Category: MP3s

Free and legal MP3: The Migrant (unhurried, nicely-textured)

This one starts in tentative, noodly mode—just a guy testing out some interesting acoustic guitar chords.

The Migrant

“2811 California Street” – The Migrant

This one starts in tentative, noodly mode—just a guy testing out some interesting acoustic guitar chords. The first time I heard this, I’m all “When’s the song starting?” Second time, too. When I finally absorbed the idea that okay, this one just isn’t in a hurry, it was almost a magical transformation. Rather than being impatient for the song to begin, I realized the song had in fact begun, right there in this deliberate, exquisitely recorded introduction. I have no idea how Bjarke Bendtsen, doing musical business as The Migrant, knew that “2811 California Street” had to start this way, but now I’m right there with him. This is how the song has to start.

Forty seconds or so in, he puts the chords he had tested out into a rhythmic strum, over some elusive background percussion. Volume builds, and tension. The cymbal swell around 1:20 is first the climax and then the release that delivers us into the body of the song, via an opening melodic motif that is both simple and riveting—a figure that climbs first up and then two-thirds of the way back down using mostly accidentals, or what on a keyboard would be the black keys. This unassuming melody, first heard between 1:25 and 1:30, part upward yearning, part downward reassessment, becomes the song’s recurring anchor. The structure is otherwise ambiguous, and entirely secondary to the sonic textures on which Bendtsen builds the song, blending guitar, strings, percussion, and voice into something rich and memorable. Listen, for instance, to the substance offered by the entry of the strings around 2:26, how they seem to lift the sound into a new place with their simple rhythmic momentum. Later on they give us a quartet-like interlude, leading us to the culminating iterations of the central melody, delivered this last time without any words at all.

Bendtsen recorded his first album as The Migrant in 2010, after spending a few years traveling around the U.S. with a guitar, with a home base in Texas. “2811 California Street” is a song from Amerika, album number two for The Migrant, self-released at the end of October. The Migrant
was previously featured on Fingertips in September 2010.

Free and legal MP3: Kate Miller-Heidke (too pop for indie, too indie for pop)

With its classic chord progression, well-timed instrumental variation, and quick-witted lyrical salvos,”The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child” is artfully designed for heavy rotation on radio stations that don’t exist.

Kate Miller-Heidke

“The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child” – Kate Miller-Heidke

Unabashed pop, but pop in the old-fashioned sense of smartly-constructed, brightly produced, knowledgeably melodic music, sung by actual voices, rather than what pop has at least temporarily become on 21st-century Top 40 radio. With its classic chord progression, well-timed instrumental variation, and quick-witted lyrical salvos,”The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child” is artfully designed for heavy rotation on radio stations that don’t exist.

That seems to be Kate Miller-Heidke’s niche, in fact. Her 2008 album Curiouser (not released in the U.S. until 2010) landed her likewise in a North American netherworld of being too pop for indie and too indie for pop—an album full of crisp, smart, entertaining nuggets of catchy-quirky goodness. In her native Australia, it went all the way up to number two on the album chart, but here it pretty much disappeared without a trace.

This time around, Miller-Heidke, working as always with husband/guitarist/collaborator Keir Nuttall, has veered into beat-heavy, electro-pop territory—a different-enough offering that in Australia this was released as a “side project” entitled Fatty Gets a Stylist. Here in the U.S. it’s being marketed as a Kate Miller-Heidke album called Liberty Bell, even though Nuttall is heard singing in the foreground more than previously. Miller-Heidke herself has adopted a more clipped, less idiosyncratic singing style than she’s used in the past. A conservatory-trained singer, she let her voice swoop and quaver most charmingly on Curiouser, when the song called for it. This time, she pretty much reigns that in, except maybe a bit in the album’s lead track, the ear-wormy “Are You Ready,” which New York residents may recognize from a widely seen commercial for the state lottery. (The commercial strikes me as a stretch, and successful largely because of the song itself, so for the curious, I offer up KMH’s official video rather than the ad; see below.) “Tiger Inside” isn’t as electro-poppy as some of the album’s other songs; there’s actually a nice assortment of guitar sounds to be had here. But also lots of electronic hand claps.

Miller-Heidke has been featured on Fingertips twice before—in March ’10 and in July ’05. Liberty Bell was released in the U.S. last month on the SIN/Sony Music Australia label.

Free and legal MP3: The District Attorneys (sturdy, affecting, succinct)

There’s something incredibly sturdy and affecting about this song, but the wonderfulness kind of sneaks up on you, and accumulates.

The District Attorneys

“Slowburner” – The District Attorneys

“Slowburner” begins with a suspended chord—a nice crunchy suspended chord at that. I’m a fan of well-placed suspended chords, and especially like the opening suspended chord gambit. Kind of perks your ear up right away, luring you in as you wait for resolution (suspended chords are inherently unresolved, as they offer us only two of any given chord’s proper three notes).

And “Slowburner” has plenty more going for it than merely a suspended chord. There’s something incredibly sturdy and affecting about this song, but the wonderfulness kind of sneaks up on you, and accumulates. The verse-verse-chorus-chorus structure rather naturally creates a sense of buildup, as does the way the second part of the melody, in both the verse and chorus, happens in roughly double time compared to the first half. That single-time/double-time shift also gives the song a kind of natural swing; it’s a rock’n’roll song that doesn’t actually sound like rock’n’roll. And listen to how melodically succinct this baby is: “Slowburner” consists solely of two strong refrains—the four-measure verse melody (with the second two measures repeating the second time through) and the four-measure chorus melody. They are linked by an insistent but chummy lead guitar that wails mostly on a high E note. This is a full-fledged song to be sure, but there’s no fat here at all. Makes you wonder why so many bands pad their songs with passages that just kind of tread water. If they’re not working, get rid of them. Write a great melody and be done with it. Isn’t that easy enough? Why doesn’t everyone do this? (These are rhetorical questions.)

The District Attorneys are a quintet from Athens, Georgia, founded in 2009. They were featured here in January for the song “Splitsville,” another disarmingly crafty piece of work. “Slowburner” is from Waiting on the Calm Down: The Basement Sessions, the band’s second EP. No full-lengths have been recorded yet, but this is a band worth keeping an ear out for.

Free and legal MP3: TW Walsh (insistent minor-key groove)

After a delay for some ambiant, setting-up noise, “Make It Rhyme” hits upon an insistent, minor-key groove and boom, it’s got me.

TW Walsh

“Make It Rhyme” – TW Walsh

After a delay for some ambient, setting-up noise, “Make It Rhyme” hits upon an insistent, minor-key groove and boom, it’s got me. Maybe it’s the jangly tone of the electric guitar, maybe it’s the snare-free drum beat, or maybe it’s that spooky organ sustain that anchors the song’s rhythm section in something both humorous and unsettling, but this one has that great combination of being both instantly likable and deeply appealing. Speaking of humorous and unsettling, take a listen to the lyrics, which chronicle a dysfunctional relationship in a series of sardonic couplets, one of which is the titular “You sing the song/But I make it rhyme.” The extra joke here is that there are a couple of lines in the song—listen carefully and you’ll catch them—in which the rhyme is actually missing.

And the extra extra joke here is that the song is very specifically about Walsh’s long-standing friendship/musical relationship with David Bazan, erstwhile leader of the band Pedro the Lion. Walsh was the only other official member of that band; he calls this song “the worst version of myself complaining about the worst version of Dave,” with the benefit of some bemused hindsight.

Born Timothy William, Walsh recorded some solo material 10 years ago or so, and also headed a project called The Soft Drugs in the mid-’00s. He has spent more time and energy in recent years on his work as an audio engineer; his specialty is mastering, which he has done for the likes of Sufjan Stevens, Gabriel Kahane, and the Mynabirds, among many dozens of others. He has at long last put himself back in front of the microphone; “Make It Rhyme” is from the album Songs of Pain and Leisure, which was released this month on Graveface Records. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: New God (melodic grandeur in rough-edged package)

Brian Wilson goes lo-fi; what is lacking here in polish is made up for with melodic grandeur.

New God

“Motorcar” – New God

“Motorcar” is brief, slightly undeveloped, and rough-edged—but convincing where it counts, with its luminous, 16-measure melody and those Beach Boys-go-to-(lo-fi-)heaven harmonies. Those of you with an aversion to electronic percussion may want to sit this one out, but me, I can overlook some sonic crudeness in service of melodic grandeur. The chords are the classic I-IV-V chords but something majestic is achieved through how they are manipulated. In the first eight measures, we alternate between the I and the V chords, no IV chord to be heard, with the melody beginning on the third note of the I chord; we do not in fact hear the root note of a chord until the last note in the melody’s first half (first example at 0:38). This creates a particularly satisfying pivot point and is what allows the melody to double in length. In the second half the elusive IV chord makes its necessary appearance (your ear required it, whether you realized it or not), and at last, as the melody closes out, we get the chords in the “right” order: I-IV-V.

As usual, the theory stuff sounds stilted and dull in written description but for whatever reason I find that knowing how songs work like this adds to my pleasure in listening. Your mileage, as they used to say, may vary. And all that said, “Motorcar” may still sound somewhat more like a demo than a song, and yeah it could maybe stand to offer us more than two chorus-free, bridge-free verses. But every time I go back to this to listen with any kind of “Wait, maybe I don’t like this after all” skepticism, it wins me over anew with its insistent lovableness, rough edges and all.

New God is a brand new band, with zero internet presence. There’s a guy named Kenny Tompkins, from “the foggy mountains of Western Maryland,” there’s a debut album to be released next month on his own label (RARC), and that’s about all there is to report. The band hasn’t played any live dates yet, so Tompkins hasn’t had to decide who’s officially in it at this point. The guy in the picture with him is his brother, Curt, who is either part of the band or who was hanging out with him when the photo was shot (by Lindsey S. Wilson, while we’re naming names). MP3, obviously, via Tompkins. And no worries about the “dropbox” URL, this one’s fully legal.

Free and legal MP3: Caged Animals (bass-driven blend of old & new)

Front man Vincent Cacchione manages to blend a knowing, 21st-century approach to beats and lyrics with a grander vision of popular music, evoking ’50s doo-wop groups as surely as he does anything current.

Caged Animals

“Teflon Heart” – Caged Animals

Okay, so after that, perhaps you’d like to balance things out with a superbly constructed song and a highly disciplined production? No problem. “Teflon Heart” is slinky and deliberate, written with care and performed with controlled New York City cool. I love the way front man Vincent Cacchione manages to blend a knowing, 21st-century approach to beats and lyrics with a grander vision of popular music, evoking ’50s doo-wop groups as surely as he does anything current. His words have hip-hop flair, but the mood is more reflective, the rhythm leisurely, the beat dominated by actual bass playing, the singing hinting at inner ache more than outer bravado:

I know you know I’m not bourgeois
You act like I’m a replica
A ghost inside your retina
That only you can see

Another highlight is Cacchione’s prickly guitar work, offering up almost-but-not-quite dissonant solos in between verses, deconstructing both melody and rhythm as the beat, literally, goes on. And do not overlook the effectiveness of the central metaphor, which might seem too slick for its own good but for the subtext conveyed by the singer’s plaintive conclusion “I want one too,” regarding the teflon heart in question.

Caged Animals began as a solo project for the Brooklyn-based Cacchione but has blossomed into a foursome. “Teflon Heart” is from the album Eat Their Own, released in late September on Lucky Number Music. MP3 via Lucky Number. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

NOTE: Far sooner than usual, this MP3 has been taken down by the record company, and is no longer available.

Free and legal MP3: 13ghosts (gripping musical and lyrical narrative)

It’s the not-unfamiliar patient-talking-to-his-doctor motif but we are a long way here from “Doctor, doctor, can’t you see I’m burning, burning.”

13ghosts

“Dr. Bill” – 13ghosts

It’s the not-unfamiliar patient-talking-to-his-doctor motif but we are a long way here from “Doctor, doctor/Can’t you see I’m burning, burning.” “Dr. Bill” oozes depth and power, thanks to some killer guitar work and a splendid fusion of lyrical and musical momentum. There is no chorus; there is even the feeling of being no melody, as singer Brad Armstrong creates the illusion that he’s merely talking. But this is purposeful deception, belied by the song’s careful, eloquent chord sequence, striking lyrics, and the melancholy descent traced by Armstrong’s voice in the first four lyrical lines. Note the lyrics themselves seem more like sentences than verses. He’s singing, he just doesn’t want you to realize it. As the song cranks up the intensity, the subtle melody begins turning upward.

Uneasiness weaves itself through the fabric of the song. You can hear it in the recurring chord change that launches the intro and likewise begins each lyrical line to follow—that shift from an opening minor chord to an unforeseen, unrelated major chord. From there we are taken through a progression featuring more major than minor chords but the underlying sense is disturbed—we’re feeling minor, even through the major changes—and it was set up by the opening gambit. The chords themselves unfold like a narrative, which reinforces a story that escalates both in the lyrics and in the subtext, as we learn perhaps as much about the patient/narrator via what he doesn’t say as from what he does. The way internal rhyme juxtaposes with a lack of end rhyme adds to the song’s ambivalent drive. A character seeking help while insisting he’s all right: what does this say about life for the majority of us, who do not seek help even as we sense that maybe we’re not all right? A strong and haunting song, this one. You could also spend a few listens concentrating merely on the evolving, fiery guitar accompaniment, but I’ll leave that to you, I’m running long as it is.

The Birmingham, Ala.-based quintet 13ghosts is here returning to Fingertips for a third time; Armstrong also visited for an early Q&A. The band is blessed with two strong singer/songwriters, the other being Buzz Russell, who fronted “Beyond the Door,” a great song that was reviewed here in 2008. They were also featured in 2006 but that song alas is no longer online. “Dr. Bill” is from the band’s album Garland of Bottle Flies, coming next month on Skybucket Records.

Free and legal MP3: Boris (kitchen-sinky chunk of sped-up dream pop)

A kitchen-sinky chunk of sped-up dream pop, “Spoon” is instantly likable even as it presents more to the ear than the ear initially can absorb.

Boris

“Spoon” – Boris

A kitchen-sinky chunk of sped-up dream pop, “Spoon” is instantly likable even as it presents more to the ear than the ear initially can absorb. Which actually isn’t easy to do, I don’t think: package sonic overload into something brisk and immediate.

Here’s maybe the key to how Boris does it: for all the aural exuberance, “Spoon” hews to the conventional verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus design. This is why we can kind of “get” the song even when it’s offering more musical information in any given slice than we can consciously process. There are so many things to listen for here, from intermittent concrete sounds like breaking glass and cracking whips and children’s voices to ongoing threads like the singular rhythm section, which combines a stuttery drumbeat with a fluid, hyperactive bassline. That bursty drum sound does everything it can to break the song into disjointed moments, while the bass works hard to stitch it all together. Throughout, the slightly breathy lead vocal from guitarist Wata gives us something delightful to stay focused on when all else fails.

And never mind the difficult-to-absorb song—Boris itself is a difficult-to-absorb band. Together since 1992, a trio since 1996, this veteran Japanese outfit has a complex history of experimentation and genre-blending and -hopping. (The band has been identified with ambient, doom metal, drone metal, industrial, minimalist, noise rock, and punk, among quite a few others.) Its members all go by single names, which is just as well—slightly less information to process. They tour a lot and are reportedly more well known in North America than they are in Japan, having done things like open for Nine Inch Nails and appear on avant-garde film soundtracks, including one for Jim Jarmusch. The band’s 2006 album Pink was listed among the year’s best by Pitchfork, SPIN, and Blender. “Spoon” is a song from Boris’s new album called (finally, someone did it) New Album. New Album is actually (more complications) the band’s third release of 2011, this one a dream-pop-ish reworking of songs that were on the other two albums, with some new songs as well. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: New Shouts (neo-’60s garage-soul, retro-y & proud)

Here we have a splendid garage-soul groove harkening astutely back to the proto-white-boy-soul of a group like the Soul Survivors (best known for “Expressway To Your Heart,” non-coincidentally enough).

New Shouts

“The Reins To Your Heart” – New Shouts

Above and beyond the financial problems introduced by the digital distribution of music, many hands have been wrung over cultural problems unleashed at the same time. A flood of virtual ink has been spilled this year, as an example, on a complaint voiced by the critic Simon Reynolds, in his book Retromania, which among other things is about how the relentless presence of the past, digitally speaking, has led to a state in which we don’t allegedly have a genuine, current-day culture, just an ongoing regurgitation of bygone stylings.

There are so many things that strike me as wrong with this complaint; probably time for an essay. In the meantime, I go back to one of Fingertips’ founding mottoes: listen with your ears, not your mind. The idea that music has to be stylistically “different” is a mental construct. To my ears, music can be different by simply being good. So, is a song like “The Reins To Your Heart” representative of some kind of new, 2010-ish musical style? Not a bit. Does this mean it can’t be good or that we are somehow culturally poorer because the Pittsburgh foursome New Shouts recorded it? Of course not. It’s a good song! Yes, its garage-soul groove harkens back to the proto-white-boy-soul of a group like the Soul Survivors (best known for “Expressway To Your Heart,” non-coincidentally enough). Why can’t a good song sound familiar? Why can’t it remind you of another good song?

To harp on stylistic similarities is to overlook other factors that make music both pleasing and emotionally resonant. I always start with melody, because that’s me. “The Reins To Your Heart” is one of those lucky songs that begins with its hook—a smartly constructed melody (beginning at 0:11, right out of that pleasantly clangy introduction) in which the first half traces a descending B minor chord, the second an ascending A minor chord. Comprised only of the three notes from these two adjacent chords, the melody has a natural swing, running down and up those third intervals, while likewise feeling solid and primal, the aural equivalent of a three-legged stool. And the chorus is no slouch either, affording the song a second and maybe even third hook (this is also one of the those lucky songs with more than one solid hook), via the “Baby, please believe me” segment, with its group lead vocal and classic-soul vibe, leading up to that unerring, off-the-beat response line, “I want you back.” We’ve heard all of this before. So what? It gives me that deep inner smile I get when I know the music is working. Retromania has nothing to tell me, or you, about that.

“The Reins To Your Heart” is the lead track from New Shouts’ first non-single release, the seven-song EP Sing New Shouts, which was self-released in September via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Vadoinmessico

Easy-going assurance

Vadoinmessico

“Teeo” – Vadoinmessico

An Italian, a Mexican, and an Austrian walk into a bar…well, okay, not a bar, but a music school, in London. And so this is not the beginning of a joke but the beginning of the band Vadoinmessico, a multi-national quintet that remains based in the UK. And you can really hear the non-English-speaking sensibility here, even as front man Giorgio Poti (the aforementioned Italian) sings in English. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something in either the vibe, at once relaxed and kinetic, or the instrumental mix (note the lack of a rock-style drum kit), or both, that feels like nothing a purely American or British band would create or deliver.

And wow I’ve been bumping into these songs with banjos and/or pedal steel guitars in them lately and here’s another one, this time with both, and if some blogger somewhere calls this a country song I shall emit an electronic scream. Vadoinmessico offers up the self-description of “mediterranean alternative folk,” and sure, why not? I love the easy-going assurance of the melody, which is at once amorphous and ear-grabbing. There’s not a clear hook, there’s no immediately obvious verse/chorus division, and what does in the end amount to the chorus (heard just twice, the first time from 1:00 to 1:15) slips by without fuss and without resolution. What’s more, the verses themselves are hard to differentiate, and seem to center upon a repeated melody that is launched off the second beat of the measure with a string of repeated notes. The wonderful allure of the piece has first of all to do with the slight variations this melody undergoes after the consistency of the opening two measures, and then to do with the cumulative, almost hypnotic effect of this not-quite-repetition.

Note in particular the new melodic upturn we hear first at around 1:17, with a match at 1:25. We take it in as pleasant enough at that point, but when this particular variation returns as Poti sings (2:38) “Everybody please wait for me here by the river,” with the half-step ascent on the words “here by the,” we seem somehow to have arrived at the muted epicenter of the song. It feels like a payoff as long as you don’t concentrate too much, like something you can see only with peripheral vision.

“Teeo” is the third single released by the band, which has yet to put out an official album or EP.