jeremyfingertips

Favorite free & legal MP3s of 2012, part one

The annual Fingertips list of favorite free and legal MP3s of the year, part one.

Call me old-fashioned but I like my year-end lists to happen truly at the end of the year. As I think we’re close enough now, I am hereby unveiling the annual Fingertips list of favorite free and legal MP3s of the year. If you’re visiting the site, you can access the entire list through one of the main “tabs.” For those accessing the site via RSS feed or email, I will be spending the last two posts of the year presenting the favorites in two separate lists of 10.

To be considered for the list, songs had first of all to have been featured on Fingertips during the year 2012, and second of all must still be available as free and legal MP3s. You can download any or all of them right here the usual way, or listen via the play button if you happen to be reading this directly on the Fingertips site. If my snappy one-sentence song summaries leave you wanting more, you can read the original reviews by clicking on the date next to each band name, which is the date of the original Fingertips post.

I’ll start, as tradition has it, with the list presenting my numbers 11 through 20 favorites. Next week I’ll be back with the top 10.

11. “Rivers” – Black City Lights (March 29)
This is all about delayed gratification. If you wait for it, the payoff is stirring.

12. “Bang” – Elin Ruth (November 30)
I for one never tire of this kind of retro-pop-soul, if artfully done. This is artfully done.

13. “Lord Knows” – Dum Dum Girls (September 21)
Reverb suffuses this classic-sounding ballad.

14. “Stop This Now” – The Hermit Crabs (September 6)
Lovely, melancholy music as only those bands from Glasgow know how to create.

15. “Observations” – The Raveonettes (June 29)
This now-veteran duo still showing us how it’s done.

16. “A Week of Good Health” – Panoramic & True (September 14)
Inexplicably appealing ensemble pop.

17. “Broke” – Sea of Bees (March 16)
As sweet and powerful as a simple-sounding song can be. Another great chorus, too.

18. “Farm Kid” – Elim Bolt (October 12)
Songs with catchy choruses are still being made.

19. “Generals” – The Mynabirds (March 22)
Protest songs are still being made; this one is particularly stompy and wonderful.

20. “Living in a Country” – Brave Baby (December 8)
Earnest, incisive rock’n’roll is still possible, and still being made.

Okay, that’s the second ten. If you like surprises, tune in next week for the top 10; if you need it all right now, you can go here, although be warned: you won’t get the incisive one-sentence summaries over on that page. I have to leave something for next week.

Free and legal MP3: Gross Ghost (reverby/jangly power-poppy garage rock)

“Leslie” stomps along with the complex buoyancy of any dark tale told to a toe-tapping beat and sing-songy melody.

“Leslie” – Gross Ghost

Delightful yet purposeful, “Leslie” is a short shot of reverby/jangly power-poppy garage rock, or maybe garage-rocky power pop. This one stomps along with the complex buoyancy of any somber tale told to a toe-tapping beat and sing-songy melody; the song’s narrator is talking to his father’s wife (~~not, clearly, his own mother~~ and yes it is about his own mother, my mistake; misunderstood the lyrics), formerly and maybe still currently a drug addict. The story’s curious, even random-seeming specificity is an intermittent indie-rock songwriting trait that can either intrigue or irritate, depending entirely on the strength of the music. A lot of times—as here—you can’t really follow the lyrics anyway; when the music is this melodic and insistent, if the lyrics are more sound than story, there’s no loss to the listener, from my point of view. It’s enough for phrases to emerge—in this case, the song coheres nicely around the chorus’s poignant line: “Feels like I’m watching you but no one’s watching me.” Or at least I think it’s the chorus, in that it sounds like a chorus musically, and yet we only hear it once. I’m assuming if the song were any longer than 2:26 we would have heard it again.

Gross Ghost is a band based in Durham, North Carolina. While details are sketchy, they appear to have started life as the duo of guitarist Mike Dillon and bassist William “Tre” Acklen, but at this point their Facebook page lists four members. The debut Gross Ghost album, Brer Rabbit, was released back in March on the Chapel Hill label Grip Tapes; a second vinyl pressing will be shipping next month. In the meantime, the band has since signed with Odessa Records, also based in Chapel Hill, which plans to release the follow-up album this coming spring. Thanks to the MP3 blog Faronheit for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Squalloscope (affecting blend of electronic and organic)

Soft, elusive electronic parts intermingle with organic movement; the song unfolds like a skittish, intimate dream.

“Z-E-P-H-Y-R” – Squalloscope

Unfolding like a skittish, intimate dream, “Z-E-P-H-Y-R” is an affecting blend of the organic and the electronic. The non-organic parts are soft and elusive—a whispery synth here, chimey electronics there, and the gentlest of synthetic beats throughout. The non-electronic stuff, meanwhile, is full of movement and subtle edginess. We get a finger-picked guitar front and center, and it took me many listens to internalize the fact that this is an electric guitar, not an acoustic guitar. It’s being played like an acoustic guitar, which is more unusual than it probably should be.

Meanwhile, Anna Kohlweis performs with a commanding nonchalance, gliding deftly between lyrics that are almost spoken and those that are sung. Her voice has a pleasing richness and an engaging variation between her lower and higher registers, while the words that are half-spoken are often arriving with the velvety urgency of a whispered prayer. Her voice and delivery combine with the uncluttered arrangement to create the illusion that there is maybe not much of a song or a melody here, but that’s exactly what it is—an illusion. Listen carefully and you may see how the song’s melodic strength is hiding in plain sight, at once enhanced and obscured by subtlety and misdirection.

Squalloscope is the current performing name for Vienna, Austria-based singer/songwriter/artist/writer Anna Kohlweis. She previously recorded music under the name Paper Bird. “Z-E-P-H-Y-R” is a song from the debut Squalloscope album, Soft Invasions, which was released on Seayou Records back in March. The song was released this fall as a single and a free and legal MP3. You can download it via the link above or via SoundCloud, where you can also read the lyrics.

Free and legal MP3: Amor de Días (Clientele-like breeziness, w/ some crunch)

Evocative of bygone days and hopeful futures simultaneously.

“Jean’s Waving” – Amor de Días

There’s a gratifying solidity about “Jean’s Waving,” something that evokes bygone days and hopeful futures simultaneously. The feeling is nostalgic, to be sure, but not incurably so. The song is shot through with suspended chords, which tend to have a lovely irresoluteness about them—they haven’t quite committed to a full-fledged chord, but they’re ever charming in their indecision. And did I say solidity? Maybe I meant fluidity, as those uncommitted chords do flow so nicely into other chords, not to mention each other. (The most prominent example in this song is during the bridge, starting at 0:54, which seems to be built pretty much entirely from suspended chords.)

Well, solid or fluid, I like. Amor de Días is the twosome of Alasdair MacLean, best known as front man for the Clientele (currently on hiatus), and Lupe Núñez-Fernández, who is half of the multinational duo Pipas. When last we heard the band here, in March 2011, Lupe Núñez-Fernández was out in front, and the song, while still flowy, had a Continental flair to its brisk chamber poppy vibe. With MacLean on lead this time, the Clientele connection becomes (much) more obvious, for anyone familiar with that evocative band. But even with our friends the suspended chords, the sound here is less gauzy and more, maybe, crunchy than Clientele tunes tend to be. (Listen to “Somebody Changed,” from God Save the Clientele, for a reasonably close comparison.) So maybe we’re back to solidity after all. And I do believe that it’s Núñez-Fernández’s presence in the chorus that keeps the mood from getting too mopey, as it kind of helps the listener, however subtly, see or feel Jean’s departure from both points of view.

“Jean’s Waving” is a song from the second Amor de Días album, The House at Sea, which is coming from the fine folks at Merge Records in January. You can download the MP3 via the song link above or on SoundCloud via Merge.

Free and legal MP3: Joshua James (cryptic folk rocker w/ edgy vibe)

Joshua James is a young man with an old man’s voice. The words he sings are both cryptic and intense, which is a disconcerting combination.

“Queen of the City” – Joshua James

Joshua James is a young man with an old man’s voice. The words he sings are both cryptic and intense, which is a disconcerting combination. Written out they look merely weird; this, for instance—

I heard a lady singing,
“We’re all bound together!”
I joined her side by saying,
“To dance beneath the heavens!”

—is not the only point in the song where you just go what the what? Or, here’s the chorus’s recurring assertion: “But my dog ain’t nothin’, he ain’t nothin’ like my lover/Ain’t nothin’ like my lover at all.” This dude is operating from foreign coordinates, and I don’t mean merely the fact that he splits his time between Nebraska and Utah.

But songs aren’t poetry; lyrics are not intended to stand alone on a page or a screen. Some kind of alchemy is at work in the way these words are sung by this voice to these melodies and this steady, drum-driven arrangement. There are no flamboyant hooks or striking sounds, but there’s an edginess in here somewhere, and a catchiness too, although both are difficult to pinpoint. The key, to me, is the internal rhyme he uses in the second line of the verse. He grabs you with it in the opening moments—“I am a liar, a dirty wire”—but mutes the effect in the second verse with an inexact rhyme (“baby” and “lady”). What he’s done, consciously or not, is set us up for the third verse—the ear was waiting for the return of a true rhyme (“I’ll be she’s pretty, queen of the city”) and even though that’s the only time we hear the title’s phrase, the song now seems effortlessly to have delivered us to this phrase, at just the right moment. Just don’t expect to understand what he’s talking about. One other thing he has mysteriously set up is the twist in the third iteration of the chorus, when the dog is abruptly replaced: “But my lord, you ain’t nothin’, you ain’t nothin’ like my lover/You ain’t nothin’ like my lover at all.” I’m not sure I will ever decipher all this but it feels righteous and deep. Impressive stuff.

“Queen of the City” is a track from James’ third full-length album, From the Top of Willamette Mountain, which was released last month on Intelligent Noise Records. The produced by Richard Swift, who has worked with the Mynabirds and Laetitia Sadier and is also now a member of the Shins.

Free and legal MP3: Lenny Smith (homespun, unironic gospel)

Rollicking, front-porch gospel, delivered with kindly spirit by the 70-year-old Smith.

“How Blessed is the Man” – Lenny Smith

What better for the holiday season than an actual piece of gospel? Nothing against silly and/or sentimental Christmas songs but how much sturdier and more appealing is this homespun, Christ-supporting hoedown? And I say that as someone with no attachment to (or, to be blunt, faith in) Lenny Smith’s particular views of who the Lord may or may not be. But this is a heartening song—more fun than hymns or carols usually are, and as such more inclusive than it might initially sound. Someone having a good time, singing a catchy melody, with spirited, front-porch accompaniment, describing his idea of a happy world, without bad-mouthing anyone but an unspecific group of people called, simply, “the wicked.” (And even those folks seem to be approached with compassion by the kindly Mr. Smith.) This is a rollicking good time, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why anyone is offended by the reality of someone expressing a different belief system or celebrating a different religious holiday. How insecure in one’s own spiritual life does one have to be to be intolerant of someone else’s?

Oh, don’t get me started. Just crank up “How Blessed is the Man,” and see if you can’t feel a little bit blessed this holiday season yourself.

Lenny Smith is 70 years old and has been writing Christian music since the 1960s, all in the so-called “folk mass” style. His 1974 song “Our God Reigns” was a big hit with churches around the world who were embracing folk worship at the time. Family life intervened—Smith and his wife have five children—and he taught school and worked as a carpenter and sang his songs at his church and was very happy with his life. Eventually his son Daniel grew up and became a musician himself—he fronts the quirky-earnest, gospel-inflected indie art pop band Danielson—and sat his father down to record some of his songs, which became Lenny’s 2001 album Deep Calls to Deep. “How Blessed is the Man” is from Smith’s long-awaited follow-up album, Who Was and Is and Is to Come, released in November on Smith’s own label, Great Comfort Records. MP3 via Great Comfort. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Brave Baby (yearning, rock-solid rock)

“Living in a Country” is all yearning momentum and indelible chorus.

“Living in a Country” – Brave Baby

Charleston’s Brave Baby aims big here, drawing inspiration not only from the heroic/nostalgic sounds of Arcade Fire but from the granddaddies of earnest yet incisive rock’n’roll, U2. Front man Keon Masters does sing with an air of Win Butler about him; his vulnerable tenor has a rope-like strength to it, and a subtle intricacy, as he offers different aural qualities at his different registers.

“Living in a Country” is all yearning momentum and indelible chorus. You’ll hear that without even trying. Give a closer listen, though, and you’ll encounter any number of oddly satisfying details—the Star Trek-y synthesizer (first heard in the introduction), the late entry of the bass (0:29), the ghostly octave vocals (1:40), the deconstruction of the time signature during that asymmetrical interlude after the second verse (1:54), and maybe best of all, the burnished spaciousness of the sound in the chorus, which feels partly like some kind of wall-of-sound voodoo and yet partly organic and explainable. Only I can’t explain it; all I know is that the chorus’s urgent hookiness has probably as much to do with its sonic landscape as its melody.

Three of Brave Baby’s four members have been playing music together since 2008; the quartet coalesced in 2010. “Living in a Country” is the first single available from the band’s debut album, Forty Bells, due out in January on Hearts and Plugs Records. Thanks to the record label for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: School of Seven Bells

Glistening vocals, w/ glitchy bounce

“Secret Days” – School of Seven Bells

It was last year at this same time that School of Seven Bells unveiled their two-person versus three-person incarnation—a personnel change with more import than most since SVIIB was therein losing one of the two identical twin vocalists who together were central to the band’s indelible sound. As it turned out, one Dehaza (Alejandra stayed, Claudia left) was certainly better than none, and the band’s glistening swirl of rhythm, electronics, guitar, and voice remained intact, as we saw from “The Night,” the lead track from duo’s Ghostory, which was released in February.

Less than a year later comes an EP, Put Your Sad Down, with five new songs (four originals, plus a cover of the ’60s underground psychedelic classic “Lovefingers”). This is a band with something to say, and a singular way to say it; they take the 21st-century predilection for glitchy beats and shoegazey reverb and transmute it into something powerful and timeless. While the band has not abandoned its fondness for muscular soundscapes, there is at the same time something pleasantly minimalist about the texture this time—Dehaza’s voice feels more exposed here (listen at 1:39, for example), the instrumental layers more precise. Band mate Benjamin Curtis seems largely to have put his guitar down on this tune, opting for a boppy low end, featuring the robust bounce of a kinetic bass synthesizer. Those of you who may be tired of the 21st-century music scene’s relentless worship of beat over musical substance might find a way out with SVIIB—even as their melodies scan more like incantations than flowing tunes, they never seem to lose touch with the musical nature of, well, music. The band’s prevailing uniqueness remains itself an impressive accomplishment.

SVIIB is based in New York City, and has been previously featured on Fingertips in November 2008 and, as mentioned above, in December 2011. You can listen to the whole Put Your Sad Down EP via SoundCloud; purchase it via Amazon. ~~MP3 via Epitonic (just like the old days!).~~

Free and legal MP3: Elin Ruth (assured, retro-y soulful pop)

The big world out there goes nuts for the flamboyant belters but in the small world of Fingertips, I love best the singers who might cut loose but don’t. The artistry is in the restraint.

“Bang” – Elin Ruth

So even as I have, for the sake of a pithy heading, described “Bang” as “assured, retro-y soulful pop,” let me quickly note that this is not as easy to do as it probably sounds. First you need a good song (difficult to come by!); then you also need all the right touches. I hear an impressive supply of them here: the background “oo-oohs,” the horn charts, the prickly guitar strum, that little wooden-sounding percussion flourish (first heard at 0:24), and best of all those three extra beats in the first measure of the chorus. I love songs that know how to do that kind of thing.

And—let us not forget—you need an able singer. Elin Ruth starts out kind of speak-y and casual. She is holding back. Compare the end of the first lyrical line (“until we’re dead,” at 0:19) to the end of the second (“around your wing,” 0:34). She holds her note maybe a half second longer, but it’s a delicious little half second. Here is a singer with a big voice, but it’s not “X Factor” showy. It actually has an unexpected grit to it (listen to how she sings “There’s nothing I can do about it” at 0:50), but even that she refuses to flaunt. The big world out there goes nuts for the flamboyant belters but in the small world of Fingertips, I love best the singers who might cut loose but don’t. The artistry is in the restraint.

Elin Ruth began recording, in 2003, as Elin Ruth Sigvardsson. She just released her fifth album in her native Sweden, but in 2010 fell in love with a New Yorker and last year they were married. She now lives in Queens, and is readying her first album to be released in the United States, which will be called simply Elin Ruth. It’s slated for release in January on her own label, Divers Avenue Music. In the meantime, she has put together a four-song EP for the U.S., featuring “Bang” as the title track. She is now offering it as a free download via her Facebook page. All songs on the EP were originally featured on her previous Swedish albums, “Bang” coming from her 2009 album Cookatoo Friends.

Free and legal MP3: The Dead Heads (sublimely effective garage rock)

That it can be the end of 2012 and that new bands exist making this kind of straightforward rock’n’roll and can still make it sound this electrifying, well, all hope is not lost.

“When I’m Dead” – the Dead Heads

This is one of those songs that helps me realize how much I like a certain musical circumstance that I never previously would have recognized or been able to articulate. And that circumstance is: when a small moment in a song, via repetition and unfolding context, becomes one of the song’s very best things, only you couldn’t have known it from the first time you heard it. I’m not sure you can plan this out, even.

The moment I’m talking about here is the way the guitar slides up and down between two notes to create that lazy/insistent riff that fuels the song. We first encounter it after the long droney introduction, when the guitar finally starts moving (around 0:28), and at first you don’t much notice it. You’re still pretty much waiting for something to happen. The vocals start at 0:40 and I immediately like the processing involved, which achieves the contradictory effect of making it sound “garage-y” and sophisticated at the same time. We seem to be in standard three-chord territory here except, hold on, a fourth chord sneaks in there at 0:54 and it’s non-standard—sounds like a suspended chord of some kind—and it provides a bit of simple complexity that helps mold the song into such a satisfying ride. And then we’re back to those sliding guitar notes, which now propel a chorus that otherwise consists only of the words “When I’m dead,” repeated. And it’s the guitar that glues it together, something in the offhanded way it slinks up and down that seems, again, both primitive and discerning at the same time. That it can be the end of 2012 and that new bands exist making this kind of straightforward rock’n’roll and can still make it sound this electrifying, well, all hope is not lost. For anything. Not bad for a song called “When I’m Dead.”

The Dead Heads are a five-man band from Sydney, formed in either 2009 or 2010, depending on which web source you consult. They are fronted on vocals and guitars by the brothers Oscar and Ali Jeffrey. As you can hear from the music, the band’s name has nothing to do with the Grateful Dead; it derives, according to the band, from one of the dictionary meanings for “deadhead,” which is “a partially submerged log or trunk.” MP3 via the Australian new music site Triple J Unearthed; thanks to music blog The Mad Mackerel for the head’s up.