most of all our heart’s desires. But it’s alright. Everything is everything. We make contact. The building may be burning but it’s we who are ablaze.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Around the Bend” – Martha Wainwright (Goodnight City, 2016)
“Everything is Everything” – Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1998)
“Victim of Love” – The Eagles (Hotel California, 1976)
“You as You Were” – Shearwater (Animal Joy, 2012)
“Don’t Leave Me This Way” – Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (Wake Up Everybody, 1975)
“This Is The House” – Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), 1983)
“Moving to L.A.” – Art Brut (Bang Bang Rock & Roll, 2005)
“But It’s Alright” – J.J. Jackson (single, 1967)
“Ablaze” – School of Seven Bells (SVIIB, 2016)
“Girls Talk” – Dave Edmunds (Repeat When Necessary, 1979)
“Contact” – Brigitte Bardot (Show, 1968)
“Lover’s Waltz” – A.A. Bondy (American Hearts, 2007)
“Mia & Sebastian’s Theme” – Justin Hurwitz (“La La Land”: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2016)
“Dim” – Dada (Puzzle, 1992)
“Jerry’s Pigeons” – Genya Ravan (Urban Desire, 1978)
“Nothing Burns Like Bridges” – Penny Century (Between a Hundred Lies, 2007)
“Let X=X” – Laurie Anderson (Big Science, 1981)
“Go, Hippie” – Fountains of Wayne (Utopia Parkway, 1996)
“I Can Hear Music” – The Ronettes (single, 1966)
“Just Like Honey” – The Jesus and Mary Chain (Psychocandy, 1985)

Free and legal MP3: Billy the Zombie Kid (unabashed pop, ear-pleasing craft)

Every now and then a song comes along that’s as shiny and pop-saturated as can be and, somehow, all the things that bug the shit out of me when it comes to a lot of 21st-century pop just melt away.

“Golden Rainbows/Diamonds in the Fire” – Billy the Zombie Kid

Every now and then a song comes along that’s as shiny and pop-saturated as can be and, somehow, all the things that bug the shit out of me when it comes to a lot of 21st-century pop just melt away. It’s often kind of a mystery but with “Golden Rainbows/Diamonds in the Fire” let’s see if we can puzzle out why.

To begin with, the cold a capella opening is not only a nice touch but quickly demonstrates some harmonic sophistication—take a listen to how that wordless countermelody snakes around the main melody, complicating what you’re hearing so that you are given the song’s central hook while also having it partially hidden. This allows it later to feel both familiar and new at the same time.

When the song kicks in (0:18), we get an upbeat dance vibe, but only sort of: there’s something patient and easygoing in the air, despite the beat, a feeling reinforced by those measured, four-note synth lines that we hear before the vocals start, with their sly three-notes-off-the-beat rhythm. The ongoing sensation that a little more is going on here than standard-issue pop is reaffirmed by that little wah-wah comment we first hear at 0:42—entirely unnecessary and as a result indicative of a guiding intelligence that isn’t just about formula and expectation.

Before we are led at last back to the big hook of the chorus, we are set up at 0:52 by a pre-chorus that adheres more or less to one note and stays almost completely on the beat. This, to my ears, makes all the more satisfying the incisive melodic leaps of the chorus, as well as its adroit alternation between two measures of singing on the beat and two off the beat. And I don’t mean to make too much of this on/off-the-beat distinction, but in the context of 21st-century pop music, which has been simplified and compressed into oblivion, I applaud any evidence of ear-pleasing songwriting craft. And applaud even further any pop song that saves room for a serious guitar solo (2:48, don’t miss it!).

Billy the Zombie Kid is a four-piece band from Borlänge, Sweden, an industrial town 130 or so miles north and west of Stockholm. The band began in 2013 as an unnamed solo project from singer/guitarist Stefan Altzar. Acquiring members and a name over the course of the year, Billy the Zombie Kid released four songs online in 2014, began playing locally, and started recording in earnest in the latter part of 2015. The end result is the album entitled We’re Always Right, which was released on the label Alternative Alien Baby in July 2016. You can listen to the whole thing and download it for free via SoundCloud. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Winchester (stately epic)

Now this is how to start a slow song: with a stately, centered, melodic line, via a deep but elusive synth tone, in unhurried 6/8 time.

“I’m Not Ready to Go Yet” – Winchester

Now this is how to start a slow song: with a stately, centered, melodic line, via a deep but elusive synth tone, in unhurried 6/8 time. Add, without fuss, some subtle digital noise, and then a piano (acoustic or electric, can’t tell, but it sounds acoustic, which is the important thing)—and then, unexpectedly, an acoustic guitar, strumming crisp chords. We’re already a minute and twenty seconds into the song, there is still nothing but introduction in sight, but I am on board. (I’ve heard much shorter introductions sound boring and pointless.)

The singing starts, with a subtle lead-in from some shivery cymbals, at 1:58, a clean female voice, emerging so organically from the instrumentation that it’s hard to discern exactly when she starts. The song’s steady pace, measured out in deliberate triplets, becomes its anchor, its defining core, but don’t be so lulled you miss the turning point at 2:36, when a deep electronic pulse promises some as-yet unimagined transformation. Jittery synths supplant the piano around 3:15, and the digitalia accumulates as a preface to: guitars (3:54). Silvery, siren-y guitars, putting me in the mind of Explosions in the Sky, but here, initially, matched against the background acoustic rhythm guitar. Until the next turning point, at 5:14: the trembling electric guitar (maybe it’s just one after all) goes into full solo mode, joined at long last by the drums. Had you missed the drums? This is the first we’ve heard them, which I’m pretty sure illustrates (if everything else hasn’t already done so) how carefully this song was constructed. It’s easier to aim for epic than to get there but “I’m Not Ready to Go Yet” makes the journey and, to my ears, comes out the other side.

Winchester is the Toronto-based duo of Lauren Austin and Montgomery de Luna. “I’m Not Ready to Go Yet” is a track from their forthcoming debut EP, If Time is Not Linear Why Can’t I Forget the Past? (no release date set at this point). Thanks to the band for the MP3.

p.s. While I resist typographic idiosyncrasy here, you should know for the record that the band officially spells its name with capital letters and spaces, like this: W I N C H E S T E R.

Free and legal MP3: Auditorium (brisk, elusive, unique)

“Never Wrote a Diver a Poem” is brisk and elusive, ending before the cavalcade of mysterious lyrics can quite register, before, it might seem, the song has truly taken full flight.

“Never Wrote a Diver a Poem” – Auditorium

Last heard here in January 2015, Spencer Berger is back with his unique, theatrical take on 21st-century rock’n’roll. “Never Wrote a Diver a Poem” is brisk and elusive, ending before the cavalcade of mysterious lyrics can quite register—before, it might seem, the song has truly taken full flight.

But boy what an incisive little piece this is, with its mix of arcane pronouncements (“Never helped a builder learn the dirt’s a liar”) and aphoristic gems (“‘Kindly’ is a word that makes me doubt my deeds”), set to a rolling melody that spikes almost astonishingly with a one-off hook (the “once in generation” segment, starting at 0:54) before cuddling back into its determined groove. And even while barely reaching 1:40, the song is concise enough to first offer up a wordless melody in the introduction and then, at the end, bring that motif back into the song, now with lyrics (1:24).

Above and beyond all this remains the singular allure of Berger’s singing voice, which is tinged with exotic drama, bearing little resemblance to anything you’re normally streaming in the 2010s (unless you happen to be a Bat Out Of Hell fan; I must inescapably join in with others who hear Meatlovian elements in Auditorium vocals). One would guess Berger’s distinctive sound has something to do with his unique background, having been a professional opera singer from the ages of nine through 12; as a child, he literally sang with Pavarotti. Based in Los Angeles, he began recording as Auditorium in 2011. His new album, The First Music, was released in January; you can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. It’s a real one-man-band effort, as Berger not only sings all the vocal parts and plays all the instruments, he also recorded and mixed it himself.

(Note that the song I featured here two years ago, “My Grandfather Could Make the World Dance,” has also ended up as a track on the new album.)

Thanks to Spencer for the MP3.

photo credit: Liza Boone