Category: MP3s

“The Town Where I’m Livin Now” – Grandaddy

Bittersweet ode

“The Town Where I’m Livin Now” – Grandaddy

Grandaddy is a venerable band with a dedicated following and a knack for creating quirky, spacey, melodic indie rock; at the center of the sound is the sweet, sometimes high-pitched tenor of front man Jason Lytle. They’ve been around, with at least one notable hiatus, since 1992; their catalog is worth exploring, and isn’t as extensive as you might assume, given the on-and-off longevity–there have only been six original studio albums to date. Live albums and compilation albums are another matter. Case in point: Sumday: Excess Baggage, a B-side and rarities collection spun off the 2003 album Sumday and released digitally in August. “The Town Where I’m Livin Now” is a song that’s been around for years, but without an official studio release until it landed on this 2023 album.

The song is a swaying, bittersweet ode to, let’s face it, a surreal hellhole of a town. I assume that’s part of the joke and/or statement: we all of us here on planet Earth live among all sorts of unpleasantness and disaster, and–if we’re lucky–life goes on. Lytle, as he does, can sound a bit like Neil Young’s mischievous younger brother; the voice is high and winsome and seems to come with a baked-in wink or maybe just a shrug. And if this hits the ear at first like a simple, waltz-time acoustic strummer, keep listening. To begin with, there’s a burbling sound living at the bottom of the mix that doesn’t go away, you just kind of get used to it. Cascading piano arpeggios are buttressed by some looney-bin electronics. And the liturgical way Lytle presents these wacko lyrics is a central part of the not-actually-very-funny joke.

You can check out the whole album on Bandcamp. MP3 via KEXP.

“Gray Apples” – Sarah Morrison

Meditative, idiosyncratic, approachable

“Gray Apples” – Sarah Morrison

“Gray Apples” is the kind of artful, meditative, idiosyncratic yet approachable song one rarely hears here in the algorithm-choked 2020s. A direct spiritual descendant of the ’80s and ’90s work of the great Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry, “Gray Apples” offers metaphysical musings within the container of a three-and-a-half minute pop song, held together by Sarah Morrison’s airy and elastic voice.

Similar to Siberry at her finest, Morrison deals in unorthodox musical and lyrical interruptions, such as what first happens between 1:00 and 1:16, when the heartbeat pulse of the verse stops, the time signature disappears, and Morrison’s lyrics take on a spontaneous, spoken-poetry feel. And not to drive the Siberry comparison too far into the ground, but I’m even noting specific words here that directly call back Siberry songs (apples and Bessie, to name two), and likewise see Morrison’s evocation of what she calls “The Holy Comforter–indifference” as an echo of Siberry’s discussion of “The Great Leveler” in her epic “Mimi on the Beach.”

That all said, you don’t have to be familiar with any of this to appreciate “Gray Apples,” but if you happen to know Jane’s work you’ll get an extra kick out of what’s in store for you here. In drawing consciously or not (I’m betting consciously) on the work of an underappreciated luminary in the history of singer/songwriter music, Morrison has composed and recorded something with a subtle sparkle all its own.

“Gray Apples” is a song from Morrison’s debut album, Attachment Figure, which is coming out next month on Ramp Local Records. Morrison is based in Tallahassee, and has previously been the live keyboardist for Locate S,1, playing there alongside Clayton Rychlik and Ross Brand, who are also in the band Of Montreal. Rychlik and Brand play with Morrison on Attachment Figure, and co-produced the album with her. You can check out one other song and pre-order the album over on Bandcamp.

photo credit: Chris Cameron

“Conquering Kangaroo” – Aaron Hunter Dennis

Arcane but good-natured

“Conquering Kangaroo” – Aaron Hunter Dennis

With its acoustic groove and delightfully arcane lyrics, “Conquering Kangaroo” nestles into an agreeable Guided By Voices meets Sufjan Stevens vibe, with a perhaps unexpected nod in the direction of Lindsey Buckingham. The song has two strong, competing characteristics: Aaron Hunter Dennis’s good-natured story-telling voice, and lyrics that tell no discernible story whatsoever. Many songs succeed either because of or in spite of unintelligible story lines; this is an especially successful one, a few tart phrases standing in for narrative clarity: “baseball cap but no team name”; “the pills have been helping, too”; “a company run by brutes.”

And while I mentioned the “acoustic groove,” careful listeners will note there’s more going on here than strummy acoustic guitars. There are scratchy high-necked guitar accents, wordless vocal flourishes, and a chorus in 7/4 time; the abstract (and sometimes unintelligible) lyrics further disrupt any idea of this being just a mellow toe-tapper. Probably my favorite recurring moment is the lovely way the verse melody resolves into the end-of-verse rhyme (first heard around 0:22) only to partially disconcert the ear with those 7/4 measures that follow in the chorus. Keeping the ear off-balance is a potent maneuver if a song likewise delivers some counter-balancing comfort. A parallel tactic: Dennis gives the cryptic lyrics an intelligible, if idiosyncratic, structure, in which the last word of each verse all rhyme (or slant-rhyme, to be more precise). This also underlines the idea that the songwriter knows exactly what he’s doing, even if the listener remains slightly bamboozled.

As for what the phrase “conquering kangaroo” means or refers to, all that pops in my head is a cartoon concept of a kangaroo with boxing gloves on. Is this a metaphor for the human condition, us poor souls stuck fighting battles we shouldn’t even be involved with? Your guess is as good as mine.

Aaron Hunter Dennis is a singer/songwriter based in San Diego. “Conquering Kangaroo” is his first single as a solo artist. He was previously in the 2010s band Tan Sister Radio, which had a song of theirs placed on the Showtime series Shameless; the royalty check funded a makeshift studio for Dennis, who there began to record his own material. Thanks to the artist for the MP3, which came courtesy of Tennessee Kamanski. Kamanski is half of the engaging duo of Allen LeRoy Hug, who have been featured here both in review and playlist. Kamanski and Dennis are engaged to be married. He’s played and recorded with Allen LeRoy Hug, she’s now helping with promotion, and so sent me the song, and here you are. Occasionally it’s that easy.

“Francine” – Brandon De La Cruz

Hushed and minimal

“Francine” – Brandon De La Cruz

Fingertips veteran Brandon De La Cruz returns with another of his intimate and tremulous gems. Possessing a whispery, minimalist style that can veer in an ill-fated direction in less capable hands, De La Cruz quietly mesmerizes, transcending the seemingly straightforward setting.

“Francine” launches off a classic folk-guitar riff, swinging gently into a subdued tale of (I think) long-distance love. De La Cruz’s minimalism extends to his storytelling: he’s short on concrete details, long on suggestive phrases. And, as I can’t help but continue to mention, the man is a master of using simple words to skip at the surface of deep meaning; here, the entire song, besides the name “Francine” and two exceptions (“between” and “apart”), is composed of one-syllable words. This is not as easy as it may look, and works with the gentle music to create a trance-like vibe. (De La Cruz’s Bandcamp bio notes an interest in Japanese haiku, which makes sense.) One telling, self-referential line comes near the beginning: “Words don’t say what I mean.” And yet they’re all we have to go on, to quote Tom Stoppard.

In and around the hushed and humble setting you may notice some stray sounds in the background. Towards the beginning, underneath the finger-picked guitar, an echoey string effect (0:12) hints at the tweaks to the audioscape that De La Cruz uses to ever so subtly distort the vibe. Throughout most of the song, if you listen for it you’ll hear a low ambient rumble that gives the impression of his playing in an empty warehouse or maybe an amphitheater. There’s a sound resembling a backward guitar loop beginning around 0:54 and continuing softly from there. Later, a couple of unexpected voices, with a “found sound” character, float in and out of the mix. De La Cruz reports that his inspiration in this case is rooted in his time working part-time at Mississippi Records in Portland, which puts out a lot of folk and country reissues; he sees the sampling as a creative way to collaborate with artists who are long gone from the world. The end result to my ears has the collage-like feel of something you might encounter in an art gallery.

“Francine” is a track from De La Cruz’s new album, Two Kilos of Blue, which was recorded in New Zealand in 2020, and released last month. De La Cruz was in New Zealand visiting friends when the pandemic broke out; he ended up stuck in there for a year. However inconvenient that might have been personally, it seems to have been amenable artistically–Two Kilos of Blue is the second album he recorded while marooned, and is a collection of songs he’d written over the previous ten years. De La Cruz is based in Portland; this is his third full-length album, coming after four previous EPs, the first recording dating back to 2010. He has been featured on Fingertips in 2011, 2013, and 2020.

“The Aaron Waters Show” – Midwestern Dirt

Instrumental-forward journey

“The Aaron Waters Show” – Midwestern Dirt

At once brisk and pensive, “The Aaron Waters Show” keeps a steady pulse even as it diverts through a series of instrumental breaks between verses, along with a one-plus-minute interlude between the third verse and the ensuing bridge, and a one-minute instrumental coda. The song has no chorus, which I think contributes to its restlessness, a sense of looking for something that isn’t arriving. The unusual amount of instrumental time does that too; the vocal sections, together, carry a purposeful undertone of wishing somehow they could do more than they get to do. And they don’t do anything that isn’t laid out first by an instrumental part.

The song’s main riff (first heard at 0:21)–a gently descending guitar line finished with a decisive two-note upturn, the piano and bass joining in–repeats four times in the introduction before it becomes the verse melody at 0:47. Patrick Kapp, reminiscent of Nils Lofgren (anyone?), sings sweetly, with character; he makes the most of the relatively limited time he has to sing. The instrumental breaks keep trying to upstage him–each break following a verse features a different guitar sound. And then comes the long instrumental break after the last verse, which delivers a subtle shift via a new chord pattern introduced between 2:35 and 2:47. It repeats once and then becomes the foundation for the bridge when the vocals resume at 3:02. The lyrics at this point slow down, aiming towards some kind of resolution, even as the background cadence remains, driven by a bass line grown increasingly hyperactive. The vocals wrap by 3:57, and the song proceeds for nearly another minute, finally relaxing the tempo for the last 30 seconds. There’s a strong sense of a journey coming to an end, or maybe at least some kind of adventure ride. Which maybe makes sense given the song’s provenance: the title is a pun on the annual Air and Water Show held every summer in Chicago. The song, says Kapp, was inspired by the way each summer he is initially unnerved by the war-like noise of the aerial practice that precedes the show, only each year to remember it’s only the show, everything is more or less okay.

Midwestern Dirt began as a studio project for Kapp while he was living in Brooklyn, with recordings fleshed out with the help of family and friends. After he returned to Chicago in 2019, and then after the worst of the pandemic, the project became a full five-piece band. “The Aaron Waters Show” is a song from the album Twilight at a Burning Hill, coming out next month.

“Sorry I Can’t Stay” – La Faute

Whispery vocals, echoey arpeggios

“Sorry I Can’t Stay” – La Faute

Echoey piano argeggios lead us into Peggy Messing’s up-close, whispery vocals and how can you not be captivated? The melodies are lovely, the mood bittersweet, reinforced by the repeated titular phrase in the chorus. As a series of words, “Sorry I can’t stay” is both strikingly conversational and evocatively ambivalent, the former accentuating the latter. When we talk we are rarely as conclusive as songwriters might often portray us to be.

The arpeggios, in constant motion, contribute to the song’s watery insistence, which in turn presents in conflict with lyrics that seem to reinforce the main phrase’s equivocation. Perhaps the most plaintive lyrical moment comes with this hushed request, in the delayed second verse: “I know what you always say/ But can you say it again?”

At 1:26 a semi-discordant synthesizer offers a slow-motion solo, laying bare the song’s hidden waltz rhythm, after which it haunts the soundscape with distant, roomy sounds; these become somewhat more audible and outer-space-y around 2:15. The synthesizer touches stand in for how, in general, Messing does so much with not a lot of different elements. She seems to like offering up moments that contribute so subtly they don’t necessarily even register, such as the vocal harmonies which delicately adorn the chorus. I can’t help but relate this to the incisive way she identifies, on social media, as “an undersharer and overthinker.” (Side note: there are more of us out here than people may realize.)

Messing, originally from Winnipeg, does musical business as La Faute (“the mistake”). A visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter, she released her debut album Blue Girl Nice Day towards the end of May. Check it out via Bandcamp and buy it if you like it, which is very possible. You might in particular want to check out her cover of Paul Simon’s indelible “The Only Living Boy in New York,” which closes the album.

“Let Me Know When It’s Yes” – Smug Brothers

Jangly, catchy, concise

“Let Me Know When It’s Yes” – Smug Brothers

Against the odds, power pop survives into the 2020s, often perpetuated by the kind of good-natured, low-drama outfits such as Ohio’s Smug Brothers, who have been plying their quirky wares since 2004. “Let Me Know When It’s Yes” falls unmistakably into the classic power-pop soundscape, with its jangly guitars, catchy but bittersweet melodies, and concise song structure. Interestingly, what is concise for many bands is an extended track for Smug Brothers, since the majority of songs in their ample discography clock in not merely under three minutes but often under two minutes, or even one. Singer/songwriter Kyle Melton says the short songs are largely a side effect of the small notebooks he carries around to write down his ideas. “Let Me Know When It’s Yes,” by contrast, was written on a computer, with more room to spread out lyrically. Be that as it may, there are good songwriting instincts at work here, as super-short songs have a different structural logic to them than songs of a more standard length. “Let Me Know When It’s Yes” grounds itself in two succinct, interrelated melodies, a situation which counterintuitively requires more time to absorb as a listener than a more complex melody that you only get a passing chance to get your arms around.

Which is to say, with a super-short song, you don’t as a listener, consciously or not, expect something to seem familiar as it unfolds. The songwriter, consciously or not, might as well make it intricate because it’s not really going to sink in on first listen in any case. But it’s nice and short so you are theoretically being invited to listen a few times. A three-minute song, on the other hand, with a simpler, recurring melody scheme, allows the listener to get more readily comfortable, a comfort level enhanced, ideally, by potent motifs and a strong sense of resolution, both of which Smug Brothers smartly deliver. I’m half thinking that what might seem to be the chorus here may simply be the final, resolving line of the verse (“Give me a call and let me know when it’s yes”). This is a structure that pays homage to folk ballads and is, relatedly, a ploy Bob Dylan has often used (think “Come in, she said, I’ll give you shelter from the storm”). Tangentially, I wouldn’t call Kyle Melton’s voice Dylanesque per se, but he’s got something of Dylan acolytes Roger McGuinn and/or Tom Petty in his tone.

Smug Brothers have been through a variety of lineup changes over the years; founding members Melton (who also plays guitar) and Don Thrasher (drummer) remain at the core. Kyle Sowash (bass) and incoming lead guitarist Ryan Shaffer round out the quartet; two of the four are in Columbus, the other two in Dayton. Former lead guitarist Scott Tribble was with the band through the recording sessions for the latest album, which is called In the Book of Bad Ideas and is coming out in September. That’s where you’ll find “Let Me Know If It’s Yes.” You can check out the semi-voluminous Smug Brothers discography via Bandcamp. MP3 courtesy of the band. Note that Smug Brothers were previously featured on Fingertips in 2019.

“True Religion” – Couch Prints

Fuzzy and buzzy

“True Religion” – Couch Prints

“True Religion” is a coherent tornado of fuzz and buzz, its swirling noise counterbalanced by unexpectedly sweet lead vocals and a concise structure. So, a question: are we starting to experience ’00s nostalgia? Between the terror attack and the economy bottoming out it wasn’t that much fun to live through but hell compared to watching democracy teetering on the edge of fascism, an ideology-crazed Supreme Court eager to treat more than half the population like second-class citizens, and social media continuing to fray our political and social fabric, the ’00s have an oddly innocent glow about them in retrospect. “True Religion” in any case gives me a 2000s feel, with its fizzing amalgam of droning electronics, bagpipe-y guitars, and disembodied vocal samples, guided from above by the feathery soprano of Jayanna Roberts.

I find it interesting to follow the percussion on this one. For the first half or so you might not think so–I’m no expert but the drumming sounds pretty programmed up to that point. All percussion clears out at 1:35 for the first iteration of the chorus, featuring just voice (Roberts in her lower register), guitar, and bass. At 1:49 we get the chorus repeated, an octave higher, with the drums kicking back in. And–again, I’m no expert–but I’ll be darned if the drumming doesn’t sound live now versus programmed. A big hint happens at 2:03, when the drum skitters through a few beats in an agreeably unexpected and (what sounds like a) three-dimensional sort of way. The drumming from this point onward hits the ear as somehow more grounded (listen in particular to the cymbal sounds), so either it’s a human drummer or the program was altered. In any case, all percussion exits abruptly at 2:36 in favor of a brief coda of noise and more of those disembodied speaking voices. Everything wraps up in just under three minutes, which is frequently a sign of a job well done.

Couch Prints is the NYC duo of Roberts and Brandon Tong. “True Religion” is the first single available from their forthcoming debut album Waterfall: Rebirth, which is due out this fall.

“Lover, Don’t Leave Me” – Bocce

Swoony early rock vibe

“Lover, Don’t Leave Me” – Bocce

Speaking of drumming: while you won’t, precisely, hear rock’n’roll’s seminal “Be My Baby” beat here on “Lover, Don’t Leave Me,” that bedrock rhythm is feinted at near the song’s beginning (0:18-0:26). (Listen for the first three signature bass-drum hits; while we never get the climactic fourth wallop you almost can’t help filling it in yourself in your head). The beat underlies the rest of the song even if it’s never spelled out, and goes a long way towards lending a swoony late-’50s/early-’60s vibe to the darkly charming “Lover, Don’t Leave Me.”

The song’s opening moments set the tone, with a whistly synthesizer (or maybe just a whistle?) describing a melody ever so slightly askew; if there’s something of a looney-bin vibe to it I don’t think that’s accidental. Nine seconds in, we go directly to the chorus, which sums matters up in one succinct, repeated couplet: “Lover, don’t leave me/Lovin’ ain’t easy”–the eternal push-pull of a passionate relationship. Singer Sarah Shotwell leans into the part with her honeyed, unhurried phrasing, which includes some muted melismas on the two contracted verbs (don’t/ain’t), adding a delicate achiness that reinforces the song’s echo of early rock’n’roll.

While the lyrics proceed to allude to physical torture, I’m reading them as metaphorical, mirroring the emotional torture baked into the experience of love in all its connective messiness. We even of all things get a quote, in Italian, from Niccolo Machiavelli (2:58) to wrap matters up, which, translated, means, “The insults must be done all at once”; Shotwell adds a bittersweet “caro” (“my dear”) to the sentiment.

And just when you think you’ve heard everything the song has to offer, along comes a background chorus of men’s voices singing, if I’m hearing this right, “Ba ba-ba-ba/Ba ba” (3:43). It’s a goofball touch at just the right moment, shepherding the proceedings to a gratifying conclusion.

Bocce is the trio of Shotwell, David Provenzano, and Christopher Keene. Shotwell and Provenzano worked together previously in the band Fialta. “Lover, Don’t Leave Me” is a track from Bocce’s debut album, Good For You, released earlier this month. MP3 via the band.

“Let Go” – Brooke Bentham

Bittersweet allure

“Let Go” – Brooke Bentham

Launched off a world-weary acoustic strum, “Let Go” turns almost magically beautiful, all resolute melody and intimate, affecting vocals. The song has the bittersweet allure of something that has come down through the decades, not just the months. And it has the feeling of a take recorded with what happened to be handy: “strum this guitar,” “sing in that mic,” “the lyric sheet’s over here if you need it.”

Even when things open up sonically near the one-minute mark, the song retains its tenacity, never filling the space up with more than is necessary, leaning in the chorus on twangy, unresolved chords for drama. And then–speaking of drama–there’s the unusual way the song comes nearly to a halt at around three minutes, finishing with a slow, reflective minute of voice and a guitar strummed even more sparingly than we heard in the intro. The uniting force from start to finish is Bentham’s appealing and penetrating soprano, which holds its silver tone at both ends of the volume spectrum.

Deemed “enigmatic” by her own press material, the Newcastle-based singer/songwriter Brooke Bentham started making and performing music as a teenager, and did her first recordings while still in college. After a flurry of singles and EPs in 2017, beginning with the moody, potent single “Oliver,” she hit a songwriting wall. Her much-anticipated full-length debut, Everyday Nothing, did not emerge until 2020. Three years later we have new music by way of the EP Caring, which is where you’ll find “Let Go,” and three other songs. The EP was released in March; check it out on Bandcamp.