jeremyfingertips

In defense of quality

Quality is real, quality is not measurable by engineers, and quality will long outshine the petty strivings of page-view millionaires and their Silicon Valley acolytes.

Imagine for a moment that you could only ever listen to the most popular music—only the top 10 songs, say, or the top 10 albums. Imagine as well that you could only read the books that were most popular, and that the only available movies to see were, again, the super popular ones. Food, too, is limited in this scenario to only the most popular items. Even your activities: imagine for a moment you can choose in your spare time to do only one of, say, ten most popular leisure pursuits.

I am assuming this thought experiment is starting to sound a bit like a nightmare. Even a person with happily mainstream tastes veers regularly from liking and doing only very-popular things; everybody’s got a number of at least somewhat off-the-beaten-path favorites of some kind. This is why the accumulated preferences of a large population never coincide precisely with any one individual’s tastes. And they’re not supposed to: top 10 charts of various kinds are inherently interesting as information, but are not intended as strict behavioral control.

At least, not so far.

The web is working hard to change this—in particular, companies run by web entrepreneurs who so worship the God of Page Views as to drain life of qualitative meaning entirely. It’s all about quantity, all about getting the most people to click a link or like or follow. These are entrepreneurs such as Emerson Spartz, recently profiled in The New Yorker, who was there quoted as saying, “The ultimate barometer of quality is: if it gets shared, it’s quality.”

This is patently absurd. It doesn’t require that much history or independent thinking to realize that popularity and quality are not only not always aligned but often enough misaligned. Things that are popular are not always of high quality and things of high quality are not always popular. This is a truth as old as civilization, and it is not changed by a home-schooled 27-year-old who seeks page views for a living.

And then there is this truth, perhaps too subtle for Spartz and his fast-moving, screen-focused peers: that sometimes a thing of quality takes time to be seen, understood, and recognized. Schubert would not have ended up on any “most popular” list in his lifetime. Nor the Velvet Underground while they were still around. Or recall, if you would, the way The Shawshank Redemption was received upon release versus the way it is regarded today.

Despite the gaping hole in their understanding of human culture and human nature, this new generation of web entrepreneurs are the ones taken seriously in our benighted digital culture—the ones offered the microphones at TED conferences, followed on Twitter, and generally glorified as shining examples of 21st-century success. The lonely few of us who focus our attention on quality rather than quantity are not merely ignored, we may as well not exist when it comes to the so-called “real world” of commerce and (ooh, that word) innovation.

And while much of the squawking about Spartz after the article came out had to do with how his click-bait web sites purportedly spell the end of serious journalism online, that part of the hubbub seems to me somewhat overblown. Serious journalism has never been all that popular, and it’s unlikely that junk sites like Dose are specifically exacerbating the problem. To me the more serious concern is the Orwellian implication here—if publicly acclaimed web leaders can willfully present quantity as quality, what else are they dissembling and misrepresenting for their own ends?

In the New Yorker article and elsewhere, Spartz speaks without hesitation of his fascination with “virality.” His career to date as a web-site entrepreneur has seen him devoting endless energy and data-crunching power to refine again and again his understanding of what causes something to become rapidly and monstrously popular online. The endgame, not surprisingly, is the increasing employment of sub-rational enticements to promote an all but addict-like response from unwitting visitors: use this wording and not that wording, this photo and not that photo, place the headline here and not there, and so forth.

Users caught up in this kind of virality vortex have left the concept of quality just as far behind as have the web sites they visit. Quality by nature is a response of the thinking and feeling being, not a robotic reflex; even if arising in an instantaneous sensation, the recognition of quality springs from the depths of open-hearted intuition, not reptilian-brain instinct. At least those entrepreneurs baiting users into meaningless clicking have the gratification of profit tied up in this awful game; visitors, however, are left after the fact with little but the emotional equivalent of a junk-food coma. What did I just spent all this time doing? And why?

Thankfully, short-sighted hucksters share a common eventual fate: failure, and ridicule. And mark my word, history shall prove these virality chasers to be laughing-stocks, as much for their risible inability to mature beyond a toddler-like sense of greed and entitlement as for their blindness to their own human hearts. They hide behind currently acceptable jargon (innovation! disruption!), incapable of recognizing the painfully familiar and unimaginative nature of their actual endeavor. As Leon Wiseltier wrote recently in the New York Times, “there is nothing innovative about pandering for the sake of a profit.”

Quality is real, quality is not measurable by engineers, and quality will long outshine the petty strivings of page-view millionaires and their Silicon Valley acolytes. If you have a moral compass, you understand the existence and the importance of quality, so right away this gives you a hand-hold on what people who belittle the importance of quality are like—rudderless human beings, blinded by power of one kind or another, and just as likely to do harm as good in the world. Steer clear of these people and for god’s sake avoid their web sites.

Free and legal MP3: The Sharp Things

Lovely, urgent, and deep

“Everything Breaks” – The Sharp Things

“Everything Breaks” manages the uncommon trick of being both lovely and urgent. Each of these aspects, as it turns out, seems to hinge primarily on the song’s consistent—and subtly edgy—alteration between minor and major keys. We hear it right away in the crisp, ringing piano intro, and the minor/major shifting is only deepened and underlined by the addition of vocals. There’s a breathlessness to the proceedings, a sense that the song just has to burst out as is and be done.

And then too there’s the way the song unfolds lyrically as an elegiac litany of facts, descriptions, and/or circumstances, creating a kind of beauty-meets-tragedy atmosphere, even if it is difficult to apprehend exactly what is being sung about and why. With its graceful confluence of lyrical and melodic portent, “Everything Breaks” grabs the ear so quickly and securely that we feel grounded without even a chorus to provide its steadying influence.

The Sharp Things, previously featured on Fingertips in November 2013, are an expanding and contracting NYC ensemble, active since the ’90s, and currently in a nine-piece phase. “Everything Breaks” is the lead track on Adventurer’s Inn, released earlier this month. This album, the band’s sixth, turned out to be a personally notable and heartbreaking effort for front man Perry Serpa, as it is the last album the Sharp Things were able to record with drummer and band co-founder Steven Gonzalez, Serpa’s best friend since childhood. Gonzalez died in September from complications related to a lifelong struggle with cystic fibrosis.

Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3 Daisy Victoria (glistening, inspiring)

“Nobody Dies” – Daisy Victoria

And here we have, at the tail end of 2014, a song that somehow shocks me into here-and-now Okayness. Nearly (but not quite) as glistening as the kind of brain-free indie pop that makes my teeth grind, “Nobody Dies” is instead a song shot through with humanity and depth that leaves me laughing and winded, like emerging, twirling, from the salty, numbing North Atlantic on a warm summer day. Partly it’s the sweet subtle resonance of Daisy Victoria’s voice, and partly it’s the heroic melody, and the way it continually brings that voice upward in gratifying, unforeseen ways, but mostly it’s just how big and sweeping and genuine this feels, in an almost Kate Bushian way (minus, it should be noted, Kate’s all-out strangeness).

Hints that this is no mere dance-beat trifle come quickly (a beat-free intro juxtaposing water drips and echoey guitars) and often (even as the beat sets in, the mix is full of nuance and texture, devoid of ear-squashing processing). Some (most?) of the aural effects sound refreshingly guitar-based, in fact, while the drumming is sticks and skins as far as I can tell. And please understand that I am not now and never have been against electronics and beats and anything else that can be employed to make great music. But great music only and always originates in the human heart and soul. Something isn’t genuine just because it’s acoustic any more than something is automatically soulless just because it’s electronic. My particular glee regarding “Nobody Dies” has to do with how Victoria here has managed, in a sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing kind of switcheroo, to take an aural language too often employed to create soulless product and find within it the glow of life. I love this in uncountable and unaccountable ways.

Daisy Victoria is a singer/songwriter based in Norwich (UK). “Nobody Dies” is the title track to her second EP, released last month. You can listen via her SoundCloud page, and also there download this song in higher-quality .wav format, if that makes you happy.

Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC Radio 6 for the head’s up, and thanks to Daisy for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Hollands (thoughtful art pop, w/ extra oomph)

Even when it isn’t quite like anything else you’ve heard it always manages to be at least a little like something else you’ve heard. This is fun and as it should be.

“Great White Shark” – Hollands

With confident cockeyed momentum, “Great White Shark” is a fun-house blend of thoughtful art pop and something bashier and more direct. A dignified violin break collides with a chugging, minimal rhythm section; articulate guitar lines locate clearings between earnest chunks of elusive lyrics; a basic verse melody repeats, with reappearing variations, while something resembling a chorus slips in once or twice; the song, while pushing five minutes, passes in something of a fever dream. Welcome to what has become of rock’n’roll in the mid-’10s, devolving and evolving simultaneously into whatever two people in Brooklyn (it’s almost always two people in Brooklyn) feeling like recording. Even when it isn’t quite like anything else you’ve heard it always manages to be at least a little like something else you’ve heard. This is fun and as it should be.

Anyway, I have listened to this song like a thousand times and I am left with two conflicting impressions: 1) its various complexities (in structure, nuance, texture, rhyme) continue to elude me; 2) its sturdy simplicity is grounded in the relentless recurrence of a basic three-note, ascending melody. And I am guessing that if I can train my brain to hold these two antithetical notions simultaneously, I may achieve some new level of enlightenment. Or, at least, would be better able to explicate a song named “Great White Shark” only, it seems, because the phrase slides quickly by in a lyric two-thirds of the way through the song.

Hollands is the married couple of John-Paul and Jannina Norpoth. John-Paul is the multi-instrumentalist, Jannina, classically trained, plays violin. Both are children of professional musicians. Among their favorite artists, according to the band’s Facebook page, are Igor Stravinsky, Frank Zappa, and Randy Newman—a mighty trio if ever there was. “Great White Shark” is a song from Restless Youth, their full-length debut, which was released last month. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it (vinyl is an option!) via Bandcamp. MP3 courtesy of Magnet Magazine.

I didn’t really know where to go

Eclectic Playlist Series 1.11 – Dec. 2014

While taking its usual romp through the decades, this latest iteration of the Eclectic Playlist Series focuses its 2010s attention largely on the current year, as a way of highlighting songs from three of my favorite albums of 2014. Other than that, we get the usual strange brew of things that somehow go together for largely unknowable reasons. Along the way we find a Radiohead B-side far stronger than most bands’ A-sides, a lost new wave ballad from the downtown NYC scene (from an album, The Shirts’ debut, never put on CD as far as I can see), and a song that, internet at my disposal or not, I could discover no confirmation of year of release—this the completely obscure but oddly satisfying “So Long Sam,” from Barbara Ruskin, a British singer/songwriter of the “swinging London” era. Because she is still alive and potentially reachable online, once I have this playlist posted, I’ll see if I can ask her directly about this song, and maybe I can nail down the year that way. Which would actually be kind of fun. But, thanks to good old-fashioned email, I was able to get the information directly from Ruskin herself, who informs us that “So Long Sam” was written and recorded as a demo in 1967. It never ended up being released until President Records put out a Barbara Ruskin retrospective album in 2004 entitled A Little of This, which is quite a bit of fun.

As for why 1997 alone represents the 1990s this time, I have no explanation. Oh, and the Robert Plant song? Unexpectedly awesome.

“Surrender” – J. Geils Band (Monkey Island, 1977)
“Pearly” – Radiohead (Airbag/How Am I Driving? EP 1997)
“Kristine” – Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time, 2013)
“Heart of Stone” – SVT (No Regrets, 1981)
“Sonic Parts” – Khoiba (Nice Traps, 2005)
“Running Through the Night” – The Shirts (The Shirts, 1978)
“No One’s Gonna Love You” – Cee-Lo Green (The Lady Killer, 2010)
“So Long Sam” – Barbara Ruskin (demo, 1967; A Little of This, 2004)
“Long Gone (Buddy)” – ‘Til Tuesday (Everything’s Different Now, 1988)
“Loop De Li” – Brian Ferry (Avonmore, 2014)
“Les Petits Ballons” – France Gall (single, 1972)
“Why Can’t You Fix My Car” – Leo Kottke (My Father’s Face, 1988)
“The Agency Group” – Alvvays (Alvvays, 2014)
“Hide in Your Shell” – Supertramp (Crime of the Century, 1974)
“Everybody Knows (except you)” – The Divine Comedy (A Short Album About Love, 1997)
“House of Love” – Robert Plant (lullaby and… The Ceaseless Roar, 2014)
“Louis Quatorze” – Bow Wow Wow (single, 1982)
“Just One Last Look” – The Temptations (With a Lot O’ Soul, 1967)
“Annan Waters” – Kate Rusby (Hourglass, 1997)
“Parables” – Rebekah Higgs (Rebekah Higgs, 2006)

Free and legal MP3: Ward White (art-y & stylish but very approachable)

“Sabbath” is as arch and distinctive as a rock song can hope to be in the year 2014 without sounding fey or contrived.

“Sabbath” – Ward White

With sly hints of the old Hot Chocolate nugget “Every 1’s a Winner,” “Sabbath” chugs off the launch pad with delicious authority, featuring the splendid songwriting trick of beginning your lyric with the word “And.” I’m kind of a sucker for that one. And Ward White’s rounded, art-y tenor, a less adenoidal version of someone like David Byrne, it turns out I’m kind of a sucker for that too.

“Sabbath” is as arch and distinctive as a rock song can hope to be in the year 2014 without sounding fey or contrived. The verses feel like we’re already in the middle of the song, and lead us into a section (0:47) that bridges us without hurry to the chorus, accumulating lyrical lines while not quite coalescing musically; and the chorus, when it arrives (1:02), turns out to be less a chorus than a single sentence, rendered memorable by a vivid chord change in the middle (on the words “in front of my face,” at 1:08). The lyrics, meanwhile, feel rich and involving without easily forming a narrative. But any song that can include these lines—

And what of all these women?
They come and go but mostly go
And when they come believe me I’m the last to know

—is surely doing something right. And then, as word-oriented as White appears to be, he unexpectedly closes the song out with an increasingly scintillating minute-and-a-half of droning guitars and bashing drums. Fun!

The Brooklyn-based White has been releasing stylish, accomplished recordings since the late ’90s, floating around the edges of the NYC music scene without quite breaking through, even to the blogosphere. Which may also mean the man is doing something right. “Sabbath” is a song from his eighth solo album, Ward White is the Matador, released earlier this month. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Julius (indie pop, w/ graceful nuance)

“Oh Baby” – Julius

I have many issues with what passes for pop music in the year 2014: the brazen artifice of it, the lack of lyrical and melodic imagination typically on display, and the shrunken aural context (pop music in the ’10s more or less refuses to mix well with anything but other pop music from the ’10s), to name a few pet peeves. On top of this, I remain gobsmacked by the unironic embrace of pop sheen and flow by a significant segment of ’10s hipsters. Perhaps this is the ultimate consequence of shifting from ownership to (mostly) free access: the audience is so little invested in the end product that the impetus for listening becomes merely to locate something familiar and diverting, for just those three or four minutes, rather than something to stake the depth of your identity on.

Well, there’s no settling any of this while we’re still in the middle of our grand digital transition. But, in the meantime, here: “Oh Baby” is unabashed pop. It even, I think, features, albeit briefly, some Auto-Tune. And yet there is something in here, musically, that I don’t think you hear in standard-issue 2014 pop music. On the one hand it’s a texture thing—the way the musician who calls himself Julius lets his song unspool with a rich sense of space and time. Rather than the flat, compressed sound of music that’s been processed and layered within inches of its life, “Oh Baby” offers up something that appears, aurally, to straddle the digital and analog worlds. The unhurried drumbeats that provide the song’s backbone may be electronic, may be organic, may be a mix of both, but in any case they feel musical rather than logistical, with a sense of three-dimensional space rather than manipulated puzzle pieces. Likewise the backing vocals that press into the mix at 1:40: regardless of how manipulated, or not, they feel fueled by breath, they too seem to be taking up organic space.

But the thing that really won me over are the chords. However many times I listen I am in thrall to the grace of the flowing chord pattern that Julius introduces when the song first moves beyond the percussive accompaniment (beginning at 0:44). These are not showy, anthemic chords, but the elusive progression from 0:44 to 0:47 to 0:49 moves with a quiet grandeur one might usefully describe as orchestral. And here is where it merits mention that Julius is himself a refugee from the classical academy, a self-professed “weirdo classical prodigy” who only recently began listening to pop music. Once upon a time, pop stars veered into classical music to give their careers cultural heft; nowadays we may be seeing the opposite. Yes, Julius now chooses to operate in the seemingly constrained world of fluffy pop (could there be a title with any less contextual weight than “Oh Baby”?), but the song seems also, somehow, to be straining at a new way of mining depth in the musical language many if not most coming-of-age adults prefer to be speaking right now. Even lyrically the song may be presenting a bit more than it lets on; the recurring line “I’d give the world/To believe what I thought I felt” is no mere throwaway, as one example.

Released last month, “Oh Baby” is the second song Julius has recorded; it was produced by Benny Cassette, who has worked with Kanye West. You can download above, as usual, or visit his SoundCloud page, where you can also hear his first song, along with a more recently posted remix/mashup.

Free and legal MP3: Alvvays (sweet, jangly, off-kilter)

“Archie, Marry Me” has a sweet, sweeping relentlessness about it, and if the whole thing is partially buried in mud and fuzz, this somehow makes its insistence all the more poignant

“Archie, Marry Me” – Alvvays

“Archie, Marry Me” has a sweet, sweeping relentlessness about it, and if the whole thing is partially buried in mud and fuzz, this somehow makes its insistence all the more poignant, makes its gorgeousness all the more down to earth. This is a song that rhymes “matrimony” and “alimony,” not to mention “Atlantic” and “panic,” “papers” and “makers.” This is a song with a woman singing to a character named Archie. This is a band called Always that spells their name Alvvays. The off-kilter appears to be their territory.

At the seeming center of this eddy of off-center goodness is front woman Molly Rankin, who sings with an enticing blend of composed abandon. Her voice veers now too close, now too far. As the band pounds and jangles along, Rankin sounds like someone at once assured and bewildered; her repeated “Hey hey”s resonate off imaginary canyons of hope and despair. But at the true center of the proceedings is the song itself, which etches melodic glory from the simplest of components, and burrows into a listener’s warmest places through the timeless, heartfelt force of guitars and drums. If you don’t concentrate you’ll miss the guitars’ wild, second-verse excursion, buried nearly beyond earshot, but all the wilder for its lack of neediness. In much the way the singer’s simple plea seems almost necessarily concealing some thornier reality, so too does the music’s apparent plainness appear to couch some more complicated sentiment. Remember, they could merely have spelled their name the way it sounds.

Alvvays is a quintet based in Toronto. Molly Rankin is the daughter of the late John Morris Rankin, of the popular and (in Canada) well-known Celtic/folk group The Rankin Family. Among band members is guitarist Alec O’Hanley, formerly of the Charlottetown-based band Two Hours Traffic, who were featured here back in 2010. “Archie, Marry Me” is from the debut, self-titled Alvvays album, released on Polyvinyl Records back in July. The song has been floating around the internet even longer than that, but only last month emerged in free and legal MP3 form over on the long-standing free and legal MP3 blog 3hive. So thanks, very much, to the 3hivers for this one. And note that you can listen to the album and buy it in various formats via the Polyvinyl web site. I encourage it.

I get mixed signals

Eclectic Playlist Series 1.10 – Nov. 2014

As regular visitors realize by now, the Eclectic Playlist Series exists to counter the internet’s discouraging tendency to group music strictly together by genre and/or decade. I’ve been hoping that there are at least a handful of recalcitrant 21st-century listeners who might find some delight in this kind of eclecticism.

Recently what has been further occurring to me is the cultural price we pay for the internet’s reductive organizational habits. Not only are we as listeners short-changed by being denied a larger context for our listening, but the musicians are as well, which may in turn have a subtly adverse effect on the music they will go on to create. Think of all the artists who have come of age here in the 21st century who never find their music presented in any kind of broader historical context. The whole system is becoming a kind of closed feedback loop, to the detriment of musicians and listeners alike.

But: here I am again, with 20 songs, representing six decades and a variety of rock’n’roll-related genres, melded into one 80-minute-or-so listening experience. Radioing heaven, getting mixed signals, ending up in some kind of weird but inspirational church, with idiosyncratic stops along the way to ponder the state of human relationships. It’s all right to feel a little fear, to be sexy with a belly like Jack Nicholson, running around in circles all day long. With a hell of a guitar solo. Many problems are solved by a hell of a guitar solo, or maybe just a tube of cherry chapstick.

Oh, and this: as the first year of the Eclectic Playlist Series draws nearer to a close, I figured it was time to alert you guys to a larger-scale intention of this wide-ranging enterprise. As a way of enforcing variety and surprise, I decided from the start (but forgot to tell you; oops) that no one artist would be featured here more than once in a calendar year. So far so good (although I did feature Rilo Kiley in one playlist and Jenny Lewis in another), and I will happily finish the playlist year next month with that intention intact. But with this overall structure in mind, I realized kind of after the fact that rather than simply identifying each month’s list as “Volume 1,” “Volume 2,” and so forth, it might be better to label them in such a way as to make entire years more readily identifiable. And so with this month’s playlist, I’m introducing a slightly new ID system: rather than calling this one “Volume 10,” I am labeling it “1.10.” When the new year of playlists starts in January, it will be “2.01.” Etc. Once we get to the playlists beginning with “2,” you may begin to see certain artists from the first year’s playlists slide back in, even as new artists continue to arrive.

“Remember” – Greg Kihn Band (Next of Kihn, 1978)
“Everything Passed Me By” – James Irwin (single, 2014)
“I Radio Heaven” – Over the Rhine (Films for Radio, 2001)
“Can’t Be Sure” – The Sundays (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic, 1990)
“Too Late to Turn Back Now” – Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose (single, 1972)
“Damn, Wish I Was a Man” – Cindy Lee Berryhill (Who’s Gonna Save The World?, 1987)
“Raphaël” – Carla Bruni (Quelqu’un m’a dit, 2003)
“Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” – Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (The Best Years of Our Lives, 1975)
“Cherry Chapstick” – Yo La Tengo (And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, 2000)
“The Touch of Venus” – Sandy Wynns (single, 1965)
“White Mice” – The Mo-Dettes (single, 1979)
“Sleepless” – King Crimson (Three of a Perfect Pair, 1984)
“Axes” – Low Frequency in Stereo (The Last Temptation Of…, 2006)
“Bitter” – Jill Sobule (Happy Town, 1997)
“These Eyes” – The Guess Who (Wheatfield Soul, 1969)
“{Explain}” – Sarah Blasko (What the Sea Wants, the Sea Will Have, 2006)
“Charm” – The Wild Colonials (This Can’t Be Life, 1996)
“Maid in Heaven” – Be Bop Deluxe (Futurama, 1975)
“Take Me to Church” – Sinéad O’Connor (I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss, 2014)
“Mercy Street” – Peter Gabiel (So, 1986)

Free and legal MP3: The Rebel Light (astute, catchy, and assured)

“Strangers” opens with a burst of happy wordless vocals (choosing the especially giddy “ba-ba-ba” over the more noncommittal “la-la-la”), right away informing us of its good-natured intentions.

“Strangers” – The Rebel Light

Year by 21st-century year I am increasingly discouraged by our collective inability to discern good-catchy (based on effective/surprising melody) from bad-catchy (based on annoying, often shout-y repetition)—and, I suppose the greater affliction, our apparent preference for the bad-catchy. I do understand that bad-catchy is far easier to concoct and that today’s pop-oriented songwriters and producers, perceiving that virality is unrelated to quality, find bad-catchy better suited to their purposes.

Well, boo to all of them, but hooray for the astutely good-catchy “Strangers,” from the Los Angeles-based trio The Rebel Light. While sounding entirely of the 2014 moment, “Strangers” thrums with warmth and joy in a way that far too much of today’s indie pop has abandoned in favor of technology and analytics. As such, I’ll wager that this song will sound as fresh to future ears as most of 2014’s YouTube fodder will sound stale and uninteresting not that many years from now.

With a thumpy, head-bobbing core, “Strangers” opens with a burst of happy wordless vocals (choosing the especially giddy “ba-ba-ba” over the more noncommittal “la-la-la”), right away informing us of its good-natured intentions. While displaying moments of near-minimal accompaniment, the song works almost surreptitiously to add layers of aural interest as things unfold—squally electronics, hand-claps, an undercover disco beat, cowbell, acoustic guitar, a capella break, we get a little bit of everything stitched ably together into a pop-perfect 3:25 length. And at the heart of this catchy song is (of course) a super catchy chorus, featuring one of those great, inevitable-sounding melodies that good-catchy songs so often have. While easy to learn and sing along with, the chorus’s melody delivers extra oomph via the way it slides seamlessly off and on the beat. Specifically, note how each line in the chorus starts off the beat (i.e., the words “you,” “standing,” “waving,” etc.) aligns onto the beat for the middle of the line, then slips back between the beat for its three emphatic closing syllables (for instance, on the words “live this way” beginning at 0:46). I especially like when seemingly straightforward songs give us subtle little treats like that along the way.

“Strangers” is a single released by the band last month. You can download as usual via the title above, or directly from the band via SoundCloud. The band has previously released one three-song EP and one other single, both in 2013.