jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: Soltero (jaunty & homespun)

Reminiscent of Yo La Tengo’s acoustic side.

“Mercenary Heart” – Soltero

Jaunty and homespun, “Mercenary Heart” has the loose-limbed warmth of Yo La Tengo’s acoustic side. Underneath the mild-mannered ambiance, however, is the same kind of songwriting diligence that Soltero has displayed the previous two times they’ve been featured here (in 2004 and 2008).

Although not as extremely positioned as the Cub Scouts song regarding resolution, or lack thereof, singer/songwriter Tim Howard definitely uses unresolved moments to his advantage here, employing melody lines both in the verse and in the chorus that end before resolving. Rather than leaving the ear hanging, however, Howard lets the music resolve after the singing stops, which, in addition to the breezy pace, is what gives the song its sense of relentless motion.

I also like how effectively Howard works with sound, and how he shows that you don’t have to go nuts with strange and novel sonic elements to create compelling textures. Here, Howard works with little more than two guitar sounds and the regular and upper register of his own voice. True to the cliche, less can often be more.

Soltero recorded four albums as a (usually) four-piece band in Boston from 2000 to 2005. The fifth album, in 2008, was pretty much a solo endeavor for Howard, who was then living in Philadelphia. He went on to live in North Carolina and Central America before settling recently in Brooklyn. “Mercenary Heart” is a song from 1943, the latest Soltero album, set for release next week. The album was recorded largely with Alex Drum (who is in fact a drummer), but playing live now the band is back to four pieces. Note that there are two other songs in addition to this one available as free and legal MP3s via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Balthrop, Alabama (incisive storytelling from 11-piece ensemble)

“Electricity” offers us a refreshing break from 21st-century indie-rock’s inclination towards obscurantism. And you can dance to it.

“Electricity” – Balthrop, Alabama

“Electricity” offers us a refreshing break from 21st-century indie-rock’s inclination towards obscurantism. And you can dance to it.

I’ve got nothing against a certain amount of lyrical mystery, mind you, but I think today’s exceedingly well-educated rockers often overdo it in the “what are they talking about?” category. There’s something to be said for narrative clarity and matter-of-fact insight, and “Electricity,” the dryly related story of a small town and its first long-ago Saturday night with electricity, has both. The storytelling is musical as much as lyrical here. You’ll obviously notice the noodly, sci-fi synth that is immediate aural code for “ooh! electricity!” But note too the perfect electric guitar sound, right there in the intro—that buzzy but vibrant tone, which, combined with a fuzzed-out drumbeat, feels shot through with current. When the opening riff returns in an instrumental break at 2:47, the guitar sounds even more thematically aligned; I can’t describe it but it feels to my ears like the sound an electrified fence would make if you could play it like an instrument.

As for the story itself, I like how it extends beyond the Saturday night into Sunday morning, when no one could get up because they had all been up so late. This, we are being told indirectly, is really how “things will never be the same in this city.” It’s an incisive twist.

Brooklyn-based Balthrop, Alabama was founded by Alabama-born siblings Pascal and Lauren Balthrop, who have named the band as they did for their idea that the band itself, with 11 members, is a kind of small town. “Electricity” is the semi-title-track from the ensemble’s new album, We Have Electricity, released last month on the not-for-profit End Up Records, also located in Brooklyn. After a double-album debut in 2007 and four subsequent EPs, this is the band’s first regular-length album. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Sophie Barker (downtempo loveliness)

“Say Goodbye” weaves a knowing spell, breaking no new territory but doing what it does with great bittersweet panache.

“Say Goodbye” – Sophie Barker

Sophie Barker is not a name you’re likely to recognize but you may well recognize her voice—she sang a number of songs fronting the musical outfit Zero 7, which helped popularize the so-called downtempo (or chillout, or downbeat) genre early in the millennium. (She co-wrote and sang, for one, the widely-heard song “In The Waiting Line.”) Personally, I never warmed to Zero 7, and I think it was because of my irrational prejudice against “producer music.” Zero 7 was/is the brainchild of two British producer/remixer types, and to me that eliminates the main thing I get out of music, which is a sense of personal connection to a musician who is playing an instrument and/or singing a song. This is just me, I will note. You are entitled and even encouraged to feel otherwise.

Anyway, so if Sophie Barker now comes along with a similarly chilled-out sound but is singing and performing her own material, rather than as a hired hand on a musical “project,” I find my heart much more open to it than I was to her Zero 7 performances. “Say Goodbye” weaves a knowing spell, breaking no new territory but doing what it does with great bittersweet panache. (New territory, as I’ve said many times, is way overrated.) Barker has a lovely voice, at once plainspoken and rich, with a thrilling upper register that she unleashes largely in the chorus (although don’t miss how she sometimes flits into it briefly, as for instance when she sings the words “Will you” in the line “Will you be standing by me?” at 0:45). With its offhand melodies and melancholy bursts of harmony, “Say Goodbye” shimmers with feeling, and, to me, shows the potential power of this kind of composition when sung truly from the heart.

“Say Goodbye” is from the album Seagull, Barker’s third solo album, released last year in the UK. She is currently playing in the US. No word yet on whether the album is slated for a US release, but the promotional MP3 suggests something might be in the works. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Mirror Lady (luminous lo-fi)

This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening.

“Hands Are Tied” – Mirror Lady

Careful readers will know that lo-fi music makes an occasional appearance here, but it’s more accident than statement. I am not a fan of lo-fi for the sake of its lo-fi-ness; I am a fan of good songs, and when they happen to be constructed in a lo-fi environment, hooray for that, because it’s another worthy three or four minutes of music unleashed in the world.

“Hands Are Tied” is a particular marvel, a song both superbly crafted and distinctly attuned to its lo-fi setting—so attuned in fact that you almost don’t notice how lo-fi it is. That, to me, is a brilliant accomplishment. The key is the warmth of the sound. Bathed in reverb, the song still feels lucid and distinct. The keyboard, guitar, and the bass all but melt together, sketching lazy joint melodies over a drum beat at once urgent and welcoming. This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening. I particularly like the woodwind-y synth melody that chimes in after the phrase “always the same,” first heard at 1:45. I am charmed as well by the very end of the song, how you can hear the bass turn off, which in that one sound/gesture embodies the song’s lo-fi warmth.

Now based in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the three men calling themselves Mirror Lady first started playing together while students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Hands Are Tied” is from the band’s debut recording, an EP entitled Roman Candles, which was self-released last month and is available via Bandcamp on a “name your price” basis.

Free and legal MP3: Jesca Hoop (not all vocal processing is evil)

The song’s dizzy momentum is bewitching, and for all the electronic processing, its human core is both obvious and dazzling.

“Born To” – Jesca Hoop

With all of the vexation I’ve been feeling these last couple of years regarding Auto-Tune, I’ve forgotten something important: I’ve never had anything against vocal distortion per se. There is absolutely nothing wrong, to me, with the artful use of filters, effects, and so forth. Any number of favored musicians and wonderful songs have employed such tools. In its proper place, Auto-Tune may offer a new range of possibilities for artful vocal distortion as well. (Hint: its over-use by and domination of today’s top 40 does not qualify as “its proper place.”)

I’m not sure whether Jesca Hoop is here using Auto-Tune or some other processing system (probably the latter; perhaps a vocoder), but the main point to my ears is that you can hear, viscerally, the quality of her singing voice (not to mention her songwriting voice), regardless of what she’s doing to process the sound. And this blending of the natural and the man-made appears to be part of the song’s purpose from the very start. The opening riff—brisk and complex and almost thrilling—is played on acoustic guitar and yet set in a hazily processed soundscape. Her voice arrives in a similar brew, full of both spirit and artifice. The song’s dizzy momentum is bewitching, and for all the electronic processing, its human core is both obvious and dazzling. Contrast this to the cynical, sheep-like use of Auto-Tune in the pop world, effecting little more than the addition of a metallic/robotic edge to the vocal that will sound fad-like and pointless once we emerge culturally from our trance-like attachment to it.

Hoop is an adventurous singer/songwriter who was born in Northern California, grew up Mormon, lived as a homesteader in Western wilderness areas, worked for five years as the nanny for Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s children (no, really), and picked up and moved to Manchester, England in 2009 at the encouragement of Elbow’s Guy Garvey. “Born To” is a song from her forthcoming album, The House That Jack Built, scheduled for release in June on Bella Union. Hoop was previously featured here in 2007.

Free and legal MP3: Jonka (neo-’80s electro pop, w/ soul)

“Every Other Day” burns with the booty-shaking resolve of an old Hot Chocolate song, channeled through the ’80s electro-pop stylebook.

“Every Other Day” – Jonka

A textbook exercise in how to construct a groove, “Every Other Day” burns with the booty-shaking resolve of an old Hot Chocolate song, channeled through the ’80s electro-pop style book, Erasure edition. Listen to how the layers coalesce—first the basic beat, itself an alluring blend of distant-seeming sounds; then the bass, all fat and old-school; then the first foreground element, a slappy, tappy percussive sound playing a jittery series of double-time flourishes. At this point, it’s cool but not necessarily awesome. Awesome arrives with the next two elements: the organ-y synthesizer (0:24) that skitters away seemingly between the beats; and, the pièce de résistance, the high, swooping “oo-oos” (0:32) that deliver the song’s first melody, wordless though it may be.

Beyond the sure groove, what sells “Every Other Day” is Jonka’s commitment to vocal harmonies. Just as the twosome blend their names—Jon Neufeld and Annika Kaye—to create the band’s name, so do they blend their voices in a plush, ongoing layering of harmony not often heard in this musical setting. From the opening lyric, the band mates (a married couple, you should know) sing every word together, and are over-dubbed so that there are at least two of each of them singing at all times. Neufeld’s soulful baritone takes the lead but Kaye’s full-bodied backing vocals are just as important a part of the song’s texture. The song’s melodies, meanwhile, percolate relentlessly upward, giving the song an almost gospel-like sense of uplift.

Neufeld and Kaye live in Brooklyn. Neufeld grew up on Staten Island and Kaye, born in Sweden, was raised in Manhattan. “Every Other Day” is the first song available from the duo’s second album, Pinks and Blues, which is arriving at some unspecified date in the reasonably near future.

Free and legal MP3: Lydia Loveless

Alt-country, no holds barred

“Learn to Say No” – Lydia Loveless

Just 21, Loveless sings from a deep reserve of heart, soul, and older-than-her-years affliction. A cursory listen puts this one in the alt-country-with-an-attitude box (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), but closer inspection reveals a gratifying depth to both her singer and songwriter sides.

To begin with there’s her voice, a potent combination of anger and sadness; she navigates the pain-filled lyrics (“Why does it take so much out of me/To be this weak?”) teetering between control and breakdown. You can hear it in the tiniest moments, like the way she sings the word “I” in the phrase “when I’m usually wrong” (0:21)—there’s a lot of emotion buried in that condensed flutter that aches out and is quickly reeled back in. Or, the way she chokes out the word “someday” at the beginning of the the chorus the second time through (1:50). Reinforcing the impression that she probably never sings the same word the same way twice is a song that offers subtle changes throughout its development. We don’t hear the signature guitar riff until 1:10, and when the verses return after the chorus, the melody has been subtly changed, which you can hear most clearly at the pause that appears at 1:27—a nice moment that has no equivalent point when the verses were initially presented.

Loveless, raised in rural Ohio, has a complicated back story, but the upshot is she has been playing professionally since she was 13 and quickly fell into habits and behaviors not necessarily associated with the middle-school-aged, to put it delicately. After being in the new-wavey band Carson Drew with her sisters and her father, Loveless released her first solo album in 2010. “Learn To Say No” is from album number two, Indestructible Machine, which has been out on Bloodshot Records since September. The song has been floating around the internet since at least December but it just came to my attention last week, thanks to Largehearted Boy. ~~MP3 via Bloodshot Records, and there’s one more free and legal MP3 from the album available via the record company.~~ Note that the label also sells a beverage cooler/holder that says “DRINK MORE. LOVE LESS,” which has a certain pugnacious charm about it.

Fingertips Q&A: Theresa Andersson

Theresa Andersson answers five questions about the state of music in the digital age.

Sweden-born, New Orleans-based musician Theresa Andersson first turned heads in 2008, when her kitchen-made video for the song “Na Na Na” inadvertently became a YouTube sensation. She had made the video to help potential venues understand the nature of her one-woman-band live performances. In the process, she made the use of electronic effects (in this case, loop pedals) look unusually charming.

Andersson was featured here in January for her song “What Comes Next,” at that point an advance track from her album Street Parade. The album, full of similarly alluring musical concoctions, is being released this week on NOLA’s Basin Street Records. And yet, Andersson, embracing the realities of the 21st-century music scene, sees recorded music as secondary to live performance, which is where, as she says, she makes the real connection with the listener.

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: It used to not matter so much at shows because people would still want to buy a physical copy of the CD. On my most recent tour to Sweden I noticed a drop in sales which was disconcerting. I can see that the fan or consumer is redistributing their funds—i.e., spending less on CDs and putting more towards a ticket price. My answer to this is to develop my live show more to make it a must-have experience…something that can’t be downloaded.

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

A: What’s next? Is “the cloud” going to control what we listen to? No, I might be old fashioned here, but I like to have physical contact with my own collection. Not everything is about efficiency.

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: The more the merrier. There’s such a thick forest of information out there that is so difficult to cut through. And every little bit of press hopefully helps reaching someone!

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: I like it. In fact, I utilized this in the making of my new record Street Parade. One of the Kickstarter perks was to be able to listen in on the recording sessions via a webstream and later have a chat session. It was fun to get the fan input.

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: For me, this allowed me to be heard. I am thinking of my YouTube video “Na Na Na” that has now been seen by close to 2 million people. This sparked an interest that gave me a good start. A lot of the work after that has been the direct contact with the fan—i.e., the live show. I really believe that this is where I truly make the connection with the listener.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Free and legal MP3: Slowdim

Sturdy, potent power pop

“Money” – Slowdim

A winner from beginning to end, “Money” is shrewdly constructed but gloriously unfussy, its pure (power) pop heart hearkening back to decades of rock radio hits without any air of contrivance or over-retro-ism. Songs this well-built rarely sound so free.

It begins with a “two-level” intro—10 seconds of restrained warm-up, the guitars swirling and jangling but as if from maybe the next room; then, the real thing, with a full-bodied, sing-along lead guitar riff that first grabs attention and then gets out of the way so the song can start. Less obvious than the great guitar line here is the note with which the bass launches said guitar line (listen carefully at 0:11), a nifty music-theory maneuver that adds subliminal texture and alerts the ear, however unconsciously, that what follows is worth listening to. I like too how the two-part intro is a subtle mirror of the heart of the song, with its two-part chorus. Speaking of which, listen to how what you might call the pre-chorus (first heard at 0:45) is itself a great hook and yet feels incomplete without the arrival of the true chorus. Note that the song’s title derives from the pre-chorus—another subtle songwriting trick, simultaneously adding substance to the pre-chorus while creating, via the pre-chorus’s unresolved melodies, an emotional demand for the second part, which delivers a spirited release with its layered harmonies and gratifying, descending melody.

Not to be confused with the British shoegaze band Slowdive, Slowdim is a four-piece band from Boston that has been together for about a year, although various combinations of its members have known each other for a good deal longer. “Money” is the band’s first single. They are currently recording their debut album. MP3 via the band.

Free and legal MP3: The Spring Standards (evoking bygone folk w/ up-to-date flair)

A song about leaving, evoking bygone folk music but with a 21st-century attitude.

“Only Skin” – The Spring Standards

There’s something tender and unfinished about “Only Skin.” Fading in at the beginning, the musical setting (piano and percussion, and a bit of guitar later on) is a tentative one, the instruments sketching rather than fully painting the scene. The feeling is not minimalist—there is a full-fledged sense of musical warmth here—but the restraint feels introductory, as if we are waiting for something larger to happen.

It turns out that what is larger that happens is Heather Robb’s voice, a wise and honeyed instrument itself. The arrangement leaves her so exposed you can hear her breathing. She sings about leaving, and the lyrics evoke bygone folk music, both for the way the verses begin and end with the same lines (hey, M. Ward did this last week too) and for some of the lyrical conceits, notably the way the song’s narrator urges the lover she is leaving behind to “Remember me with yellow hair and freckles on my nose.” And then the song takes an abrupt and delicious turn into the 21st century: “Remember me in purple shoes and turquoise pantyhose.” The lover who is leaving is determined to the point of harshness; the titular phrase arrives in the guise of one of the greatest lyrical kiss-offs I’ve yet heard: “Your name is just a noise now/Your face is only skin.” (Ouch.) And yet it comes wrapped in that careful melody, and embellished by those aching, wordless harmonies. Does the narrator mean it, or is she trying simply to convince herself? One can’t be sure, but the bittersweet gentleness of the nearly nursery-rhyme-like music suggests heartbreak under the bravado.

The Spring Standards are three musicians who have been playing various instruments together since their teenage days growing up along the Pennsylvania/Delaware border. They are now located in New York City. “Only Skin” is a track from their double-EP release yellow//gold, which is coming out in May on Parachute Shooter Records.