Category: MP3s

This Week’s Finds: October 22-28 (The Low Frequency in Stereo, Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters, Porter Block)

“Axes” – The Low Frequency in Stereo

To begin with we get a surf guitar over a crisp beat. Another guitar joins in for a few measures, then leaves. Surf guitar riff re-establishes itself. Next to enter is a Doors-like organ. At this point I for one would not have understood that exactly what was missing was a trumpet but what do you know: the trumpet, appearing at 56 seconds in, is utterly perfect. The whole song, as a matter of fact, seems to unfold with impeccable charm and precision all the way through, as each sonic element—the surf guitar, the organ vamp, the trumpet, and Hanne Andersen’s breathy, somewhat distant vocal, when she finally starts singing (over a minute into the proceedings)—contributes its own distinct ingredient to the musical stew. The band, from Norway, seems to call themselves, interchangeably, Low Frequency in Stereo, and The Low Frequency in Stereo. Not a big distinction but I’m kind of a stickler for details; I’m going with “The” at this point. Reading about them a bit I see that they’ve been tied since their founding in 2000 to the so-called “post-rock” genre, but I personally have trouble with that label, which seems an unnecessary way to distinguish fresh sounding rock music (interesting instrumental combinations and song structures) from previous sounds, overlooking the fact that rock music at its best is always growing and stretching. “Axes” is from the CD The Last Temptation Of…, scheduled for release next week on Gigantic Music. The MP3 is available via the band’s site.

“Fata Morgana” – Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters

A fast-picking bluesy, slidey shuffle with an odd sort of homespun character. Lucas sings of the legendary enchantress with a cartoony sort of croon on top of the almost old-timey music; the combination of the rapid-fire acoustic guitarwork, the old-fashioned melody, and Lucas’s vaguely unhinged presence creates an unexpected blast of merrymaking. Lucas is something of a cult-hero guitarist, with experience ranging all the way back to playing with Captain Beefheart during the last incarnation of his Magic Band in the early ’80s; among the impressive array of musicians he’s collaborated with are Lou Reed, Patti Smith, John Cale, Bryan Ferry, Matthew Sweet, John Zorn, Dr. John, Jeff Buckley, and (yes) Leonard Bernstein. Gods and Monsters is being billed as a sort of New Wave supergroup; certainly its members are of interest, since Billy Ficca (Television) plays drums and Ernie Brooks (the Modern Lovers) bass. What’s more, Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads (and previously also the Modern Lovers) had a hand on the knobs in here (and is playing with the band on the road). And actually Jonathan Kane (Swans) plays drums on most of the songs although Ficca’s here on “Fata Morgana.” The song is from the CD Coming Clean, which was released at the end of September on Mighty Quinn Records.

“Circles” – Porter Block

If “Circles” is as vaguely pastoral, skillfully produced, and giddily melodic as an old XTC song, this is no accident. Peter Block and Caleb Sherman, doing business as Porter Block, are the first to report that their biggest influences are the Beatles and XTC. It’s wonderful enough to see a new band that understands XTC’s brilliant but underrated contributions to rock’n’roll history; it’s all the better when the band in question handles its influences this comfortably. I hear a lot of indie bands that seem to have this unconscious need to sound exactly like their musical heroes, down to out-and-out vocal mimickry. I am relieved right away by Porter Block in that they write XTC-ish songs without having a singer who sounds at all like Andy Partridge (or Colin Moulding, for that matter). In any case, the chorus here in particular offers winsome XTC resonances, both musical and lyrical (including the very Andy Partridge-like word “whirligig”), and if you don’t have any particular knowledge of or interest in XTC (but why not??), it doesn’t matter, as the lilting 3/4 melody stands beautifully on its own two feet. “Circles” is from the CD Suburban Sprawl, scheduled for release next month by Engine Room Recordings. The MP3 is via the band’s site.

This Week’s Finds: October 15-21 (The Panda Band, Causa, Beat Radio)

“Eyelashes” – the Panda Band

Loping along with a kitchen-sink variety of sounds and musical moments, “Eyelashes” is a song that I think will satisfy both those who enjoy songwriting craft and those with short attention spans. After a three-second introduction, we are thrown right into the middle of the song, as the chorus comes first. Just as I’m getting acclimated to the expansive soundscape, featuring an unnameable wall of sound that doesn’t appear to be any particular instrument or background vocal, the song pulls back to a quieter section, but even that shifts quickly, as the singer and acoustic guitar are joined first by a cheesy organ (I mean that in a good way) and some skittering electronic percussion, leading us soon enough into an engaging instrumental section. The song isn’t quite a minute old yet. And, as it turns out, the instrumental interlude, too, keeps moving and keeps us guessing—the 24-second break beginning at around 54 seconds in itself has three different sub-sections, including one of the coolest (and oddest) guitar “solos” I’ve heard in a while (check it out starting around 1:06, after the flurry of electronic twittering—it’s pretty low in the mix, and for all of its alternating dissonance it almost doesn’t sound like somebody playing an instrument). Even as the song can be parsed into these semi-describable chunks, the impressive thing is that “Eyelashes” holds its ground with great panache, offering a rollicking musical adventure in a concise space. The Panda Band is a quintet from the large but remote city of Perth, Western Australia. This song is from the band’s debut CD, This Vital Chapter, which was released in Australia this summer, and given a U.S. release last month on the Filter U.S. label. The MP3 is available via the band’s site.



“The King is Dead (But the Throne Is Not Ours)” – Causa

Mysterious and restrained and yet also fast-paced, mixing electronics and guitars with Radiohead-like aplomb. The melody urges the song forward and upward against a particularly appealing beat; I like how well-articulated and almost minimalist it is, achieving a satisfying complexity without simply piling on the digitally-manipulated sounds. The Spanish lyrics add to the enigmatic feel, thanks to the complete failure of my high school Spanish to rescue more than one or two words from the flow. And talk about great guitar solos, this one, beginning at 2:09 and closing out the song, is probably what ultimately sold me here; it’s a repetition of nine basic notes, but yanked out of the instrument in an itchy, urgent, and increasingly freaked-out way. Love it. Causa is a quartet from Buenos Aires, Argentina that has been around since 1999. “The King is Dead” is a song that has not yet appeared on an album of theirs; it’s available as an MP3 via the band’s site.


“Fearful” – Beat Radio

Part lullaby, part benediction, “Fearful” is one beautiful and tender song, yet possesses not an ounce of sappiness, which limns its sturdy truthfulness in clear, almost breathtaking strokes. Most love songs, let’s be honest, defeat their own intentions through mawkish exclamations, both musical and lyrical. Somewhere in the interplay between Brian Sendrowitz’s vulnerable vocal, the subtle but progressive tension of the acoustic instrumentation (listen to the drumbeat, for instance), and the rock-solid melody, the song achieves a luminous clarity that doesn’t have to rely on bromides or histrionics. “Fearful” is from the band’s debut CD (they call it an LP, god bless ’em) The Great Big Sea; the MP3 is available via the band’s site. As a matter of fact, the entire album is there to be listened to and downloaded as free and legal MP3s (god bless ’em). A New York City four-piece, Beat Radio has been written about all over the place, but I noticed them first only recently via the Sixeyes blog.

This Week’s Finds: October 8-14 (El Presidente, We Are Soldiers We Have Guns, Brett Dennen)

<"Turn This Thing Around" – El Presidente

Turn it up, shake it out, and beware as this uncomplicated, preposterously addictive tune is likely to stick in your head for the next several days. Boasting a smashing neo-glam-rock sound that bridges everyone from David Bowie to the Bee Gees to Prince to the Scissor Sisters, this quintet from Glasgow makes music that leaps from the speakers, certain to sound at home on everything from a transistor radio (should any still exist) to a Mac Pro. With their feisty dance-rock riffs and falsetto vocals, El Presidente edges neo-glam-rock ever so close to camp (and truly glam rock and camp are never that far away), and yet, for me, “this thing” stays on solid musical ground largely for the crazy sincerity of its exhilarating chorus. When Dante Gizzi (great name) sings “Let me go back to where we were,” the melody not only resolves impeccably (and deep in the gut) but I hear an unexpected dollop of genuine pathos that no amount of squeally vocals can quite dispel. “Turn This Thing Around” is a song from the band’s self-titled debut, which came out last October in the U.K., finally to be released in the U.S. last month on Red Ink Records, a Sony imprint. The MP3 is courtesy of the fine folks at betterPropaganda.

“Songs That No One Will Hear” – We Are Soldiers We Have Guns”

Okay so while I would never have identified this, in advance, as a favorite songwriting trick, as soon as I heard it I knew it was: having the introduction in a different key from the song. And, who knows, maybe that won’t always work for me either, but in this case I find the effect entrancing, in large part because of the thoughtful, atmospheric beauty of the guitar work that comprises the introduction. The playing is both crisp and echoey, its gentle alternation between major and minor chords creating a continual sense of something about to happen and yet also there being no hurry to get there. Then, 40 seconds in: we change keys, we get a sense of movement in the guitar, something chimey chimes in, and Malin Dahlberg adds her delicately powerful voice to the mix. Even as the atmosphere remains restrained–almost slipping into near silence at one point–the song has tremendous character, perhaps because of the next thing I notice: for all the gentle meanderings of the sonic landscape, this song has a real melody to offer. You could speed this baby up and set it to a big bashing rock beat if you wanted to (not that I want to!), because of the range of motion in the notes. I think it’s all too easy here in the 21st century for musicians, fiddling with digital gizmos, to lose track of the great gift of melodic elasticity. On a screen everything flattens. It’s a theory, at least. We Are Soldiers We Have Guns is a duo from Gothenburg, Sweden; “Songs That No One Will Hear” comes from their cleverly-titled EP To Meet is Murder, which is scheduled for release later this month on Stereo Test Kit Records. Many thanks, as always, to Hedvika at the excellent Getecho blog for the lead.

“Ain’t No Reason” – Brett Dennen

Another simple and compelling tune, but set in an entirely different musical universe than the one occupied by El Presidente (see above). Brett Dennen is one part Ron Sexsmith and one part Steve Forbert, with maybe a sprinkle of John Prine, repackaged by the universe into lanky (he’s 6’5″) 20-something redhead with a wise-beyond-his-years vibe, a memorable voice, and some spiffy songwriting chops. He seems to have the distinctly Prine-like ability to be simultaneously goofy and serious, sometimes within the same sentence (“I don’t know why I say the things I say/But I say them anyway”), and a Sexsmithian flair for sad, vivid melodies. Forbert kicks in because of the woodsy ache in his tenor, and the sense I get that he’s going to out on the road playing his guitar for the next 30 years also. “Ain’t No Reason” is from Dennen’s second CD, So Much More, slated for release next week on Dualtone Records. MP3 via Spinner.

This Week’s Finds: October 1-7 (The Whigs, The Sheds, Jeremy Enigk)

“Technology” – the Whigs

Take the crunchy drive of the Strokes but loosen it up, make it sound a little more fun than hip, a little warmer than cooler, and you’ve got a quick sense of this exuberant trio from the semi-legendary indie rock oasis of Athens, Georgia. Just about all I need out of this song is that great barrage of fuzz-toned guitar chords in the intro–I mean, how primal and cool and perfect is that sound? Perhaps lead guitar is overrated after all, when so much dazzling musical force can be channelled through crisp, chord-based pounding. And yet the song hardly stops there, working itself up into two separate hooks—one delivered as those great intro chords return (at 0:30), the other right after that, where the chorus centers on one note (beginning at 0:44) with shifting chords underneath, leading to the line “Technology it needs me.” There are great rock’n’roll precedents for this kind of one-note melody, but two of the monumental examples that occur to me (“Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Pump It Up”) use it in the verse rather than the chorus. Coming here after all the chord-crunching it seems like its own sort of brilliant release. “Technology” is a song off the Whigs’ debut CD, Give ’em All a Big Fat Lip, which was self-released last year, then re-released in September by ATO Records. The MP3 is via the ATO Records site.

“Too Many Pictures” – the Sheds

Listening to “Too Many Pictures,” I develop a theory on the spot: it’s hard to be quirky and nice at the same time, musically speaking. Usually something that’s quirky involves a prickliness of one kind or another–maybe some unusual vocals and/or lyrics, some challenging sounds, or at the very least some jarring twists and turns in the overall musical structure. To sound “nice,” on the other hand typically involves a significant amount of both prettiness and gentleness. So, yes—hard to be jarring and soothing simultaneously. One would think. But here come the Sheds, a duo from Kentucky that is more than happy to oblige. How do they do it? Well, clearly having a flowing melody and gentle instrumentation helps (as do those perky “ba-ba-ba” backing vocals). So the niceness is right up front. Whereas the quirkiness is subtler, based in the band’s lo-fi vibe, disarmingly unaffected vocals, and naked-seeming lyrics. “My family has a history of cancer/Addictive personalities/A tendency for excess intake/And our hearts are big”: that’s awfully quirky writing. And yet maybe here they’ve figured out where the quirky and the nice can overlap after all—in poignancy. Most of all, this song is poignant, as the narrator, rigorously honest with himself, describes his (quirky!) human need for the cigarettes he knows he shouldn’t smoke, singing a melody which takes plaintive, almost unplanned-sounding turns, sometimes upwards and sometimes downwards. “Too Many Pictures” is from the band’s recently self-released CD, The Sheds Quit Smoking, and all the songs do in fact have something to do with smoking. The MP3 is via the band’s site; as a matter of fact, the entire CD is available there for free and legal download. Thanks to the music blog Each Note Secure for the lead.

“Been Here Before” – Jeremy Enigk

Dreamy, grand, and effortlessly melodic, “Been Here Before” has many graces but to me its most notable achievement is its reclamation of a progressive rock aural vocabulary into a 21st-century pop setting. Enigk’s haunting vocal resemblance to Jon Anderson (Yes, anyone?) is not the only thing that sets off the prog-rock bells in my head (although it helps); there’s also the majestic ambiance (the soaring mountains and spreading valleys of sound), the supple use of 7/4 time, and okay maybe the organ solo too. Whatever happened once upon a time to make progressive rock the whipping boy of critics and music hipsters, who the hell cares anymore. In the hands of a talent like Enigk’s, the music comes across like a revelation. “Been Here Before” is packed with more musical ideas than most musicians realize are possible in a four-minute pop song—a series of fully-formed melodies and structural shifts that flow fluently and beautifully together. Lead singer of the pioneering but oddly controversial ’90s band Sunny Day Real Estate, Enigk more recently headed up the Fire Theft (with two Sunny Day compadres); now he’s got a solo CD coming out, his second. It’s called World Waits and is scheduled for release later this month. “Been Here Before” is the second track on the record.

This Week’s Finds: Sept. 24-30 (Artisan, The Lemonheads, Emily Haines)

“Wind Change” – Artisan

Crisp, rhythmic, and melodic, “Wind Change” sparkles with a not often heard sort of acoustic/electronic energy. Certainly there are any number of people out there attempting to combine these two disparate sonic camps; a sub-genre even emerged early in the ’00s—“folktronica”—that sought to name at least some of these efforts. And yet achieving a bona fide blend of acoustic and electronic instruments is harder than it may seem to the dial-twiddling crowd: what we tend to get are either blurry tunes heavy in atmosphere but light in actual song-iness, or simple guitar songs with distracting effects thrown in. None of that, however, for Artisan, a British outfit which combines a Simon & Garfunkel-like sprightliness with melodies and vocal stylings that owe a lot, in a wonderful way, to Thom Yorke. The beats here are so subtle and well-conceived they often sound like little more than guitar-body percussion, which merely reinforces how central the guitar work remains, through both the complex, chord-changey verse and the simple, sing-along chorus. I’ve rarely for instance heard harmonic accents worked so organically into a song without drawing undue attention (listen at 1:27 to see what I mean)–just one example of the stylish musicianship on display. “Wind Change” is available as an MP3 on the band’s site. It’s a demo but the band tells me that at this point it’s as finished as it’s going to be for some time. Sounds pretty good as is.



“No Backbone” – the Lemonheads

Talk about songiness: Evan Dando at his best always specialized in songiness of just about the best kind—the power pop kind. Now first of all, turn the volume up on this one. No, louder. You want to be sure to properly absorb the guitar barrage (and hey that’s the venerable J Mascis on lead, how ’bout that?). And talk about the blending of disparate sounds: what about that wall of guitars and Dando’s husky-honey voice? I think the potential to combine an all-out sonic assault with sweet melody has always been the grand allure of that intractable genre known as power pop. What “No Backbone” does particularly well is sound barely contained so much of the time—not just J Mascis but also drummer Bill Stevenson (with certfied punk credentials of his own), just bashing first, asking questions later. It’s a tricky balance, since a finely-wrought pop song is actually a pretty strict container, without a lot of room for loosy-goose drama. Written, as a few Lemonheads songs have been, by Tom Morgan, of the not-terribly-well-known Australian trio Smudge, “No Backbone” is a lean and shining container indeed, but the ensemble drives and pushes and keeps making it sound like implosion is but a few measures away. Until, that is, that wonderful part where things get a bit quieter, at around 2:20 (and doesn’t Dando sound intensely Costello-like right there?), for maybe 15 seconds, and then, never mind, the band is back and we’re kicked in the butt till someone pulls the plug at a tidy 3:09. “No Backbone” is a song from the Lemonheads’ self-titled new CD, due out tomorrow on Vagrant Records. No, the Lemonheads haven’t had an album for a long time (10 years); it’s a whole new band this time except for Dando. The MP3 is courtesy the AOL Music Indie Blog.


“Doctor Blind” – Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton

Lead singer for the band Metric and one-time member of the ramshackle Broken Social Scene ensemble, Emily Haines strips things down here for a haunting, piano-based reverie with a pointed message. I’m immediately attracted to the time-signature challenges in the chorus, which lend a meaty flavor to an already tuneful piece–I think she abuts a measure of 5/4 to a measure of 7/4, but I could be wrong; it’s beautifully articulated and engaging in any case, with Haines singing in a weary, not-quite-deadpan voice. Everything is draped in lamentation (listen to how the strings sound when they join those ghostly echo-noises in the background), which is perhaps as it should be when the subject turns, as it seems to here, to our society’s sickening reliance on pharmaceutical products for our quote-unquote well-being. And actually I’m loving those echo-noises, whatever they are (unearthly guitars? distorted vocal samples?); they acquire a more prominent place in the background during the last minute or so, sounding like a chorus of alien ghosts trying to warn us, through a some sort of interdimensional doorway, about something we wouldn’t understand anyway. “Doctor Blind” is a song from the CD Knives Don’t Have Your Back, coming out this week on Last Gang Records.

This Week’s Finds: Sept. 17-23 (Annuals, Paul Michel, Special Patrol)

“Brother” – Annuals

This expansive group of North Carolina youngsters (front man Adam Baker is 19) sound like Arcade Fire’s younger American cousins. This is a good thing. Like that great Montreal band, Annuals show an impressive grasp of instrumental melody (note the recurring violin refrain), musical dynamics (they do both loud and soft with impressive character), and idiosyncratic production tricks as they transform a lilting, pastoral opening (complete with crickets) into a hard-driving rocker, showing both patience and passion in the process. It takes well over half the song to arrive at the visceral, propulsive beat that becomes its destiny—a beat that actually swings if you think about it: one-two; one-two. I really like when the percussion steps to the forefront at 2:45 and we hear the beat in a stripped-down and yet still nicely textured setting, and like as well the unusual guitar solo that led into the percussive section, at 2:26—unusual both for the complexion of the sound (not the typical searing guitar solo) and for the way it allows itself to be enveloped by the slightly unhinged background; typical guitar solos demand the front-and-center seat, perhaps at the cost of a richer musical flavor. Nice stuff from a promising ensemble. “Brother” is a track from the band’s debut CD, Be He Me, scheduled for release in October on Ace Fu Records; the MP3 is via the Ace Fu site.


“Day’s Looking Up” – Paul Michel

With its melancholic descending guitar line and casually assured presence, “Day’s Looking Up” sounds like some great lost classic rock ballad, particularly when we arrive at the chorus. What a beautiful, inevitable melody we get there, and what great lyrics: “Hope is an only child/And change is a desperate fool/Waiting for jealousy to clear out the room.” These are great not because they are unutterably profound (that would be asking a lot) but because of quite literally how they sound in the setting: big fat concepts to match the big fat beauty of the musical line. I am also impressed with the words because Michel is going for it here—he’s aiming at something beyond “I love you, baby” or “You hurt me, baby” while at the same time avoiding the two biggest problems in pop lyrics, which are 1) cliche and 2) obscurity. Mainstream pop veers towards cliche; indie rock veers towards obscurity, and I’m not equipped to say which is worse but neither is particularly satisfying. A Washington, D.C.-based singer/songwriter, Michel has also spent time in bands, and it shows in his singing—his voice is packed with more power and elasticity than the typical singer/songwriter, gliding effortlessly up and down to notes both higher and lower than they sound. “Day’s Looking Up” is a song from the CD These are Beautiful Things, released last year on Magic Bullet Records. Michel has a new CD called A Quiet State of Panic scheduled for a November release on Stunning Models on Display Records.


“Changing Emily” – Special Patrol

Anyone remember Pure Prairie League? Although I have never been a particular fan of that sort of country-pop-rock, there’s no doubt that the once-upon-a-time ubiquitous “Amie” had a certain compulsive charm. And everything sounds better draped in nostalgia anyway, so if a trio from Adelaide, South Australia decides to come along in 2006 and channel some Southern U.S. country-rockers from three decades ago, if the melody is there, and the harmonies, and if the effort has verve and more than a little compulsive charm of its own, what the heck. I’m on board. There is definitely something about the layered harmonies of the chorus, with those high voices on top, that just seems so comfortable and right. I like how the song in fact starts with the chorus, which is not something you hear every day—there’s just a ringing, vaguely Credence-like guitar line and boom, the chorus. I’m surprised more people don’t try that. Two of the guys in Special Patrol—the singer/guitarist Myles Mayo and drummer Rob Jordan—have been playing music together since ninth grade, and have known each other since second grade; they began recording in 1999. The band has been in its current form since 2003. “Changing Emily” is a song from their upcoming CD, Handy Hints From The Undertaker, to be released in October in Australia on Mixmasters Records.

This Week’s Finds: Sept. 10-16 (Heartless Bastards, Judah Johnson, Isobel Campbell)

“Into the Open” – Heartless Bastards

From its dreamy opening–the echoey, faraway keyboard, the reverby vocal–“Into the Open” kicks into an intensely engaging reverie of a midtempo rocker. And there: I wrote at least one sentence about this marvelous Cincinnati trio without extolling the unearthly talents of singer/songwriter/guitarist Erika Wennerstrom. She opens her mouth and the world shifts; she has the sort of voice that reminds me why I listen to music. When it’s aligned with such a stirring, almost sing-song-y tune, I can do little except sit and receive, rather insight-less. Notice by the way she doesn’t sing in her full voice at the beginning, in the echoey intro. And hey that’s an actual introduction, almost like the old days–a separate part of the song that leads into the rest but is never repeated. That’s kind of cool right there. Anyway, she doesn’t really start singing singing till after that–the line that starts (David Byrne-ishly) “And I find myself…” Just listen to that. Every syllable is imbued with substance in a way you can neither teach nor describe. Interestingly, Wennerstrom’s lyrics here employ Talking Heads-style declarations, sometimes repeated, as Byrne was wont to do. This strikes me as very likable, somehow, since otherwise the music and vibe, which wanders into some room-shaking noise here and there, has nothing to do with the older band. “I’ve got a wind in my face”: listen to that. Sit and receive. Wennerstrom is the real thing, and so’s her band. “Into the Open” is the first song on their new CD, All This Time, released in August on Fat Possum Records. The MP3 is available via the Fat Possum site.

“Little Sounds” – Judah Johnson

Judah Johnson is a band, not a person; and “Little Sounds” is not so little, but rather a large, yearning sort of rock song, at once familiar- and fresh-sounding, which is a nice combination. Just that great up-and-down sliding guitar line in the intro is enough to hook me; vocalist Daniel Johnson’s substantive yet tender vocal delivery is another plus. And yeah I don’t suppose we can know, stuck inescapably in our own cultural moment, whether the band’s ear-grabbing use of electronic accents in the midst of such a big-sounding piece of rock is going to sound really cool in the long run or really dated. While I’m having a hard time focusing on what the song is about, get the sense that it’s all very sad, an impression furthered by the intriguing “Ooh Child” reference in the bridge (with the lyrics inverted: “Ooh, child/It won’t get easier/It won’t get brighter”). Made me wonder for a moment if the Five Stairsteps were a Motown group (Judah Johnson is from Detroit), but no, I see they were from Chicago (thanks, Wikipedia!). “Little Sounds” is from the band’s second full-length CD Be Where I Be, released in late August on Flame Shovel Records. The MP3 is via the Flameshovel site.

“O Love is Teasin'” – Isobel Campbell

So like a lot of people lately I’ve been listening carefully to the gruff but lovable Bob Dylan, pondering at no small length his deepening embrace of traditional song structures, admiring the tenacity, really, with which he has pursued his troubadour destiny, which has a lot to with being at once a great student and interpreter of songs from the dustier alleyways of folk music. Things return and return again to the storied Anthology of American Folk Music and a-ha, here’s where I start talking about Isobel Campbell, in case you thought I’d forgotten. The melty-voiced Scottish cellist/vocalist, and one-time member of Belle & Sebastian, has a CD coming out later this fall that, of all things, is directly inspired by the recordings from the late ’20s and early ’30s that Harry Smith famously collected and released in the early ’50s that propelled the American folk movement later that decade. This seems even more unexpected than her highly unexpected collaboration earlier this year with Mark Lanegan. “O Love is Teasin'” is, apparently, a traditional song that Campbell has arranged, and it’s subtle and very simple (just guitar and voice with two–count ’em, two–soundings of a chime) but if you slow down you might just find it as achingly gorgeous and haunted as I do. Of course even if you slow down it’s over pretty quickly (it’s just 1:57); my suggestion is listen to it a few times in a row to catch all of fragile, breathy moments Campbell offers while delivering this almost medieval-sounding melody. Her distinction is that her voice is at once pretty and imperfect, which has an arresting effect in this minimally presented song. “O Love is Teasin'” is from a CD that will be released in November on V2 Records called Milkwhite Sheets–an album of “psychedelic lullabies,” according to the press material. The MP3 is available via Pitchfork.

This Week’s Finds: Sept. 3-9 (Out of Clouds, Tokyo Police Club, Darling New Neighbors)

“Like a Lily” – Out of Clouds

Unlike the other three seasons, which fade into their successors, summer ends with the sense of a door slamming. Everyone seems to hate it, but truly we are co-conspirators: against the reality of the Earth’s steady revolution, we insist on seeing a sudden end where there is none. So okay, it may be cool and rainy, and school buses may be back on the streets, but me, I’m not going to lose the full seasonal experience, and offer a most summery-sounding song to help recover calendar reality. Out of Clouds is an earnest six-piece band from Gothenburg, Sweden with an obvious affinity for innocent ’60s pop sounds of both the British and American variety. But don’t mistake the gentle piano chords, easy beat, and tender harmonies as purely an exercise in retro-ness; to my ears, “Like a Lily” has a vital and appealing heart. Singer Joel Göranson’s voice isn’t just sweet–listen closely and you’ll hear a subtle edge; it’s Brian Wilson with Thom Yorke mixed in. The chorus nails this all down for me with its unfolding melody and continually interesting series of chords. “Like a Lily” is the lead track on the most recent Out of Clouds EP, Into Your Lovely Summer, self-released in June. The MP3 is from the band’s site.

“Nature of the Experiment” – Tokyo Police Club

Listen to how quickly this band builds a compelling song: first comes that buzzy, lo-fi bass, then a quick cathartic grunt, then that really wonderful guitar line, at once chimey and dissonant, both careful and slightly unhinged. And then to top it off a splendid opening line—“We’ve got our tracks covered/Thanks to your older brother”—that plunks us right into the middle of a conflict of some sort, while simultaneously recalling spiky Britpop from some previous generation or another. We’re just 16 seconds into the song at this point; when the whole thing is only two minutes you clearly have to hit the ground running. The singer, Dave Monks, is also the bass player; and it could be my imagination but it strikes me that when the lead vocalist is the bass player, the bass is inescapably more interesting–let’s face it, a guy who sings lead is used to being heard, not blending into the background. A young band, the Toronto-based Tokyo Police Club sounds rough around the edges but the song is a winner, a skittering blend of melodic bursts and lyrical salvos (“It’s an ancient Russian proverb/I doubt it’s one that you’ve heard”) set to an invigorating Gang-of-Four-ian beat. “Nature of the Experiment” is from TPC’s debut EP, A Lesson in Crime (Paper Bag Records), slated for a U.S. release in October. It was originally released in Canada in April. The MP3 is via the Paper Bag site.

“Overgrown” – Darling New Neighbors

From Austin comes a different sort of rough-around-the-edges band. Darling New Neighbors is a trio that plays a lopsided, homespun sort of indie pop that veers, song to song, in a variety of directions. “Overgrown” is their take on something resembling country, but I don’t think you have to think you like country to like a tune that manages to sound so heartfelt and, well, goofy at the same time. Elizabeth Jackson’s forthright, naive-seeming alto, with its penetrating falsetto, seems the perfect vehicle for this landscape-driven tale of love gone wrong. All three members of the band play multiple instruments (things like mandolins and accordions and ukeleles); Jackson herself takes a solo on the violin in the middle of this one that goes on and on and makes me smile every time I hear it. “Overgrown” is the first song on the band’s debut CD, Every Day is Saturday Night, released in August on I Eat Records. The MP3 is via the I Eat Records site. (Note a delay of about five seconds at the beginning of the MP3; don’t worry, it’ll start.)

This Week’s Finds: Aug. 27-Sept. 2

“Los Angeles” – the Rosewood Thieves

After the old-timey piano intro, the first thing you’re likely to notice here is singer Erick Jordan’s spunky vocal resemblance to John Lennon–whom he readily acknowledges as one of his musical heroes. (There’s even a lyrical reference to “that bird that flew,” for good measure.) If this already seems like a good thing, you’re home free with this song; if however you’re trained to be disapproving of transparent influences, I urge you to relax that learned reflex and simply listen to whether the song is pleasing. Me, I find “Los Angeles” a rousing good time, for a variety of reasons. The engaging melody and crisp production are a good part of it, but to me songs often prove their mettle in the details–the little things that go on that didn’t “need” to be there but, with their presence, make everything else seem deeper and stronger and truer. I like, a lot, the meandering course the melody takes from the fourth into the fifth measure of the verse–the part, in the first verse, where it sounds like Jordan is simply singing a drawn-out “ahhh” but it actually turns out to be an “I.” Formally this is called a “melisma”–where a group of notes are used to sing one syllable–and is more characteristic of classical than pop music. I also like the stutter (literally an extra beat) in the melody line–you hear it in the seventh measure in the introduction, and each time that point returns in the verse. Sometimes the more subtle the touch–like the way the piano intro is revisited in the middle of the song but with a major chord momentarily underneath (at 2:38)–the cooler the effect. All in all this seems the work of a band that knows what it’s doing. The Rosewood Thieves are a quintet from New York City. “Los Angeles” is one of seven songs on the band’s debut EP, From the Decker House, released last month on V2 Records.


“Lowlife” – Scanners

I’m in love with the opening riff here, with its fuzzy, restrained, melodic yet unresolved appeal; when it leads into a memorable opening line–“I know you’re not ready to live/Are you ready to die?”–I am solidly hooked. And even more is going on right away (check out that ghostly keyboard thing hovering above everything else), most notably the unexpected use of Sarah Daly’s violin, which provides a plaintive undercurrent to her full-throttled but pop-savvy vocal style. (I’m thinking she sounds like Grace Slick and Siouxsie Sioux’s somewhat more mild-mannered love child.) The more I listen to this song the more I am impressed with its precision and timeless pop know-how; while sounding completely contemporary, “Lowlife” displays a vitality that cuts across the generations–I hear all rock decades from the ’60s onward in different aspects of this song, which in another time and place might’ve been blaring from all of our car radios out on the wide open road but as of now is just a really cool little song you can download for free on the net. Bob was right: things have changed. “Lowlife” is from this London-based band’s debut CD, Violence is Golden, which came out in June on Dim Mak Records. The MP3 is available via the Dim Mak site.


“Lullaby in A” – Bel Auburn

A lovely melody placed over tasteful blips of tweaky fuzz and feedback, “Lullaby in A” starts slowly, almost as an incantation. A minute in, the song opens up sonically, but something of a reverie remains, as the earnest verse repeats and repeats–there’s no chorus, just an interlude of upward-swelling guitars and noise–against an assertive drumbeat and subtly shifting backdrop mixing the electric and the electronic. At around 2:50 we float into a new (but still lovely) melody; this one however slides quickly and refreshingly into a harsher section full of hammering guitars and electronic swoops before quieting back down and, soon, fading into a vibrating electronic wail. And, yes, okay: are they taking what Radiohead and Wilco have done and making it perhaps prettier, perhaps poppier, perhaps easier to listen to? Probably; and I for one say hooray for them. I love Radiohead and Wilco to pieces and have and will follow them anywhere (hey, I’ve even listened to the end of “Less Than You Think,” willingly, twice). But it’s a big planet, and there’s a lot of ways to make great music, only one of which is by being blindingly original. (Remember too that a whole lot of blindingly original music is also unlistenable; very little of it is effective pop.) Most of this rock’n’roll game is about absorbing and repositioning what someone else already did. And oops I guess I’m back on the “it’s okay to have obvious influences” soapbox, so I’ll step down merely to note that Bel Auburn is a quintet from Ashland, Ohio; “Lullaby in A” is a song from the band’s second CD, Lullabies in A and C, self-released in mid-August and available as well as a free and legal download on the band’s site.

This Week’s Finds: Aug. 20-26 (Apollo Up!, Hezekiah Jones, Richard Buckner)

“Walking the Plank” – Apollo Up!

A winning combination of melody and invective, “Walking the Plank” sounds as sharp and blistering as an early Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson song. But this is no wearisome nostalgia trip, as there’s likewise something very present and unbeholden to anyone about this trio’s disciplined, fiery sound. While vocalist Jay Leo Phillips (also the guitarist) has an Elvis-like timbre, his voice is deeper, and rougher around the edges; plus, he has his own intermittently explosive guitar to play off against, which seems clearly to add to the intensity of his performance. (And that’s the funny thing about most of those early EC gems–they rocked, but, largely, and strangely, without any sort of lead guitar sound.) Being a trio is no small point of differentiation–I really think that trios, at their best, offer rock energy that is as pure and focused as it comes. No matter how noisy a trio gets, there’s something concentrated and essential about the sound it makes; you can always hear each instrument precisely if you listen, which I find bracing somehow. “Walking the Plank” is the lead track off the band’s Chariots of Fire CD, their second, which was released in June on Theory 8 Records. The MP3 is available via the band’s site.


“Put On Your Light” – Hezekiah Jones (with Clare Callahan)

A slow, bittersweet foot-tapper, if such a thing is possible. But go on and see if your foot doesn’t for some reason want to tap along to this sad and swaying tale of troubled love. It’s not just the minor key that lends the song a woebegone air; listen too to how the achy melody is often sung off the main beat (the one your toe is tapping, remember)–this fosters a resistant, unsettled, I might even suggest unhappy vibe. Meanwhile, there’s a duet going on between the almost ghostly-sounding Callahan and the full-voiced Jones (whose name is actually Raphael Cutrufello), but it’s an odd duet. Callahan starts, Jones joining in to finish the end of both lyric lines in the verse. They sing the chorus together, but with the lyrics offering one side of a love relationship hitting a rough patch, the effect is disconcerting. By the presence of the duet, we are seemingly given both voices–both sides of the battle, as it were–and yet they’re singing the same words; they’re even singing the same musical notes, with no interval harmonies at all. The two lovers of the story sound all the sadder and more isolated as they sing without the other really hearing; the listener meanwhile is unnerved for lack of any clues about who’s done what, who’s “right” and who’s “wrong,” who to believe, who to side with. Very lovely and very sad. Cutrufello recently released the first Hezekiah Jones CD, Hezekiah Jones Says You’re A-Ok, on Yer Bird Records, but “Put On Your Light” isn’t actually on it; it’s available as an unreleased song via the HJ site.


“Town” – Richard Buckner

There’s no question, to my ear, where the center of this brisk but meaty song is: the first line of the chorus, that vocal leap Buckner takes at the end. The entire song is built upon short lyrical snippets and small melodic intervals; but there at the end of the opening line of the chorus, the last interval of the snippet, heading upward, is a fifth. A leap up always sounds larger than the interval actually described, and so right away there’s something startling and pleasing about it. I like how, the first time we hear it, Buckner is singing the word “down” as the melody jumps up. I like even more the grand character of this gruffly smooth (or maybe smoothly gruff) voice as it is exquisitely revealed in the process of taking, and making, that leap. Buckner heads to and hits just the one five-steps-up note, and yet as he holds it his voice stretches and intensifies in marvelous ways, every time that line-end comes around. It’s a subtle but beautiful and memorable hook right there; what solidifies it as the center of a beautiful and memorable song are the chords Buckner employs to create the structure around the hook. They are neither novel nor tricky but they are invitingly true and inevitable, a sweet descending series falling away from the initial leap upward. I keep wanting to hear this part over and over, and it sticks in my head for hours afterwards. “Town” is the first song on Buckner’s upcoming CD Meadow, which has a lot of one-word song titles for some reason. The CD–Buckner’s eighth–is set for a September release on Merge Records.