MP3s – Page 18 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Dear Euphoria (delicate musing on love and loss)

Over a peaceful, arpeggiated bed of boops and bips, “Our Time” unfolds as a graceful, melancholy ballad, celebrating love in the face of loss.

“Our Time” – Dear Euphoria

Over a peaceful, arpeggiated bed of boops and bips, “Our Time” unfolds as a graceful and melancholy ballad, celebrating love in the face of loss. Singer Elina Johannsen processes her voice in a way that strikes the ear as both slippery and central, with the elusiveness of the effect mirroring the ambivalent emotional circumstance the song presents.

And yes, for the record, I do not reject all vocal processing, by any means; what I’ve always objected to was the combination of faddishness and thoughtlessness propelling the technique (epitomized by Auto-Tune) for so many years. What should be obvious but, it seems, hasn’t been, is this: be human, be compassionate, be inventive, and all manner of musical and technological expression is open to you. Someone like Björk has known this for years. Prop up shallow idiocies with formulaic songwriting and production methods in pursuit of big streaming numbers and okay, have fun, but I’m not interested.

Meanwhile, Johannsen is tackling the big subject here, with a directness leavened by the sweetness of her tone, the delicacy of her declarations, and the soothing melody. I am assuming the loss she is singing about is a loss occasioned by death, and she seems to be singing from the perspective of the dying person; but, it works if the subject is a less permanent loss as well. She employs simple, mostly one-syllable words throughout, which has the subtle effect of amplifying both the gravity and the sublimity of the situation. The vibe is at once uncomplicated and stimulating, with a number of engaging touches along the way, from the life-support electronic pulse that accompanies two-thirds of the song (listen to how it decamps at 1:52), to the brief but wonderful guitar or guitar-like distortion at 1:03, to the all-out false ending at 2:29. And, a trait not to be underestimated, the song doesn’t overstay its welcome, wrapping up in a concise 3:06, easily inviting repeat listens.

Johannsen is based in Stockholm. Dear Euphoria was previously featured on Fingertips all the way back in 2007; the MP3 to that track, “Falling Behind,” is no longer available. “Our Time” is the second single released to date from an album due out in the spring. Thanks to Johannsen for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Amanda Palmer (theatrical cry for justice)

While piano-based, the song’s musical palette expands in all directions, with textures both rough and intimate, accompanying a lyrical bombardment that feels all too real and up-to-the-minute, painting a picture of a culture on the brink of physical and emotional self-destruction.

“Drowning in the Sound” – Amanda Palmer

As an artist, Amanda Palmer is such an deft navigator of our brave not-so-new social media world that it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that she is a dynamic and gifted musician. The relentless energy with which she shares herself online in multi-faceted ways—creating one of the only robust and truly successful (both emotionally and financially) artist-fan communities of the 21st-century to date in the process—is as admirable as it is, to me, if I’m honest, exhausting-sounding. I can’t imagine how she manages a life that includes paying heed to 12,000 active online patrons, and would be skeptical if not outright cynical about her efforts were it not for that previously stated reality: she is a top-notch singer/songwriter/musician, and somehow (somehow) doesn’t let the potentially immolating realities of an artistic life lived on social media derail or cheapen her creative output.

Here’s her latest: a song, called “Drowning in the Sound,” that is as raw and scintillating as her best music can be, with an added wrinkle: the song was initially crowd-sourced, with the lyrical ideas and inspiration coming from 600 of her Patreon supporters. Oh, and she wrote it as part of a two-day songwriting exercise in August 2017. While piano-based, the song’s musical palette expands in all directions, with textures both rough and intimate, accompanying a lyrical bombardment that feels all too real and up-to-the-minute, painting a picture of a culture on the brink of physical and emotional self-destruction. It’s not fun, no; but the music, with its sophisticated, stop-start dynamics and Bush-ian theatricality, engages the spirit. Palmer’s voice, an agile alto with a spoken-word quality, is more than up to the wide-ranging performance, which includes portions rendered in falsetto, as if things weren’t dramatic enough. I guess if I’m going to hear about the end of the world, I’d rather it come from a song than from cable news: there’s something in the singing and the craft of it that manages yet to inspire hope, which is a crucial element in any effort any of us can take to rescue humanity from prospects that here in 2019 look on the dim side.

“Drowning in the Sound” was originally released in September 2017 as a fund-raiser for victims of Hurricane Harvey. The song has resurfaced recently as a lead single for Palmer’s first album in six years, There Will Be No Intermission, which will be released on March 8, 2019, which is International Women’s Day. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: San Mei

Hazy, guitar-laced

“Wonder” – San Mei

Stately, hazy, guitar-laced, and ear-worm-y (in a good way), “Wonder” nods at some of contemporary pop’s aural trimmings while delivering songcraft and instrumentation unlike what our 2010s popsters tend to busy themselves with. San Mei—the stage name for Australian singer/songwriter/guitarist Emily Hamilton—is committed unabashedly to the guitar, so that’s an ear-opening contrast to today’s music scene right there. And yet, with its somewhat processed, clipped ambiance, this doesn’t sound like anyone’s father’s rock’n’roll either.

And, I have to say, one of the song’s ongoing pleasures is hearing Hamilton’s light and agile voice—which one can with no difficulty imagine layered over an electronic beat, with an easily conjured battery of back-up dancers—fronting a song that drapes its pop-inflected fabric over a sturdy body of guitar squonks and sirens. The opening testifies to what we’re in for: first, a hint of shimmery electronics, but, no, what’s really happening is the guitars are warming up (listen for the subtle scratch of electric guitar strings at 0:05). “Wonder” proceeds to launch off an honest-to-goodness guitar riff, and is driven throughout via a creative variety of electric guitar tones and etchings, including something of a psychedelic freakout at 2:23.

But there is more than guitar worship going on here. “Wonder” is structurally impressive, with its double-time tag in the verse, balanced by a pre-chorus slowdown, all leading to a chorus so solidly chorded that I’m tempted to call it anthemic were it not also so effortlessly presented—a kind of “Who, me?” approach to anthemic rock’n’roll.

San Mei was born as a laptop-based bedroom pop project, but Hamilton soon aimed her sights on a larger instrumental palette than a MIDI keyboard offered—by which of course I mean guitars: fuzzy, intersecting, drony guitars. After a debut EP in 2017. San Mei returned this year with the four-song Heaven EP, released in September. You can hear the whole thing over on SoundCloud.

Free and legal MP3: Laura Gibson

Song as languorous dream

“Tenderness” – Laura Gibson

Framed on top of a sparse but expressive rhythm section—buoyant bass riff meets stark tom-tom beat—“Tenderness” unfolds without haste, as a languorous dream. Gibson sings in a warm, rounded tone, augmented by an almost Holiday-esque ache, suggesting someone at once too shy to speak and yet brave enough to sing. “Don’t wake a swarm of bees beneath me,” she coos, not as fragile as she might sound.

The song supports her both musically and symbolically, employing sturdy sonic structures as almost aural sleight of hand—you don’t notice the droning guitars we get hints of in the background, but you feel them. And the strings: yes, you hear the strings, but really listen to them and feel what they’re doing, too—as for instance the intuited pathos of their downward-sliding notes (1:25 presents an example). In Gibson’s hands, even the straightforward idea of backing vocals feels freighted, unnerving; she asks, in the chorus, “Do you want tenderness?” and the lack of certainty over whether she’s still singing to the man she’d been initially addressing or now singing to herself is intensified by answering background voices so in sync with her idiosyncrasies (it’s all her, after all) that they register as the personification of voices in her own head, manifesting the depth of her interpersonal turmoil. (She proceeds, in the first chorus, from “Kiss your mouth for tenderness” to, in later iterations, “Curse your name for tenderness,” and then, “Break your leg for tenderness”; ouch.)

With its simple sway, “Tenderness” doesn’t break a sweat as much as glue you to your seat. More is revealed with repeated listening. I suggest not losing yourself too much in Gibson’s vocal tone to forget to listen to her phrasing, which can stun. Hear, for instance, how she sings the words “model of” in the lyric “You’re a model of reason,” at 0:47: I can’t quite absorb what she’s doing there or how she’s doing it. Or, listen to the upward swerve she effects in both the second and third verses, at the same moment in the fourth line of each—on the word “men” at 1:46, and “face” at 3:15. These are not moments you are necessarily supposed to notice, which makes noticing them all the more potent. And not all moments here are vocal. Maybe my favorite is the abrupt shutdown of the strings at 1:44, a muted reinforcement of the fierce words that have preceded it:

I’ve been taught, I should wait to be chosen
That I haven’t known love
Until I’ve been destroyed by love

“Tenderness” is a track from Goners, Gibson’s fifth album, which was released on Barsuk Records in October. Gibson’s song “La Grande” was featured on Fingertips in November 2011, and her song “Harmless” made its way into a playlist in May 2016. MP3 via Barsuk, where you can also buy the album, in vinyl, CD, FLAC, or MP3 format. Or go to Bandcamp, where you can listen in full before you buy the digital version.

photo: Timothy O’Connell/Fader

Free and legal MP3: Christine Fellows

Joyful/serious protest

“Unleashed” – Christine Fellows

The plucky ukulele riff that opens this one, as steadfast and persistent as ukulele riffs often are, hints not at the muscular romp to follow. But after the intro and a preliminary uke-backed verse, the band kicks in, and drives “Unleashed” forward with a gleeful vigor. That terrific bit of syncopation she dishes out at the end of each short verse—spelled out first in the ukulele prelude, starting at 0:20—adds to both the glee and the vigor.

“Unleashed” appears to be about rising up in resistance to injustice, and if so, it is surely one of the friendlier-sounding protest songs I’ve heard. The ukulele helps, to begin with. But Fellows herself has one of those congenial singing voices, a singing voice with the approachable tone of a speaking voice. It’s actually perfect for a protest song; she makes you inherently want to join in.

The lyrics add to the welcoming vibe. She positions resistance to tyranny as not merely humane but joyful; one line that stands out, both for its tone and its content, is: “We enrage our enemies/With rousing elegies.” I could not help but think of President Obama here, how the right wing extremists could listen to his eloquent calls for justice and respond only with unheeding rage. Fellows frames this crazy-making situation with such good-natured zest that it reinforces the important idea that we are not responsible for the reactions of others, only for our own actions. Which means: keep it up with the rousing elegies.

If “Unleashed” is a resistance pep talk, the Winnipeg-based Fellows doesn’t, in the end, shy from somber reality. Her final words, over a portentous drone from the cello, are “And the tide is rising.” On the one hand, she may be referring to the tide of the resistance, but the words unflinchingly bring climate change to mind. In other words, the tide of resistance had better be rising, and soon. She can rouse us into action with a good-spirited zing of a song but let’s remember the stakes.

“Unleashed” is a track from Roses on the Vine, Fellows’ seventh album, in a recording career dating back to 2000. She was actually one of the earlier artists featured on Fingertips, appearing back in August 2004. Her new album, released last month, is available in name-your-price fashion via Bandcamp.

photo: Lesandra Dodson

Free and legal MP3: Johnny Marr (irresistible minor-key goodness)

“Hi Hello” – Johnny Marr

Do you sometimes want to hear somebody just make music? Somebody who’s been around and knows what he or she is doing? Do you want to listen to someone who isn’t trying to be the latest sensation, who isn’t after clicks and follows? If so, try this one. It’s Johnny Marr, it glides along in a lovely and slightly dark way, it’s got guitars, it’s in a minor key. What more do you need?

Johnny Marr as I assume you know used to be in the Smiths, and as such was the architect of their distinctive, minor-key-jangly-chimey sound. “Hi Hello” works a bit of that ground, but here the ground is knowingly smoothed over—mellowed with age, perhaps, and/or not as concerned with sounding so rigorously different as the Smiths were. But hell, by now, Marr has spent a whole lot more time not being in the Smiths than he spent being in them. A good amount of that time found him landing as a guitarist in a series of previously existing bands (The Pretenders, The The, Modest Mouse, et al.); outside of a 2003 album credited to Johnny Marr & The Healers, the solo efforts have only recently been sprouting up—one in 2013, one in 2014, and this new one in 2018. Which is all to say he’s still relatively new to the front-man role, still finding his I’m-the-center-of-attention voice. He does a good job here expanding his vocal range with an effortless leap into and out of falsetto that kind of slyly turns into the song’s principal hook. And I could be entirely imagining this, but the short instrumental motif we hear at 1:48 sounds like an oblique reference to the old hymn “Hey Ho Nobody Home,” which itself might not be completely irrelevant to the title and lyrics here. Or I could be entirely imagining this.

“Hi Hello” is the fourth track from Marr’s album Call the Comet, which was released in June. MP3 via The Current.

(Note that MP3s from The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the iTunes standard of 192kbps, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on standard-quality equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to get the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I still urge you to buy the music. It’s only right.)

Free and legal MP3: Calva Louise (ferocious & fantastic)

Concise and ferocious, “I Heard a Cry” is almost ridiculously appealing—two minutes and sixteen seconds of crunchy guitars, headlong momentum, and subtle craft.

“I Heard a Cry” – Calva Louise

Concise and ferocious, “I Heard a Cry” is almost ridiculously appealing—two minutes and sixteen seconds of crunchy guitars, headlong momentum, and subtle craft that can reaffirm one’s faith in humankind, if that doesn’t sound too grandiose. But what the heck: we need it right about now. To my ears, there’s something Clash-like in the brash meeting of power and grace on display here, with the added bounty of Jess Allanic’s arresting vocals, in their varied guises, from garage-rock yelping to soaring “ooh-oohs” to sultry asides and smartly articulated pronouncements.

At the center of the proceedings are two things: first, a sing-song-y guitar riff, which we hear initially in a searing, almost bag-pipe-y rendering and then later, to keep us on our toes, in an acoustic translation; second, the demarcated five-note melodic descent that the verse coalesces around (first heard at 0:26)—a moment that each time seems nearly to stop the song in its tracks but instead launches it into further commotion. Keep listening and you’ll hear all sorts of other touches, including unexpected forays into interlocking melodies, sudden interjections (check out Allanic’s “Hey!” at 0:49), ear-bending guitar effects, and, even, a brilliant chord change in the middle of where you’d never think to find it (1:40).

Calva Louise is a new-ish band from London, and all but the definition of a 21st-century power trio. This is their second single. A debut full-length album is expected in early 2019.

Free and legal MP3: Annie Dressner (UK-based expat singer/songwriter)

“Falter” – Annie Dressner

Annie Dressner has one of those plainspoken voices that sounds like she’s singing and not singing at the same time. It works especially well with a song like “Falter,” which itself is simultaneously simple and maybe not so simple. An obvious complication is the time signature hiccup that Dressner employs in the intro and the verse, before allowing the song to slide into a more familiar groove.

Less obvious is the push/pull of the lyrical content. The song reads to me as a poignant testament to our imperfect lives. What might initially sound like a pep talk to the self (“Stop wasting time! Get to the finish line!”), comes across to my ears as a bittersweet recognition that there’s something inevitable to our falling short of our dreams, and that we go on anyway. The wisdom we gain through aging and perseverance may be more valuable than what we thought we wanted as young dreamers. Perhaps I’m reading more into it than is there? I’d like to think not. The hints I see suggesting the more complex reading are sprinkled throughout; if I try to explain in detail this would get too long, and potentially embarrassing, as I could well be off base. Let me just note that the title is, in fact, “Falter”: the apparent weakness itself, not the pep talk. Also, the chorus launches off the plaintive question “Can’t you get it right?”; expressed with the implicit negative, it becomes rhetorical: no, we can’t get it right. We’re human.

More to my usual concerns—I don’t often get caught up in lyrics but it could be that distinctive quality in her voice that focused me in this direction—the chorus is propelled by a wonderful feeling of musical inevitability, having to do with the unresolved chord at the outset, and the series of chords that bring it invincibly to resolution. I like too the unhurried, almost mournful guitar solo (starting at 1:58) that inserts itself between two iterations of the bridge, delaying the payoff of one last chorus, and (perhaps) adding subtle irony to the words “almost at the finish line,” since she ends up singing that twice.

Annie Dressner was born and raised in New York City; she moved to the UK in the early 2010s. Her new album, Broken Into Pieces, was released last week. You can both listen to it and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks to Annie for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Hatchie

Catchy dream pop

“Sure” – Hatchie

Breezing in on a vibe that explores the overlap between the Cranberries and the Sundays, “Sure” overflows with melody and nostalgia. And yet, the magic trick here is that Hatchie mastermind Harriette Pilbeam manages to put forth her music in a crisp, contemporary package. Which doesn’t (thankfully) mean she’s pandering to any of today’s all-but-unlistenable trends (over-processing, mindless digital rhythms, affected vocalizing). This is as solidly constructed a piece of music emerging from the remnants of the pop-rock spectrum as one can hope to encounter in the ongoing nightmare that is the year 2018.

I’m hearing a coy type of syncopation as one of the keys to this song’s earworm-y success. After the chiming, guitar-filled intro, the drums kick in at 0:22, and if you listen you’ll see that we get a direct second beat but in place of an equally accented fourth beat (which would be the classic backbeat rhythm), there’s a stuttered, off-center accent. This manages both to move the song along and to play with the flow in an agreeable way. Added to this is the way the lyrics in the verse begin only on the second beat of the measure, which creates a pleasant, head-bobbing lag, the hesitation pulling us forward rather than backward. Resolution comes with the sturdy descent of the chorus, melody now planted on the first beat, even as the drumming underneath stays with its offbeat swing.

And hey that’s a rather wordy explication; I could also just say: it’s really catchy.

Pilbeam is from Brisbane, which partially explains her easy way with this type of melodic, history-embracing music—Australia is one of a handful of countries (Sweden is another) that has figured out how to maintain cultural interest in rock’n’roll’s organic development long after the combined machinations of the mainstream American music industry and fad-obsessed internet crowds have left it for dead. “Sure” was originally released as a single in November 2017, and became more widely available with the release of her Sugar & Spice EP in May 2018. Hatchie is finishing up a US tour as we speak, with dates upcoming this month in LA and Brooklyn, among other places.

Free and legal MP3: Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

Sharp, creative rocker w/ back story

“And You Are?” – Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

So this is a crazy-great concept, but also a crazy-challenging one: take an imaginary album, laid out track by track in a popular novel, and actually write it and record it. This is what Perry Serpa decided to do with the fictional album Juliet, from Nick Hornby’s popular and affecting book Juliet, Naked. The book involves a deep dive into music fandom, among other things, and centers around a reclusive singer/songwriter of Hornby’s invention named Tucker Crowe. Near the beginning of the novel, Hornby invents for us the Wikipedia entry for Crowe’s 1986 masterpiece, Juliet, which includes a track listing for the album. These are the songs that Serpa set about to write.

Not too intimidating a project, huh? Write music good enough to stand in for a fictional masterpiece? Plus there’s already been a movie made of the album, which came out earlier this year. (The movie, however, only created two of Juliet‘s ten songs.) “For better or for worse, I led a fifteen-plus piece band for almost twenty years, so I’m no neophyte when it comes to foolish, time-consuming, lofty creative pursuits,” Serpa told me via email. So here we go: “And You Are?” is the opening track on the imaginary album, so likewise opens Serpa’s. And what a wonderful, evocative piece of retro, semi-baroque folk rock it is. Seeking to create from scratch an album from 1986 gives Serpa all the artistic license he needs to willfully ignore that the 21st century ever happened to rock’n’roll; not always a bad thing, says me. Half Dylanesque harangue, half R.E.M.-like invocation, “And You Are?” swirls around an ascending string motif that adds a textured hook without taking away from the song’s electric edge; I especially like it when the guitar gains ground in the second half of the song, eventually mingling its own lead in and around the recurrent strings.

Not all the tracks from Juliet are specifically discussed in Hornby’s book, but some not only are described in one way or another, they are given a lyric or two. For instance, the first line of “And You Are?” was straight from the novel: “They told me talking to you would be like chewing barbed wire with a mouth ulcer.” The next line, however, is Serpa’s: “But you never once hurt me like that.” Serpa says this kind of writing was “fun as shit to do.”

The real album that Serpa has made based on Hornby’s imaginary one is, cleverly enough, entitled Wherefore Art Thou?: Songs Inspired by Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. And it’s even cleverer than you might think; the imaginary Wikipedia entry mentions a 2002 tribute album to Juliet that was called, yes, Wherefore Art Thou?—which was not merely a Shakespeare allusion but a reference to the fact that in this fictional world, Tucker Crowe had disappeared after he released Juliet, and more or less hadn’t been heard from since. One final, meta twist relevant to Serpa’s project: Scott McCaughey, who sings lead on the song I have for you here, was founder of the Minus Five, one of the bands Hornby mentions as recording a song for the imaginary tribute LP.

For the record, Hornby himself has said, of Serpa’s smartly-hewn creation, “I’m happy to think that my book has somehow produced work this good.” Serpa has announced that a portion of the sales of the album will go to the UK-based charity Ambitious About Autism, which was co-founded by Hornby. Wherefore Art Thou? comes out October 5; streaming and purchase links are here.

Lastly: Serpa’s aforementioned 15-plus-piece ensemble, The Sharp Things, have been twice previously featured on Fingertips, in 2013 and 2014.

photo credit: Margaret Gaspari