Category: MP3s

Free and legal MP3: Waters (fuzzy, thumpy, discordant, & somehow cute)

Fuzzy and thumpy and semi-discordant, “For the One” is kind of cute in spite of itself.

Waters

“For the One” – Waters

Fuzzy and thumpy and semi-discordant, “For the One” is kind of cute in spite of itself. Let’s begin with Van Pierszalowski’s somewhat strangled, not-always-exactly-on-key tenor, which for all its shortcomings also has impressive presence and charisma. I’m not at all sure what separates voices that veer off key but remain somehow true from those that are simply off key and please stop singing, but Pierszalowski falls clearly in the former category, to me. His case is assisted by the vocal company he keeps, whether it’s him layered and multi-tracked or some other folk doing the honors; the various wordless background vocals that warble in the background above the lead singing add texture and character and an odd kind of cuddliness to the proceedings.

And then there’s the crunchy guitar sound. Pierszalowski’s type of precarious tenor goes oh so naturally with heavy, crunchy guitar. Maybe Neil Young has just conditioned us to believe this. Or maybe I could come up with an impromptu theory about how our ear takes in that high and unstable voice and requires something deep and heavy and grounded to counterbalance it, to allow us to feel that all is still okay with the world. These are some deep and heavy and grounded guitars, in any case. And don’t miss what may be the one of the longer one-note solos in rock’n’roll history, from 2:24 through the end of the song. Not a solo in the sense of always being front and center, but you can hear this one note on one particular guitar all 35 seconds or so; it’s the note that eventually ends the song. (An E, if you must know.)

Pierszalowski was last seen around these parts as front man for the band Port O’Brien, featured here in 2009. Port O’Brien split in 2010; Waters is a solo project that coalesced for Pierszalowski while finding himself in Oslo, where he seems to have settled for the time being. He grew up on the California coast, and spent some formative summers in Alaska, and at this point seems to have a life story impossible to trace with any geographical certainty. “For the One” is the opening song on the debut Waters album, Out in the Light, coming out in September on TBD Records.

Free and legal MP3: Gold Leaves (’60s pop meets indie pop, w/ Spectorian nod)

A fetching blend of melodramatic ’60s pop and muddy ’10s indie something-or-other, “The Ornament” matches a brisk bashy pace to an introspective melody and evocative if inscrutable lyrics.

Gold Leaves

“The Ornament” – Gold Leaves

A fetching blend of melodramatic ’60s pop and muddy ’10s indie something-or-other, “The Ornament” matches a brisk bashy pace to an introspective melody and evocative if inscrutable lyrics. There’s something Phil Spectory in the air—here an ambiguous echo of the classic Spector beat, there a reverb-enhanced ambiance that knowingly evokes the famous wall of sound. But Grant Olsen—Gold Leaves is his baby, pretty much a solo project—is not merely in retro mode. The song usurps Spectorian elements for its own idiosyncratic purposes. Listen for example to how “The Ornament” strips itself down to its drumbeat in and around the two-minute mark. Spector-produced songs are filled with dramatic drumbeats but nothing like this. The drums here, further, introduce an off-kilter section of the song that seems neither bridge nor verse and which culminates in a dramatic pause before rejoining our regularly scheduled programming.

And that’s another intriguing thing about this song. Even as it nods to a simpler sort of pop, it will not itself be pinned down to either a verse or a chorus that obviously sticks in the head. The verse seems to be divided into three sections, and the lovely turn of melody we hear in the opening lines (0:07-0:20) is never quite returned to—the next two times the song revisits that place, the main melody has been shifted up. I think what happens in a song like this is that you keep unconsciously waiting for that great early moment to return and when it never quite does you are instead led through a journey that seems at once familiar and unsettling. Olsen’s voice—a droopy tenor that’s one part Robin Pecknold, one part Ron Sexsmith—guides us through the song’s lyrical and melodic quirks most endearingly.

Olsen has previously been known to the indie world as half of the duo Arthur & Yu, which released its one album, to date, back in 2007. “The Ornament” is the title track to his debut as Gold Leaves, which will arrive on Hardly Art Records in August. MP3 via Hardly Art. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Haley Bonar

Delightful, succinct, Neko-ish

Haley Bonar

“Raggedy Man” – Haley Bonar

Many songs that are less than two and a half minutes are wonderful in their shortness but, at the same time, feel a bit over-short. Which is to say, it’s easy enough to wrap up a song in two minutes or so simply for the sake of punching out a short song; it’s another thing to give a short song some real oomph, to make a song that’s short in length but long in depth and feeling. With the delightful and succinct “Raggedy Man,” clocking in at 2:12, Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Haley Bonar, sounding not unlike Neko Case’s younger sister, gives us a deft lesson in how it’s done.

Her two primary tricks are melodic. First is the straightforward but underutilized technique of using a full complement of notes. In the first ten seconds of singing she covers six of the scale’s nine tones, counting the top and bottom of the octave as two separate notes, and she ranges across the entire octave. Melodies that incorporate a majority of the notes in the scale are inherently more expansive and interesting. A short song gains substance this way. The other melodic trick is her 16-measure melody line. Most pop songs involve melodies that are no longer than eight measures, and some are just four. A 16-measure melody feels complex and leisurely, and creates the aural illusion of more time passing—another great way to expand the feel of the song.

Bonar (rhymes with “honor”) further employs some subtler structural tricks that work to counter the song’s brevity, including her use of a series of unresolved chords (beginning at 0:57) right where the ear is expecting a chorus, and her stripped-down take on the main melody when it returns at 1:29. Short songs don’t usually have the time or inclination for this kind of presentational variety. Bonar even finds the wherewithal at the end for the introduction of a new wordless melody in the last 15 seconds, providing a coda for which short songs also don’t usually have time.

“Raggedy Man” is a track from Bonar’s album Golder, which was self-released in April, and funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Bonar was previously featured on Fingertips in 2008. Thanks to the artist for the MP3, which Fingertips is hosting.

Free and legal MP3: Bon Iver (indie icon returns, powerfully)

“Calgary” opens as a benediction, Vernon blessing us with that aching falsetto, layered on top of itself, in a cathedral-like setting, with only an organ-like synthesizer as accompaniment.

Bon Iver

“Calgary” – Bon Iver

When last seen around here, in October 2007, Bon Iver was the obscure, self-released solo project for a guy best known as a member of a band called DeYarmond Edison. Yeah, not many people had heard of them, either. The album was released by Jagjaguwar Records in February ’08 and then in Europe by 4AD in May. Let’s say it strikes a chord with a lot of people. Within a couple of years, the guy is in the studio with Kanye West. I can’t claim to have seen that coming.

“Calgary” opens as a benediction, Vernon blessing us with that aching falsetto, layered on top of itself, in a cathedral-like setting, with only an organ-like synthesizer as accompaniment. Percussion joins in around 1:14, centered on some rumbly tom-toms, along with an extra, twangy keyboard and some hints of a fuller band. The main melody, which repeats throughout the song, acquires a beat and a momentum that it did not hint at in the church-ish opening section. This to me is the power and delight of the song—that seamless, “how’d-he-do-that?” transition from prayer to proclamation, achieved by the very careful, if casual-seeming, entering and exiting of instruments and sounds. By the time the full band arrives in earnest around 1:53, the repeating melody has acquired a whole new kind of solemnity, a solemnity based on movement and rhythm rather than incantation. The electric guitar comes out of its shell for an itchy sort of solo at 2:23, leading into a bridge during which—don’t miss it—Vernon drops the falsetto. The song ends over an acoustic guitar that was previously hidden in the mix, giving both Vernon’s voice and the song’s melody one last iteration.

“Calgary” is the first single from the long-awaited second Bon Iver album, which is self-titled, and slated for release next week on Jagjaguwar. MP3 via the record company.

Free and legal MP3: Snailhouse (smooth, swanky, melancholy)

Best of all, I do believe that this song offers up an as good if not better use of the “sentimental”/”gentle” rhyme than the familiar, if rather forced, one we got oh so long ago in the Bob Welch-penned classic that this song is a winning homage to.

Mike Feuerstack

“Sentimental Gentleman” – Snailhouse

Smooth and swanky and melancholy, this wise/weary homage to the old Fleetwood Mac/Bob Welch chestnut “Sentimental Lady” is a sneakily wonderful work in its own right. I love its rubbery, lazy-afternoon vibe, sprinkled with unresolved lead-guitar chords, unhurried horns (or horn-like sounds), and some built-in applause that one can truly call a smattering. Best of all, I do believe that this song offers up an as good if not better use of the “sentimental”/”gentle” rhyme than the familiar, if rather forced, one we got oh so long ago in the Welch-penned classic.

The voice and guitar we are hearing here belongs to Mike Feuerstack, of the veteran Canadian band Wooden Stars; Snailhouse has been his lo-fi-ish side project since pretty much the same time Wooden Stars got off the ground, back in 1994. With both a slight tremble and a pleasing richness, Feuerstack’s voice emerges from his throat so effortlessly he seems merely to be talking, an effect accentuated by his wry, conversational lyrics, which seem at least in part to deal with what it’s like to be an experienced but still pretty much unknown rock’n’roller. “We lied to the promoter/Said we’re packing them in,” he asserts, dryly, along the way.

“Sentimental Gentleman” is the title track to the sixth Snailhouse album, which was released in April in Europe on Mi Amante Records, and then in May in Canada through White Whale Records and Forward Music. MP3 via Mi Amante.

Free and legal MP3: Grace Jones (splendid return of the trippy ’80s icon)

Grace Jones

“Sunset Sunrise” – Grace Jones

Sounding like a Marianne Faithfull for the club set, Grace Jones re-emerges as a singer after 20 years without an album release. Always somewhat ageless, not to mention androgynous, the now-63-year-old Jones pulls off this slinky, bass-driven shaker without breaking a sweat, her voice huskier and chestier than previously, her mystique unharmed for the long absence. The sheer musical presence and power of this song is a surprise and a delight, combining a sinuous playfulness with an almost oracular austerity. “Is it yours?/Is it mine?/Is it ours/To divide?” she sings, deliciously off the beat, voice vibrating with menace and experience. Grace Jones remains a trip.

Jones was always as much a visual artist as an aural one; the flat-top haircut and angular clothing she favored became quickly iconic in her new-wave era heyday; that she was both an early MTV favorite and a cartoon-ish silver screen villain is no surprise, and no one should underestimate how much a certain present-day pop star, with the fake name and the outlandish costumes, owes her act to the pioneering Jones. But here’s a big difference: Jones pulls off her persona by seeming genuinely odd, not to mention authentically bad-ass. Everyone who has followed her seems instead to be purposefully setting out to be odd, as if checking off a qualification on a resume. Not the same thing.

I mean, just take a look at this video, for the song “Corporate Cannibal,” which, like “Sunset Sunrise,” comes from the forthcoming album Hurricane. Crazy, yes? But also almost beautiful. In a trippy kind of way. Hurricane has actually been out since late 2008, but had only previously been offered up in Europe. It finally gets a U.S. release in September, via PIAS America.

Free and legal MP3: Ariel Abshire (swift & sweet, w/ a knowing hook)

Ariel Abshire

“No Great Pretender” – Ariel Abshire

The swift and simple “No Great Pretender” is an object lesson in the power of a good hook, while also an object lesson in the mysteries of what comprises a hook in the first place. The hook in question is found in the interval leaping, first up then down, that launches the chorus, with the lyric “But you caught me red-handed.”

The first leap is made between the words “you” and “caught,” and it’s a sixth interval—a relatively large space between two notes in a melody, so you notice it, but by itself not really a hook. See what happens next, however: Abshire plunges back down, this time making it a two-part interval, splitting the word “red-handed” into two different notes. There’s music theory stuff going on here that I can’t quite get my arms around but the notable thing (pun intended) is that she lands, on “handed,” a whole note below where she started; from end to end here we’ve got a major seventh interval, which melodically has deep, intrinsic appeal. Not a lot of songs sketch this interval out. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” does, but gets there with a transition at the top of the interval. Here, Abshire gets us there at the bottom. The hook is at once subtle and powerful.

So here’s a young singer/songwriter with some serious songwriting chops. Check out when she returns to the chorus after the bridge, at 2:07, and what does she do but eliminate the hook this time entirely: first skipping the “red-handed” part and then altering the melody on the “never surrender” part. It’s a tease, and of course sets up one last return before the song wraps up, not even three minutes old.

All of this talk is to take nothing away from her voice, which is strong and sweet and true. I discussed this last time she was here, in April 2009. She was 17 at that point, with one record under her belt, but a number of years of experience already singing around Austin. “No Great Pretender” is a track from her second album, the appropriately titled Still So New, due out in August. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Blind Willies (rugged shuffle w/ sly sense of humor)

“Lord Thought He’d Make a Man” is an old-timey song with sprinkles of Randy Newman, Kurt Weill, Tim Waits, and Jim Morrison concocted into slinky, rugged shuffle.

Blind Willies

“Lord Thought He’d Make a Man” – Blind Willies

Any band that combines a Hammond organ and a cello has my attention, to begin with. Likewise a band that features a lyric about being tried “by a jury of your fears” in the song’s first 25 seconds.

“Lord Thought He’d Make a Man” is an old-timey song with sprinkles of Randy Newman, Kurt Weill, Tom Waits, and Jim Morrison concocted into slinky, rugged shuffle. Front man Alexei Wajchman has a sly sense of humor and a slightly unhinged singing and guitar-playing style that fully commands the aural stage (and I have no doubt of his command of the physical stage as well).

Blind Willies are a San Francisco-based band that grew from a duo of students at SF’s High School of the Arts playing a combination of American folk songs and Wajchman’s original compositions. There are now five people in the band. “Lord Thought He’d Make a Man” is from the group’s’ third album, Needle, Feather, and a Rope, which was recorded live to two-inch analog tape at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio, with a minimum of overdubs. The album was released last month on the band’s own imprint, Diggory Records. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Robert Pollard (pretty & inscrutable, over triplets)

“In a Circle” is unexpectedly pretty, as Pollard’s songs sometimes are, and incomprehensible, as his songs pretty much always are.

Robert Pollard

“In a Circle” – Robert Pollard

Inscrutable, indefatigable Robert Pollard returns with his 157th solo album in June and the thing with Mr. Pollard is you just have to remind yourself he is not here to be fathomed. There is no understanding what he’s up to, pretty much ever, at the level either of individual song lyrics or of larger career trajectory. Semi-famous, to some, for founding and fronting the Dayton-based band Guided By Voices way back in 1983, he also remains pretty much completely obscure, and growing more so by the ticking of our 21st-century clock. Such is the fate of anyone touted as an indie legend. The fragmentation of the marketplace leaves no legacies in its wake. (Current indie legends, take note.)

(And okay this is not really his 157th album, but it is his second, already, of 2011; and he has written more than 1,300 songs all told.)

This new album, Lord of the Birdcage, was created around poems he had already written and later decided to set to music. I can’t begin to claim enough expertise in Pollardiana to be able to note any resulting differences between “In a Circle” and Pollard’s previous work. All I know is this one is unexpectedly pretty, as his songs sometimes are, and (you were forewarned) incomprehensible, as his songs pretty much always are. Words flow by over a triplet-centric rhythm, the verses slipping past before you can quite catch them, the chorus marked by a series of phrases at once floodlit by emphasis and lacking any obvious through-line: “routine exercise,” “constant reverie,” “makeshift comfort suites,” and, the one which becomes its own sort of offbeat hook based on its location, “nine o’clock meetings.” He is clearly up to something here, and if he keeps putting this much material out, maybe someday I’ll figure out what it is.

Lord of the Birdcage is due out in June, on Pollard’s Rockathan Records label. MP3 via Pitchfork.