jeremyfingertips

“July 4” – Mondo Cozmo

Moody & purposeful, with that Hal Blaine beat

I’ll admit I’m a sucker for the Hal Blaine drum beat (think “Be My Baby”), but that’s not the only thing going for the moody, purposeful “July 4,” from the new Mondo Cozmo album. There is a clear whiff of Springsteen in the air here as well–in an encouraging, homage-y way rather than a retread-y way. The title is part of it (July 4 might be seen as referencing two different Bruce tunes) but there’s also Cozmo’s world-weary, determined vocals, which build from a Nebraska-esque mumble/whisper to the higher register urgings of the chorus. One might also consider the song’s narrative a bit on the Boss-y side–an elusive story that appears to involve ne’er-do-wells in over their heads. And oh yeah there’s a river in here too.

While the song simmers with its persistent beat and offers partial build-ups, note that we never get any Bruce-style, full-throated deliverance. Instead, the chorus keeps to the same steady thump while the verse melody is inverted but retains the disciplined, in-between moments, now augmented with some sonorous synth flairs in the background. Keep an ear on those synth sounds moving forward–beginning around 1:57 they have this lovely way of sustaining notes before and through the verse that are not part of the underlying chord, providing a background hint of atonality that, somehow, grounds the music all the more resolutely. And then, as the song approaches a would-be climax, the sound peels back at 3:18 with some distant asynchronous arpeggios, leading us, unexpectedly, into something that sounds like a children’s chorus, delivering a poignant series of wordless “ahs.” We get one more taste of the chorus to wrap things up, and while I’m not sure much has changed it sounds all the more heroic this last time through.

Mondo Cozmo–birth name Josh Ostrander–is a singer-songwriter/producer based in Philadelphia. He began recording as Mondo Cozmo in 2016; “July 4” is a track from It’s PRINCIPLE!, the fourth Mondo album, released at the end of August on Last Gang Records. MP3 via Last Gang. Ostrander was previously featured on Fingertips in 2007, when he fronted the band Eastern Conference Champions, who played together from 2005 to 2015.

Shouldn’t I be doing something?

Eclectic Playlist Series 11.06 – July 2024

What a difference a month makes. The mood is (cautiously) lighter. I remain stupefied that a convicted criminal who orchestrated an attempted coup can be considered a viable candidate for president of this country. Can be popular despite his track record of various despicabilities. Is continuing to be treated by mainstream media as pretty much normal. This is not just frightening but also goddamned puzzling. How did we get here? But wait a minute: I said the mood is lighter, and it certainly is. The dreaded rematch has been short-circuited. I’m with her.

Now then, I can’t claim that this month’s playlist has anything to do with this. Or does it? “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”; “The Next Time Around”; “Don’t Change On Me”; “Don’t Come Running to Me”; “Then Came You”: a suggestive batch if looked at a certain way. But seriously unplanned. Consider it the zeitgeist at work. In any case, here’s where we’re going together this month:

1. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” – Sugar (Copper Blue, 1992)
2. “Patterns” – Laura Marling (single, 2024; Patterns in Repeat, coming 10/24)
3. “The Next Time Around” – Little Joy (Little Joy, 2008)
4. “Gag Reflections” – Wild Moccasins (single, 2012)
5. “Don’t Change On Me” – Ray Charles (Love Country Style, 1970)
6. “Don’t I Know” – Sinéad Lohan (No Mermaid, 1998)
7. “Nowhere” – Swaying Wires (I Left a House Burning, 2016)
8. “A Little Respect” – Erasure (The Innocents, 1988)
9. “Don’t Come Running to Me” – Madeline Bell (Bell’s A Poppin’, 1967; bonus track on the 2004 re-issue)
10. “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” – Klaatu (3:47 EST, 1976)
11. “Shenandoah” – Anaïs Mitchell (The Brightness, 2007)
12. “Hot Sun” – Wilco (Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP, 2024)
13. “Zoeira” – Joyce (Hard Bossa, 1999)
14. “You Can’t Take Love For Granted” – Graham Parker (The Real Macaw, 1983)
15. “Then Came You” – Dionne Warwick and the Spinners (single, 1974)
16. “Like I Say (I runaway)” – Nilüfer Yanya (single, 2024)
17. “Red Rubber Ball” – The Cyrkle (Red Rubber Ball, 1966)
18. “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” – Spoon (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007)
19. “Afternoon in Kanda” – Jesse Harris (Sub Rosa, 2012)
20. “Find My Love” – Fairground Attraction (The First of a Million Kisses, 1988)

Random notes:

* The Houston indie outfit the Wild Moccasins had a bit of an internet moment earlier this century. Fronted by Zahira Gutierrez, the band started up in 2007, released three albums between 2010 and 2018 on the reasonably high-profile New West label, got some love from NPR among other places, but quietly disappeared after their last release. Gutierrez has recently reemerged as a solo artist, with more of a pop orientation, using only her first name. “Gag Reflections” was a single released in between their well-regarded first and second albums.

* Sinéad Lohan recorded two albums in the mid- to late-’90s, the first of which was released only in Ireland, the second of which got full distribution on a major label and earned her a good amount of attention and airplay back in the day. And that was pretty much that: she got married, had two children, and at one point sooner than later decided that she had zero interest in continuing on as a professional musician. Wikipedia reports that she did work on a third album in the 2004 to 2007 range but it never saw the light of day. Her one widely-released album, 1998’s No Mermaid, remains a quiet classic of sorts, full of songs of depth and quality. “Don’t I Know” is the third song from the album that I’ve featured in an EPS mix over the years.

* Well known by now as the composer, playwright, and brain child behind the hit Broadway show Hadestown, which won eight Tony Awards in 2019, Anaïs Mitchell began her career as a singer/songwriter in the early ’00s. Hadestown started as a concept album in 2010; it was Mitchell’s fourth release at the time. Then came a long and winding road to the Broadway stage, which occupied a lot of Mitchell’s time and creative energy along the way; she’s only released two albums of original material since then, in 2012 and 2022. “Shenandoah” is a song I’ve always loved, from 2007’s The Brightness. I’m a bit of a sucker for songs with asymmetrical melodies–and here I mean the way the first line of the verse stops, melodically, at 0:30 but when the melody repeats in the next line it extends itself (0:40). There’s something timeless in that, with the vibe of an old folk song. Mitchell has a confident, distinctive singing voice, which sounds at once innocent and full of wisdom. A longtime visitor or two might remember seeing the beautiful “Flowers (Eurydice’s Song)” featured here back when it first appeared, on the 2010 Hadestown concept album.

* The new single from Laura Marling is gorgeous. What a songwriter she is. And she can sing, too.

* Madeline Bell was born in New Jersey and began singing gospel as a teenager; her professional career, however, took her in another direction. On tour with a gospel act in Europe in 1962, Bell ended up being introduced to a number of notable British performers, including Dusty Springfield, who not only went on to employ Bell as a backing vocalist but by some accounts began to model her singing style after Bell’s. Bell stayed in the UK, recorded a few more albums, and later became known as vocalist for the pop group Blue Mink, which had a half-dozen hit singles in England in the early to mid-’70s. You’ll definitely hear something Dusty-ish in “Don’t Come Running to Me,” a track included on the 2004 re-issue of Bell’s 1967 solo debut Bell’s A Poppin’. While Bell moved into more of a smooth pop-soul direction later on, this debut album is much more of a Bacharachian pop recording, very much an artifact of a particular (and particularly wonderful) moment. For those with a soft spot for the so-called “Swinging London” era, check out this performance of the song from British TV in 1967“.

* The background story of many a long-ago rock band can be more interesting than anticipated. Take the Cyrkle, a one-hit wonder ensemble from Easton, Pennsylvania. Originally called The Rhondells, they ended up being managed by none other than Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who changed their name to the Cyrkle–exotic spelling suggested by John Lennon himself. They even opened 14 times for the Beatles on their 1966 tour, including the Fab Four’s final-ever concert performance, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. “Red Rubber Ball,” meanwhile, was a song co-written by Paul Simon and Seekers’ guitarist Bruce Woodley, offered to the Cyrkle when the band was opening at one point for Simon and Garfunkel. Cyrkle singer and bassist Tom Dawes had a subsequent career writing commercial jingles, including Alka-Seltzer’s omnipresent “plop plop fizz fizz” refrain. According to an over-long, un-sourced write-up on Wikipedia, the band managed to reunite in 2016 and were still performing live as recently as 2022. Over on Spotify, there are four new singles posted since 2023, including the nostalgia-laced “We Were There,” which was released in May.

* Speaking of bands unexpectedly reuniting, the Scottish group Fairground Attraction, fronted by the wonderful Eddi Reader, has reemerged here in 2024 with their first new material in 34 years. Known best for the soft, swinging single “Perfect,” from their 1988 debut, the group offered up only one follow-up release–a collection of b-sides called Ay Fond Kiss (1990)–before disbanding. Reader went on to an artistically rewarding if off-the-beaten-path solo career, which has slowed down in recent years–there were 10 albums released from 1992 to 2009, and only two since then, most recently Light Is In The Horizon (2022). Meanwhile, Fairground Attraction has put out two singles in 2024, including “Beautiful Happening” in June, the title track to a forthcoming album. “Find My Love” is one of a number of delightful, light-spirited songs from their late-’80s debut.

“Evening Dream” – Mo Kenney

Everything about “Evening Dream,” in all its toe-tapping melancholy, speaks to attentive craft and artful detail; this is one structurally sound, melodically incisive, smartly produced song. Look how easily the listener is swept in, first with the crisp acoustic strums and then a quickly introduced verse that barely allows the singer a breath, employing an unbroken stream of trochaic rhythm to accentuate a sense of movement. (A trochee is the opposite of an iamb: ONE-two, ONE-two versus one-TWO one-TWO.) Note if you will how the single place at which the opening verse allows for a breath follows the phrase “evening dreams”–and that this, in turn, is the only time the title presents itself in the song. Most pop songs, conversely, pretty much pound their titles into your head–or, in any case, utilize as a title the most often repeated phrase in the song. While doing it as Kenney does here may not guarantee the quality of a song, I’ll suggest that songwriters who know and care enough to use this device are a self-selected group of thoughtful artists, likely to be creating thoughtful, worthwhile art.

So the chorus doesn’t give birth to the title. What it does do, smartly, is offer up a metrical contrast to the verse: as opposed to the run-on vibe created by the relentless trochees, the chorus consists of two lines of clipped, two-syllable chunks (these appear to be called spondees, but I definitely had to look that up). The chorus ends with one more metrical shift as Kenney sings “I can take/I can take care of myself.” That this ultimately becomes the most repeated phrase in the song but is not the title suggests, however subtly, that the song’s narrator is actually not quite so sure about taking care of themself. Later, the second time through, the chorus leads us into some elegant bass lines and a wistful bridge–because of course this well-constructed song has a bridge. Don’t get me started on the vanishing art of the bridge.

Kenney is a singer/songwriter based in Nova Scotia. “Evening Dream” is the first track made available from their fifth album, From Nowhere, which is slated for a September release. You can check out the Kenney discography on Bandcamp.

photo credit: Matt Horseman

“Wishful Thinking” – Julia-Sophie

I’m fascinated by an offbeat bit of synthesized percussion that you can hear in “Wishful Thinking” if you stop to listen for it. The song itself starts with a smooth, propulsive beat, possessing the vibe of a calming burble. Then, at 0:31, a sound, somewhere (sort of) between a scratch and a cymbal choke, starts up and goes on to hit at a regular interval that does not–interestingly; weirdly–align with the song’s beat. (When I called it “offbeat” I meant that literally.) It’s a background sound, easy not to notice consciously. But its gentle if determined persistence to mark out an unrelated beat adds texture and mystery to a song that initially presents as a smooth ride. It also sets up later sections of the song when most of the instrumentation is stripped away; the first time we hear this, at 1:07, that offbeat percussion sound comes to the forefront, and here it subtly regularizes, somehow, momentarily, into the beat of the song. This is the kind of thing that I can end up delighted by. You?

Meanwhile, floating above everything is Julia-Sophie’s breath-filled voice, which entices not merely in its variegated lead role, which includes some spoken interludes, but in the differing ways she accompanies herself. I especially like how some of her vocals, both in lead and backing iterations, appear to meld into synthesizer washes, which happens throughout the song–yet another subtle touch that requires active listening to notice. But–this is an ongoing point I’ve been making here for 20-plus years–even if not registering consciously, subtle production and/or compositional features contribute to a song’s disposition and, ultimately, its allure (or lack thereof). When all is said and done, it’s what I’ve been here all these years trying to discern–not just to say “I like this” but “Let’s figure out why I like this.”

The half-British, half-French singer/songwriter Julia-Sophie Walker has a recording history dating back to the mid-2000s, when she fronted the Oxford, UK-based band Little Fish. She was known as Juju Heslop at the time. She eventually married bandmate Ben Walker, and they went on to form the electro-pop band Candy Says, at which point she was using the name Julia Walker. After 2019, Julia-Sophie adopted her full birth name as her stage name and began a solo career, with a more experimental brand of electronic pop. “Wishful Thinking” is a track from her latest release, the full-length album Forgive Too Slow, which comes out tomorrow. Check out all her solo work on Bandcamp.

“Collies” – Tennessee Kamanski

If Fingertips is in many ways an ongoing salute to quality over virality, and if I could be somehow more effective at informing the wide world of my mission, an artist like Tennessee Kamanski would be on my promotional poster. What carefully written and beautifully performed music she produces! Agile guitar work; an unconventional sense of melody and hook; sweet vocal presence: she’s got the goods. Me, I don’t care if someone has millions of YouTube streams; I don’t care about TikTok sensations. I care if someone writes terrific songs; I care if they perform with heart and soul. I’m on board with Tennessee Kamanski, who does both of these things.

Based in Southern California, Kamanski first came to my attention as part of the wonderful if short-lived duo Allen LeRoy Hug, whom I featured first in a review and next in a playlist, both times in 2021. With the duo disbanded, Kamanski has released two new songs since: last year’s lovely “Red Sun” and now the inscrutable and fetching “Collies.”

Launching off a graceful, cascading guitar lick, “Collies” also sports a firm backbeat, subtle melodic flair, no apparent chorus, and tantalizing lyrics that seem obviously to make sense to the songwriter while eluding explication from the casual listener’s point of view. I enjoy this type of specific-but-enigmatic lyric; it tells me I’m in good artistic hands, and encourages and rewards repeat listening. Yes there’s a passing reference in the lyrics to a border collie, but why is the song called “Collies”? What’s with the blood loss? The bag of apples? The nimble guitar lick–heard only three succinct times in the song–provides the ear with a sturdy if quirky hook, a musical anchor that gives the lyrics permission to mystify. And even as the acoustic guitar is front and center those three times, the song doesn’t present otherwise as acoustic, featuring that strong beat and a variety of instruments and production touches. I like the offhand electric guitar gurgle at 1:25, and the space-age synth flares at 1:03 and 2:07, to point to a few notable flourishes.

You can as always download “Collies” via the above link (thanks to the artist for that), but allow me to encourage you to visit Bandcamp and download the song there and support her directly; you can pay anything you’d like. While there you can also read and ponder the lyrics yourself and see what unfolds in the song for you as you follow along.

I must have been dreaming

Eclectic Playlist Series 11.05 – June 2024

I see the statistics, from Mixcloud, and they are very clear: not all of you guys listen to these playlists all the way through. In fact, it’s quite the overwhelming majority of listeners who listen to some but not all of the songs, playlist after playlist. And I get it: it’s human nature–or, at least, human-on-the-internet nature; twenty-song playlists may prompt the aural equivalent of TL;DR in this click-happy, distraction-filled environment.

But I intermittently feel compelled to point out that these playlists are not like an album front-loaded with its best songs only to fizzle out on side two. They are, instead, packed with excellent songs from top to bottom. What’s more, I often find myself installing a particular favorite as the last track–I suppose this is me in “always leave them wanting more” mode, aimed towards the intrepid few who take the whole journey with me. But a lot of listeners, alas, don’t hang in there long enough to hear it.

Consider this a long-winded way of urging you not to miss the last song this month, which is an unassuming gem from newcomer Selma Eriksen called “By Now.” I won’t further describe; go listen and discover it for yourself. Even if you just want to skip right down to it.

Repeat reminder from last month: for an overview of (almost) all songs featured to date in an Eclectic Playlist Series mix, check out the master EPS playlist that I update on Spotify every month. As noted in the past, Spotify does not have available every song I place on every list–it’s almost always missing one or two songs every couple of months (this time, for instance, “I Don’t Wanna Lose Him” is unavailable). Another obvious drawback is that you don’t get the contexts of the original mixes with this master list, or the crafted segues. But what you do get is a unique, super-long-lasting listening experience presenting as a quirky, genre-free radio station, minus any interruptions. And at 1,900 songs, it’s a playlist many times larger than most 21st-century radio stations would dream of offering.

As for this month, here’s what you’re in for:

1. “That Great Love Sound” – The Raveonettes (Chain Gang of Love, 2003)
2. “Susannah’s Still Alive” – The Kinks (single, 1967; The Kink Kronikles, 1972)
3. “Lights Light Up” – Fenne Lily (Big Picture, 2023)
4. “Don’t Look” – Nervus Rex (single, 1978)
5. “Possession” – Sarah McLachlan (Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, 1994)
6. “It’s Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World)” – The Ramones (Pleasant Dreams, 1981)
7. “Tomorrow Today” – Kippington Lodge (single, 1968)
8. “Comet” – Lonely Drifter Karen (Poles, 2012)
9. “Red Pepper Blues” – Art Pepper (Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, 1957)
10. “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” – Radiohead (In Rainbows, 2007)
11. “I Don’t Wanna Lose Him” – Gigi and the Charmaines (unreleased single, 1966)
12. “Running Back” – Thin Lizzy (Jailbreak, 1976)
13. “Heartbeat” – King Crimson (Beat, 1982)
14. “Rains Came” – Shelby Lynne (Tears, Lies, and Alibis, 2010)
15. “Violent Times” – St. Vincent (All Born Screaming, 2024)
16. “Burning Down the House” – Tom Jones and the Cardigans (Reload, 1999)
17. “Takatanga” – Antônio Carlos Jobim (Tide, 1970)
18. “Le Salon” – Autour de Lucie (Faux Mouvement, 2001)
19. “As If You Read My Mind” – Stevie Wonder (Hotter Than July, 1980)
20. “By Now” – Selma Eriksen (single, 2024)

Stray commentary:

* A few internet music veterans out there may remember “That Great Love Sound” being a bit of a blog-based sensation back when MP3 blogs were a shiny new thing. The Raveonettes–whose name was based on the Buddy Holly song “Rave On”–were and are a Danish duo who clothe their neo-garage rock in layers of noise. And if “That Great Love Sound” has the inexorable vibe of a classic, consider that the song’s co-writer was none other than Richard Gotterher, who wrote or co-wrote some actual classics, including “Hang On Sloopy” and “I Want Candy,” before becoming a trailblazing producer of acts such as Blondie, The Go-Go’s, Marshall Crenshaw, and many others. Gotterher produced this first Raveonettes album, Chain Gang of Love, which is interesting also for the oddity that every song on it was written in the key of B-flat major. The Raveonettes, meanwhile, press on as an active band; a cover album called The Raveonettes Sing… is due out next month.

* Gigi and the Charmaines were another hard-working ’60s R&B group that struggled to make it commercially, recorded a number of songs, including some–such as “I Don’t Wanna Lose Him”–that went unreleased for decades, and ultimately faded away without fanfare. It strikes me that the less well-known the group, the more complex their backstory can be. I can’t summarize quickly; read the notes for a compilation put out by the UK label Ace Records, in 2006, if you’re interested. All I will report is that Gigi was the nickname used by lead singer Marian Jackson, that the group started in Cincinnati in 1960, and landed in Canada at some point. They lasted in one form or another until 1974.

* This Talking Heads cover by the unlikely partnership of Sir Tom Jones and The Cardigans is bizarrely compelling. Jones’ allure is not to be underestimated, ever. The song appeared on his 1999 album Reload, which featured mostly cover versions and mostly had the dynamic Welshman singing with a variety of guest artists, including the Pretenders, Van Morrison, Robbie Williams, and Portishead. Wikipedia reports that Reload is the best-selling album of Jones’ career; at the time it was his 34th studio album. That number is now up to 40.

* Kippington Lodge was the psychedelic/baroque-pop-ish forerunner to the venerable pub rock band Brinsley Schwarz, and was itself an outgrowth of a band Nick Lowe and Brinsley Schwarz had previously formed named Sounds 4+1. When Lowe left the country for a while after that, Schwarz formed a new band, called Three’s A Crowd, which got signed to EMI Records, and subsequently changed their name to Kippington Lodge. When Lowe returned to the UK, he joined the band, which proceeded to release a series of singles, including “Tomorrow Today,” but never a full album. (Much later, in 1998, an album emerged which gathered in one place all pre-Brinsley Schwarz recordings.) For the uninitiated, I should note that Brinsley Schwarz is the name of the lead guitarist but was also used as the name of the band after they jettisoned Kippington Lodge. What’s more, two members of Brinsley Schwarz–Schwarz himself and keyboardist Bob Andrews–went on to form the core of The Rumour, for a number of years Graham Parker’s ace backing band.

* I highly recommend the new St. Vincent album. Lots of good tracks including the James Bond-y one tucked into this mix. All Born Screaming isn’t any sort of concept album, and the music varies from song to song, yet there’s something subtle in the air that creates a consistent feeling by the time you’re through. And it definitely encourages repeat listens.

* A recent article in the New York Times profiling Sarah McLachlan reminded me what a big deal she was back in the day, and rightly so. McLachlan’s star run didn’t necessarily last that long, but the highlights reward the ears all these years later. I especially like her second album, Solace, one album before her songs began to hit the charts. But there’s little wrong with Fumbling Towards Ecstasy as well, and “Possession” remains one of her most fully-realized and absorbing compositions.

* “By Now” appears to be the first release by the aforementioned Selma Eriksen. Eriksen was born in Norway but has lived for some time in the U.S., in Los Angeles and New York City. She is both a singer/songwriter and a model; at this point online information seems more oriented towards her modeling than her music. “By Now” was released in May. Hat tip to the Luna Collective’s weekly Spotify playlist for this one.

* The Vin Scelsa reference in the Ramones song is there for those who know. I will always be musically and creatively indebted to that man.

One day I will learn to shine

Eclectlc Playlist Series 11.04 – May 2024

With the Eclectic Playlist Series now in its 11th year (!), I still aim to populate each mix with a good number of artists who have yet to appear on a prior list. I shoot for seven or eight new artists every time; this month there are 12. Sometimes artists new to an EPS mix are people I’ve previously featured with an MP3 review (as, for instance, Becca Richardson this month, among others). Other times a debut artist here is someone relatively new to the music scene (Jenny Owen Youngs this time, as an example). Another category can be a seemingly random band from the past with a song I happen to feel like plugging into the mix; the British post-new-wave band Haircut 100 qualifies this time around. A long-ago figure from the jazz world can become another first-timer (see Gil Mellé, below). One last interesting (and less common) category is the massive pop star who sneaks in with a song that somehow fits into the EPS flow more than what they usually put out (enter, here, Beyoncé).

Unrelated reminder: for an overview of (almost) all songs featured to date in an EPS mix, you can check out the master EPS playlist that I update on Spotify every month. As I have noted in the past, Spotify does not host every song I place on every list–typically it’s missing one or two songs every couple of months (this month, for instance, “Once You Know” is missing). But there are at last count nearly 1,900 songs on the playlist. You don’t get the contexts of the original mixes with this master list, but you do get many hours of entertaining listening out of the deal–the equivalent of a very quirky radio station, without any announcers.

As for this month, here are the goods:

1. “Fallout” – Yo La Tengo (This Stupid World, 2023)
2. “A Bird in the Hand (Is Worth Two in the Bush)” – The Velvelettes (single, 1965)
3. “Nothing To Be Done” – The Pastels (Sittin’ Pretty, 1989)
4. “Free Ride” – Nick Drake (Pink Moon, 1972)
5. “Once You Know” – Le Reno Amps (LP, 2004)
6. “If I Were You” – k.d. lang (All You Can Eat, 1995)
7. “Alliigator Tears” – Beyoncé (Cowboy Carter, 2024)
8. “Etc” – Francis and the Lights (single, 2013)
9. “Ode to Billie Joe” – Sinéad O’Connor (The Help Album, 1995)
10. “Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)” – Haircut 100 (Pelican West, 1982)
11. “Under Capricorn” – Gil Mellé (New Faces – New Sounds: Gil Mellé Quintet/Sextet, 1953)
12. “Avalanche” – Jenny Owen Youngs (Avalanche, 2023)
13. “On Top of the World” – Cheap Trick (Heaven Tonight, 1978)
14. “Mathematics” – Cherry Ghost (Thirst For Romance, 2007)
15. “Wanted” – Becca Richardson (We Are Gathered Here, 2017)
16. “It’s Wonderful” – The Rascals (Once Upon a Dream, 1968)
17. “Take Me As I Am” – October Project (October Project, 1996)
18. “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” – Roy Ayers Ubiquity (Everybody Loves the Sunshine , 1976)
19. “The Bike” – Amy Correia (Carnival Love, 2000)
20. “Stop Hurting People” – Pete Townshend (All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, 1982)

Stray commentary:

* If “A Bird in the Hand (Is Worth Two in the Bush)” sounds a little familiar–sounds, perhaps, a bit like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”–that’s because the two songs were both co-written by the Motown songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield. And this song came out first. If you think about it, the songs are similar not only in sound but in subject matter: in each case, the lead singer is saying “I love you more than that new person who says they love you.” The Velvelettes were yet another high-quality Motown singing group that seem to have deserved wider success than they ultimately achieved. Their best-known song, in retrospect, was “He Was Really Sayin’ Somethin’,” which was a minor hit for them in 1964, and a bigger hit for the group Bananarama (re-titled as “Saying Something”) in 1982. The Velvelettes started as a quintet, and later performed as both a quartet and a trio. After dissolving at some point in the 1970s, the group was re-assembled in the 1980s and intermittently toured into the 2000s.

* Le Reno Amps was a good-natured, They-Might-Be-Giants-adjacent duo from Scotland, active between 2004 and 2011. They are not, as noted, to be found on Spotify, but you can discover their appealing, slightly skewed, DIY-ish pop on Bandcamp. (And, you can buy any of their albums there on a name-your-price basis.) An example of their general approach to things: the band’s name was devised as an acronym of the bandmates’ two surnames (Maple and Nero), with an added “s.” I featured “Once You Know” here back in 2005, and retain a soft spot for this one.

* Gil Mellé was an interesting cat. As a 19-year-old baritone saxophonist he was signed to Blue Note Records–the first white musician on that storied label’s roster. At the same time he was a visual artist, who created covers not only for his own albums but for albums by Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk. After recording a series of albums between 1953 and 1957, he abandoned jazz performance for a long and busy career as a composer for film and TV; he wrote some 125 scores in all, including work for Ironside, Night Gallery, and Columbo. He was known in particular for being a pioneer in the use of electronic music in film and TV scores, building his own synthesizers and, by some accounts, the world’s first drum machine. Later in his career he returned his focus to visual art, working in the ’90s with computers to create widely-acclaimed digital paintings. He died in Malibu in 2004.

* For the uninitiated (which includes me), that is not a typo in the Beyoncé song title. All song titles on Cowboy Carter that have words with the letter “i” in them are spelled with double “i”s; the song titles are, furthermore, capitalized on the album, so each “i” looks like this: “II.” This is an inside reference to the fact that the superstar singer/songwriter considers this album to be “Act II” in a three-act sequence, which began with 2022’s Renaissance. Cowboy Carter presents a lot to sort through, and while not much of it has clicked with me so far, I felt drawn to “Alliigator Tears” right away, so here it is.

* As if we needed more evidence of the late Sinéad O’Connor’s majesty as a singer, give a listen to her commanding take on the Bobbie Gentry chestnut “Ode to Billie Joe.” O’Connor’s use of her breath as part of her vocal tone is all but heartbreaking. And don’t miss the choice she makes on the word “spring” about 45 seconds before the end. Big props here too to the minimal, eerie arrangement, which keeps a flowing, menacing undercurrent throughout. The song can be found on The Help Album, which was released in 1995 as a fundraiser for a charity called War Child, which provides assistance to people in war zones around the world. The artists featured on the album were all British or Irish, and included Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Oasis, Blur, and Paul Weller.

* As a single, “It’s Wonderful” was initially credited to the Young Rascals, but the band was about to officially become, simply, the Rascals by the time Once Upon a Dream came out. If remembered at all here in the history-challenged 21st century, the band has been pretty much reduced to their R&B-flavored hit singles “Good Lovin’,” “People Got to Be Free,” and “I’ve Been Lonely Too Long.” But as the Rascals evolved through the later ’60s they had more complex aspirations. Front man Felix Cavaliere was quoted in an interview at the time referring to Once Upon a Dream as “Sgt. Pepper-ish”; clearly the band was aiming for a previously unattained sophistication in the music and general presentation. The album was marked by some between-song effects and a number of tracks that flow together without pause–you’ll hear some of that both before and after “It’s Wonderful” if you listen carefully. I’m not sure how successful the whole thing is–it’s no Pet Sounds–but it is a worthy artifact of the time.

“You Know What You’re Doing” – Orbis Max and Tim Izzard

Smartly crafted, accomplished pop rock

“You Know What You’re Doing” – Orbix Max and Tim Izzard

This is a community service announcement to remind you that there are plenty of interesting and accomplished people doing interesting and accomplished things, online, that do not attract the attention of the viral-infatuated masses and/or clickbait-oriented websites. I would venture to say that some if not most of these people may be entirely satisfied avoiding the harsh glare of virality. At least, I hope they are. Me, I remain maddened as ever by our collective penchant for assessing worth via instant popularity. And I grow increasingly intrigued by talented souls plying their trade in the relative dark.

Take Orbis Max, a so-called “internet recording collective” that, as it turns out, long predates the internet. Launched as a regular, in-person band in California back in the 1970s, Orbis Max band members drifted into different locations over time, but re-formed once the internet made recording separately from a distance a viable option. The band retains two original members, has four ongoing bandmates, while also working collaboratively with a rotating cast of outside musicians as the spirit moves. And no, they are not setting the world on fire in terms of streams and views. But they put together something like “You Know What You’re Doing” and yes, it’s clear from the opening guitar riff, jaunty and melodic, that Orbis Max themselves know what they’re doing. The melody, with its well-placed minor chords, shimmers with an early-rock’n’roll nostalgia even as it sounds fetching in the here and now. Dw Dunphy’s vocals are at once sturdy and vulnerable, with the tone of a classic rocker wandering into vaguely unknown territory.

And what a smartly crafted song, the construction of which includes, by my estimation, not merely a robust bridge (in these bridge-deprived times) but a bridge that arrives early in the song, where the second verse might otherwise be. At this point, on the words “Even now” (1:08), the voices become layered, gang-vocal style, with an unexpected but congruous whiff of Springsteen in the mix. (Dunphy is based in Monmouth County, New Jersey; could be something in the water.) The early bridge, if that’s what it is, is in any case, aurally, part of the song’s ongoing sense of continuing development; listen in particular to the intermittent sprinkles of lead guitar (including an incisive coda) and to the changing nature of the backing vocals.

“You Know What You’re Doing” was co-written by guitarist Don Baake and guest musician Tim Izzard, who is based in the UK. Recurring core Orbis Max members are currently located in Texas, California, and the aforementioned New Jersey; other regulars are located in North Carolina, Arizona, and Liverpool, among other places. Dunphy is new to the band in the scheme of things, having joined in 2022, following a long stint as a singer/songwriter/one-man-band. “You Know What You’re Doing,” was released as a single at the end of March. A new single was just released on May 1, entitled “Fields,” which you can check out on Bandcamp. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

“Blue Tuesday” – Francis of Delirium

Propulsive and vulnerable

“Blue Tuesday” – Francis of Delirium

How is it that some singer/songwriters sing about their personal angsts and it comes across as kind of small and whiny while other singer/songwriters sing, as well, about their personal angsts and it soars into something weighty and inspiring? It’s a mystery. And obviously my personal perspective on any given musician is just my own, and often at odds with cultural consensus. But Jana Bahrich, who fronts the project Francis of Delirium, strikes me as the real deal. Nothing small and whiny about what she does.

From the ringing guitar and pulsing backbeat of the intro, “Blue Tuesday” propels us forward with itchy resolve. We are pushed directly into the middle of a story via the opening line’s unusual kickoff: “And it starts in the back of a cab.” This demonstrates the kind of stout assurance that supports the song beginning to end–an assurance perhaps best epitomized by the audacious slant rhyme upon which the chorus pivots:

It’s a blue Tuesday
I could use babe some of us

In another setting, in someone else’s hands, this (sort of) near rhyme might seem an awkward blunder; here it feels sly and subversive. She’s kind of daring you to call her on it and not caring if you do. Throughout, the 22-year-old Bahrich sings with a tone alternating between airy and grounded, between vulnerable and assertive. You buy what she’s selling; the underlying bash and drive leaves you almost no choice. This a concise song both musically and lyrically, with a seemingly straightforward meaning: the narrator is feeling down and desires her partner’s presence as a balm. But being down often leads to passive indecision, while in this case, the singer knows what she wants and asks for it, not something everyone has the presence of mind to do. She offers a second slant rhyme in the process, in the second half of the chorus: “It’s a blue Tuesday/I could use babe some of your touch.” It’s an even slantier slant, matching two syllables (“your touch”) against one in the previous line (“us”), so the lyrics scan differently too, with Bahrich hesitating on the second word, landing it on the backbeat of the next measure, sweeping us back into the song’s adamant flow.

Based in Luxembourg, Francis of Delirium was previously featured on Fingertips in April 2022. “Blue Tuesday” is a track from the outfit’s excellent debut album Lighthouse, which was released in March. I like by the way that the song is the fifth track on the album–another move, in a world of side-one, cut-one singles, that speaks to Bahrich’s underlying confidence. MP3 via KEXP.

(A sad side note: KEXP’s “Song of the Day” feature, which has fed Fingertips a significant number of free and legal MP3s over the years, has been discontinued. The MP3s they’ve uploaded still seem to be online at this point, but it’s unclear how long that will last.)

“Jacket” – Sam Evian

Affable, McCartney-like tunefulness

“Jacket” – Sam Evian

“Jacket” has an affable tunefulness about it, with a loose-limbed, Ram-like vibe bespeaking on the one hand singer/songwriter/producer Sam Evian’s long-standing adoration of the Beatles, and on the other the fact that he recorded this latest album in his idyllic-sounding studio in the Catskills, in a renovated barn, live on vintage tape–“No headphones, no playback, minimal overdubs or bleed,” in his words. The guitar sounds are straight out of the 1970s, as is the perky, midtempo, Nilsson-esque melody, with its easy-going wanderings up and down the scale.

Structure-wise, the song has a sneaky convolution to it, with a verse and chorus that sound somewhat but not precisely alike; it’s especially easy to get disoriented when a song starts with the chorus, as this one appears to. Bonus bewilderment points here for removing the first line of the chorus after one iteration, thereafter replacing it with a cheerful set of female-voiced “La-la-la”s. Lyrically this is one of those songs where the words are at once legible and incomprehensible: you can read along with the song and still have little sense of what’s transpiring. And then, in the middle, a verse pops as meaningful, even though it has no apparent relation to anything previously sung:

I trace it back and find a twisted memory
A loose end coming back to haunt me, it’s getting older and older
You know our trouble has a way of finding more
Like we were soldiers in a war so long ago

First off, he traces what back, exactly? We don’t know, pushed as we abruptly are into the middle of a thought without any context. Listen next to how perfectly “A loose end coming back to haunt me” scans with the music; it’s the parade of iambs in the lyrics that does it–except for the “it’s getting older and older” addendum, all the lines here offer perfect one-TWO stresses. The words glide effortlessly, all but forcing our attention to the stanza’s gloomy conclusion, contradictorily presented with the song’s ongoing peppiness. I’m not sure what it all adds up to–by the way, there’s not a single mention of a jacket–but it keeps me listening, and re-listening. Perhaps the song is being sung to an old jacket? Or by one?

Plunge, Evian’s fourth album, came out in March, and is the first he’s released on his own label, Flying Cloud Recordings. Collaborators on the album include El Kempner (Palehound, Bachelor), Adrianne Lenker (Big Thief), Sean Mullins, and Liam Kazar, among others. Meanwhile, Evian has for some years been an in-demand producer, having recorded albums with a wide variety of indie rock acts, including Widowspeak, Cass McCombs, Blonde Redhead, Cassandra Jenkins, Big Thief, and Hannah Cohen, who happens also to be Evian’s partner.