Category: MP3s

“Torn Blue Foam Couch” – Grand Archives

This is one of those sweeping, evocative, thoroughly impressive songs that everyone more or less has to like—until, of course, everyone does like it, at which point there will be those who decide they don’t like it because too many people like it. You know the drill.

Lovely melodies are front and center in “Torn Blue Foam Couch”; they feel like bygone melodies, from another time and place, wafting through the window almost Twilight Zone-ishly—you’re sure you recognize them, but something seems a little off. There are some unusual instrument choices—the harp sound in the intro (might actually be a ukulele) isn’t something you hear every day, and that rubbery drum that kicks in at around 0:48 is not typically heard in a standard drum kit. But something else seems subtly awry as the song develops and after any number of listens I finally figured it out: this baby has a bizarre structure: it’s all verse for the first two-plus minutes, and then all chorus the rest of the way. The switchover happens at about 2:16, and you can really feel the shift in your gut at that point—it’s like you didn’t realize quite how much the tension was building until it finally released.

Lyrically the song escapes me—no matter how many times I listen, a combination of Mat Brooke’s pretty yet often unintelligible voice and some defiantly inscrutable lyrics continue to stymie. “Hey darling don’t you look fine/The dull look in your eyes/You’re terrified”: fascinating, but—huh? Brooke formed the Seattle-based Grand Archives in 2006, after leaving Band of Horses following their first CD for Sub Pop Records. Previously, he was in a band that has seemed retrospectively influential–the purposefully misspelled outfit Carissa’s Wierd, which also featured Jenn Ghetto and Sera Cahoone, and whose odd, neo-folk-rock sound presaged the likes of the Decemberists and Johanna Newsom. “Torn Blue Foam Couch” is from Grand Archives’ sort of self-titled debut CD, The Grand Archives, which was released last month, also on Sub Pop. MP3 via Sub Pop.

“Hush If You Must” – Brooke Waggoner

Brooke Waggoner may be the only singer/songwriter in Nashville who cites Chopin as an influence, never mind both Chopin and ELO. So she is not a typical Nashville musician; she’s from Louisiana but she’s not a typical Louisiana musician either. She seems, indeed, to have her eye on music that extends beyond any one regional palette—or any one genre’s palette, for that matter. “Hush If You Must,” while starting as a breezy piano ditty (the intro recalls “Daydream Believer” to these ears), quickly hangs a fuller-fledged, string-laden sound upon that original, recurring refrain. There are tempo changes and mood shifts throughout, centered on the basic dichotomy of the musically restrained vocal sections, featuring Waggoner’s double-tracked yet cozy voice, and the swifter, louder instrumental sections—which include one unexpected, tempo-shifting break, at 1:38, all honky-tonk and handclaps.

Waggoner has a college degree in music composition and orchestration, and is personally responsible for the string arrangements that play a central role here. But even when a soaring string display grabs your attention, I suggest keeping an ear on the piano. Waggoner has a sure touch at the keyboard–her playing has palpable personality, and not just during the honky-tonk interlude. I feel as if I can see her determined, playful, satisfied face as she nimbly hammers out her sure-fingered lines. Listen in particular to the extended piano solo she takes starting at 2:52—it’s not complicated, but it’s vibrant and personal in a way that more overtly virtuosic playing often isn’t.

Waggoner is 23, and has one EP to her name so far—Fresh Pair of Eyes, which was self-released last year. “Hush If You Must” is the lead track from the EP, and is available as an MP3 via SXSW, where Waggoner performed last week.

“Big Sky” – A Brief Smile

An exquisitely ambivalent song, musically speaking, “Big Sky” rings with unresolved chords, elegant dissonance, ringing harmonics, and finely-tuned noise–all hung on the unassuming frame of a sturdy little pop song. Succinct melodies, verse-bridge-chorus, you can even sing along. This is a marvelous accomplishment.

The chorus is a particular wonder; I can’t recall another song featuring such a blatantly unresolved musical setting in the chorus—normally the place where the song’s tension is released via melodies that come home to solid, grounded chords. None of that goes on here. The melodies lay out against a wash of chords that don’t match; the ends of lines leave us hanging musically until the very end, and even there, rather than a typical resolution we get an unexpected downward leap of six intervals—the aural equivalent of taking a last downward step on a staircase you thought you were already at the bottom of. You arrive surprised, unexpectedly reacquainted with gravity.

A Brief Smile is a five-piece band from NY and I’m just now stumbling upon them, and listening to this song, and liking it, and lookee here, it came out in September, and the band itself has been around long enough that they have “big fans” out there who apparently hang on their every note. Such is the unconquerable breadth and depth of the contemporary rock’n’roll scene. I will never get my arms entirely around it and neither will you or anyone else. The best we can do is work together to fill in one another’s missing pieces. “Big Sky” is a song off the band’s CD Now We All Have Horns, released on Wrecking Ball Music. MP3 via the band’s site.

“The Caribbean” – the Chocolate Horse

I find this very distinctive blend of homeliness and sophistication completely enjoyable. The Chocolate Horse are five guys from Cincinnati who give the impression of playing whatever instruments they feel like playing, in whatever style they happen to start playing. If “The Caribbean” has an island sound to it, we’re talking about a peculiar island—one that maybe grows both palm trees and cacti, on which cowboys on horses saunter down the beach in suede bathing trunks and everyone else is on vacation, but prefers to stay inside reading and listening to the radio, which only broadcast bands from Omaha pretending to be from Cuba.

Or something like that. Over and above the rhythm’s lazy sway and the eccentric interplay of trumpet, upright bass, and (dobro?) guitar, “The Caribbean” succeeds on the strength of Jason Snell’s oddly appealing voice. Half whispering, half growling, Snell sings with a historical sort of command, his voice echoing with the authority of some long-lost ’70s crooner, augmented with a ghostly falsetto and an indie rocker’s penchant for straying (winsomely) off pitch. A French horn and a saw are additional recruits in the Chocolate Horse’s instrument arsenal, although I’m not sure I’m hearing the latter in this song, and I may be imagining the occasional appearance here of the former.

“The Caribbean” is a song from the band’s debut CD, released last year and recorded when they were still officially a trio. Like every other band in the world, and every other music lover (truly, I’m sure no one is left around this week to read this except maybe you), the Chocolate Horse will be in Austin for SXSW. The MP3 is available via the vast SXSW MP3 collection.

“God Told Me To” – Paul Kelly

An old-fashioned folk-rocker with a new tale to tell: here, one of Australia’s most well-known living pop music bards sings, first person, as a terrorist, justifying his actions in our post-9/11 world. The canny, world-weary Kelly knows exactly how much his sociopath’s words sound like something an American president might likewise say (in our post-9/11 world): “The wicked need chastisement, you know it’s either them or us”; “God told me to/I answer not to them or you”; etc.

Kelly is often talked about as the Ray Davies/Bruce Springsteen (imagine them mushed together) of Australia, but he hasn’t been too successfully exported to the U.S. over the years. The closest he got to a certain sort of left-of-center recognition here came with his 1988 album Under the Sun, thanks to the appeal to “modern rock” radio stations of the song “Dumb Things” (in truth, a wonderful song, which still sounds great).
That album was recorded with a band called the Messengers (originally the Coloured Girls, changed for American export).

A classic single’s length (3:42), with an incisive guitar line and a haunting chorus, “God Told Me To” is nonetheless (obviously) as far from single material as could be in this country. So I’m not picturing a belated breakthrough for the estimable Mr. Kelly just yet. The artfully stark video could under the right circumstances get some YouTube love but then again it’s been around since the summer and has been seen only 8,000 times, mostly (I’m guessing) by Australians. But hey, the man’s playing at SXSW (see? everyone!), which is a mighty accomplishment for a 50-something musician. Stolen Apples, the 2007 CD on which you’ll find this song, has not been released in the U.S., but maybe the SXSW appearance is a harbinger of a domestic release? In the meantime, the MP3 is available via SXSW.

“Rooks” – Shearwater

     Shearwater is not only playing at SXSW this week but is based in Austin. The theme is complete. This song, however, is brand new, the semi-title track to an album called Rook, scheduled for release in June. On it, Shearwater continues both its penchant for lovely-ominous music and its avian fixation–the name Shearwater, you might recall, comes from a type of bird that flies close to the surface of the water; recall, too, that band leader Jonathan Meiburg has himself been an ornithological graduate student. While you’re at it, you may as well be reminded that Meiburg is a member both of Shearwater and a little band you may have heard of called Okkervil River. (OR’s front man, Will Sheff, is likewise in both bands, which is kind of cool.)

Meiburg sings with great, almost old-fashioned sweetness and his melodies are so gentle that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that “Rooks” is without question a tense, briskly-moving composition, marked by siren-like instrumental flourishes and cryptic but assuredly dark lyrics. When he lets rip the word “paralyzed” with uncharacteristic pungency (at 1:42; almost the exact halfway point), it’s as if we’ve been all but slapped awake only to fall instantly back into a new dream: the ensuing trumpet solo, underscored by distant, determined (bird-call-y?) “wo-oh-oh-ohs,” places us into a newly formed musical landscape. The dream, teetering on the borderline between interesting and nightmarish, continues.

Rook will mark Shearwater’s debut on Matador Records; its last few CDs were released by Misra Records. MP3 via Matador.

“Power to Change” – the Black & White Years

Perhaps there has always been a fine line in music between the idiosyncratic and the gimmicky, but I’m guessing never more so than here in the 21st century–an age in which worldwide musical genres are a mouse-click away, and a multi-million-dollar recording studio is no longer required to manipulate sound. And so, these days, bands can rather too easily seem the contrived result of combining, oh, say, South African music with an Upper West Side sensibility. For instance. Idiosyncrasy or gimmick?

The only way to tell, as far as I can see, is to do exactly what the music critics (and bloggers) almost never do: just listen, and stop thinking (and talking) so much. Take “Power to Change,” which bops and rolls to a ska-inflected, electronic-infected beat, guided by a split-personality vocalist who mashes glam-rock theatrics with jamband-style acrobatics. Whether this sounds in words like something I would enjoy is irrelevant; whether the music itself violates some or another “rule” about this genre or that one, also irrelevant. Relevant alone is the incisive, assured movement of the song, its engagingly crunchy vibe, its wistful good humor, and oh so cagey production.

For probably most of that we have producer Jerry Harrison to thank. Stripped-down-simple only does so much for me, usually; I definitely do not mind detecting the presence of an honest-to-goodness producer. Among many spiffy touches, I love the echoey electronics with which he layers Scott Butler’s vocals (particularly beginning at 1:44), and am tickled by the instrumental breaks Harrison (I assume) inserted into the song–check out the offbeat keyboard-like guitar (or guitar-like keyboard?) at 1:37, and the squonky guitar solo at 3:14. Harrison–a former Talking Head and Modern Lover–heard the Black & White Years at last year’s SXSW festival (the band is itself from Austin, in fact) and shortly thereafter whisked them off to produce their album in his Bay Area studio. That self-titled CD has just been released on Brando Records, a tiny Texas label. That’s where you’ll find “Power to Change,” while the MP3 is via SXSW; the band, not surprisingly, is returning to the festival this month. No longer in need of a producer.

“Drops in the River” – Fleet Foxes

“Drops in the River” is characterized by an aural depth of space not often heard in a rock’n’roll setting. Listen quickly and you might say, “Okay, sure, reverb, and a tenor–it’s Band of Horses, it’s My Morning Jacket.” But do yourself and the music a favor and attend more carefully. If so, you might hear how the Seattle-based quintet Fleet Foxes transforms reverb from a production strategy to a three-dimensional experience–via vocal harmony, percussion, and eccentric instrumentation, the band creates a vast, stone-vaulted sort of space in which one might picture monks, choirs, and thick white dripping candles.

Then again, on the band’s own MySpace page, they conclude, after attempting to describe their sound, “Not much of a rock band.”

The unusual accompaniment arrives right away: check out those Eastern-sounding stringed things we hear before anything else; they also arise intermittently throughout, as if from some ancient cranny. When the singing starts, it comes in multiple layers of vocal harmony–an unusual touch at the beginning of a pop song. From its soft and deliberate start, “Drops in the River” eventually offers up an impressive dynamic range, taking us on adventures in tempo and volume and instrumental involvement during its engaging four-plus minutes, sometimes turning on a dime in interesting and effective ways–for instance, the downshift from that clanging guitar that starts at around 2:00 into the subdued percussive section that begins at 2:18. And listen, in fact, to that clangy guitar and how it sounds like something one might in fact play in a large, dark, maybe a little damp cathedral. Along with some Eastern-sounding stringed things no doubt. “Drops in the River” is a song from the band’s Sun Giant EP, due out on Sub Pop in April. MP3 courtesy of Paper Thin Walls.

“One, Two, Three!” – I Make This Sound

Happy music from a band with a happy-sounding name. But it’s interesting-happy, not sappy-happy. Listen, first of all, to how the band takes the song’s basic three-beat measure and distorts it, via a jumpy piano refrain, hopping between the beats, to sound as if it must be some altogether new and different time signature. But, no, you can use the song’s title to count the beats: one, two, three, one, two, three. Lead singer Jonathan Price has a warm, pleasing (dare I say happy?) voice, and the way the female backing vocalists offer staccato punctuation between verses is another cheerful touch.

But there’s a “dark” section too, and how many peppy pop songs bother to do that? See how the time signature shifts to 4/4 at around 1:30 and then into, maybe, actually, some new and different time signature after all, because I can’t parse the section from 1:40 to 1:56 in any standard way. Then there’s a nicely resolving 4/4 section at 1:57 before we return, at 2:11, to the cheerful rhythm of the opening verse, complete with those perky background singers singing a countervailing melody.

I Make This Sound is from Los Angeles and there are seven people in the band, so my goodness, they’d better be pretty happy or they would probably be really miserable. There’s a lot of potential for drama there. “One, Two, Three!” is a song from their second EP, entitled Staring at Yourself, which was released in February. MP3 via the band’s site.

“Childproof” – Batteries

Slinky, dark, and peculiarly catchy, “Childproof” sparks such conflicting retro vibes in my music memory that I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was reminding me of—usually a sign that the influences are being integrated into something fresh and tasty. So I hung in there, kept listening, and sure enough some seductively—and chronologically—divergent sonic elements revealed themselves to my dissecting ear: there’s a ’60s garage rock feel to the guitar sound, yet also something spiky and Television-like (late ’70s); there’s a Doors-like organ (’60s again) and a Morphine-like saxophone (hmm: ’90s); and then there’s a lead singer (one Dave Frankenfeld) with a shivery, nasally, talky croon that sounds something like Stephen Malkmus (still current) trying to sing lead for a mid-’70s Steely Dan album. While somewhat recognizable when teased apart this way, the cool thing is how briskly and matter-of-factly “Childproof” weaves them together.

And what about that recurring “hide your eyes”/”hide and hide” part? That has a mysterious appeal to me in a this-is-really-familiar-but-not-quite sort of way that sometimes happens with new songs that stick in my head. When I first heard this song, in fact, I actually had to check to see if it was a cover version of an older song, such déjà vu was I experiencing. For all I know, this part in particular does come straight out of some older song but for the life of me I can’t place it. (Feel free to let me know if you know what I thought I was thinking of.)

A five-piece whose members come from the north country of Minnesota and Wisconsin, Batteries put out a debut CD late last year entitled That Great Grandsuck of the Sea—and no, I don’t know what that means, either. “Childproof” is third song on the album, which was self-released.

“Beyond the Door” – 13ghosts

Phased, psychedelic vocals mixed with crisp, George Harrison-y rhythm guitar give this one an immediate trippiness that might seem mere affect were it not for the terrific melody lurking at the heart of the chorus. For all its sonic largeness, “Beyond the Door” all but shimmers with focus and restraint. I like, for instance, how the chorus, when we first hear it, is delivered (0:29) as the instrumental accompaniment pulls back, everything seemingly run through the same distortion the vocals are undergoing. So we don’t actually receive the full effect of that great melody the first time it arrives–we hear it, but we don’t really hear it. This is a most excellent songwriting trick but it only works with an excellent song. (“Beyond the Door” qualifies without reservation.) And so, you see, when the chorus returns (1:12), its full power hits us all the harder. Note that the band still throws us a bit of a curveball—listen to that guitar line that drones through the first half of the melody in the chorus and feel the extra depth that dissonance can bring to music, at least when we’re in the hands of talented musicians. (Otherwise, alas, it may simply be noise.)

13ghosts, from Birmingham, Alabama, is one of those fortunate bands that contain two strong singer/songwriters–in this case, Brad Armstrong (who sang the last time Fingertips featured the band) and Buzz Russell. Russell is out front this time around, and his interest in swirly, spacey aural space is paired, happily, with unusually sharp pop chops. Normally, folks who want to take us on a space ride forget to give us something to sing along with. Russell, however, has melody, nice chord changes, and smiley-harmonies pouring right out of him here, all in the service of a song about death, and the possibility of life thereafter. The gracefully modulating “oohs” that you hear after the chorus, by the way, were, according to Russell, “supposed to create the effect of taking a Xanax or something to ease the anxiety”–the anxiety of facing the possibility of an afterlife, he says.

“Beyond the Door” is a song from the band’s forthcoming CD, The Strangest Colored Lights, to be released next month on Birmingham-based Skybucket Records.

“Regarde” – Monade

Bordeaux-based multi-instrumentalist Lætitia Sadier, one half of the band Stereolab, has had her own side project going now for the better part of the last decade (Stereolab, a “post-rock” pioneer, has been around since 1990). She calls it Monade in part for a concept taken from 20th-century Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, referring to the undifferentiated psyche (before the id, ego, and superego break apart), and also for how it is rooted in the word “mono,” which in turn is related to the word “stereo,” and thus neatly implies her working on her own, apart from her more well-known band. And right away, if nothing else, I appreciate the depth of a European education.

As for the music, the suave yet playful “Regarde” launches off an alternating minor/major chord motif, and unfolds as a kind of cool, Euro-march for the lounge crowd, driven by Sadier’s husky, Chrissie Hynde-meets-Brigitte Bardot voice (and yes, sports fans, Chrissie Hynde did in fact mention Brigitte Bardot in a song once; small world!). Plus, there’s a trombone, which is apparently one of Sadier’s main instruments. Halfway through, the song abruptly slows to a slumberous waltz (1:50), begins to pick up speed and orchestral drama (2:40), then melts precipitately back into the original tempo and rhythm (3:01) in a manner at once awkward and—I have no idea why—exceedingly charming. Don’t miss it.

“Regarde” is from Monade’s third album, Monstre Cosmic, which was released last week on Too Pure Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

“Parallel Lives” – La Scala

We can all use a big heaping dollop of melodrama with our pop every now and then, and La Scala is happy to deliver. (Even the name of this Chicago band implies something larger than life and over the top.) Up above the introduction’s searing, machine-gun guitar line and the ’80s dance beat, listen to that second guitar plucking out a homely, vaguely East European motif. Or maybe it’s not a guitar, as it sounds like a bouzouki or some such old country instrument; in any case, this is the best kind of musical melodrama—the kind that has you smiling for potentially unknown reasons.

Like for instance the verse. Listen, in the second half, to how singer Balthazar de Ley and one of the guitars “harmonize” in a crazy sort of way–the guitar plays a line completely in sync with the melody rhythmically, but squonking all over the place harmonically. It’s kind of wacky but also subtle–you might not notice, but, again, it creates an enjoyable mood. And then there’s that resplendent, two-part chorus, at which point this song truly sounds like some great early ’80s post-new wave hit, an impression furthered by de Ley’s familiar-sounding voice, which has the throaty warmth of one of those dreamy New Romantic-era singers.

De Ley by the way grew up both in Paris and in Champaign, Illinois, which may at least partially account for the intriguing, old-world sensibility laced into the band’s sound. La Scala was just formed last year. “Parallel Lives” is from their first EP, The Harlequin, to be released next week by the Chicago-based Highwheel Records.

<"My Father" – Raise High the Roof Beam

And now we get the antidote to sweeping, driving melodrama: the vulnerable, acoustic-based “My Father,” from singer/songwriter Thomas Fricilone, also Chicago-based, doing Salinger-inspired musical business as Raise High the Roof Beam. I find myself engaged right away by the broken descent of the opening riff—we begin with a standard downward progression but what’s less standard is how it stops and hangs out at the third note, two notes short of the resolution. We suspend there for the same length of time it took to get us there, and then the resolution is turned upside down: after hearing 5-4-3, and hanging out on 3, we then get 1-2 rather than 2-1. It’s all very simple and clear but interesting, and implies overturned expectations or unexpected conclusions, themes that bear out lyrically as the song unfolds.

Fricilone has a quavery voice that does not always stay on pitch, but in the particular musical setting he gives himself here the end result is gracious and affecting. For all that it may sound at first like a simple acoustic-guitar strummer, there’s actually a nimble array of instruments weaving together, including piano, ukelele, eletric guitar, maybe a melodica, and perhaps a synthesizer. Fricilone also double-tracks his vocals here, which I think gives them extra potency, and maybe compensates for the pitch variation, while maintaining the underlying fragility that serve the lyrics especially well: “My father told me I’d be late for life/That’s okay ’cause I think that waiting’s all right/I avoid the news for things that I might fear/My father tells me all the things that I don’t want to hear.”

“My Father” is a song that will appear on Raise High the Roof Beam’s Family EP, a work that is still in progress. MP3 courtesy of Fricilone’s web site.

“Pull Me Out Alive” – Kaki King

Dipping for the first time into the new SXSW MP3s, I’ve pulled out a plum, and an unexpected plum at that. Kaki King is a musician known initially for her ear-opening acoustic guitar virtuosity, which she has had a tendency to put on display in songs that are maybe a little complicated. Even as she has expanded her sonic palette over the past couple of years, and started singing on her songs, she has not previously focused her music quite so pointedly. But for her soon-to-be-released Dreaming of Revenge CD, King had producer Malcolm Burn at the board. Burn has worked with everyone from Bob Dylan and Patti Smith to Emmylou Harris and the Neville Brothers; he apparently told King, “If someone can’t be sawing a log in half and whistling along to the song, I don’t want it on the record.” Thus has King’s music taken a turn towards the accessible, shall we say.

And it doesn’t sound like a bad thing to me. Accessible doesn’t mean uninteresting, or bland. “Pull Me Out Alive” alternates itchy, idiosyncratically propulsive verses–check out the way her vocals are layered (starting around 0:29) to sound like a slightly out-of-sync conversation–with a drony, dreamy chorus that finishes on a wonderfully unresolved chord. I find the instrumental break at 2:10 particularly interesting; employing an intriguing blend of electric and electronic sounds, it nevertheless strikes me at its core as something she might previously have used at the center of one of her acrobatic and percussive guitar displays. While those who latched onto King for her instrumental mastery may be disoriented by a song like this, I kind of like it. And I assume she still does play the guitar now and then. I guess we’ll find out when the CD comes out next month. That’ll be on Velour Recordings. MP3, as noted, via SXSW, and this one may in fact be exclusive.

“Power Lines” – the Interiors

I can’t make out what they’re singing about, and the title doesn’t necessarily imply a fun time, but the music is extremely good-natured, in an early Talking Heads-ish sort of way–the stuttering drumbeat, creative bass playing, swooping melody lines, and singer/guitarist Chase Duncan’s amiable, wide-mouthed vocal style (sounding quite a bit like Dave Matthews doing a David Byrne imitation) all contributing to that sensation. One of the things that I think makes the rhythm here so ear-catching is the dynamic interplay in the rhythm section: listen in the introduction and the verse to the stark difference between the steady, clockwork bass and the changeable drum pattern. Interestingly, the bass breaking free of its strict pulse is more or less what creates the chorus, as the melody itself does not alter that much.

On guitar, Duncan adds a handsome depth to the chuggy ambiance, with rounded, semi-drone-like tones and ringing arpeggios. No doubt he’s very happy to be doing all this, after a freak accident last year required the amputation of a fingertip. (Of all things.) This happened the day after the Chicago-based trio had signed with the record label 54°40′ or Fight. The band had to take most of last year off while Duncan, thankfully, recuperated. Their self-titled label debut is slated for an April release. MP3 courtesy of the band’s site.

“Bodyguard” – Dawn Landes

“Sultry” and “banjo” are two words not normally encountered within the same sentence. But Dawn Landes, the Louisville-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter, is one those 21st-century musicians who appears comfortable juxtaposing sounds, vibes, and emotions–while happily emerging with a firm voice of her own, rather than a pointless mashup. (Not all 21st-century musicians are as fortunate. Just saying.) So here, then, we get a minimalist groove, some almost trip-hoppy but organic aural space, Landes’ pretty yet matter-of-fact voice (a disarming blend of deadpan and sultry), and yes, somehow, too, a banjo.

Anchored by its deep, unhurried bass line, “Bodyguard” unfolds in its own world, both musically–beyond the banjo, don’t miss the sleighbells in the distance–and lyrically: “I had a dream that we were robbed/They took the moldings off the walls/Erased our signatures from things.” Those are remarkable opening lines, I think, for their concrete, casual leap into the surreal, beautifully served by a melody spanning a full octave. Landes here is mining an actual, terrible real-life incident (not an intentional theme, this week, honest!): her apartment was in fact broken into, and they took her stuff (though not, I imagine, the moldings), including her laptop and hard drive, which at the time contained the only copy she had of her entire new album, then ready for production. Gone and not coming back. She didn’t try to re-create it; “I just started over from scratch,” she has said. “I wrote ‘Bodyguard’ in the kitchen while waiting for the police to show up.” I hear something of the incomparable Jane Siberry both in Landes’ vocal presentation (Sib fans note her abrupt “Where’ve you been?” at 3:22) and in something inscrutable residing deep down in this strange but hypnotic song.

“Bodyguard” is from the CD Fireproof, which was recorded live in a single day in an old fire station in Brooklyn. The album will be released next month on Cooking Vinyl; MP3 via Cooking Vinyl USA.

“Sarah’s Game” – the Loved Ones

Musical genres are a funny thing. As labels, some are very broad and more or less indispensible–say, blues or jazz or reggae–in that they clearly describe a distinct universe of music, while leaving lots of room for variation. Many others make an effort to slice and dice music into narrower and narrower sub-universes (jangle pop, anyone? folktronica?), with the unfortunate end result of implying many more boundaries than there need be, especially within the broad, theoretically embracing kingdom of rock’n’roll. (To me, the only sensible boundary to make is between good music and bad music, but we’ll leave that for another time.)

I bring this up because the Loved Ones, a quartet from Philadelphia, are supposedly a punk rock band on a punk rock record label. The band’s previous releases, a 2004 EP and a 2006 full-length, were hailed as fine punk rock by people to whom such things matter. Punk rock, it turns out, is a genre particularly resistant to boundary crossing. Punk rock fans often start to get suspicious if the music gets too “catchy” or “melodic” (which is exactly, by the way, when it starts becoming actual music rather than unprocessed noise, but we’ll leave that for another time also). So I don’t know what the punk rock purists will make of “Sarah’s Game,” but to me, this is a great listen: simultaneously harsh and focused, passionate and engaging, with a powerful melody, nicely crafted lyrics (note the internal rhymes), careful musicianship (the two guitars work impressively together), and even a harmony or two. God forbid!

“Sarah’s Game” is from the CD Build & Burn, which comes out this week on Fat Wreck Chords. MP3 via Fat Wreck Chords.

“Power” – Nick Jaina

A brisk but elegiac piano sequence, underscored by some spooky strings, leads us directly into the intriguing melody of this new song from the Portland, Ore.-based singer/songwriter Nick Jaina. I’ve been trying to put my finger on just what makes the tune so compelling, and I’m thinking it has something to do with Jaina’s prominent use of semitones, or half steps, which is not something you hear a lot of in indie rock, or classic rock, or any other kind of rock or pop for that matter. The half step is the smallest commonly recognized interval between notes in Western music, and the most dissonant when played in combination. When related within a melody, however, strange and wonderful moods emerge. Listen to how the notes he sings on the words “of the moon” (0:34) and “sacred tune” (0:37) sound so divergent, so firmly separated, and yet lo and behold they are only a half step apart. The illusion is achieved by his returning, in between, to the same notes he was singing leading into the “moon” part. So what we’re hearing is not just the half-step difference in the end notes but the significant difference in sonic relationship between the top and bottom notes in the two segments (i.e. the “moon” segment and the “tune” segment). More semitones are used, in sequence, as the melody line resolves (0:38-0:42).

And I know, this kind of thing sounds neither exciting nor, often, comprehensible in an attempted written explication. And worse, with pop music in particular, I’m always caught in the awkward position of claiming treasure in a seeming musical trifle. What I describe here, after all, is no stunning revelation in music theory land. But the very thing that causes many classical aficionados to stiff at the simplicity of pop music is, I would contend, pop’s very strength–what Proust, of all people, referred to as “the magic appeal to the imagination” found in things that those interested only in “intellectual weightiness” would condemn as “frivolous.”

Then again, maybe I’m all wrong. Maybe the song is compelling because Jaina was playing on Elliott Smith’s old upright piano. Jaina was the last person to play it before it was given to the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Or maybe it’s compelling simply because Jaina–itinerant, whimsical, a former archaeology student–is himself compelling, in a quirky sort of way. “Power” is from the CD Wool, Jaina’s second, and his first for the Hush label. (He recorded the vocals for the album in his kitchen, “refrigerator unplugged so as to be quiet, food slowly spoiling,” according to his web site.) Expect Wool in early March. MP3 courtesy of WFMU.

“Warning” – Wye Oak

This is an unusually breezy-sounding setting in which to encounter such fuzzy/droney guitars. And yet therein lies a good part of the appeal. So here we have vocalist Jenn Wasner, lightly, airily singing the sing-song-y tune to a perky, march-like beat, and listen to what-all is going on around her: extended drones of feedback-laced guitars, rising and falling according to their own logic, existing in their own time and space. Seriously, after the lead guitar offers a fuzzed-up version of the main melody in the introduction, we don’t hear anything straightforward out of the guitars for quite a while. Try listening to this and imagining the song without either the vocals or the drums and you’ll see how driven by entrancing noise the piece actually is. I particularly enjoy the instrumental breaks, which begin with a vague effort to give us the opening riff again, but it never manages to emerge completely amidst the semi-chaos; the second and longer of the two breaks, beginning at 2:04, has the happy Yo La Tengo-ish capacity to sound simultaneously crazed and cozy.

Listen also to the shifty time signatures. The sing-song-y, march-beat-ed verse is given a rhythmic tweak by a dropped beat in the fourth measure. This creates an extra dollop of semi-chaos in the instrumental sections connecting the verses, during which the beat of the entire song seems to have been misplaced. And then the chorus, or what passes for a chorus here, re-establishes some sonic order but all of a sudden, somehow, we’re in 6/4 (or 6/8?) time. For all the noise, this is one smooth song.

You’ll find “Warning” on the CD If Children, slated for release in April on Merge Records. The Baltimore duo Wye Oak, by the way, was until earlier this month a band called Monarch; a self-released version of If Children was put out originally last year under the old name. The change was prompted by the existence of (at least) two other bands named Monarch, and was no doubt connected to their Merge signing. The Wye Oak, you may as well know, was the honorary state tree of Maryland–it was a specific tree, of great renown, that was believed to be more than 450 years old when it was, alas, destroyed in a storm in 2002.

“Sad Songs” – the Pendletons

I’m never sure quite how or why it happens, but sometimes a song that seems at one level a pretty basic genre exercise at another level rises way above that for me. “Sad Songs” is an excellent example. A stompy, country-tinged garage rocker, there’s something in the basic vibe that sounds like it’s been cycling through rootsy musical ensembles since the dawn of time. Or at least since the 1950s. When the melody is so strongly rooted in a classic rhythm like this (Johnny Cash, anyone?), that’s a sign of a genre exercise. And there’s nothing wrong with that; it just doesn’t tend too often to inspire a melody-oriented listener like me.

But here are four relative youngsters from Athens, Georgia, cranking it up and cranking it out and what do you know?: it’s a blast. Why? No doubt the appeal has something to do with the energy of the playing. Check out, for instance, the speedy, stuttering guitar riff that anchors the end of each verse, at the “no no no” part (for instance, at 0:30)—it’s done with this tight-loose sort of accuracy that conveys an image to me of everyone in the band moving up and down in unison to the stutter of that little lick, in a manner at once comical and serious. And listen by all means to drummer Ben DuPriest, who bashes and bangs and still keeps a train-like pulse; he manages to sound rowdy and polite at the same time. Oh, and don’t miss (e.g. 0:39) the thrilling, brilliant mini-rolls (are these paradiddles? I’m not up on my drumming lingo) that he uses to puncutate each lyrical line in the chorus, except the last. Maybe that’s what’s doing it for me. The (maybe) paradiddles.

“Sad Songs” is from the Pendletons’ debut CD, Oh, Me!, which was released electronically this summer on the digital label Indie Outlaw.

“Boys” – the Autumns

Riveting, dramatic, slightly breathless, and thoroughly satisfying, “Boys” is the perfect soundtrack somehow to a crisp blue January day, even if the band is named the Autumns, not the Winters. The song opens with a distinctive drumbeat that launches us into an edgy, unusually dynamic melody. The edginess comes from two elements: first, the melody appears to start off the tonic–that is, the tune begins within a chord that is somehow not home base, which is an unusual circumstance, especially in a pop song; second, the melody never in fact seems to settle in a place that feels centered. The third and fourth measures are the closest we get to a “home” feeling, harmonically, and even there it’s vague and fleeting; after that, the melody in the verse springs from an almost startling series of chord changes.

And the band is really just getting started at that point. The chorus continues the kinetic vibe: an angular guitar chord–another off-center thing–leads us into a soaring section in which singer Matthew Kelly, leaping up a minor sixth (0:26), shows off a formidable falsetto; here the melodic momentum is such that it seems to be dragging Kelly along with it, the way the tide moves the water but is not the water: up and down he goes, in and out of his upper range, and in and out of singing actual words–the lyrics break for a stretch of wordless syllables right in the heart of the chorus (which themselves mirror the underlying drumbeat), and the effect is of a song overcome by its own fervor.

Perhaps long-time Fingertips visitors remember the L.A.-based Autumns from three years ago, when they were featured here for the song “Slumberdoll.” That was darn good; this is truly great. “Boys” is a song from the CD Fake Noise From a Box of Toys, the band’s fourth, which was released in the U.K. in the fall, and is slated for a U.S. release in April on Bella Union.

“Bag of Hammers” – Thao With the Get Down Stay Down

Thao Nguyen has a woolly-textured, back-of-the-throat sort of voice that brings to mind Erica Wennerstrom of the Heartless Bastards. Thao has an airier air about her, however–a feeling supported by the cheery banjo with which she chooses to accompany herself and the sprightly, slightly cockeyed rhythm that bounces us along. The jaunty guilelessness on display in fact puts me in the mind of the sound pioneered by Talking Heads in their early recordings: this sense of simple yet off-kilter music that surprises even the people playing it, as they play it.

Nguyen, from Virginia, released her first CD in 2005, a solo effort entitled Like the Linen. The disc eventually found its way to Tucker Marine, who plays with Laura Veirs and has produced the Decemberists and Sufjan Stevens. And now, also, he has produced We Brave Bee Stings and All, Thao’s second full-length, recorded with her band, to be released later this month on Kill Rock Stars (that’s a record label). “Bag of Hammers” is the album’s second track.

“Him” – Biirdie

This one features both a classic-sounding melody, almost folk-like in its sturdiness, and an ongoing urge to deconstruct it. Sometimes oddball electronics wander in. Other times, the band grinds itself more or less to a halt, just when you were air drumming to the Phil Spector-ish beat. The bass, meanwhile, seems to come and go, and when present opts often for extended notes rather than a typical, rhythm-oriented pulse. And how often does the worn-out sounding male vocalist get a sweetly harmonizing female vocalist to sing with? Not very often is the answer.

So this trio calling itself Biirdie—oops, another L.A. outfit this week—kind of makes you listen more than once. Much the way their name kind of makes you look more than once. In the old days, by the way, I’d find the oddly-spelled name somewhat irritating. But here in the Google Age, the name is a boon: search on “Biirdie” and you pretty much get stuff about them and only them. However accidental the origin—they had wanted merely to be Birdie but there was already a Birdie band—the strategy appears sound. I fear a trend coming on.

You’ll find “Him” on the CD Catherine Avenue, coming out this week on Love Minus Zero Records.

“Cherry Tulips” – Headlights

At once delicate and sturdy, quirky and poppy, summery and somehow wintery too, “Cherry Tulips” embraces a seemingly endless series of opposites—in addition to containing the aforementioned dialectics, the song strikes me likewise as both lo-fi and polished, retro-y and current, crisp and echoey. And if that’s not enough, singer/keyboardist Erin Fein manages to be at once airy and substantive, both forthright and mysterious.

Or maybe I just can’t make up my mind today.

I do know that I’m enjoying this one without reservation, from the shadowy opening heart-throb pulse through the sped-up Motown rhythm and maybe most especially the soaring, melodic, call-and-response payoff in the chorus, which enlarges the song in a way I can only describe as florally. Headlights is a trio from the Champaign, Illinois area; “Cherry Tulips” arrives in advance from the band’s second CD, Some Racing, Some Stopping, scheduled for release next month on Polyvinyl Records. MP3 via Polyvinyl.


<br

“Gila” – Beach House

Sometimes it’ll be one melody that does it, one melody that is robust and agreeable enough to hang a song upon. And “Beach House,” a languorous new song from the Balitmore duo Beach House, gives us that melody as its opening salvo, the first thing we hear from singer Victoria Legrand’s mouth: a dreamy, downward-tending progression that’s actually two lazily swinging four-note descents tucked into one another. Drenched in reverb, steamy organ, and unplaceable atmosphere, the melody hooks me for good the second time, when the upturn at the end disappears; the simple act of staying on the same note one extra time changes the chord, the mood, the trajectory of the song on the spot (compare 0:25-0:26 to 0:32-0:33 and see if you feel it.)

Now normally I’m not sure I enjoy songs with quite this much blurry reverb, but I realize in listening that it’s not the blurry reverb that bothers me per se, it’s the tendency for songs with a lot of blurry reverb to be blurry through and through–indistinct melody, hazy structure, vague instrumentation, vague everything. “Gila” is exactly not that; it’s as precisely crafted as they come, in which case the smeary touch of the reverb offers an enriching counterpoint, in maybe the same sort of way it works when a happy-sounding song has sad lyrics, or a song with fast underlying rhythm has a slow melody. Listen in particular to the guitar, which plays chord-free accompaniment throughout, offering nicely-etched lines that curl in and around the vocal melody.

“Gila” comes from the band’s forthcoming CD, Devotion, which will be released next month on Carpark Records. MP3 courtesy of Pitchfork.

“Henri” – the Heavy Circles

In one of the more unusual multi-generational (but not really) musical couplings in recent memory, Edie Brickell has teamed up with her stepson, Harper Simon, to put out an album as an entity called the Heavy Circles. Simon is Brickell’s husband Paul Simon’s son from his first marriage, and I said multi-generational “but not really” because as it turns out, Brickell is only six and a half years older than stepson Simon, who’s 35.

And here they are, serving up an offbeat, atmospheric homage (it seems) to French painter Henri Matisse, describing Matisse’s imagery via a hypnotic rhyme scheme over a circular, spy-movie motif, fleshed out with some cinematic synthesizers and the barest touch of crunchy guitar. I’m not sure there’s any more point to it than there was when the elder Simon sang rapturously, and surreally, about René Magritte back when Brickell was a teenager. But it draws me in and then—nicely—lets me go, without fuss. Songs under three minutes always score extra points with me.

But: combine the son of a ’60s and ’70s icon with a woman most often considered an ’80s one-hit wonder and the cool factor is way low on this one; I’ll be surprised if the blogosphere pays much positive attention. But I’ve always admired the clear-voiced Brickell as a singer; maybe this collaboration will help her shed her outdated public identity.

The self-titled CD, to be self-released on a label called Dynamite Child, is, yet again, due out next month.

“On the Chin” – Grey Race

I’ll start the new year with a couple of songs that are not really new at all—a reminder that a song is always new if you haven’t heard it yet. “On the Chin” begins with a straightforward eighth-note riff linked by an amplified acoustic guitar-neck sound, which emerges after the riff is heard the second time. If it’s gratuitous, movement-wise (the guitarist doesn’t really need to run his fingers up and down the neck like that), percussively, it’s at the center of the riff, quietly threading through the song and tacitly foreshadowing the later emergence of actual stringed instruments in the mix. And, what the heck, because I’m a foreshadowing fan, I hear in that slidy sound, additionally, a hint of the vocal intervals that singer Jon Darling will soon be leaping with his pliable tenor–intervals topped by notes he has no business hitting with such glee.

The string players who enter during the bridge (at around 2:07) and step briefly but incisively to center stage for the subsequent return of the chorus (2:39) probably have no business in the song either but the thing is so judiciously assembled it makes perfect sonic sense at that precise moment.

“On the Chin” has been floating around the blogosphere–just barely–since June, when the Brooklyn-based trio’s first EP was released; the subsequent Grey Race album containing the song, entitled Give It Love, was released in September on Unfiltered Records.




“Une Américaine à Paris” – Rupa and the April Fishes

Born in the Bay Area to Indian immigrant parents, Rupa Marya spent a good amount of her childhood in both Northern India and France, which at least partially accounts for the zesty, gypsy-inflected sound she coaxes out of the April Fishes, an ensemble featuring a guitar, a cello, a trumpet, drums, upright bass, and accordion. Singing in fetching French, Marya mixes musical cultures in a way that may sound pastiche-like to purists but sounds vibrant and beguiling to me, thanks in large part to the song’s simultaneously energetic and intimate vibe. (That’s a more unusual combination than it may initially appear.) Marya herself strikes me as a preternaturally charming vocalist; listen to how musical she sounds when she’s trying not to sing so prettily (that speak-singing section beginning at 1:38) and see if you are charmed as well.

Note that if you are at all insecure about your accomplishments to date on the planet Earth, you may not want to know that Marya, singer/songwriter, guitarist, and driving force behind Rupa and the April Fishes, is a musician at night and an honest-to-goodness M.D. doctor during the day, currently on the medical faculty part-time at the University of California at San Francisco. She has also worked as an independent radio producer, in between medical school and going to work as a physician. But remember that this is not a competition; admiration is the proper response to someone this talented and driven. “Une Américaine à Paris” is from the debut Rupa and the April Fishes CD, Extraordinary Rendition, originally self-released on Bateau Rouge Records last January and scheduled for an international release in April on world music label Cumbancha Records.




“The Silence Between Us” – Bob Mould

A bracing shot of earnest, subtly melodic rock’n’roll, “The Silence Between Us” ranks up there with the best of Mould’s solo output. Lionized for his role as Hüsker Dü lead man, Mould has been an inveterate blogger but spotty solo artist, recording infrequently and often steering clear of the guitar-based blitz of his first group and its more commercially-capable successor, Sugar.

There is no reason to expect again from Mould anything resembling the gut-deep fury of Hüsker Dü; so while I’m not hearing the volume or speed associated with that seminal band, what I am connecting to across the years is Mould’s willingness after a good long while to put some meaningful electric guitar back into his songs, while at the same time maintaining a precision in songwriting characteristic of his best work (and often, I think, missing when the volume gets cranked too high, particularly in his post-HD material). This one does nothing fancy, but some well-timed melodic intervals and chord detours lend “The Silence Between Us” an almost noble sort of stature. The guitar solo that begins at 2:20 is worth the download alone, offering a succinct balance of brain and brawn, complete with a nifty electronic coda.

“The Silence Between Us” will be found on Mould’s forthcoming CD, District Line, slated for release early next month on Anti Records. MP3 courtesy of Spinner.