jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Heyrocco (catnip for ’90s fans)

Tricky of a power trio to wrap its sensitive side into a thunderous song that appears to be about premature ejaculation.

“Melt” – Heyrocco

Here’s a shot of adrenaline for you ’90s rock fans, full of loud crunchy guitars, gratifying melodies, slightly affected-while-trying-not-to-sound-affected vocals, sexually forward lyrics (“When you undo/My belt/I melt”), and some of that loud/soft oscillation that worked so well before smartphones took over (not that there’s a connection…necessarily…). In the bigger picture of things, “Melt” is timeless rock’n’roll—young men making their desire desirable via backbeat, melody, and loud crunchy guitars.

But notice the tempo here. It’s got a backbeat, yes, but a deliberate one. For all the mighty, bottom-heavy sound on display, “Melt” is nearly a ballad, albeit a loud and R-rated one. (Tricky of a power trio to wrap its sensitive side into a thunderous song that appears to be at least partially about premature ejaculation.) And yet this is not to be confused with those treacly so-called “power ballads” arena rock bands used to churn out back in the day. This is maybe just a slowed-down rock song, but with such brawny vitality that the crowd’s going to dance anyway. From start to finish, the sound is stout and bracing; the simple, declarative chorus is the definition of killer; and the guitar solo you have waited patiently for (2:46) is a concise, off-kilter triumph. For three minutes and forty-nine seconds you can pretend Bill Clinton is still president.

Heyrocco is a young trio from Charleston, South Carolina with one digital-only full-length release to date, 2012’s Comfort, which you can listen to and/or buy via Bandcamp. A full-fledged debut album is expected later this year.

The Subtle Sorrow of Social Media

To experience our connections through impersonally-directed snippets on social media is to be denied the heart and soul of friendship.

We have so quickly grown accustomed to social-media-fueled communication that it seems almost quaint to remember that one-to-many communication was once both difficult and expensive to arrange. Only people who were either public figures or professional communicators were routinely put in the position of communicating at a distance to multiple people at the same time.

Today, anyone engaged with social media is typically doing so many different times a day, effectively for free. Sending the same message simultaneously to lots of different people we know is easy and fun and oh so efficient.

As a matter of fact, the internet not only allows us ready access to one-to-many communication, it seems to have flipped the equation in terms of what kind of communication is more readily employed. After all: how many of your friends and family members have sent you a personal email in the last week, or have actually called you on the phone, versus how many have sent you a social media message of one kind or another?

Easy and fun and efficient is winning out at this point, yes?

But where, I am beginning to wonder, does all this easy fun efficient communication leave the people on the receiving end?

Potentially overwhelmed by information, for one thing, but that’s not my immediate concern. I am concerned, instead, about the genuine and vital human need for specific attention, which is decidedly overlooked in the social media milieu.

Each of us is an individual, with the thoughts and feelings of an individual, the challenges and joys and desires and frustrations and dreams of an individual. And, in the course of our daily existence, one of our basic needs, as individuals, is for communication that substantiates and validates this individuality. Up until very recently, this was one of the wonderful things friendship was for.

Today, thanks to social media, even communication that happens in what is supposed to be our personal space is all too often replaced by the impersonal communication fostered by Facebook and other social media applications.

The rise of impersonal communication

Because that’s what one-to-many communication is, by necessity: impersonal communication. It may come from someone you know, it may have to do with circumstances you are familiar with, but such communication is not being specifically tailored to the individual that you are. This is a new mode of relating to one another—“I know you personally but I will address you impersonally”—and it’s sad, to me, in an elusive but powerful way.

On the sending side, the impersonality of personal broadcasting strikes me as an equal if not greater cause of subtle sorrow. Say you share a personally meaningful tidbit on Facebook with your social network only to be greeted with silence—no responses, no comments, not even any “likes.” Isn’t this kind of crummy? Or do most people not even notice, because it’s really more about the sending than the receiving? Which is also kind of crummy, if you think about it.

Of course non-responding recipients don’t mean to be making you feel badly. The nature of social media frees the recipients from the obligation to respond. This is hardly the same as letting a personal letter sent via the post office go unanswered.

But to me, this is exactly, and cumulatively, the problem. The central means of communication we have adopted in our 21st-century lives has freed us from not only the obligation but, one might suggest, the desire to respond to even our actual friends and family members.

And all this impersonal communication fostered by social media is actually so unnecessary. Here we have the most powerful and widely-utilized communication-oriented invention in the history of humankind—the internet—and it’s like we’ve pushed the one-to-many button and it’s gotten stuck.

The internet, after all, is still an unprecedented tool for genuinely personal communication. The asynchronous instantaneity of email remains a powerful way to dive into thoughtful conversations with close friends and relatives. Texting has its virtues, as long as you let it overwhelm neither your ability to be physically present nor your capacity for handling more involved or time-consuming dialogue. And, of course, picture-phone technology such as that offered by Skype or FaceTime allows us to turn a personal, one-to-one telephone conversation into a face-to-face(-like) encounter with ease.

But something about the social-media revolution of the ’10s seems to have cooled our collective enthusiasm for one-to-one communication, however beautifully enhanced the internet has rendered it.

Talking to everyone and no one

Perhaps the unabashed, on-display metrics of social media have hypnotized us into believing that even in matters of the heart and spirit, quantity counts more than quality. Social media applications love to display your number of friends and followers, while continually encouraging you to find more. And there these contacts sit day after day, all but begging us to address them—which of course is easily done with quick status updates and tweets via handheld devices we rarely let out of our grip. We are encouraged to send out personal details—new photos, new recipes, new jobs, new ideas, new links on the web—and forget we are wrapping them in an impersonal package. In talking to everyone collectively, we talk to no one individually.

Beyond the immediate realm of social media, there is no confusion about the difference between personal and impersonal communication. Even when Kevin Spacey’s character on House of Cards talks to you on the screen, you understand he is not talking to you personally, he is talking, collectively, to the audience who is watching. Talking at them, essentially. As theater, this is both reasonable and entertaining.

But in our lives, with our actual relationships, we seem willing to go along with the ruse. When your friends on Facebook send messages they are not talking to you personally but to the collected audience of people who happen to be “watching.” But because you know them, the illusion that they are in fact talking to you is easier to believe. But they are merely talking at you.

And don’t get me wrong—personal broadcasting surely has great utility in our interconnected world. Being able to say the same thing to lots of people at once is helpful in many contexts. Twitter, for instance, has almost single-handedly given those who aspire to the position of “thought leader” in any given industry an unprecedented platform. This is the power of personal broadcasting at its best.

I also understand the argument many might make that hearing from far-flung friends and family in any manner, impersonally or not, is better than not hearing from them at all. Facebook has surely put people in touch who would otherwise not be in one another’s lives in any fashion, and this seems only a positive thing.

Should friends be an audience?

But note the context. People you would “not hear from at all” if you were not receiving their impersonal, broadcast messages are, by definition, people with whom you are not close—people who don’t really know you in the here and now, nor you them. Distant friends, cousins many times removed, and random scattered acquaintances may in fact be the ideal audience for impersonal messaging: you sort of know them, so you believe they are addressing you more than Kevin Spacey is, but you also don’t really know them, so you are not unconsciously expecting any kind of direct connection.

There have recently been studies that have suggested that using Facebook is often a depressing experience for people. Articles discussing such studies typically focus on the potential for Facebook users to feel envious while watching a parade of pictures and status updates from friends having joyful and exciting experiences. This leads to stress and sadness, goes the theory.

I have yet to see anyone discuss what might be the bigger underlying problem, which is social media’s one-to-many communication mode. We seem so enamored of our newfound broadcasting powers we have thus far overlooked the discouraging effects both of being ongoingly talked at by our very own friends and family members and of being often deprived of personal responses when we ourselves are doing the broadcasting.

Simply put, one-to-many works best when the “many” and the “one” have no personal relationship. In this case, the inherent impersonality of this type of communication is no issue. When the broadcaster, on the other hand, is someone who does in fact have personal knowledge of who you are, of what your life is like, of what matters to you, and so forth, finding yourself now merely a member of his or her “audience” may not feel especially gratifying or connective.

Meanwhile, broadcasting via social media puts a person continually in the position of seeking an audience, not seeking a personal connection. This is why people are routinely discouraged if they post a status update on Facebook and only one person comments. If they were seeking a personal connection, they might be delighted with one comment. But they are actually seeking an audience, and an audience of one feels like failure.

To me, the actual failure is the over-use of personal broadcasting. To experience our connections through impersonally-directed snippets on social media is to be denied the heart and soul of friendship.

It all gets back to the idea of being specifically tended to. This is what social media works to take away from us. We have no reason to assume a friend is ever expressly thinking of us when he or she sends thoughts or news out into the social-media world, and we are never guaranteed the reassuring attention of a friend when we, in turn, send our own thoughts and news into that relentless stream.

Obviously this is not a black-and-white situation. There are still good reasons to employ social media for personal broadcasting. And there obviously remain many other ways to reach out to our closer connections, beyond sending out social-media salvos. I am just not convinced we are doing this as often as honest-to-goodness friendship might seemingly both require and desire now that we have this new communication tool so centrally placed in our arsenal.

Recently it has occurred to me to wonder if our online social reality is some weird kind of karmic retribution for life in the Citizens United era here in the United States. The Supreme Court, after all, would have us treat collections of human beings (i.e., corporations) as we would individual human beings. Substituting broadcast communication too broadly for personal communication seems to me to be part of the same category error.

Personal broadcasting has yet to make quite so many people quite as angry as the Citizens United decision, of course. But time may yet tell.

Free and legal MP3: Quilt (fidgety, ’60s-inspired quasi-neo-psychedelia)

For a minute and a half, “Tired & Buttered” pounds away with a fidgety, psychedelic claustrophobia that seems counter-intuitively liberating.

“Tired & Buttered” – Quilt

For a minute and a half, “Tired & Buttered” pounds away with a fidgety, psychedelic claustrophobia that seems counter-intuitively liberating. I don’t think we’re hearing more than two chords here, and the section that seems to be the chorus appears to be getting by with just one. Notice too that a lot of urgency is created without, actually, that much noise. No wailing or bashing, just a steady beat, some atmospheric vocal effects, an elusively non-Western guitar line, and two chords. Keep an ear on the harmonies, which are casually trippy.

At the precise halfway point, things change (1:30). The song slows and quiets, the woozy vocals get a bit woozier, the drumming gets careful and winsome. Soon an electric guitar snakes to the foreground with an informed ’60s flair for the pop-exotic, and leads us with an abrupt lack of fuss back to the opening tempo and ambiance. Now the guitar seems more clearly in charge, its background flourishes suddenly keys to the entire song. Having no clear idea what “tired and buttered” means will not detract from the song’s charms.

Quilt is a trio from Boston. “Tired & Buttered” has been floating around online since the fall, finally to emerge on the band’s second album, Held in Splendor, in late January, on the Mexican Summer label. MP3 via NPR’s fine selection of free and legal downloads from 2014 SXSW acts.

(As a P.S., the band had a bad accident in their van recently. They are all okay but their van, upon which they rely to tour, is not. You can read more details at http://quiltmusic.org/quiltmusic/HOME.html and contribute some amount, big or small, if you are so inclined.)

Free and legal MP3: The Honey Trees (lush, disciplined, gorgeous)

Lush, disciplined song with a drop-dead gorgeous chorus.

“Nightingale” – The Honey Trees

You don’t expect a song named “Nightingale” to begin with a drum solo. You do expect a song named “Nightingale” to be sung by a someone with a lovely voice. You don’t expect any song—named “Nightingale,” or not—to have a drop-dead, goose-bump gorgeous chorus, simply because there’s no sense in getting one’s expectations that high. Bonus points here for the musical elegance of the transition from verse to chorus (first heard at 0:52-0:55). Note too that even in the rarified world of crystal-pure voices, The Honey Trees’ singer Becky Filip deserves some special props. Hers is not simply pretty but full of subtle character, and impressively athletic (for example, the supple leap she takes at the end of the phrase “skin and bones,” at 0:40).

The song is lush, disciplined, unfalteringly interesting. The verse feels purposeful, as Filip floats her beguiling voice above a syncopated rhythm. I like the sudden clearing of the minimal bridge (2:26). But, seriously, this chorus. Like many acutely beautiful things, it is not perfect. It is less full-fledged chorus than indecipherable sentence, containing perhaps 10 words, and encompassing (by my count) at least six moments of ravishing harmonic delight along the way. It ends both unresolved and somewhat incomplete-seeming, the perhaps inevitable result of the breathtaking mini-journey it pulls us through. The first time you hear it, in fact, the power of its beauty may not quite to sink in before the song slides sideways into a liminal section of wordless vocals (1:10). The next two times, the chorus is repeated, creating what may well be the song’s finest moment: the drum-led threshold between the chorus’s irresolute end and its immediate repetition, which we hear both at 2:13 and at 3:14. And that second time—don’t miss it—the chorus gets an additional repeat, which this time is preceded by an unexpected upward melisma at 3:43 that in its own way introduces a delicate kind of anticipatory closure into a melody that otherwise resists completion.

The Honey Trees are a duo from central California (Filip’s band mate is Jacob Wick). “Nightingale” is a song from the band’s debut full-length album, Bright Fire. An earlier EP was released in 2009. The album was produced by Jeremy Larson in Springfield, Missouri, and will be released in April.

Free and legal MP3: Jessy Bell Smith (magical, lilting, and steadfast)

Jessy Bell Smith has a magical lilt in her voice, and “John Mouse” is a magical, lilting song, all forward momentum and earnest, recycling melody.

“John Mouse” – Jessy Bell Smith

Jessy Bell Smith has a magical lilt in her voice, and “John Mouse” is a magical, lilting song, all forward momentum and friendly, recycling melody. Verse and chorus are barely distinguishable as Smith, once set in motion, seems not to want to break the spell of this odd, oblique little tale. A mouse has been killed, to begin with. The narrator seems conflicted about it. After that, little is unambiguous, lyrically.

Musically, on the other hand, “John Mouse” is steadfast and definitive, with the feeling of a olden-days folk ballad re-booted by a traveling-carnival rock band with more interest in horns and tooting keyboards than electric guitars. There in the midst of the song’s light-footed élan, Smith manages to convey the sensibility of both ringmaster and empath, laying an almost poignant tenderness atop her “Step right up!” confidence.

Note by the way that it’s rare for a song to have both this trustworthy a backbeat and this offbeat an arrangement. When the backbeat disappears, starting at 2:09, the song’s idiosyncratic pith comes more fully into focus. This is fun in its own way but when the drumming returns 30 seconds later is when she really owns you. I think there’s a lesson in that but I’m not exactly sure what it is.

A singer/songwriter from Guelph, Ontario, Jessy Bell Smith has also somewhat recently become a member of the veteran Toronto band The Skydiggers. “John Mouse” is from the album The Town, released at the end of February via Choose My Music, a British music blog with a small, associated record label. The album was a limited-edition CD and appears now to be sold out; you can check out two other songs via Bandcamp, and download one of them via SoundCloud, thanks to the Guelph-based Missed Connection Records. Smith’s one previous release appears to have been a very lo-fi EP called Tiny Lights, in 2004. Two of those songs landed on this finally-recorded album. Thanks to the record label for the MP3. Thanks to Lauren Laverne for the tip.

I’ll go public in my own time

Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 4 — March 2014

As one corner of the world embarks upon a week of relentlessly promoted new music, how about a playlist filled with almost entirely unpromoted music from every rock’n’roll decade that yet exists?

So, yes, Volume 4 of the Eclectic Playlist Series is upon us. I am starting to think the playlists should have titles, if only to give them more immediate personality. Will think about this for future reference.

In the meantime, here are 20 more songs placed thoughtfully together despite notable differences in year of origin and genre. We open up with a Jules Shear track that is not I don’t think in the standard pantheon of widely-admired Jules Shear gems but not for lack of brilliance. The Smiths song has always been a favorite in part because of how it manages to break out of the band’s signature sound even while still being very Smiths-y. Willie Colón I quite literally just stumbled upon recently via some Songza exploration. New York salsa is not an expertise, needless to say, but this song had an extra oomph to it that called to me. I especially like juxtaposing the cutely blasé Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett, just now breaking out, with the declarative strangeness of New Wave princess Lene Lovich. It just seemed to work. As for OMD into the Grateful Dead, that initiated as a music library shuffle accident that was too good to forget. Meanwhile, the Auteurs, anyone? I never really knew what they were about, but ended up with a cassette version of New Wave a few years after its release. I never heard them on the radio, and have never had reason to discuss them with anyone, so I feel as if they have previously existed in my own private sub-universe. We’ll see how they do exposed to the light of day.

If this seems like a reasonable idea, be sure to check out the previous playlists in the series, helpfully titled Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3.

This playlist was originally created via Spotify but I’ve since converted all playlists to Mixcloud. Here’s the widget:

Full playlist:
“Hard Enough” – Jules Shear (Allow Me, 2000)
“Le vent nous portera” – Sophie Hunger (1983, 2010)
“A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours” – The Smiths (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987)
“I Just Got Back” – Parliament (Up for the Down Stroke, 1974)
“Listen to Me” – Buddy Holly (Buddy Holly, 1958)
“Heart” – Nick Lowe (Nick the Knife, 1982)
“El Dia de Suerte” – Willie Colón (Lo Mato, 1973)
“Avant Gardener” – Courtney Barnett (The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, 2013)
“Home” – Lene Lovich (Stateless, 1978)
“I Got a Line on You” – Spirit (The Family That Plays Together, 1968)
“Kill to Know” – Amy Miles (Dirty Stay-Out, 2002)
“Helen of Troy” – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (English Electric, 2013)
“Box of Rain” – Grateful Dead (American Beauty, 1970)
“Leave Me Alone” – Baby Washington (I’ve Got a Feeling, 1963)
“He Keeps Me Alive” – Sally Shapiro (Disco Romance, 2004)
“Gimme Some Slack” – the Cars (Panorama, 1980)
“Show Girl” – The Auteurs (New Wave, 1993)
“10538 Overture” – Electric Light Orchestra (The Electric Light Orchestra, 1972)
“Bodyguard” – Dawn Landes (Fireproof, 2006)
“It’s a Fire” – Portishead (Dummy, 1994)

Introducing Mixcloud playlists

The Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series is now available on Mixcloud.

Regular visitors may have noticed that I’ve begun posting playlists on Spotify. At the same time, I haven’t been completely happy there. While it’s all but effortless to make playlists on that popular streaming service, there are in my view three consistent downsides to how things work in Spotifyland. First, you have to register before you can listen; second, playlist songs are inelegantly stacked together (rather than artful segues you typically get an awkward amount of dead air between songs); and third, all playlists are marred by random commercials which intrude if you are using the free versus paid-for service. An additional problem occasionally encountered is the absence of a song one might otherwise want to use. Spotify has lots of stuff but they don’t have everything, because basically no one can.

The British streaming service Mixcloud deftly sidesteps each of these problems, for the relatively minor cost of it involving more effort to create playlists in the first place. Rather than dragging and dropping songs, Mixcloud requires the playlist maker to fully construct his or her playlist as one long file, which is then uploaded. Further effort is then necessary to upload song titles and “time-stamp” the playlist, so the Mixcloud player can identify what song is playing at any given time.

The end result is brilliant, however. You get a playlist anyone can listen to, without joining anything, you get a playlist with purposefully designed segues, you get a playlist without commercials, and you get to include any song you have in your own library. On top of all this, Mixcloud is legal; they pay all the appropriate licensing fees required in the U.K. And while it’s true that Mixcloud is a very DJ-oriented environment, there does seem room for eclectic playlists of all kinds, so I’m definitely hopeful to gain a foothold there.

Which I most certainly have not done yet, as you’ll see if you visit my profile page. But hey it’s a brand-new enterprise for me, and the beginning is always today, as the saying goes.

Note that right now I’m a bit out of sync with myself—Volume 4 in the Eclectic Playlist Series will be out in a few days on Spotify, but on Mixcloud only the first two playlists in the series are available. You can access those below. I am hoping that within another month or so I will be able to beginning publishing the playlists on Spotify and Mixcloud at the same time. In the meantime, it’s a good opportunity to check out these earlier playlists if you haven’t quite found the time yet. Not that I can give you more time in the day (if only), but here at least is the easiest access yet to the music.

Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 1 by Fingertipsmusic on Mixcloud

Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 2 by Fingertipsmusic on Mixcloud

Free and legal MP3: Terminal Gods (dark yet uplifting guitar rock)

Hook-iness nestled in a gnarled shelter of blazing guitars.

“The Wheels of Love” – Terminal Gods

A pounding ferocity that makes me want to talk in clipped sentences. Hook-iness nestled in a gnarled shelter of blazing guitars. Almost poignant in its refusal of poignancy. Black leather hiding a tender heart. Those gruff, baritone lead vocals that almost aren’t even like singing.

But then there’s the discipline of the guitar lines themselves that give rise to a need for articulate description. I hear unexpected echoes of Big Country’s bagpipey sound lurking in the fervent fingerwork, and something of that band’s earnest hopefulness too, despite Terminal Gods’ best efforts to cloak themselves in a goth-ier growl. The song is simply too well built to be a downer, the interplay between vocalist Robert Cowlin and guitarist Robert Maisey too vivid to do anything but uplift.

Cowlin and Maisey were formerly in a band called The Mumbles from 2005 to 2011; Terminal Gods was formed shortly thereafter. “Wheels of Love” is from the band’s debut release, a six-song EP entitled Machine Beat Messiah, released in late November. You can listen and/or buy via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Goldheart Assembly (energetic & smile-inducing)

Nothing is better than music that makes you smile not because it’s funny but just because it makes you smile.

“Oh Really” – Goldheart Assembly

With slinky-swingy energy of elusive provenance, “Oh Really” is irresistible well before the gang-style vocal response in the chorus makes further opposition futile. Nothing is better than music that makes you smile not because it’s funny but just because it makes you smile.

Beyond those fetching “Oh really?”s of the chorus, the song’s charms are rooted, to my ears, in the way the melodies snake in and around the 4/4 time signature; routine avoidance of the downbeat (i.e., the first beat of the measure) gives “Oh Really” the momentum of a slippery incantation. At the same time, the slightly over-modulated mix pushes the ear in a not-unpleasant way, adding to the goofily hyped-up ambiance. All in all a winner that needs to be listened to more than written about. (That’s your cue.)

“Oh Really” has been around since at least 2010 but did not appear on either of the band’s first two albums. It was officially unveiled as a single in January. Goldheart Assembly is a five-piece band based in London. Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC 6 for the head’s up, and to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Paul Armfield (disarming acoustic contemplation)

Sleek and homespun at the same time, “Speed of Clouds” may initially hit the ear as an oddity, but settle in with it and let its idiosyncrasies coalesce into the enjoyable and rather moving composition that it reveals itself, over four minutes, to be.

“Speed of Clouds” – Paul Armfield

And now for something completely different. A delicately plucked, out-of-time intro, employing a variety of under-utilized string sounds, launches us into an alternative musical world in which acoustic instruments band together orchestrally to accompany a deep-voiced troubadour musing on the profundity of aging. Sleek and homespun at the same time, “Speed of Clouds” may initially hit the ear as an oddity, but settle in and let its idiosyncrasies coalesce into the pleasurable and rather moving composition that it reveals itself, over four minutes, to be.

At the center of it is the voice and sensibility of Paul Armfield, an Isle of Wight-based singer/songwriter with a distinctive delivery, best described as a cross between Cat Stevens and mid-career Leonard Cohen, with a bit of sorcerer thrown in. His is such a different-sounding voice than we are used to hearing that at first it may seem almost primitively mannered, and yet very quickly, as you sink into the song, you may notice how soon like an old friend he sounds, not to mention how beautifully he does in fact sing, his voice projecting a three-dimensional presence that feels especially satisfying in this age of vocal processing and gimmickry.

“Speed of Clouds” is from Armfield’s fifth studio album Up Here, which was released last month. You can listen to the whole album via SoundCloud. Thanks to Paul for the MP3.