jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Jennah Barry

Singer/songwriter with depth & allure

“The Coast” – Jennah Barry

“The Coast” opens in a relative hush, and in 6/8 time, just Barry’s voice and a barely articulated guitar. The pithy rhythm section kicks in at 0:37, the unstable momentum of the uncommon time signature pairing oddly well with the singer’s sweet vocal presence, and the sing-songy melody she offers. The production is crisp, the arrangement both minimal and assured, and Barry sings without affectation or artifice. Already this feels like a strong antidote to the ungated arrivals thronging through the internet music scene, with their mud and trickery and self-absorption. Sometimes all I’m looking for is a little easy know-how, a little unselfconscious musical ability.

At 1:02, almost like a wave hitting the shore, 4/4 time arrives with the chorus, and it’s the shift here that is almost, somehow, the song’s hook. Sometimes, I realize, it’s not the unexpected time signature that boosts a song’s resonance as much as how a more common beat is at some point woven into the musical story. The 4/4 chorus smacks the song in the middle of a 6/8 measure, and dances with its own quirky rhythm, the drummer giving us the first and fourth beats but skipping the others. Barry sings more forcefully in the chorus, with a bit of Kathleen Edwards’ honeyed urgency, and yet somehow still keeps her gist hidden, allowing us to hear phrases more easily than sentences. I find the elusiveness refreshing.

“The Coast” is the lead track from Barry’s debut album, Young Men. Nova Scotia born and raised, Barry moved to Toronto in 2006 for college, where she studied jazz. She joined the indie pop orchestral collective O’Darling, and also played with a roots/country band called The Long Haul, but never took to the big-city thing. Returning with relief to Nova Scotia after graduation, she hooked up with producer/engineer Diego Medina, and recorded Young Men at his home studio, bringing some O’Darling compatriots in for the session. The album was released in May; you can check it out and, perhaps, purchase it via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Suit of Lights (melodic, idiosyncratic, apocalyptic)

Combining a Fountains-of-Wayne-ish gift for melody with an idiosyncratic sense of presentation.

“The Human Beings” – Suit of Lights

As homely as it is endearing, “The Human Beings” combines a Fountains-of-Wayne-ish gift for melody with an idiosyncratic sense of presentation. Over an assemblage of woodwinds huffy-puffy-ing in the background, front man Joe Darone offers up what appears to be a pathos-free elegy to the planetary tragedy that is human civilization. But, hey, at least you can sing along—well, part of the way. The verse and the chorus are as pithy and tuneful as can be; the entire lyrical section—verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/verse/chorus—wraps up in 1:40. The song plays out from there as an instrumental at once plucky and ominous, woodwinds interspersed with a muted sort of churning menace. As with the lyrics—“So they blacken the earth and blacken the ground/Now you’re not gonna find one of them around”—the music doesn’t end assuringly. My advice is to enjoy the unbridled melodicism, and find a bit of hope in a human creative urge so relentless as to feel compelled to dress up the apocalypse in such an appealing package.

Billing itself as “an indie rock manifestation,” Suit of Lights is a loose collective fronted by Joe Darone, operating out of New York City. Darone began his musical career as a teenager in the New Jersey punk band The Fiendz in the late ’80s. His Suit of Lights project began life in 2003. “The Human Beings” is a song from Shine On Forever, the third Suit of Lights album, released last month on Visiting Hours Records. You can check the whole thing out on Bandcamp, and buy it there as well. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Everest (mellow facade hides sharply constructed song)

Can a song be immediately engaging and sustainably appealing with neither a hook nor a discernible story? Apparently, yes.

“Raking Me Over the Coals” – Everest

Can a song be immediately engaging and sustainably appealing with neither a hook nor a discernible story? Apparently, yes.

With the lazy-brisk gait of a soft-rock classic, “Raking Me Over the Coals” has a winsome, timeless feeling. Russell Pollard’s easy-going tenor adds to the bygone vibe. And yet there’s a crispness in the air as well; beneath the mellow facade is a sharply constructed song, with persistent melody lines, an elusive chorus, and one well-placed, off-kilter chord change. That change—first heard at 0:43—leads both into and out of the expansive, unusual chorus section, which is comprised of two verse-like segments and finishes with a minor turn on the stand-alone title phrase. The chorus has a protracted, narrative-like feeling, so even as it does come up twice in the three-minute song, it’s hard to get a sense of repetition. This is no sing-along. A typical pop song gains its title from the most repeated word or phrase in the song, and that’s true here, but obliquely: we hear it first, idiosyncratically, at the end of the first section of the first verse (I kind of liked that, for some reason), and then the two more times in the chorus. Just three times in the whole song.

I said “narrative-like,” and I meant it: while the song has the ambling feel of a tale being told, I can decipher no through-line or event descriptions. Truth be told, the smooth and effortless-seeming music belies the title’s implication, and that’s part of the charm here too. Whomever or whatever is raking the narrator over the proverbial coals, he sounds pretty philosophical about it.

Pollard is a L.A.-based musician who has played with a number of notable indie bands over the years, including Sebadoh and Earlimart. “Raking Me Over the Coals” is a song from the band’s third album, Ownerless, which was released in June on ATO Records.

photo credit: Zoran Orlic

Free and legal MP3: North Atlantic Drift (moody, stately instrumental)

Combining the subtle flavors of electronic texture with the deep allure of simple melody. An instrumental, but no apparent relation to the old Fleetwood Mac instrumental with the same name.

“Albatross” – North Atlantic Drift

The musical fine line between dull and hypnotic is never as evident as when venturing into the uncharted territory of the rock’n’roll instrumental. With no words to guide us, an instrumental often makes no effort to engage the conscious mind at all; there are, indeed, any number of thriving sub-genres in which obvious melodic movement takes a big backseat to texture and ambiance. Such sub-genres, alas, do not typically register with me. My conscious mind is a demanding beast. I happily go about my life pretending that ambient music doesn’t really exist.

Every now and then, however, an odd hybrid slides into my field of awareness. Each of the two gentlemen in Toronto-based North Atlantic Drift has a background in electronic, “post-rock” music, and they surely love their processors and loops and all those digitally manipulative tools of the trade. They are not out here to thrill you with their intricate melodies. They are here to captivate you with mood and texture. And yet they bring a secret weapon: archetypal melody. “Albatross” is grounded in one three-note, minor-key descent, played on a reverbed guitar. Note how offhanded the melody’s entrance is, at 0:12, how it emerges shyly from the gently pulsing mist. Note too how slippery the middle note is, and will remain—we hear it only in slurred combination with the previous note. The song develops patiently from the ground of this slightly blurred three-note motif, itself just an inversion of the two-note bass line, with the middle note filled in. The motif is repeated four times, without hurry, before the a higher, slightly varied descent is heard, leading to one last repeat of the original melody. The song involves four repetitions of this “verse,” with three short interstitial sections in between. Subtle layers are added via percussion, guitar, and synthesizer. The whole thing passes like a dream, like a forgotten thought, like a stately idea; I find it hypnotic, never dull, and pin its success on the musicians’ willingness to combine the subtle flavors of electronic texture with the deep allure of simple melody. Your mileage may vary.

“Albatross” is from the debut North Atlantic Drift album, Canvas, which was released digitally in March, then with a limited run of CDs in June. It bears no obvious relation to the classic Fleetwood Mac instrumental of the same name, but perhaps there is a subtle connection nonetheless.

Free and legal MP3: Wildlife Control

Think the Records crossed with Phoenix

“Analog or Digital” – Wildlife Control

The pumpkin ale may be arriving on the beer shelves, but I hope it’s not too late to slip a great summer song into your music library. In “Analog or Digital,” pure power-pop adrenaline meets a nimble 21st-century sound palette—think the Records crossed with Phoenix—and all that’s missing are people still listening to their car radios with the windows open. Not to mention radio stations that would play this. But you get the idea.

This one hardly needs any annotation—it’s got a head-bopping one-note bass line, an infectious melody, is three minutes long, and is about listening to records (a subject that forms its own important splinter group in the kingdom of power pop). Bonus points for the chorus’s recurring lyric “It doesn’t matter if she’s analog or digital,” which seems instantly zeitgeist-y—a brilliant blend of the concrete and vague, simple to sing along with, while inviting more meaning than it actually offers.

Wildlife Control is a duo comprised of brothers Neil and Sumul Shah. They grew up in rural northeastern Pennsylvania and are now bicoastal, with Neil in Brooklyn, Sumul in San Francisco. Their web site bio, which seems purposefully nebulous, notes that the brothers “collaborate on everything,” while offering no specifics on, say, who does the lead vocals, or who else helped them out in recording their album (“an ensemble of close friends” is the best we get). “Analog or Digital” has been running around the internet since December, in advance of the band’s first album, which was just self-released at the end of July. No worries about the anonymous-looking file name here, this one checks out as free and legal. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the original link.

Free and legal MP3: Wild Moccasins

Glistening, purposeful neo-’90s guitar rock

“Gag Reflections” – Wild Moccasins

With its glistening union of purposeful guitar rock and a mellifluous soprano, “Gag Reflections” gives off a welcome aroma of ’90s alternative rock (Belly, anybody? Tanya Donelly?), and okay, here’s something that the Retromania crowd refuses to understand: how brilliant it is that today’s bands have such wide-ranging, decades-spanning musical language by which to be inspired. Sure, it was cool when rock’n’roll was younger and new forms were emerging, but it is also cool now with nearly 60 years of rock’n’roll behind us for bands to comb through it all and decide what works as a platform for their own musical expression. For laughs, browse the blogosphere and note how often writers disparage a band for “not breaking any ground.” By which they mean that a given piece of music doesn’t seem to sound “new.” And yet to judge “newness” based entirely on whether it’s a new form is not only short-sighted (there’s way more to music than form, and always has been) but entirely misses the point of rock’n’roll in 2012. End of rant.

Both solidly built and subtly quirky, “Gag Reflections” begins with an odd but incisive prelude—first we hear a double-time riff, with an air of Morse-code urgency about it, then Zahira Gutierrez enters singing only the song’s title, the riff continuing, building tension, and releasing, now, into a proper intro. And quite an intro it is, with a satisfying, all but anthemic guitar line (0:22), the kind of guitar line, indeed, that rock’n’roll songs were made to be built around. And yet here, this superb guitar line feels a bit hidden—less central than slightly left-of-central, and soon overshadowed by Gutierrez’s fetching, elastic voice, which is simultaneously inviting and mysterious. She is one of those singers who can appear to sing clearly while still concealing most of the words she’s saying. And so you lean closer in. The payoff arrives at the end of the chorus, when she abandons words entirely for that angelic “oo-oo-oo” we first hear at 1:12. I love that the song’s most powerful hook is a fleeting moment, almost an afterthought, after the lyrics have ended. I also love the even higher “oo-oo-oo” Gutierrez unleashes later on (2:44), and, then, the brief but compelling guitar noise the band puts out shortly thereafter.

Wild Moccasins are a Houston-based quintet founded in 2007. Their debut album, Skin Collision Past, was self-released in 2010, and then re-released nationally in 2011 on New West Records. “Gag Reflections” is a single released in mid-July on New West.

Free and legal MP3: King of Spain (one-note melody, w/ power & style)

I don’t know if I’m a sucker for one-note melodies but I sure am fascinated by them.

“Motions” – King of Spain

I don’t know if I’m a sucker for one-note melodies but I sure am fascinated by them. Rock’n’roll has had a smattering of famous songs with extended one-note melodies (“Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Pump It Up,” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” are the three that always come to mind) and yet consider the difference in feel between that trio of harangue-like tunes and this one-note wonder, which is smooth and cat-like in its unfolding. The arrangement, drony and hypnotic, pulls us with style and determination through such a silvery series of chords that the ear almost doesn’t hear how dogged a one-note melody this is—unlike its one-note companions from rock history, which veer now and then from the primary note, the melody in “Motions” is literally just one note for the entire length of the verse section, beginning at 0:39, until the very last note, which falls off on the last word of the phrase “This is the way that we fall.”

One-note melodies inescapably draw our attention to the lyrics, since our ears seek the source of complication in what they are listening to, in an effort to understand, and if the melody is all one note, the complication pretty much all comes from the words. The lyrics in a one-note melody carry an inescapable feeling of stream of consciousness; the lyrics of “Motions” take this one step further—they seem less a spontaneous litany of cool-sounding words than themselves a meaningful exploration of the inner workings of the mind. They pour out, demand contemplation, yet leave no time in which to contemplate. Focus if you can on the words and you’ll find the power of the song multiplies.

When the debut King of Spain album, Entropy, was released in 2007, the band was a solo project for Tampa singer/multi-instrumentalist Matt Slate. In 2009, King of Spain became a duo when bassist Daniel Wainright joined as a full-fledged member. “Motions” is from the forthcoming album All I Did Was Tell Them the Truth and They Thought It Was Hell, to be released at the end of August on New Grenada Records.

photo credit: Lucy Pearl Photography (http://www.lucy-pearl.com)

Free and legal MP3: The Nervous Wreckords (snarly, snotty, & good-natured)

On the one hand a poison pen letter to music critics, “Let Them All Talk” is at the same time a kind of self send-up, which makes the whole thing function in a much more delightful way than it otherwise might.

“Let Them All Talk” – The Nervous Wreckords

Snarly and snotty and yet still good-natured, “Let Them All Talk” is a speak-singing throwback to some earlier, more primal kind of rock’n’roll. I’m not sure I normally like this kind of thing—whatever “kind of thing” this in fact is—but I am won over by front man Brian Karscig’s unerring musical instincts. Even while sort-of-talking it’s clear that he has a fine singing voice, and even as the song sounds simple, the arrangement is inventive and the band ever so tight. I love in particular the peculiar, background guitar solos (0:57 and 2:12) and the perfect finishing touch of the female background singers who begin chiming in with fills of “Oooo! Jealous!” at 3:01.

On the one hand a poison pen letter to music critics, “Let Them All Talk” is at the same time a kind of self send-up, which makes the whole thing more delightful than it otherwise might be. I don’t know if there’s any effective way for a rock singer to take a straight potshot at critics without sounding like a whiner; Karscig avoids that with his goofy bravado, which winks while it chastises, and includes some actual flak he himself has received (e.g. “sounds like a girl when he sings,” a charge sometimes leveled at him while in the band Louis XIV). In the process he comes across as both serious and jokey, which, in a meta kind of way, allows him all the better to get some good digs in (e.g., “You act like a rock star/But all you play is your pen, and your mouth”). The best way to act like a tough guy in our post-ironic age is to make fun of acting like a tough guy.

Karscig played with the relatively successful Louis XIV (2003-2009), which released two of its three albums on Atlantic Records, and made appearances on late-night TV in the U.S. The Nervous Wreckords were started in the wake of Louis XIV’s dissolution in 2009. In addition to playing guitar and singing, Karscig has worked increasingly often as a producer. “Let Them All Talk” is the title track to the second Nervous Wreckords album, which was recorded in Karscig’s home studio on a vintage Neve board with ’60s and ’70s gear. This will be the band’s first national release, slated to arrive in September via Knitting Factory Management. MP3 courtesy of the fine folks at Magnet Magazine.

Fingertips Q&A: The Royalty’s Nicole Bourdeau

The Royalty’s front woman Nicole Bourdeau answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

The El Paso quintet The Royalty have a marvelous throwback feeling to them without, somehow, sounding overly nostalgic or out of step. They have the assured vibe of musicians just doing what they do, waiting patiently for the world to come back around to wanting this kind of thing. The band’s buoyant appeal has much to do with big-voiced Nicole Bourdeau, who sings with a verve that channels many decades’ worth of charismatic vocalists, from pre-rock’n’roll belters to girl group powerhouses to new wave chanteuses.

Founded in 2005, the band released its self-titled debut album just last year, and was featured here at that point, for the song “Alexander.” A follow-up album, Lovers, was released this May; it has yet to yield a free and legal MP3 but if or when that happens I’m rooting for the song “Bartender,” which you can check out via the band’s video.

In the meantime, front woman Nicole was kind enough to stop by, virtually, to tackle the relentless but well-intentioned Fingertips Q&A questions.

The Fingertips Q&A, for the uninitiated, is a recurring feature. More than 30 artists to date have participated. The Q&A’s sole intent is to allow actual, workaday 21st-century musicians a forum for discussing the state of music in the digital age. So-called experts and futurists have far too loudly dominated this discussion for too long.

Q: Let’s cut to the chase: how do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits insist?

A: Yeah this is a tough issue. It’s definitely hard to deal with the modern boycott of purchased music. I do not think music should be free. It’s just like everything else, there needs to be money to back you up and give sustenance to what you’re doing. We’ve noticed a shift to live music (i.e., all the festivals) and vinyl that is becoming the new income source for musicians. That’s not a bad thing. It’s cool. But as for digital music, it’s a tough battle and no one in the industry has an answer. But hey, at this second, we’re getting to play and we’re happy campers about that.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”?

A: There are lots of ways to look at the cloud. As a musician, it’s a little daunting because it’s never been this way before, historically. As a listener, I can see pros to it though. Technology has taken away the artifact (tangible recordings) and made them immortal in a way. So ANY musician is on the same playing field. The likelihood of getting shelved and forgotten is now a lot smaller…because there is no shelf! I feel like I could go in circles on the pros and cons but overall I’d say this new age of transparency is a good and challenging chance for musicians to rise to the occasion.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected—or not—by the existence of music blogs? Do you miss old-style music criticism, or do you welcome the non-professional music fan into the mix?

A: As a band, I think we’ve greatly benefited from the existence of music blogs. Victory [the band’s record label] actually first heard about us through a random blog and it lead to getting signed. We’ve had some really wonderful reviews and it’s always great to get that encouragement. I say let people have the freedom to start blogs and if you are good at giving reviews, your opinion will matter. But there’s a difference between well-thought intelligent opinion and an agro-nerd rant. We keep crossing our fingers because the reviews so far have been pretty friendly…

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: Good question! Well I think the digital age has let the artist/fan relationship reach new heights in the best kind of way. It’s kind of like that transparency I mentioned. The contact level is so solid that you have to be honest about who you are and I say any honesty added to the world is a good thing. It’s a benefit and can be so much fun. Distracting? Yeah maybe, haha. It’s another element added to the job description of musician but it’s an important one.

Q: There is clearly way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you as a musician cope with the reality of an over-saturated market, to put it both economically and bluntly?

A: I would say economically speaking, at the moment at least, the over-saturation is hitting us hard. On one side, anyone can record at home (including us) and that’s creatively really great. But it leads people to feel like music is a free resource and that decreases its value on the market. On the other side, I think the music business is still the same ol’ cut throat place. You have to have a stroke of luck plus the talent to back it up. The burst of evolution in the music world is going to proceed in a predictable fashion, musicians need to adapt and become stronger or they won’t make it.

Fingertips Flashback: Ephemera (from November 2004)

Revisiting a previously featured song, this one from 2004.

Fingertips is going into its summer hiatus, which means no new songs will be posted until July 25th (or so). I won’t be entirely absent from the internet, and there may be a certain amount of activity around here, but a lot of it will be maintenance oriented and somewhat invisible.

To ease into the slowdown, I offer you a wistful summery song from the land of ice and snow. And okay it’s actually not a cheerful song—few songs entitled “Saddest Day” would be aiming in that direction—but it’s a lovely musical breeze on a hot July day nonetheless.

“Saddest Day” – Ephemera

[from November 22, 2004]

A three-woman Norwegian band channeling Astrud Gilberto via Frente—yes, the world can be a wonderful place when we all just mingle together peacefully and see what happens. Bright, silvery, and airy, “Saddest Day” is that sweetest of pop confections: a sad song wrapped in an upbeat package. Stars in their native country (they received the Norwegian equivalent of a Grammy earlier this year), Ephemera have released four CDs to date; this spring, a compilation disc called Score was released for the U.S. market. Not yet out of their 20s, Ephemera has nevertheless been together for 10 years now. “Saddest Day” was originally from the band’s 2000 CD, Sun, which was their second; it is also found on a CD called Score, a compilation released for the U.S. market this past spring. The MP3 is on the band’s web site. Thanks to visitor Jeff for the head’s up.

ADDENDUM: Although the band’s site is still online, and the MP3 is still available there, things have been quiet in Ephemera-land since 2005. Vocalist Christine Sandtorv released a solo album in 2006 (on Ifemmera Records, it should be noted); the internet’s nosy robots pick up no other sign of musical activity from any of the three bandmates since then.