MP3s – Page 24 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Jesca Hoop (minimal, agitated)

Itchy and curious, “The Lost Sky” grabbed my ear in a “where is this going?” kind of way, as the song’s opening verses unfold over minimal, agitated acoustic guitar work and a precise, intermittent bass line.

“The Lost Sky” – Jesca Hoop

Itchy and curious, “The Lost Sky” grabs my ear in a “where is this going?” kind of way, as the song’s opening verses unfold over minimal, agitated acoustic guitar work and a precise, intermittent bass line. But as the song proceeds I slowly get the idea that where the song is going is where it already is: the ear has to adjust to its edgy open-endedness, its determined lack of solid ground. Symbolic of its restless core is what happens at the end of the (not very chorus-like) chorus (1:23-1:26). Listen first to how the melody has slowed down and seems at last to move towards resolution; and then, nope, it turns out that the note the ear is waiting for (1:23-1:26) is not an ending but a beginning: the resolving note starts the next verse and off we go again.

Other things begin to anchor me as I listen, starting first and foremost with Hoop’s harmonies, which kick in at 1:12 on the song’s incisive question “Why would you say those words to me if you could not follow through?” The narrator is a brokenhearted lover, and as the song plucks along my heart warms with the understanding that it only ever takes a talented songwriter to render the familiar unfamiliar. Here we get propulsive but diligent music, evocative lyrics, and then, yes, those increasingly startling and satisfying harmonies (where she takes it at 2:31 caused me just about to gasp), and there I am, embraced yet again, with gratitude, by the potency of song. It’s a nice place to be right about now.

Born in California, singer/songwriter Jesca Hoop moved to Manchester (UK) in 2010. “The Lost Sky” is from her forthcoming album, Memories Are Now, coming out in February on Sub Pop Records. Here is someone who apparently cycles through Fingertips in five-year loops; Hoop was previously featured in 2007 and 2012.

MP3 via Colorado Public Radio.

Free and legal MP3: The William Shakes (Shakespearean indie rock)

The William Shakes is a project established to create indie rock songs from “de-contextualized” Shakespearean dialogue. Yeah, I know. But trust me, this works amazingly well.

“The Fault” – The William Shakes

At once comfortable and intriguing, “The Fault” is better than it has any right to be, and certainly better than you are imagining it could be, based on this: The William Shakes is a project established to create indie rock songs from “de-contextualized” Shakespearean dialogue. Yeah, I know. But trust me, this works amazingly well.

The mastermind here is Boston area musician Mark McGettrick. According to press material, McGettrick was inspired by David Bowie’s famous “cut-up” methodology for writing lyrics, and for whatever reason thought to apply it to the Bard. McGettrick selects a character from a Shakespeare play, isolates that character’s lines, randomly puts them back together, and then “curates” them into song lyrics. “The Fault” is based on lines spoken by the character Cassius in Julius Caesar, who among other things uttered the famous “The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars/But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” The project has yielded a four-song EP, entitled How Goes The Night?, which is coming out in February.

Back to the song itself, which is almost hypnotically powerful–all forward motion and economical guitar accents, with a cascading melody often magnetized around one central note. McGettrick has an incisive, slightly wavery voice that wanders DIY-ishly off pitch in a fetching way that somehow makes the words all the more absorbing. And what words!; and how they shine a shrewd light on what song lyrics have to do and what they don’t have to do in service of convincing music. Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter has built-in scannability (e.g., “So well as by reflection, I your glass”), his vocabulary relentless vigor; these two factors help to generate a song with ineffable backbone. As a long-time fan of song lyrics as sound versus sense, I am not bothered if I do not understand what a singer is singing or what the words actually mean. In fact, I believe that a song’s overall meaning is sometimes clearer on an abstract and intuitive level than a concrete and explainable one. Listen to “The Fault” and maybe you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

McGettrick composed and produced all songs on the EP himself, and played guitar, bass, and percussion as well. A handful of other musicians contributed, from Boston and beyond. McGettrick has been around the Boston music scene for a number of years but this appears to be his first solo recording.

Free and legal MP3: Orouni

Acoustic rock from Paris, gentle and assured

“The Lives of Elevators” – Orouni

What a fluid and charming piece of work this one is, buoyed by an effortless sense of melody and the fragile but authoritative voice of the eponymous Orouni. A Parisian singer/songwriter whose self-proclaimed influences include the likes of Leonard Cohen and The Kinks, Orouni makes carefully composed songs in which the notes seem handcrafted, one by one, then sung with an ongoing aura of surprise and assurance. The chord change at 0:56, gentle and resolute, is emblematic of the song’s pervading ambience of precipitant redesign, which culminates at 2:37 with a trumpet solo. It is both unexpected and ideal.

“The Lives of Elevators” is a live performance, from a recently folded-up French music site called Findspire, the offerings of which remain available on YouTube. Watch the video and be lulled by the easy-going flow, as we check in visually with each musician, so locked into the groove that they somehow seem to be playing one thing but listening to another. I mean that as a compliment, even if that doesn’t sound like one.

Orouni has recorded three albums to date, which you can listen to and purchase via Bandcamp. I recommend a visit there. “The Lives of Elevators” is based on a 2008 New Yorker article of the same name, written by Nick Paumgarten, which itself is worth reading. The song is a new one, which might appear on the next Orouni album, which might be released this year. Plans are yet unclear. Thanks to Orouni for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Pop & Obachan (charming, freewheeling, good-spirited)

At once woozy and perky, “I Bet High” presents us with a brief but much-needed shot of good spirit and motion to counter the tar pit of despair many of us have fallen into since 11/9.

“I Bet High” – Pop & Obachan

At once woozy and perky, “I Bet High” presents us with a brief but much-needed shot of good spirit and motion to counter the tar pit of despair many of us have fallen into since 11/9. But blink and you’ll miss this one: no sooner does the listener feel fully embraced by the chunky, freewheeling vibe then the song plunks to a close.

So while I like this a lot there is no hiding the fact that “I Bet High” is an odd song, with an ad hoc feeling to both structure and texture. The tinkly electric guitar sounds like some kind of far-away-in-time instrument; Emma Tringali sings with a tone mixing come-hither-ness and a playful shove, awash in reverb; and the entire song bounces along without much of a rudder—the verses melt into a charming if woolly indistinctness, while the chorus glides through our awareness before we even realize that’s what we just heard. In the end, the song’s playful, “look-at-what-I-just-found” sensibility is central to its appeal. Put it on repeat and enjoy.

Pop & Obachan is a studio duo and a six-piece live band, led by Tringali and Jake Smisloff and based in upstate New York. “I Bet High” is a track from their debut album, entitled Misc. Excellence, which was recorded in their apartment on a tape deck and released last month. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks to the band for the MP3. [MP3 no longer available.]

Free and legal MP3: The Blessed Isles (’80s-style electro-pop)

“Confession” – The Blessed Isles

Brisk, skittish, and still rather lovely, “Confession” presents as a knowing homage to ’80s electro-pop while sparkling with an energy that feels current rather than nostalgic. The effortless, sing-song-y melodicism evokes Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, without perhaps that band’s knob-twiddly thickness, while the unusually effective mix of synthesizer and guitar calls New Order to mind.

Only here, notice, the guitar doesn’t loom heavily at the bottom of the mix but provides a lilting, melodic counterpoint to the song’s electronic pulse. In the extended introduction, the guitar at first works with its own variation of a heartbeat, but later on (0:45) finds its upper register and snuggles a precise and concise melodic line into the rubbery electronic milieu. Listen in particular to when it returns, between verses, at 1:37, all glide and grace, and a seductive counterpoint to singer Aaron Closson’s sweet but substantive tenor.

The Blessed Isles is the duo of Closson and Nolan Thies. Based in Brooklyn, the band self-released an EP in 2011, and was signed to Saint Marie Records the following year. “Confession” is a track off their debut full-length album, Straining Hard Against the Strength of Night, released by Saint Marie back in May. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3:Case Conrad (muscular, concise rootsy rock)

Modest and controlled at the outset, with an ever-so-subtle swing, “The Swim” develops organically into a muscular bit of rootsy rock, timeless in its approach and vibe.

“The Swim” – Case Conrad

Modest and controlled at the outset, with an ever-so-subtle swing, “The Swim” develops organically into a muscular bit of rootsy rock, timeless in its approach and vibe. A lot here rests in the capable singing voice of Gustav Haggren, the veteran Swede who is one of three lead vocalists in Case Conrad. Haggren’s is a burnished baritone, a voice that sounds like a friend and a stranger, a plea and a bargain, a dream and a disappointment. It’s a rich, human voice, unshowy and entirely at home in this easy-going composition, with its major-minor alternations and satisfying melodic resolutions (the sturdy run first heard from 0:51 to 0:58 is especially pleasurable, if you happen to be a chord progression fan).

One of the song’s agreeable touches is this odd little sidestep it takes after the second two choruses, when it deconstructs itself into 6/8 time, with a slightly loopy, Tom Waitsian flair. There’s no particular reason for it, but that’s where the magic in songwriting often lies.

Case Conrad was formed by Haggren in the wake of the 2009 breakup of his band Gustav and the Seasick Sailors, who were a notable Fingertips favorite back in the day (featured in 2005 and 2008, if you’re curious, and aren’t you, a little?). Four of the band members are from Sweden and one is from Portugal; residence-wise they are now split between Malmö and Barcelona.

“The Swim” is a track from A Tightrope Wish, the band’s third album, released last month on Stargazer Records/This Is Forte.

Free and legal MP3: The Holiday Crowd (brisk & jangly, w/ killer chorus)

The chorus is a recurringly climactic gem, with a shiny-catchy feeling that marvelously transmutes the song’s influences into something all its own.

“Anything Anything” – The Holiday Crowd

If you have any long-term knowledge of rock’n’roll history, when you listen to “Anything Anything” you are likely going to be put in the mind of the Smiths. This is not a bad thing; the Smiths were a seminal band, trafficking in a sound so unique as to be sui generis. Pretty much anyone influenced by the Mancunian quartet at all ends up kind of sounding like them in certain unmistakable ways.

But I will quickly note that “Anything Anything” is not Smiths 2.0; it’s quite a wonderful piece of pop on its own terms. If it manifests shared characteristics with Morrissey-Marr compositions—from the fade-in intro through lead singer Imran Haniff’s discontented lilt to the chiming guitar arpeggios—the song at the same time has an underlying energy that feels warmer and brighter, and a structure less willfully idiosyncratic. And boy oh boy this chorus, which feels almost goose-bumpily climactic every time it recurs, with a shiny-catchy feeling that marvelously transmutes the song’s influences into something all its own.

That all said, a visit to the band’s Facebook page informs us that they may not be in love with the Smiths comparisons. Oops! But then again, not. Because look, it’s my (self-appointed) job to put new songs I’m enjoying into their musical contexts. I compare new bands to older bands regularly. I try to do so creatively and sensitively but to act as if an obvious aural correlate doesn’t exist, or to feel it is somehow taboo to point it out, is silly. I mean, were I to write about this song and not mention the Smiths, most of you would wonder how I managed to miss that. Online commenters love to rail against “lazy” reviewers who use comparisons rather than descriptors, but this isn’t a zero-sum game. I believe in comparisons and descriptors, and anything else that assists with the eternally thorny problem of dancing about architecture, as it were. It is no more a crime to be influenced by a major musical antecedent than it is to point out this influence. End of soapbox.

The Holiday Crowd is a quartet from Toronto. They formed in 2010, and released their first album in 2013, which you can listen to on Bandcamp. “Anything Anything” is a song from their forthcoming self-titled album, due out in January. Thanks to Magnet Magazine for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Magana (short, off-kilter, hypnotic)

This quiet, off-kilter electric ballad all but hypnotizes me, for reasons I’m still unraveling.

“Get It Right” – Magana

This quiet, off-kilter electric ballad all but hypnotizes me, for reasons I’m still unraveling. I like the cold opening, I like the smoky clarity of Jeni Magana’s voice, how she uses reverb to add texture without adding muddiness, and I feel especially engaged by the low-register electric guitar work, breathing a nonchalant semi-atonality into the bottom of the mix. Everything is simple-sounding, and it’s a short song, but it glides by without giving you a firm handhold to breathe out during. This is a fetching dynamic; I have gladly kept this on repeat for quite a while.

Jeni Magana is a Brooklyn-based musician doing musical business, succinctly, as Magana. “Get It Right” is the lead track on her debut EP, entitled Golden Tongue, which was released last week on Audio Antihero Records. Magana was previously in the Brooklyn band Oh Odessa, which released one album in 2012.

You can both listen to Golden Tongue and purchase it via Bandcamp. MP3 once again via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Almanac Mountain (ambling vibe, classic rock undertones)

There’s something wonderfully out of time about the ambling vibe of “Harborside”; it has the feel of a lost classic-rock nugget while not really sounding all that classic-rock-y.

“Harborside” – Almanac Mountain

There’s something wonderfully out of time about the ambling vibe of “Harborside”; it has the feel of a lost classic-rock nugget while not really sounding all that classic-rock-y. I think it’s the unhurried, three-note sampled-strings synthesizer riff that we hear in the intro and which anchors us throughout that brings the joy here—it’s got a bit of cartoon loony-bin about it, in maybe a Pink Floyd- or Supertramp-ish way. (And those are two groups that didn’t have much to do with each other, I realize, except for being British and thriving in the ’70s but in retrospect, here we are.)

The riff, traveling from the home tone to the major third to the augmented fourth, has an inherent majesty, which throughout the song plays engagingly against the loopier touches (the opening, standalone flourish; the jaunty, bridge-like chorus; the intermittent interjection of warbles and odd sounds; the abrupt, oceanic ending). The subtle mirth here also for vague reasons brings some of classic rock’s better efforts to mind, as underneath the rock’n’roll mindset, however dressed in frills and gilding, has been an understanding that we can’t be taking it all too too seriously. I have long contended that when music can make you smile, independent of lyrics, there’s something substantive going on.

Almanac Mountain is the name that New Hampshire-based Chris Cote has given to his work as singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer. “Harborside” is the closing track on his latest album, Cryptoseismology, released last week. It’s the third full-length Almanac Mountain album, and note that Cote’s sound with the project tends to have a heavier, ’80s-ish sound to it (Depeche Mode this time more than the Smiths), which makes “Harborside” all the more curious and lovable. You can listen to the whole thing, and buy it either digitally or physically, via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: The Burgeoning (inventive and accessible rock’n’roll)

There’s something that almost doesn’t compute here, this sense that these four dudes from Philadelphia have figured out some new way to make old-fashioned rock’n’roll.

“Beautiful Rampage” – The Burgeoning

Instantly likeable, and it only gets better. Guitars like you haven’t heard in a long time, first of all: an adept, introductory one-two punch of scratchy atonal rhythm and keening lead. It’s a four-piece band and you can hear the four pieces, there’s space in the mix, and there’s order and authority, but expressed in the most casual manner. There’s something that almost doesn’t compute here, this sense that these four dudes from Philadelphia have figured out some new way to make old-fashioned rock’n’roll. There are hooks, there are the good chords, there’s a lead singer who takes charge without showing off, there are some squiggly moments nearly beyond earshot.

And those guitars, which get an invigorating chance to stretch out, as the lead guitar’s solo at 1:50 burns directly into the rhythm solo (2:07), now a lead in its own right, and what a searing and inventive and expansive solo this turns out to be, all the way to 2:40. So much territory we seem to cover in a song that still manages to wrap up at 3:25. And I mentioned hooks, didn’t I? Check out the chorus (which doesn’t sound like a chorus) sprung upon us, casually, at 0:55, with improbable, melodic leaps that stick in your head because maybe you’ve never heard them before, or maybe you have and have just forgotten because most pop songs use the same friggin’ chords over and over and over. And few operate with such a tight and creative rhythm section, because too many rhythm sections these days are digital afterthoughts. Music has been suffering. But not here.

Founded in 2011, The Burgeoning features brothers Logan (vocal, rhythm guitar) and Alex (bass) Thierjung, Mark Menkevich (lead guitar), and Brandon Bradley (drummer). “Beautiful Rampage” is a song from their debut EP, Loud Dreams, which is due out in late October. Check it out on Bandcamp when the time comes.