Category: MP3s

“Serious Man” – Soltero

A confident burst of thoughtful indie rock, “Serious Man” hooks the ear first with its jangly guitar riff and then witih its characteristic time-signature hiccup, arising first as we hear the titular phrase around 0:13: those two extra beats required to fit the music to the words manage both to interrupt and to reaffirm the appealing flow. Nothing like a little asymmetry to make the world a better place in this age of overly perfected beats and AI-induced conformity. Nothing, too, like Tim Howard’s reassuring, unpolished voice, to remind us that we want and need human beings out there expressing themselves. (Why anyone would want to hear a machine expressing itself remains a puzzle to my organic brain and my beating heart.)

“Serious Man” is brisk and to the point, but also expansive enough to include some incisive octave harmonies, some scratchy guitar work, and, as unexpected as it is welcome, a bass solo (1:35-1:47). Best of all is the underlying sense of humor that subtly supports the enterprise, knowingly undercutting the singer’s effort to assert his seriousness. It’s not laugh out loud humor, at all; it’s weary-acceptance-of-the-human condition humor. Although Howard’s low-register vocal following the bass solo (1:47) does provoke a soft smile, at least for me.

Soltero is a shape-shifting project fronted by Howard, which got started back in 2001. Sometimes a solo project, Soltero is now a trio. “Serious Man” is the lead track from Soltero’s ninth album, Staying Alive, released last month. You can check the whole thing out, and buy it, over on Bandcamp. This is the first album Soltero has recorded since the American-born Howard relocated to Berlin in 2018. Soltero has been featured five previous times on Fingertips, most recently in 2023; see the Artist Index for all the links.

“Fire Sign” – S.G. Goodman

Alternating between a dusty stomp and a keening incantation, “Fire Sign” finds S.G. Goodman sounding weary yet self-possessed. At the song’s heart, the Western Kentucky singer/songwriter changes vocal registers to persistently pose the question “Who’ll put the fire out?” The repetition, lyrically and musically, takes on an aspect of supplication. Is part of her wondering what it’ll take to extinguish her inner drive? Why is she assuming it can/will in fact be extinguished? Unless she’s pondering the permanent extinguishment that awaits us all. Her press material does report that this song was written in the aftermath of the deaths of both her dog and a good friend and mentor while Goodman was out on a grueling tour. Meanwhile, why is it a “who” versus a “what”? (Note that in the same material she answers the question directly: “The only person who can put my fire out is myself.”)

Astrologically speaking, fire signs are characterized by their strong personalities and drive. This song has both. Goodman’s knack for the offbeat turn of phrase–“Shapeshifting through the night of life’s turn rows”? “No curling in the daylight”?–is buttressed by the music’s durable framework. We don’t hear anything but bass and drum under her cold-open vocals until 36 seconds in. The only addition we get at first is a thoughtful, resonant guitar, describing phrases that lag behind the song’s rhythmic center. Halfway through (1:12) we hear a keyboard that’s just as thoughtful and restrained, adding almost subliminally to the hand-wrought texture, moving to the front of the mix only at the tail end of the coda. What the song may ultimately lack in development it makes up for in potency. No one’s putting Goodman’s fire out just yet.

“Fire Sign” is a song from Goodman’s forthcoming album, Planting By the Signs, which will be arriving in June. She was previously featured on Fingertips in August 2020.

“Wherever” – Jonas Carping

There’s something about the central descending melody delivered by Jonas Carping’s rich baritone that feels especially satisfying here. Perhaps all the more so because of how Carping teasingly withholds the crucial chord progression that underpins the melody the first time he takes us through it (0:12-0:22). As a listener I feel both intrigued and a little “huh?” at that point. But the context is corrected immediately thereafter (listen for that first, greatly anticipated chord change at 0:27), and throughout the rest of the song.

The other attractive thing about “Wherever” is the way its aural space subtly shifts as the song unfolds. For the first 50 seconds we’re in an unmoored, vacant lot of a space, with vague background sounds accompanying a heartbeat drumbeat. Things solidify slightly at 0:49 as a full drum kit kicks in while a droning electric guitar ringingly expands the landscape. A brief but incisive drum fill at 1:12 flips a sonic switch and we lose the muted fogginess of the opening third. As things progress the song’s simple, steady melodies acquire a sort of august resonance, amplified by Carping’s sonorous vocals. While the song stays mostly within his lower register, the couple of times in the last minute that he reaches slightly higher are each a mini-highlight.

Jonas Carping is a singer/songwriter based in Lund, in the south of Sweden. Interesting story: Carping has been submitting his music to Fingertips since 2012–enough times to be an inbox regular, not enough times to be an annoyance. I’ve always liked his songs but they each time seemed to fall just a little short, due no doubt to my own idiosyncrasies as a listener. “Wherever,” for whatever reason, hits the mark for me; so here, at long last, is Jonas Carping. “Wherever” is a song from an upcoming EP. MP3 via the artist.

“Consequences” – The Spectacular Fantastic

An early-era Fingertips favorite returns for the second time in, oh, 20 years. The Spectacular Fantastic are still up to their semi-lo-fi, semi-power-poppy ways, guitars and fuzz and melodies at the ready. Clocking in at a pop-rock perfect 3:33, “Consequences” is adeptly built, with a solid underlying chug that gives the incisive guitar work time to stretch out. Frontman Mike Detmer sings in a tone that sounds one part irritated and one part wounded; it’s a fine line sometimes. There are even some loud-soft and fast-slow dynamics at play here, a perhaps unusual touch for such a homegrown enterprise.

“Consequences” grabs the ear with its opening line–“What I do when I do what I do/Is none of your business”; after that things get charmingly elusive in terms of both structure and content. The lyrics sound half defiant, half apologetic. Consciously or not, this appears to be reflected in a song that seems to operate in a middle ground between verse and chorus, somehow not possessing either thing fully. There is basically one eight-measure melody–it ascends, descends, and then sort of resolves and sort of doesn’t. While you’re left thinking about that, there is space for the guitar, in all its nicely articulated glory, its tone calling to us from another time and place. For variation, the main melody at one point gets delivered, stripped down, in half time. As for hooks, there is (kind of) one–the recurring, repeated lyrical phrase “I don’t care”–and yet its very concept is undermined, humorously (I think!), by the song’s title. The guy is braying about not caring and yet the song is called “Consequences.”

The Spectacular Fantastic is a loose-knit, intermittently gathered project fronted by Mike Detmer, whose day job for the past four years or so has him running a neighborhood coffee spot with his wife in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on the western outskirts of the greater Cincinnati metro area. (It’s called Funny Farm Coffee, another hint at the sense of humor Detmer deploys.) “Consequences” is a track from TSF’s forthcoming album, Fantasy Clouds, coming out later in February. Thanks to Mike for the MP3. By the way, all of the band’s releases–eight previous LPs and four EPs–are uploaded on the Internet Archive and are available there for free.

For those keeping score at home, the Spectacular Fantastic have been featured here three previous times: twice in the innocent days of 2005, and once more in the substantially less innocent year of 2016.