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Free and legal MP3: Joan As Police Woman

Sparsely funky, keyboard-based

Joan As Police Woman

“The Magic” – Joan As Police Woman

“The Magic” burns with a sparse but smartly-articulated sense of old-school, Stevie Wonder-ish funkiness. The song roots itself in a keyboard vibe—both electric piano and organ set the basic tone—while the verse offers up a melody at once slinky and sprightly. Vocally, Joan delivers at both ends of her singing register; I’m not sure I’ve previously heard a female singer employ her falsetto quite so Prince-ishly before.

Keys-driven groove notwithstanding, I suggest keeping your ears on the guitar, which noodles in the background early, pretty much disappears for two-thirds of the song, then makes its presence known at 2:35, laying down some scorching and dissonant lines underneath the repeated lyric “I wanna be bad.” There’s a sense here that we’re building towards a full-out wailing solo, but it never happens. And the song is better for it, as instead we veer at 3:07 into a dreamy resolution to the bridge, both musically and lyrically, with Joan singing, “My shadow must find a window in the wall”—a lovely line that’s both specific and vague, concrete and abstract, hopeful and brooding.

Joan As Police Woman has been Joan Wasser’s performing name since 2002, but the Maine-born, Connecticut-raised Wasser had been a working musician since the early ’90s, getting her start as violinist for the Dambuilders while still a Boston University student. Early in her career Wasser was perhaps best known as Jeff Buckley’s girlfriend; losing her way after his death in 1997, she eventually hooked up with Antony Hegarty in 1999, became part of his band for a while and performed on Antony and the Johnsons’ 2005 album I Am A Bird Now. Her first Joan As Police Woman album was released in 2006. “The Magic” is a track from her new album, The Deep Field, which was released in January in the U.K., and is available digitally via her web site and iTunes. A physical release in the U.S., on PIAS Recordings, is scheduled for April.

Free and legal MP3: Kinch (swings with verve & power)

At once jaunty and powerful, loose-limbed and anthemic, “Once, I Was a Mainsail” holds many charms within its concise, pop-perfect 3:46 time frame.

Kinch

“Once, I Was a Mainsail” – Kinch

At once jaunty and powerful, loose-limbed and anthemic, “Once, I Was a Mainsail” holds many charms within its concise, pop-perfect 3:46 time frame. Right away, there’s the brief but ear-catching introduction, which establishes the song’s swaying 2/4 swing with some crafty interval jumps, as the guitar lopes from the first to the fourth to the sixth, via those slurred half-steps. It’s an attention-grabbing way to lead back into the first again, albeit an octave higher. The song is five seconds old at this point.

Then there’s swing itself, which after the guitar-based intro is articulated only by bass and drum in the first verse, the bass playing with the same intervals as the introduction, but with the sixth below rather than above the tonic. Establishing the melody only against the rhythm section serves to focus us on the imaginative lyrics, introducing the titular metaphor, with this lyrical payoff, sung as the rhythm abruptly breaks down: “You were the only thing that I would tie myself to.” And then, just when you might begin to wonder where exactly this is swinging us to, the band, literally, breaks into song: those gang vocals at 0:48 nailed this one for me, they were just too unexpected and perfect. (For those keeping score at home, this part yet again ends on that original sixth note that haunts and anchors the entire song.)

A quartet when previously featured here in March 2009, Kinch is now a five-man band, still based in Phoenix, still with that James Joyce-inspired name of theirs. “Once, I Was a Mainsail” is a new single, also available via the band’s web site. The song will eventually appear on the band’s next album, The Incandenza—and if the band’s Ulysses-based name isn’t enough, this next album is named after the family in Infinite Jest. It’s hard not to be fond of a band that is repeatedly inspired by long, impenetrable books.

Free and legal MP3: Acrylics (dream pop plus, from Brooklyn)

“Sparrow Song” quickly establishes itself in dream pop land, with layers of glistening keyboards and synthesizers, reverbed female vocals, and a stately 4/4 beat.

Acrylics

“Sparrow Song” – Acrylics

As with the Joan As Police Woman song above, here is another composition in which the guitar makes a late entrance, but with an entirely different vibe and effect.

“Sparrow Song” quickly establishes itself in dream pop land, with layers of glistening keyboards and synthesizers, reverbed female vocals, and a stately 4/4 beat that supports both the faster-paced melody of the verse and the slower, more expansive and harmonically-layered chorus. And yet there, in the midst of this shimmering soundscape, what’s that we hear at 2:20 but…a guitar. And not just any guitar, and certainly not the kind of processed, Cocteau Twins-like guitar sound that typically propels this dreamy kind of music. Nope, what we have here is a mellow electric guitar that sounds unassuming and organic as it plays the chorus melody in an easy-going lower register. Note how it then finds itself placing notes in an around a swirling vocal-like sound that might be a voice or might be synthetic. And how this type of ’70s-like guitar seems to have no business here—and yet it entirely does. “Sparrow Song” is deeper and richer for its presence.

Acrylics (as with Eurythmics, no “the”) is the duo of Molly Shea and Jason Klauber. They have been playing music together in one form or another since meeting at Oberlin College in the mid-’00s. Acrylics was started in Brooklyn in 2008. “Sparrow Song,” which features Caroline Polachek, from the group Chairlift, on backing vocals, is a track from the album Lives and Treasures, released this week on Friendly Fire Recordings, in conjunction with Hot Sand Records. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead. MP3 via Stereogum; it won’t show up in the media player here but click on the song title and you’ll get the download.

Free and legal MP3: The Booze (twangy, skillful update of late ’60s Stones)

The Booze

“Kick Me Where It Hurts” – the Booze

Surefooted, totally convincing 21st-century take on that late-’60s Stones sound. It’s a pleasure and more than a little of a relief to hear a band with the talent and aptitude to handle this particular twangy, rough-edged side of the rock idiom with clean production technique and honest to goodness songwriting chops. Weary I get of muddy, fatigued by excessive reverb. From the crisp acoustic strumming to the resonant bend of that countrified guitar to the spot-on backing singers, “Kick Me Where It Hurts” oozes both authenticity and proficiency. This is a highly recommended combination for anyone seeking a future in this brave new digital music world of ours.

And this thing isn’t just about a retro vibe. Vocalist Chaz Tolliver brings his own slightly vulnerable oomph to the Jaggeresque performance, greatly assisted by the song’s lyrical and melodic fluidity. Note how the chorus is very close in melody and spirit to the verse and yet completely separates itself. This makes the song feel really really solid, even as Tolliver sings like someone not quite recovered from his previous night’s binge. I think the pivotal moment is when we modulate from major to minor (first heard at 0:38), grounding us in a moment of poignancy (listen to Tolliver’s plaintive “Mama…”) before rolling onward. The lyrics, meanwhile, shine with an offhanded, Let It Bleed-like dexterity. “Stumbled on the D train in my military coat,” the second verse begins, just perfectly.

“Kick Me Where It Hurts” will be found on the the album At Maximum Volume, to be released next month on Underrated Records. It’s the hard-working band’s fifth in four years. MP3 via Underrated. Thanks to Consequence of Sound for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Six Organs of Admittance

Meditative acoustic guitar prayer

Ben Chasny

“Hold But Let Go” – Six Organs of Admittance

Meditative acoustic guitar prayer, of sorts. Over a gentle, deliberately descending lick, Ben Chasny floats his tremulous voice, interwoven with some elusive electronics. The guitar, moving neither too fast nor too slow, has a palpable presence in the song; given the echoey vocal effects, the other subtle sounds in the mix, and sparse lyrics that are mere clouds of suggestion, the guitar feels like the only solid object on display—the guitar, and Chasny’s fingers as they ply the strings, which are all but visible as the string work continues.

Hands become central to the experience. The paradoxical-seeming choral directive is “Hold but let go.” Hands in prayer position come to mind. “Hold but let go” is mostly all Chasny has to say here beyond what his hands are saying, hands which hold the guitar and let go of the music latent within it. There is more to the song than the notes he plays, than the words he sings; there is a power that accrues through the deliberate repetition, the attentive playing, the life-affirming nature of the central message. We can all benefit from this, from holding but letting go.

Chasny has been recording as Six Organs of Admittance since 1998. He is based in Northern California. “Hold But Let Go” is a song from the album Asleep on the Floodplain, coming out next week on Drag City Records. MP3 via Drag City. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Papertwin (brisk, alluring electro-pop)

The combination of brisk, dance-club movement with precisely conceived instrumental lines is alluring, and the understated chorus—with a half-time melody that floats behind the beat—is both gorgeous and elusive.

Papertwin

“Coma” – Papertwin

Electro-pop, by its programmable nature, too often breezes into the world in a digitized rush of symmetrical beats and swooping synth lines. How much happier the ear is, however, when it hears a song that begins like “Coma” does, with its well-constructed intro, full of purpose and asymmetrical motifs. There are three basic sections—the opening, bass synthesizer section, a shorter section with a guitar, and then the last, longest section, with the deeper-sounding guitar that brings New Order clearly to mind. None of these sections is the same length. And within each one, the melody lines are strong but irregular—they hook your ear but without telegraphing where they are going, each, also, lasting different lengths of time.

This is a long-winded way of saying they had me at hello. When vocalist Max Decker opens his mouth and that haunted, slightly roughed-up, slightly reverbed tenor comes out, there’s no stopping this song. New Order, yes, is a big influence, but Papertwin emerges with its own take on that formidable sound. The combination of brisk, dance-club movement with precisely conceived instrumental lines is alluring, and the understated chorus—with a half-time melody that floats behind the beat—is both gorgeous and elusive. So elusive, in fact, that the band fiddles with it the second time through, so we only really hear it twice in the four-minute song. Another example of this song’s hidden good work is the new synth melody introduced in the song’s coda (3:05). Most songs are coasting by then. It’s a subtle touch that makes the subsequent return of melody lines from the introduction all the more satisfying.

“Coma” is one of two songs on Papertwin’s debut digital single, released last month, and both available as free downloads on the band’s Bandcamp page. Thanks to the band for letting me host the MP3 here.

Free and legal MP3: Jared Mees & the Grown Children (exuberant, Portland-infused idiosyncrasy)

Converted last week into a big fan of IFC’s daffy sketch comedy Portlandia, it’s only natural, I guess, to find myself gravitating this week to the exuberant, Portland-infused idiosyncrasy of Jared Mees and the Grown Children.

Jared Mees and the Grown Children

“Hungry Like a Tiger” – Jared Mees & the Grown Children

Converted last week into a big fan of IFC’s loopy sketch comedy Portlandia, I supposed it’s only natural to find myself gravitating this week to the exuberant, Portland-infused idiosyncrasy of Jared Mees and the Grown Children. We’ve been there before, you and I, just this past September, when Mees & Co. were in between albums. The previously fluid ensemble has since solidified into a line-up of five, and has a new album on the horizon, for which “Hungry Like a Tiger” is the lead track.

And quite a lead track it is, with its toe-tapping drive, its effortless melodic hook, its ear-worthy lyrics, and—hail, Portlandia!—its intermittent tendency to unravel the momentum with pensive interludes, not to mention its meta awareness of itself as a song. This rollicking tune hints at the crazy energy the band surely offers its live audiences; yet for all its loosey-goosey ambiance, the song is likewise a study in discipline and restraint. With a seemingly endless number of instruments up their sleeves, Mees and the gang nevertheless refrain from barraging us with kitchen-sink assemblage, pulling out the cello, the trumpet, the Hammond organ just exactly when they are required and no more. The Hammond in fact waits to come out till the end (4:04), at which point it gets a kicking little solo. Note that it’s hard for an instrument you haven’t otherwise heard to enter late in the game and not sound out of place or distracting. Note that the Hammond sounds perfect here.

The album Only Good Thoughts Can Stay, the band’s second, is coming in May via the Portland, Ore.-based media and arts collective/record label/comics imprint/consignment store/gallery/other things Tender Loving Empire, which Mees runs with his wife Brianne. How PDX of him.

Free and legal MP3: Cold Cave (dense, powerful, memorable)

Cold Cave

“The Great Pan Is Dead” – Cold Cave

Combining dense, pummeling energy and palpable ache, “The Great Pan Is Dead” is four minutes of stunning 21st-century rock’n’roll. Wowee. I hardly knew at first how to unpack what I was hearing—the buzzing-guitar wall of sound, the orchestral synth lines, the relentless sonic drive, the sense of furious poignancy suffusing this whirl of sheer electrical power. In the center of it we get the full-throated emoting of front man Wes Eisold. Eisold has a history as a screamer in hard-core bands, and you can hear it at the edge of his singing, even as the singing is genuinely sensitive, even moving.

So I let it cycle on repeat for a long time and I finally began to hear, maybe, what was happening. In the tradition of modern classical minimalists more than any pop song I’ve heard, “The Great Pan Is Dead” spends long periods of time anchored in one chord—the music moves energetically and rhythmically while staying unusually rooted harmonically. We do not, for instance, hear a chord change in the song until 51 seconds in. That is not normally done. This lack of harmonic motion adds immeasurably to the pent-up fury of the aural landscape. Eisold, in the middle of this, sounds like someone throwing his battered body against a bolted door. “I know people without substance,” he sings; you can hear the thud of exclamation points in his phrasing.

And then, later in the song (2:33), we arrive at an opposite place: Eisold singing a largely one-note melody against a shifting series of chords—another kind of subtle, claustrophobic tension to contend with. This is one crazy cool song, and my first shoe-in for a place on the 2011 favorite song list.

Cold Cave is a trio based in NYC. “The Great Pan Is Dead” is from the band’s second album, Cherish the Light Years, due in April on good old Matador Records. MP3 via Matador.

Free and legal MP3: The Submarines (jaunty, reflective, augmented electropop)

The Submarines

“Birds” – The Submarines

At once jaunty and reflective, “Birds” offers up an appealing mix of the electro and organic, as husband-wife duo John Dragonetti and Blake Hazard augment their based guitar-and-keys sound with strings, bird song, sing-along harmonies, and—a first for them—a live drummer. (And hey, it’s Jim Eno, from Spoon.) More than most electropop, this song sounds like it was recorded by real people in real three-dimensional space. Warmth permeates, and the electronic tools utilized feel all the more effective in this setting. This is something I suspect that more bands are likely to understand in this new musical decade: the power of integration. Now that we can literally concoct any sound we want at any time, creating more and more new sounds is no longer a particular talent. The talent is to integrate the sounds we have in newly effective ways. Just making electropop suddenly becomes a narrow and uninteresting pursuit; learning how to incorporate the sounds of electropop into a broader aural spectrum—much more interesting, and fun, I should think.

To hear a bit of the power of this, check out the difference between the song’s two instrumental breaks. At 1:25, a ghostly synthesizer line gives way, via a manipulated drumbeat, to two varieties of strings—the rhythmic pizzicato pluckings of violins, and the low bowing of a cello. And then at 2:42, the same opening melody is voiced with a more classic electro sound, which now leads into a spiffy shot of backwards guitar lines. That the song has led up to this instead of just fed us this electro diet from measure one—and that the electro elements have grown naturally from the aural palette of the overall song—is a great part of the charm, to me.

The Submarines are based in Los Angeles and have two previous full-length albums to their credit (and were featured on Fingertips back in 2006, at the time of their debut). “Birds” is a track from their forthcoming album Love Notes/Letter Bombs, slated for an April release on Nettwerk Records. MP3 via Spin.com. Bonus Submarines trivia: Hazard is the great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Free and legal MP3: Jeniferever (complex & alluring Swedish rock)

A Swedish band that sounds more like an Icelandic band—that is to say, drifting and expansive versus kicky and ironic (and yeah, I know: generalizations; oh well!)—Jeniferever plays with a lilting sort of precision that seems well-suited to the grey icy whiteness that many of us have been looking at out our windows for the weeks on end.

Jeniferever

“Waifs and Strays” – Jeniferever

The song derives its elusive power from its hidden-in-plain-sight 3/4 time signature. The pace is steady and deliberate, like a 4/4 song, without any waltz-like clue that we’re in three. Blame drummer Frederik Aspelin on the seductive misdirection; after staying aligned with beats one and two he rushes ahead and then behind the third beat before the ear quite recognizes it, creating a hypnotic, syncopated flow where more typically we get the prosaic ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. The verse melody then works complexly in and around this already complex approach to the basic time signature; singer Kristofer Jönson here does not once sing a melody aligned with the basic beat (“Fight to find the balance in between,” he sings, at one point). And this is exactly why the chorus floods us with grace, beginning with that wondrous four-note guitar lead-in (1:18), which seems literally to launch us into another plain of awareness. In the chorus, the melody at last surrenders to the beat the song had otherwise resisted. It feels just about transcendent, all the more so as the chorus otherwise remains unresolved. The big moment is the moment that appears to be leading to a bigger moment but actually doesn’t.

“Waifs and Strays” is a song from the quartet’s new album, Silesia, only its third full-length in 15 years of existence. (Not to date them or anything but the band is named after an early Smashing Pumpkins song.) It will be released on Monotreme Records in April. Thanks to Monotreme for permission to host the MP3. And thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up on the song.