MP3s – Page 74 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Laura Veirs & Mount Analog (unexpected Led Zep cover)

“The Ocean” – Laura Veirs & Mount Analog

The most unlikely people can sound like Robert Plant, if they only try. Alterna-folkie Laura Veirs, known for her deft acoustic compositions and plain-spoken vocals, manages here to pull off a Led Zeppelin cover by sounding neither the same nor actually very different than usual. But check out her maybe slightly distorted vocals at 0:32 if you don’t believe she’s channeling something pretty cool here. (Oh and full disclosure: I once had a plant named Robert.)

It’s an odd thing, how Veirs retains the heavy feeling of this proto-heavy-metal song, while breathing something light and frisky into it. Off the bat we get a fuzzy, homemade-sounding lead guitar, tracing Jimmy Page’s famous original line, but also a sweet chimey thing (perhaps a glockenspiel?) playing along with it . It puts me in the mind of a jig, which I don’t think the original did. In any case, the tone is set—the music is being seriously considered, but Veirs & Co. will not be intimidated into either slavish recreation or wholesale re-invention. This is recognizably “The Ocean” and yet also somehow not. I especially like how she takes Plant’s rather goofy vocal break in the middle and gives it a lovely, layered setting—sounding less like drunken accident and more like an integral part of the piece. Credit must also be given to Mount Analog, which is actually a pre-existing, shape-shifting side project started by husband Tucker Martine (more well known now as a producer) back in 1997. Sounds like they’re having fun just rocking out a bit, which is not really what they are wont to do.

The song is part of a massive, brand-new, six-years-in-the-making tribute to Led Zeppelin by a bunch of relatively obscure indie bands and artists from the Northwest, but with a few ringers thrown in—M. Ward (playing the instrumental “Bron-Yr-Aur”), Chris Walla (doing a slow-burning “In The Evening”), and the redoubtable Ms. Veirs chief among them. The album is called From The Land of Ice And Snow: The Songs of Led Zeppelin and it’s coming out next month on the Portland-based Jealous Butcher Records. The MP3 is right now a Fingertips exclusive.

Note that the Houses of the Holy-inspired cover art, excerpted above, was done by Carson Ellis, who is best known for her ongoing collaboration as illustrator-in-residence with the Decemberists.

Free and legal MP3: Goodtimes Goodtimes (amiable, warmly sung, w/ ’70s scent)

“Fortune Teller Song” – Goodtimes Goodtimes

This one also features a pleasantly fuzzy guitar sound, coupled in this case with a tune so chuggily easy-going and warmly sung that it never once sounds like something you haven’t heard before. And I mean this as a compliment, most definitely—another reason why those who seek to criticize some music for “not being new” are, to me, so off the mark. I don’t think music needs to have an agenda like that.

Goodtimes Goodtimes is the performing name for the Italian-born British singer/songwriter Franc Cinelli, who appears to have a particular affinity for the amiable but often discarded music of the ’70s. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s a sturdy bygone feeling to “Fortune Teller Song” that has something to do with Gordon Lightfoot and Jim Croce and early Billy Joel and a bunch of others who strummed and crooned across our AM radio dials back in ancient times. And yet he does so with an organic rather than commercial touch; he isn’t trying to get on the radio, and it adds a grace to the proceedings that, to my ear, makes this song all the more appealing. The simple, character-based story also seems like a throwback, and Cinelli’s buzz-filled voice—nicely offset by the female backup singers in the chorus—makes me happy for no particular reason.

“Fortune Teller Song” is from the second Goodtimes Goodtimes album, this one self-titled, and scheduled for release next month on London’s Definition Arts label. The debut, Glue, came out in 2007. Cinelli has made the MP3 available on his site for an email address, but has been kind enough to let me post it here directly.

Free and legal MP3: Eux Autres (lo-fi Springsteen, w/ charm & gusto)

The appealing, DIY-ish duo Eux Autres (say “ooz oh-tra”) have discovered an unexpected lo-fi core in the middle of this Bruce Springsteen rave-up.

“My Love Will Not Let You Down” – Eux Autres

The appealing, DIY-ish brother/sister duo Eux Autres have discovered an unexpected lo-fi core in the middle of this Bruce Springsteen rave-up. A fan-favorited cast-off from the Born in the USA sessions, “My Love Will Not Let You Down” is exuberant fun when Bruce does it but to my ears can’t help sounding like a bit of a retread; it’s almost too Bruce-y for its own good. Here, Heather and Nick Latimer strip out the brash “No Surrender” echoes and find a different kind of beating heart. The song still rushes along, but minus the well-oiled E Street guitar orchestra (note how the song fades rather than barges in); here we get a piano, an off-kilter, rumbly drum, and probably just one kind of guitar. And in place of Bruce’s throaty rasp we have Heather’s attractive but decidedly unschooled voice, which I urge you to listen to carefully. It’s not just that she aches rather than roars—the shift from male to female “narrator” is significant—but her tone is almost a miracle of reverbed, lo-fi sweetness, offering a shifting stream of heart-melting nuance that can’t possibly be thought out but boy does she have it going here from beginning to end.

Springsteen by the way is nearly alone among his classic-rock peers in combining three 21st-century accomplishments: 1) He continues to have active high school- and college-aged fans; 2) He has seriously influenced a number of important current bands; and 3) He still puts out meaningful records himself. It is just about a unique trifecta for someone of his generation here in 2010, but I guess they don’t call the guy The Boss for nothing. While there have been no shortage of indie bands covering his songs in concert, I haven’t heard too many noteworthy free and legal MP3 covers before this goodie caught my ear last month, via the Philadelphia-centric culture site Philebrity. It’s been out since 2009, actually, but any song is new if you haven’t heard it before, right?

Eux Autres was featured in Fingertips back in 2005, and have released two albums to date. Their next full-length release, Broken Bow, is due in November. The band’s name, as you might have been wondering, is pronounced “ooz oh-tra,” with the “oo” as in “good.”

Free and legal MP3: Jenny Wilson (idiosyncratic Swede)

“Hardships (Gospel Version)” – Jenny Wilson

I am a fan of strange songs with hooks, which no doubt explains my fondness for Tom Waits, Jane Siberry, and They Might Be Giants, among others. Knowing how to be both weird and catchy is rare gift—it requires both smarts and humor—and surely weeds out both the uninformed and the formulaic.

No stranger to idiosyncrasy—her first band’s first release was named “worst album of the year” by a major Swedish rock magazine, according to Allmusic.com—Jenny Wilson sings and arranges with whimsy and determination and little concern for convention. While grounding her songs somewhere within an R&B-like setting, Wilson has no apparent interest in creating either an Amy Winehouse-style homage or a Dirty Projectors-esque deconstruction. Lord knows where the marimba came from but it works, as does the back-and-forth tension between the semi-minimalist verse and the (almost) sing-along chorus. The chorus is in fact one big inscrutable delight, both sticking in your head and continually running from it: there’s the hook-y moment at the beginning, with the words “If I…,” but see how it tails off into lyrics that are difficult to follow and the musical equivalent of a run-on sentence. It’s very engaging somehow.

“Hardships!” is the name of Wilson’s first U.S. release, which came out in late August on her own Gold Medal Recordings label. (The album was previously released in Europe in 2009.) This so-called “gospel version” of the title track is the only free and legal MP3 available so far; it has a slightly different instrumental accompaniment than the original and augments her multi-tracked voice with forceful, gospel-choir-ish backing vocals that replace a prominent violin that is now nowhere to be heard. MP3 via IAMSOUND Records, which is distributing the album’s first single, “Like a Fading Rainbow” (good song too); “Hardships (Gospel Version)” is the b-side.

Free and legal MP3: The Migrant (guitar, voice, & graceful parade of sounds)

“The Organ Grinder” – The Migrant

With guitar and voice, “The Organ Grinder” starts off simply, plaintively—think Thom Yorke doing a Neil Young imitation—only to acquire offhand grandeur as a graceful parade of instruments (accordion, melodica, organ, guitalele [?], various percussive devices) add their voices to the mix. For a simple-seeming singer/songwriter composition, the song unfolds with an unerring sense of drama and beauty. Check out, as one example, the whistled motif that enters, almost as an afterthought, at 0:58, and then the unexpected but almost touching way the guitar joins the whistle in delivering the second half of its melody.

And if all songs showed such attention to dramatic development as this one—the last minute here is rich and surprising—the world would surely be a better place. The rhythmic shift at 3:07 is alone worth the price of admission, even if you (to think!) had to buy it, which in this case you don’t.

The Migrant is the name that Danish singer/songwriter Bjarke Bendtsen has given to his musical project, which represents the culmination of a couple of years spent living in Texas and also traveling around the U.S. The record itself, however, was recorded with friends when Bendtsen was visiting Denmark last summer. The end result, Travels in Lowland, will be self-released later this month.

Free and legal MP3: Land of Talk (gorgeous & expansive, w/ FMac feel)

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency.

“Quarry Hymns” – Land of Talk

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency. Powell’s slightly fuzzy voice serves her well in Christine McVie territory like this, and her guitar playing—often tough and slashy in the past—here becomes the picture of monumental restraint. Check out how she clears the way, at last, for a solo at 3:06 and then check out how few notes she plays, and how quietly, and with what graceful dissonance. I recommend listening to the guitar throughout, as Powell is relentlessly interesting, even with the volume turned way down.

While “Quarry Hymns” is on the long side—more than five and a half minutes, which can be dangerous for pop songs—the effect is expansive rather than lengthy. Give a lot of credit to the hook in the chorus, which is so strong and effortless that it carries the song along in a timeless, almost trance-like state.

The Montreal-based Land of Talk is an established Fingertips favorite, having been featured previously in ’07, ’08, and ’09. Each song is worth checking out. Powell is the singer, songwriter, and centerpiece; the band has shape-shifted around her, with each recording offering a different iteration. They appear currently to be a trio. “Quarry Hymns” is from the group’s second full-length album, Cloak and Cipher, due out next month on Saddle Creek. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Sarah Kirkland Snider (Shara Worden-sung orchestral drama)

Part of a song cycle inspired by the Odyssey, “This Is What You’re Like” is an adroitly constructed composition for female voice, chamber orchestra, and electronics that treads the sometimes blurry line (in New York City, anyway) between indie pop and art song.

“This Is What You’re Like” – Sarah Kirkland Snider (featuring Shara Worden and Signal)

Part of a song cycle inspired by the Odyssey (let’s hear it for the classics! anyone?), “This Is What You’re Like” is an adroitly constructed composition for female voice, chamber orchestra, and electronics that treads the sometimes blurry line (in New York City, anyway) between indie pop and classical ensemble piece.

For all its stringed drama, layered presentation, dynamic changes, and uncertain chords, however, this is a song that does not forget that it is in fact a song—an impressive accomplishment for a classically trained composer, who would be excused if she had had all semblance of recognizable melody and structure knocked out of her in graduate school. But no: the Yale School of Music-educated Snider anchors the intermittently dense proceedings with a recurring, bittersweet melodic refrain that I’d call a chorus except that she plays with it each time so it’s never quite the same twice. It’s a lovely and affecting melody, with an enticing added beat in the second half, as the lyrics change (the first time we hear it) from “This is what you’re like,” to “This is what you once were like.” I especially like the refrain’s second visitation, when the lyrics change and the melody is almost but not quite swallowed by surging, dissonant orchestration. The song benefits greatly from Shara Worden’s dusky, charismatic presence; her eclectic background makes the My Brightest Diamond singer a natural for the project.

The overall work is called Penelope and debuted as a multimedia theater piece with music by Snider and lyrics by the playwright Ellen McLaughlin back in February ’08. It’s progressed through a number of revisions and performances since then; the song cycle version, featuring the ensemble Signal, premiered in May ’09 but even this was altered once Worden got involved. The first performance of the work in its current form came in April of this year; the long-awaited album will be released in October on New Amsterdam Records, a NYC-based label co-founded by Snider and dedicated to presenting the works of composers and performers “whose music slips through the cracks between genres,” says the web site.

Free and legal MP3: The Vaccines (catchy lo-fi goodness)

“If You Wanna” – The Vaccines

Joy Division meets—somehow—the Ramones. Don’t ask, just listen, it works. This is not a “composition”‘; this is not complex; it’s muddy and lo-fi (the band says it’s a demo, actually) but the spirit is shiny and polished and yikes is it catchy in the best possible way. And can I take a moment to rant about how badly the word “catchy” is misused in the age of internet music writing? Something isn’t “catchy” just because the singer repeats himself over and over, or just because the tune is like a nursery rhyme. Just because something gets stuck in your head doesn’t mean it’s catchy; it could be irritating and do that too. Something is catchy if the melody is smart, reasonably short, and somewhat familiar-sounding. Of course it’s a fine line between familiar-sounding and same-old, same-old. Catchy songs usually walk that razor’s edge with flair.

Oh and let’s underline the “smart” part. Others may disagree, but here in Fingertipsland, being dumb or badly-written disqualifies a song from being catchy. (And I mean dumb dumb, not smart dumb, like the Ramones were.) To me, catchy is a glowing word, the sign of a pure pop song; I don’t debase the word by using it on dumb shit. So, okay, “If You Wanna”: brilliantly gloriously catchy. With noisy guitars. The chorus sounds like an old friend but there’s a twist in the air here. Maybe it has to do with how the rhythm shifts from the Raveonettes-like drive of the verse, with its equally distributed beat, to the backbeat-heavy chorus, with such a strong emphasis of the two and four beats that you feel blown halfway back to a far more innocent time than ours (“It’s got a backbeat/You can’t lose it…”). Note how this shift coincides with the audible innocence of the song’s narrator, who seems certain that all be well should his lost lover, who obviously left of her own accord, suddenly decides she made a mistake. He sings hopefully; you the listener know there’s no hope.

The Vaccines are a brand new band from the U.K.; I can find no specific information about them anywhere—they just joined Facebook last week, for crying out loud. Thanks muchly to the fine fellows at Said the Gramophone for the head’s up on this one. MP3 via the band, at Soundcloud.

Free and legal MP3: Elsinore (well-crafted & melodic, w/ strings)

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, the melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places.

“Lines” – Elsinore

In a photography class I took some years ago, I learned that a satisfying black-and-white photograph is very likely to include the full range of the black-to-white spectrum, from the blackest black to the whitest white but also including many different in-between grays. I suspect, lacking of course any empirical evidence, that something similar is involved with music. For me, anyway, melodies that manage to hit the top and the bottom of the octave, while also employing most of the in-between notes, feel richer and often more meaningful to me than stingy tunes that stay within a more constrained range of notes.

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, its full-spectrum melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places. Ryan Groff has a crooner’s timbre and engages that ambling, string-festooned melody with a dreamy, charming nonchalance. (For the record, I’m hearing seven of the eight notes in the scale, many used more than once.) There’s that nifty chord shift in the middle of the verse (first heard at 0:15) that each time snaps the ear to attention even as nothing in particular announces it; it is not attached to either melody or lyric; and Groff lets it slide right under him, every time, most casually. The strings grow insistent, the guitars take the song back at 2:28, and the harmonies, suddenly all Brian Wilson-like, sing us up to the pensive coda. This is not some song someone dashed off on the back of a napkin in a bar.

Elsinore is a quartet from Champaign, up and running since 2004. The connection to Denmark and/or Hamlet is unaddressed by any promo material I could find. “Lines” is from Yes Yes Yes, the band’s third full-length album, released last week on Parasol Records.

Free and legal MP3: Icarus Himself (minimal, idiosyncratic trio)

That’s apparently something called an Omnichord that produces that distorted, tingly, music-box-like chiming that opens “Digging Holes.” It is among a number of unusual items this Madison-based band has in its musical bag of tricks.

“Digging Holes” – Icarus Himself

A teardrop-shaped plastic box called an Omnichord is the particular electronic gizmo creating the distorted, music-box-like chiming that opens “Digging Holes.” Introduced in 1981, it’s a homely thing, filled with slanting rows of small buttons, but also a then-futuristic “touch plate,” for mimicking strumming; and yet it is not the only unusual item this Madison-based band has in its musical bag of tricks. A baritone guitar is another—this being a low-voiced six-string that can sound like a bass but also be played like a regular guitar. Front man Nick Whetro’s minimally oriented sense of arrangement is yet another and probably the most important of the band’s idiosyncratic aural facets.

“Digging Holes” has one line of melody—it’s what the Omnichord sketches out at the beginning—and this is what we hear in and around offbeat accompaniment that veers from a reggae-like organ shuffle to Balkan-style trumpet and back again. The song develops slowly, but the stark interplay between the organ and the baritone guitar is oddly inviting, and when the “normal” guitar joins in, along with the faintest drumbeat, about a minute in, its offhand lead lines over the underlying syncopation feel for a moment as if this is all the song needs to be about. And, in a way, because the song itself barely exists—is the one repeated melody line a verse or a chorus or neither?—we really are captured, throughout, by necessarily passing moments, by sounds that appear briefly and move on (a series of four percussive slaps we hear between 1:46 and 2:00; the gate-shutting guitar sound that precedes the trumpet solo at 2:46; et al). Even those elements that persist a while, like the trumpet, or the ghostly, intermittently heard slide guitar, have the effect of being somehow apart from the song, adorning its minimalist skeleton but never supplanting it.

Icarus Himself is Whetro on vocals, guitar, trumpet, and sampler, Karl Christenson on the baritone guitar and Omnichord, and (so newly added to the lineup he’s not in the pictures yet) drummer Brad Kolberg. “Digging Holes” is a song from the band’s Mexico EP, which was released in May on Science of Sound. MP3 via Science of Sound.