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Free and legal MP3: Idlewild (brisk, embracing rocker )

From the opening lead guitar salvo through the effortless, deadpan pre-chorus hook, “Younger Than America” feels just about perfect.

“Younger Than America” – Idlewild

Do we need crazy all the time? Do we need gimmicky, do we need abstract, do we need unusual and/or odd? All the time? I don’t think so. In any case, crazy and gimmicky and strange only work when there’s a benchmark of normal and straightforward to operate against, right? And so here’s your benchmark: the admirable, long-standing Scottish band Idlewild. They’ve never quite had their moment here in the U.S.—although 2000’s 100 Broken Windows came close—but they’ve been at it for 15 years now and their latest release shows us, yet again, the musical benefits to be had when a band can stick it out for a while.

From the opening lead guitar salvo through the effortless, deadpan pre-chorus hook, “Younger Than America” feels just about perfect—a brisk, embracing rocker with an active, ringing lead guitar and unexpectedly effective female backing vocals. Front man Roddy Woomble has a Dickensian name and a husky depth to his voice, sounding at once weary and inspired. Although singing about America, there’s a Celtic undertone to the music, which only accentuates (to me, anyway) a clear echo of the old Horslips song “The Man Who Built America.” Anyone else with me on that? Okay, never mind. In the meantime, I love the “couldn’t/wouldn’t/shouldn’t have” business here (first heard around 0:36)—it’s a sly but definitive hook, grabbing the ear and anchoring the song between the verse and the chorus. Check out also the slow but steady way the song develops an almost Springsteen-esque sort of spaciousness, complete with a new, wordless vocal melody introduced in the coda (3:20).

Although they have churned through bass players and second guitarists a bit, Idlewild’s core of Woomble, lead guitarist Rod Jones, and drummer Colin Newton have been together since 1995, during which time the band has evolved from being neophyte, punk-ish Fugazi wannabes into full-fledged musicians with a warm, nimble sound. “Younger Than America” is the lead track on Post Electric Blues, an album released last year in the UK and last week here in the US, by the Nice Music Group. The album was in fact initially available as a free download, and you can still hear the whole thing on the band’s site. MP3 via Insound. Note that this is a direct download, but the song will not play in the Fingertips player because of how Insound links to its MP3s.

Free and legal MP3: Nicole Atkins (big-voiced singer/songwriter from NJ)

In the past, Nicole Atkins has parked her big voice inside of songs sparkling with ’60s pop sheen—a little bit girl group, a little bit Brill Building—and boy it fit like a glove. This time she’s moved up a decade or so and has gotten in touch with her inner Robert Plant.

“Vultures” – Nicole Atkins

But—and this is key—she knows how to contain it. “Vultures” starts in slinky mode, all suggestion and minor key. And don’t miss by the way that great, tremulous, unresolved guitar chord that launches the song at :05; that tells you a lot about where we’re going here. If you listen closely, you’ll detect Atkins’ trademark vibrato, but she isn’t showing off. The drums hit louder than she does, at first. The lead guitar makes itself known. She lets herself be lost within gang-style vocals. She sings, “I can disappear/From who I’d like to be.” She sings a line we’ve heard before, “Take all they can get,” in a near whisper at 2:26. Then, a change. She repeats the line right away, at 2:32. She’s singing much louder, with almost instantaneous abandon; now, after all that set-up, my goodness listen to that. There’s an other-worldly force to the vocal energy unleashed here. That’s kind of where the Plant comparison comes in. I’m especially fascinated by the way she controls her vibrato, dialing it up and down like volume but with its own logic, independent of volume. Nicole Atkins has a big voice but is much more than a voice—she is a powerful singer, and a unique presence on the 21st-century rock scene.

“Vultures” is the first song available from the album Mondo Amore, Atkins’ second full-length release, which will be out in January on Razor & Tie. MP3 via Razor & Tie. This is by the way the third time that the New Jersey born and bred singer/songwriter has been featured on Fingertips, dating back to 2005.

Free and legal MP3: Jonah (reverberant, nicely written indie pop)

On the one hand, a peaceful, reverberant pop song, on the other hand, a rousing sing-along of near anthemic proportions. How do they do it?

“Bees” – Jonah

On the one hand, a peaceful, reverberant pop song, on the other hand, a rousing sing-along of near anthemic proportions. How do they do it? I’m guessing it has something to do with being from Portland. It seems they know how to do just about anything out there.

One thing that catches my ear towards the beginning is that double drum beat (0:10) that launches us from the introduction into the first verse. Kind of snaps you to attention, counteracting the “Strawberry Fields”-ish tranquility of the opening measures. The verse features an almost nursery-rhyme-like pattern of overlapping descending lines that are reinforced by a wordless vocal section with a different melody built onto the same simple chord progression as the verse. In the second verse, note how the lyrics scan with gratifying precision—listen, for instance, to how the rhythm of the melody on the phrase “destroy all the evidence” (0:40) aligns with how one would speak those same words. The incisive chorus, in turn, gives us a melody that at once slows down and stretches out (expanding through the entire octave, in fact), which creates that sing-along feeling. And yet after that stirring refrain, listen to how we are left on an unresolved note (1:17)—a sly and effective trick that adds depth and pushes our ear to “require” the next verse. Which of course Jonah is happy to provide.

“Bees” is a song from the album The Wonder and the Thrill, the quartet’s third, set for release next month.

Fingertips Flashback: Avocadoclub (from May 2006)

The internet has come to be home to way more one-hit wonders than AM radio ever was. And, okay, while I guess we actually aren’t talking about “hits,” it’s basically the same idea—there are countless bands who put out one really good song online and then just disappear. But at least sometimes, the songs remain, even if the band vanishes. So here we have one cool song from the Berlin duo Avocadoclub; the band’s web site remains stuck in 2006, but the MP3 is still downloadable. Here’s what it sounded like to me four years ago….

“Too Much Space to Walk Away” – Avocadoclub

[from “This Week’s Finds,” May 16, 2006]

As smooth, catchy, and vaguely disaffected as an old Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark single. This has all the earmarks of a great floaty synth-pop hit but the really cool thing is they’re not really using a heck of a lot of synthesizers; the acoustic guitars are actually more prominent. Most of the effect, I think, is coming from the layered majesty of Bendrik Muhs’ vocals, and the use of a New Order-style lower-register lead guitar line. Muhs has the ability to sound both pretty and weary, like Ben Gibbard doing a Lou Reed impression; his aching delivery of the sweeping chorus is big-time pop heaven. Avocadoclub is an English-language band from Berlin; there appear to be two guys at the heart of it, but they’ve fleshed out into a five-piece band for the debut CD. “Too Much Space to Walk Away” was the title track on the band’s second EP, released in 2002; it has shown up as well on the debut full-length, entitled Everybody’s Wrong, which was released in March on Firestation Records. Thanks much, yet again, to Getecho for the lead.

ADDENDUM: Can’t seem to find much trace of this band from either before or after 2006. Their MySpace page takes their story up through 2008, but talks of no further releases past Everybody’s Wrong. There is kind of a cool cover of the Pavement song “Newark Wilder” in the media player, however.

Free and legal MP3: Wow & Flutter (endearing, squonky rocker)

“Scars” – Wow & Flutter

Pleasantly crunchy and semi-dissonant, “Scars” opens with a yin-yang-y guitar riff—three parts ringing and harmonic-laced, one part fuzzy and purposeful, as if the band were still deciding what kind of song this was going to be even after they already started recording. What they ended up with is a deft blend of the opening riff’s two attributes, as a drony, unresolved sensibility courses through a brisk guitar rocker otherwise mixing the offhanded brio of an Exile On Main Street outtake with the squonky quirkiness of the Pixies. Translation: it’s curiously engaging, and it rocks.

And because I haven’t gotten on my “value of experience” soapbox in quite a while, I’ll take this opportunity to point out that Cord Amato has been in front of a band called Wow & Flutter, in one incarnation or another, since 1998. But here we are living through a musical day and age that seems to be about the opposite of letting musicians breath and grow and (dare I suggest it) learn their craft over an extended period of time. No, we’re much too focused here online on being sure to find everything first, and really fast, and then on to the next, even first-er and faster thing.

Tiring it is. I’m really happy to hear musicians who sound like they’ve been around a little while. Wow & Flutter, a trio at this point, will release its seventh album, Equilibrio!, next week on Mt. Fuji Records. MP3 via Mt. Fuji.

Free and legal MP3: Warpaint

Hypnotic fever dream

“Undertow” – Warpaint

Hypnotic and blurry, “Undertow” feels like something of a fever dream, the dual vocals of Emily Kokal and Theresa Wayman floating over a pulse-like beat in a way that feels unmoored and amorphous but is actually tightly controlled. Words glide, circle back, repeat, but without the firm sensation of verses and a chorus. Occasionally the jazz-like guitar sound that served as the intro re-emerges but instrumentally it’s mostly bass and percussion, registering more in your gut than your brain, which accentuates the oceanic flow of the lyrics—once the singing starts it doesn’t really stop. This is a strange song, and I recommend listening to it a number of times because there’s a larger effect going on than its initial four minutes suggests.

I find that the song, for me, turns on the guitar that enters at 2:32—a bright, trebly, Talking Heads-like line, previously unheard, that, it turns out, was set up by the drummer, who kicked into a different groove back at 2:13, only maybe we hadn’t noticed. There’s something in how this new sound is brought into the existing landscape, and how the landscape is subtly but firmly changed, that feels deep and affecting. And then, at around 2:30, we get what we hadn’t gotten until right now, and maybe hadn’t realized was missing: the band playing together, putting its collective sound in front of our ears, the blurry-fevered narrative set aside for the better part of 20 seconds. While some of that returns at 2:50, now I can sense the band waiting, I can sense the weight of something larger looming, and when it comes back (3:27), the song roars to a truly satisfying if still mysterious conclusion.

Warpaint is a quartet from Los Angeles. They self-released an EP last year and caused enough of a stir that the band, on the verge of the release of their debut full-length, is a bit wary of getting churned through the blogosphere. As drummer Stella Mozgawa recently told Spinner: “We’re just dorks. I’d like to be a dork for as long as possible instead of being cool for like, a day.”

The Fool comes out later this month on Rough Trade Records. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Darren Hanlon

Fun stuff from speak-singing Australian

“Buy Me Presents” – Darren Hanlon

If you must know why I am terminally suspicious of technological frills (I’m looking at you, Auto-Tune), it’s because of this: the simple, deeply effective pleasure of hearing a musician perform his or her songs without them. And yes, I know it’s a fine line, I know that many seemingly simple songs are built using technology “they” never used to have (whoever “they” were), but I’m talking more about visible versus invisible frills. I’m all for anything that helps us better hear the instruments and voices involved in the song-making, and I’m also, absolutely, all for anything that can be used, effectively, as music, however electronic or “artificially” generated—those are organic in their own way. Faddish processing that pointlessly roboticizes the sound is less good. Way less good.

So here’s Darren Hanlon, about as far from our Auto-Tuned radio music as he can be, and yet, lo and behold, look how fun, look how easy to listen to, look how delightful. I love the homely, chuggy guitar sound, I love Hanlon’s bemused, Billy Bragg-ish speak-singing, I love the unassuming ease of this great chord progression, I love the funny but not jokey lyrics, and I love love love that valorous, unexpected saxophone.

Hanlon is an Australian singer/songwriter who began a solo career in 1999 after previously playing in a number of Aussie bands, including the Lucksmiths and the Simpletons. “Buy Me Presents” is a song from his fourth album, I Will Love You At All, released last month on Yep Roc Records. Note his breakthrough album in Australia, in 2006, had the intriguing title Fingertips and Mountaintops.

Have you heard the Fingertips Top 10 lately?

Checking in on the Fingertips Top 10 is always a good way to stay in touch with the best free and legal downloads being featured here week to week, especially if you have a hard time listening to all the songs as the weeks go by. Songs stay on the list for a maximum of three months, so the list is continually undergoing a slow evolution. The player will let you hear them as a 40-or-so-minute stream, and a very pleasant 40 minutes it is….

Free and legal MP3: Allo Darlin’

Bright smart pop w/ movement and charm

“My Heart is a Drummer” – Allo Darlin’

So we should be clear by now, class, that there is no formula here, no checklist that leads, guaranteed, to a great song. But if I were forced to identify one characteristic that gives a song a leg up, that sends a song soaring skyward rather than plummeting earthward, it might be this: movement. (For those who thought I might say a ukulele, no, but I like how you’re thinking.) A song becomes too easily dreary or dull without a sense of movement; while a song that moves is a song you are more likely to want to hear again, a song that warms and nourishes and reminds you of that all-important, often-overlooked detail: you are alive.

Movement does not have to mean speed. But movement means we do not, as a listener, feel we are stuck, and we do not feel we are waiting very long for something to happen (this is pop music, after all, not a Brahms Symphony). Something, rather, is almost always happening—the melody goes from here to there to there, chords shift and shift and shift again, the band finds its groove without veering into a rut, the singer sounds ever so slightly breathless or edgy or even as if he or she is in some way making the words up on the fly.

Needless to say, “My Heart is a Drummer”—a song that is itself about a certain sort of movement—moves. (That there is no introduction gets us off on the right foot.) The melody leaps and prances and yet also resolves with fluid ease, while the fetching Elizabeth Morris delivers her lines in natural yet idiosyncratic rhythms. The band plays along with such locked-in elasticity you almost don’t notice they’re there; this is one of those songs that sounds less arranged than discovered. But if you get around to it, notice how the guitar plays with great judicious ease—I especially like the high, ringing countermelody it offers beginning with the second verse (around 0:44).

Allo Darlin’ is a half-Australian, half-British quartet based in London (leader Morris one of the Australians). “My Heart is a Drummer” is a song from the band’s self-titled debut album, released in June in the UK, and this week in the US, on the Fortuna Pop label.

Free and legal MP3: Jupe Jupe

Irresistible neo-New Romantic camp

“Add As Friend” – Jupe Jupe

Treading that oh-so-fine line between camp and earnestness, “Add As Friend” is a melodramatic, irresistible slice of neo-New Romantic synth pop, complete with a crooning baritone, goofy synthesizer sounds, and an anthemic dance-floor melody. We know we’re in good hands when the intro builds rapidly from a bell-like synthesizer line through a pulsating (and smile-inducing) middle section into full-fledged melodic glory by 0:28—a simple, beautifully crafted instrumental theme that serves as the ongoing heart of the song. I find a song with a wordless hook difficult to get out of my head.

But make no mistake about the camp here. One giveaway is the overtly humorous synthesizer lines which pop up throughout the song—most noticeably at 0:22, 1:26. 2:44, and 3:12, if you’re keeping score at home. At its heart, camp is a joke—even if, often, a serious joke—so humor is always near the surface. Another is the song’s Erasure-esque vibe, and Erasure was nothing if not the camp champion of the New Romantic movement. But as Erasure themselves proved, a camp act can still create really good music. Jupe Jupe has hereby joined the club.

A foursome from Seattle, Jupe Jupe self-released their debut album, Invaders, this week. That’s where you’ll find “Add As Friend.”