MP3s – Page 47 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Ace Reporter (mesmerizing & melodic)

A paean to sheer melody, “Untouched and Arrived” is lean, shiny, and compelling.

“Untouched and Arrived” – Ace Reporter

A paean to sheer melody, “Untouched and Arrived” is lean, shiny, and mesmerizing. There is no fat here, no distracting complications. A straightforward rhythm guitar strum introduces the song, then disappears. There is one verse melody, repeated twice in each verse, and one chorus melody, repeated four times. A semi-bridge is constructed from the repetition of the title phrase, previously employed in the chorus. And that’s really all we’ve got here, and if it’s somehow enough, that tells you how strong these melodies are. The song engulfs me; it is pure pop at its most intoxicating.

“Untouched and Arrived”‘s silvery conciseness may be due to its unusual birth story: Ace Reporter mastermind Chris Snyder spent 2010 writing, recording, and posting one new song every day. He called it the threesixfive project, and however he managed to do it, he emerged at year’s end with an impressive cache of songs to mine for future recordings. “Untouched and Arrived” appeared on day 75. While the production has been altered from the original version, the song is pretty much intact. I can imagine if one is in the middle of writing a new song every single day, for an entire year, there would be limited inclination and/or energy for undue fuss and complication. Snyder had a killer tune at the end of the day, and he resisted the urge to mess with it.

You can hear a few dozen of the threesixfive songs on the project’s web site. They are surprisingly engaging, and I say that as someone suspicious of any kind of song-a-day gimmick. In 2011, Snyder made four EPs from the threesixfive material. The debut Ace Reporter full-length album, Yearling, likewise drawing from the 2010 mother lode, was recorded last year and will be released in February on the Brooklyn-based label Ooh La La Records. Thanks to Magnet Magazine for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Nels Andrews (wistful, nicely textured, w/ backbone)

A wistful 3/4-time shuffle with mysterious narrative force.

“Barroom Bards” – Nels Andrews

A wistful 3/4-time shuffle with mysterious narrative force, effortless melody, and a cumulative intensity. Bearing an attractive vocal and stylistic resemblance to Michael Penn, Andrews sings with the kind of offhand command not as common as it ideally should be—durable, concrete words flow from his mouth on top of crisply arranged textures via a strong descending melody; he’s afraid of neither putting his voice front and center nor of giving us many other agreeable sounds to listen to. I especially like the interplay between the mandolin and the electric guitar, which are not ordinarily instruments that seem to nod too specifically in the direction of one another. Here they both add thoughtfully to the underlying acoustic guitar strum; this feels less like mere accompaniment than orchestrated composition.

And this is another one of those songs that does not reveal itself to me in terms of narrative, no matter how many times I listen. I either can’t figure out who Poor Sweet William is and what he’s done or maybe I just don’t want to; there’s a part of me that craves the spellbinding versus the manifest. Andrews’ clear baritone and his often arresting word choice (I love: “I grew long then cut off my hair”) are all that I need.

“Barroom Bards” is a song from the album Scrimshaw, Andrews’ third, due out this month in the US. The Santa Cruz-based Andrews has for some reason had much more success in Europe than the US to date; the album has been out there since this past spring, and garnered fine notices. Scrimshaw was produced by Todd Sickafoose, who has worked previously with Andrew Bird, Ani DiFranco, and Anaïs Mitchell, among others. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Elise Vatsvaag (sparse and elegiac, w/ strings)

After the real-life storm that affected so many people in the Eastern U.S. last week, we can all use a bit of restraint and sweetness.

“After the Storm” – Elise Vatsvaag

This song was nearly featured last week, but it didn’t fit in the mix quite right so I put it aside for a week and now look.

Sparse and elegiac, “After the Storm” uses what sounds like a full-fledged string quartet to generate volume and intensity in a song that otherwise secures its power from restraint and sweetness. After the real-life storm that affected so many people in the Eastern U.S. last week, we can all use a bit of restraint and sweetness.

Nothing has ever been this clear before
After the storm I have no fear at all
No fear at all

Vatsvaag is Norwegian and while her lyrics occasionally betray a non-native-speaker’s tentative syntax, the overall effect, almost counter-intuitively, is one of poignant authenticity. She sings with a clear tone but also without much sustain (i.e., she doesn’t hold her sung notes for long), which lends a soft-spoken intimacy to her delivery. The song has a traditional structure—verse, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, repeat with bridge—but her tender, affecting melodies expand gently beyond the typical eight measures in the pre-chorus and again in the chorus, which then melts into the instrumental tumult provided by the strings. This shows yet again that a song cannot be reduced merely to its words, and that it’s almost always the subtle musical effects rather than simply a turn of phrase that sends the impact of a song from the head to the heart.

Vatsvaag has been releasing a series of free to download songs throughout 2012. The first four were then gathered, earlier this year, into an EP called This Is Not My Music #1; after the second four have been released (song number 8 arrives later this month), This Is Not My Music #2 will be released. “After the Storm” was the seventh song, released in October.

photo credit: Erik Sæter Jørgensen

Free and legal MP3: dEUS (hard-driving, catchy, w/ speak-singing)

No-nonsense rock’n’roll, both hard-driving and melodic, and yet too with an almost gracious sense of purpose.

“Ghosts” – dEUS

No-nonsense rock’n’roll, both hard-driving and catchy, and yet too with an almost gracious sense of purpose. The opening keyboard riff sounds like a regular old piano, and gives the song an old-school swing that brings to mind the kind of radio-friendly rock made in the ’60s that was not itself Motown but existed only because Motown existed, if that makes sense.

And yet “Ghosts” is hardly a nostalgia trip; the feeling is more timeless than retro, more hybrid than homage. Front man Tom Barman speak-sings the verse in a way that both grabs the ear and fully informs you that he is not a rapper. (I don’t mean that as a criticism, just as an observation that rock singers have a particular way of speak-singing lyrics that is its own kind of thing.) The speak-singing interrupts the flow created by the catchy keyboard riff, drawing the song in on itself, creating both tension and anticipation—it is only a matter of time before that piano line returns, and when it does it finds itself in the center of the chorus, as much a part of the hook as the actual melody. The song’s last two minutes—right after the line “So chase the ghosts away ’til they’re gone”—crank up the drama and the noise as the band tips its hat more directly to its roots as an experimental outfit influenced by the likes of Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart. (I like the “hoo! hah!”—but sometimes also just “hoo!”—exclamations that now begin to interject into the proceedings.) And then everything just stops as if accidentally deleted.

Based in Antwerp, Belgium, dEUS was founded way back in 1991, but has recorded only seven studio albums to date, including two in the last two years. The only other remaining original member besides Barman is Klaas Janszoons, who plays keyboards and violin. The band, complete with its odd typography, remains relatively unknown in the U.S.; their records have only been sporadically released here. “Ghosts” is from the album Keep You Close, which came out a year ago in Europe. That album and 2012’s Following Sea were both released in the U.S. for the first time this fall, on the label [PIAS] America.

Free and legal MP3: Allo Darlin’

Brisk, jangly, and wistful

“Northern Lights” – Allo Darlin’

Brisk and jangly, “Northern Lights” appears indeed to move too quickly for its own lyrics, as sweet-voiced Elizabeth Morris has repeatedly to squeeze extra syllables into tight aural spaces. The effect is somehow fetching. Listen, for example, to how she sings “suddenly came apart” (0:43), or how she handles the opening part of the lyric “And it makes me feel so alive” (1:09). The melodies, meanwhile, with their mid-stride minor-key modulations, have an undertow of wistfulness about them.

The song’s musical and lyrical fulcrum, to my ears, is the chorus lyric “This is the year we’ll make it right,” first heard at 1:12. The chorus presents us with a speedy gallop through a repeatedly descending, vaguely Christmasy melody line, its first two lines covering the same basic interval in such a way that the second line is subtly accentuated. The second time we get to the first two lines, in the second half of the chorus (is anyone still with me??), this moment feels extra-accentuated. And this is where we are when we get to “This is the year we’ll make it right.” And wouldn’t you know that everything else, moving forward, about the song—the “wait for me!” pace, the sweet-voiced singer expressing hopes and dreams, the lower-register guitar melody (consciously or not echoing the Blondie classic “Dreaming” starting at 1:23)—pretty much says hmm this also may not be the year you’re going to make it right. But, you can keep dreaming. (As luck would have it, Blondie will yet have the last word this week; see below.)

Allo Darlin’ is a London-based four-person band split between Brits and Aussies. “Northern Lights” is the third single from the band’s second album, Europe, which was released back in May on Slumberland Records, but the first I’ve found as a free and legal MP3. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead. You can download the song via the title above, or at the record company’s SoundCloud page. The band was featured previously here in October 2010. The three gentlemen in the band are still wearing the same shirts.

Free and legal MP3: Chamberlin (smartly reimagined Paul Simon cover)

Brilliantly re-arranged to highlight the original’s strange and moody lyrics.

“You Can Call Me Al” – Chamberlin

So it seems that Chamberlin guitarist Ethan West was driving down the New Jersey Turnpike one day, not exactly in the best mood, and heard Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” on the radio and was struck all of a sudden by how strange and brooding the lyrics are, despite the upbeat vibe of the music. He and the band, with a history of covering unexpected songs, decided to try to rearrange the things accordingly. And boy do they. These guys kill right away with their conversion of the original’s bouncy synthesizer riff into a wailing guitar (0:13), distilling Simon’s four full, cheerful iterations into a lead line that takes us through the motif just one and a half times, leaving us edgy and unresolved. Singer Mark Daly dives into the lyrics—previously sung so drolly by Simon—with a moody disquiet, sounding like an outtake from the first Counting Crows record.

Everything falls into place from there; this version has an instant, enviable inevitability about it. I love the effortless tension the band introduces in the chorus, as the familiar but still inscrutable line “If you’ll be my bodyguard/I can be your long-lost pal” is sung not with a wink and a skip as Simon did it but with a kind of harrowing plea (starting at 1:08), as a gathering drum beat sets up a stretching out of the word “long” that mirrors the original but in an utterly transformed context and culminates in the return of the central instrumental motif, now an unmitigated howl. Don’t miss as well how the band converts Simon’s cheerful “na-na-na-na” break into a slowed-down, cleared-out instrumental in which the percussive bass line in the original becomes a ghostly, intermittent clatter of drum sticks. If everyone affected cover songs with this much skill, no new songs might ever more have to be written.

Chamberlin is a five-man band from Vermont that was founded in 2010. They have released one album and two EPs to date, the most recent release being their Look What I’ve Become EP, which came out in September. “You Can Call Me Al” is a separate song, newly released. Thanks to the band for the MP3. You can download above the usual way, or visit the band’s SoundCloud page for streaming and/or downloading and/or commenting directly to the band. Be sure also to check out the band’s web page, where you can listen to the entire EP, download a song from it, and find tour dates for its fall tour, just underway.

Free and legal MP3: Blondie (spacey, w/ heavy guitar & potent melody)

A spacey, meditative thing with a heavy-guitar core, the song features Harry in dreamy mode, voice further altered by distortion–an effective sound for late-era Blondie.

“Bride of Infinity” – Blondie

The legendary NYC rock band Blondie has been around long enough to have had by now not one but two different reunion incarnations. The first came in 1997, with the unexpected release (and success) of No Exit. The reformed band, featuring four of the original six members, took six years to record a follow-up, the smartly-titled but less successful The Curse of Blondie. Shortly thereafter, they lost original keyboardist Jimmy Destri to rehab. Another hiatus ensued, until the remaining threesome—Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Clem Burke—were roused into action by the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the release of the group’s breakthrough album, Parallel Lines, in 2008. Word at the time was that the band, reformed with two new members, was working on a new album, which eventually became 2011’s Panic of Girls, another mixed bag at best.

So what’s a long-time fan to do? Blondie in their heyday were sensational, but their heyday was 30 years ago. It’s weird enough when our rock heroes grow old but it’s one thing when they’ve been making an effort to stay in the musical stream of things, so we can kind of (sort of) get used to their aging (Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan and Paul Simon are the models here). It’s another thing when they disappear for 20 years or so and then come back and say “Here we are!” when it’s not at all clear who “we” are, and where exactly “here” is. I found one song on The Curse of Blondie I’ve wanted to listen to more than once or twice (“Rules For Living”). Panic of Girls struck me as okay but unremarkable, but maybe I’ve haven’t given it enough of a chance. Thing is, I’m not sure I’m as happy, yet, listening to Debbie Harry’s 65-plus voice as I was her 30-something voice; the change is subtle but noticeable. But I’m going to stay with her still because, well, she’s Debbie Harry for crissake.

And so, finally, we arrive at “Bride of Infinity,” one of three songs the band abruptly released as free and legal MP3s this month. A spacey, meditative thing with a heavy-guitar core, the song features Harry in dreamy mode, voice further altered by distortion. This is an effective sound for late-era Blondie, especially when coupled with the kind of strong melody that made their best songs so deeply pleasurable. This one is an unusual six measures long, with an instant repetition; thoughtfully-paced, the melody glides fully up and down the scale, using all eight notes (where one and eight are the same note, an octave apart), which is both graceful and uncommon. There is no chorus, just two instrumental breaks in between the three run-throughs of the verse, and get a load of that second instrumental break (2:20), an understated world-music hoedown featuring what sounds like a sitar and some alternative percussion. Blondie was always at its best when flaunting a humor so deadpan you can’t always be sure it’s even there.

You can stream and/or download all three new tracks via the band; one of them is a cover of the David Essex nugget “Rock On.” Note that I’m offering the MP3 above as usual but I will encourage you to use the widget below for downloading because I’m not actually sure I should be hosting this but I felt compelled to. Having Blondie on Fingertips is an honor.

Free and legal MP3: Elim Bolt (droney guitars, indelible chorus)

There is something so cumulatively affecting about “Farm Kid” that it manages to seem a little short even while clocking in at over four and a half minutes. That’s usually the length at which songs begin to seem a little long.

“Farm Kid” – Elim Bolt

With something of the big ringing clamor of Arcade Fire, “Farm Kid” rocks to a swinging backbeat, adorned with delectably droney guitars. The verse is understated and blurry; we register the beat, bask in the guitar work, and don’t understand a word. And this is how we are led, perhaps against expectations, into a brilliant, indelible chorus. Too catchy for its own good, this chorus messes further with our heads by offering up the song’s only intelligible lyric, which is almost too straightforward for its own good, if it weren’t also so piteous:

And all I wanna do is truly love you
But all I seem to do is deeply hurt you

Otherwise buried in elusive aural mud, front man Johnnie Matthews emerges with these words as a full-fledged crooner, and everything about the song all of a sudden—the melody (half sing-along, half slippery), the lyrics, the delivery—grabs at the soul. The guitar that rejoins us next, first heard in the introduction, has acquired a majestic, pealing air, all the more effective for the nearly-audible distortion it seems to be keeping constantly at bay. (Some of it will break loose during the solo, at 2:49.) There is something so cumulatively affecting about “Farm Kid” that it manages to seem almost still a little short even while clocking in at over four and a half minutes. That’s usually the length at which songs begin to seem a little long.

You’ll find the song on the band’s debut album, entitled Nude South, which is scheduled for release next month on Hearts and Plugs Records.

Free and legal MP3: Themes

Chunky rocker w/ deconstructed vibe

“Play Along” – Themes

Hung upon a simple, mi-re-do keyboard vamp, “Play Along” quickly becomes a chunky rocker with a playful, vaguely deconstructed vibe. We’re in 4/4 time but things feel craggier than that, especially in the chorus, where the jagged, jiggered melody hints at crookeder time signatures than we are here given. Backing horns start as exclamation points but wander soon into squiggly eruptions that I find charming. Structurally, the song has three regular, repeating parts (verse, pre-chorus, chorus), but listen and you’ll see that beyond a desultory inner rhyme or two, the lyrics don’t rhyme at all, which adds to the cockeyed ambiance.

Themes is the male-female duo of Kelsey Crawford (she) and Jacy McIntosh (he). Crawford plays keyboards, McIntosh guitar—in the case of “Play Along,” he is on a baritone guitar, which offers up a lower register than a standard model. Don’t miss McIntosh’s backing vocals in the chorus: he sings the same notes as Crawford, but is mixed so far down he sounds almost more like rhythm than melody. An engaging effect.

For a duo, they have a kind of an elusive history. (Note: it doesn’t help that the band’s name makes it somewhat Google-resistant.) The two had met in Crawford’s hometown of Minneapolis, but began life as a band in Santa Rosa, CA, in 2005. They moved to Minneapolis in 2007. And then to Portland in 2008. Any number of musicians have floated through to work with Themes, but they remain, at core, a twosome. Although their Facebook page currently lists drummer Nick Dayka as a member too. Is this old news, waiting to be updated, or new news that hasn’t caught up with other press material? Not sure. What is for certain is that “Play Along” will be found on the band’s fifth album, Loveweapons, which is slated for release later this year. But—more elusiveness—no precise date has been set. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Aidan Knight (unconventional & affecting)

The joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” – Aidan Knight

From its opening sounds—warm, mysterious, unresolved—“A Mirror” lets you know how good it is going to be, and how unusual. This is not a conventional pop song; not only is there no catchy chorus, there doesn’t even appear to be any recognizable verse. What we get instead is a series of motifs—some with lyrics, some instrumental—which do recur, if you’re paying attention, but which need to be listened to a number of times before they begin to coalesce into a meaningful whole.

I suggest giving this song that kind of time. A singer/songwriter from Victoria, BC, himself the son of a singer/songwriter, Knight has the natural touch of a born musician. In lieu of any one instantaneous moment of short-attention-span gratification, “A Mirror” employs its entire almost-five minutes to deliver its ineffable goods. The more I listen, the more individual pieces I grow to love (an early favorite: “I’m alive/I’m alive/I’m right here,” beginning at 0:51), while at the same time acquiring a gradual understanding of the song’s larger arc. I have no idea how a composition like this gets conceived and written, as it’s operating on a much different level than most songs I encounter. And yet also, thankfully, it comes without any avant-garde baggage or contemporary-classical pretenses. Its general musical language is familiar enough, but the joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” is the second of 10 songs on the album Small Reveal, Knight’s second full-length release, coming out later this month on Outside Music. Knight was previously featured on Fingertips at the time of his first album, in 2010. MP3 via Outside Music.