Category: MP3s

Free and legal MP3: Villagers (indirect, well-crafted keeper)

“Becoming a Jackal” – Villagers

“Becoming a Jackal” is not necessarily an immediate smash hit; it insinuates rather than sweeps away. Never is it uninteresting, however, and I mean that quite literally, in a moment to moment way. Great hooks are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but songs can sometimes coast a bit too much in between the hooks, not to mention that sometimes it’s a fine line between hook-y and facile, never mind hook-y and annoying. (You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever gotten a song stuck in your head that you don’t even like.) So there’s definitely a place in my pop universe for songs like this that use well-crafted indirectness, unexpected twists, and tension-building restraint to gain your trust and devotion.

Sink into the song’s small moments, let them float by and gain strength, notice the subtle shifts in accompaniment, and eventually a few become their own, quirky sorts of non-hooky hooks. The recurring phrase “I was a dreamer” at the beginning of the not-very-chorus-like chorus may be the first that sticks but a number of other melodic motifs grow in stature as the song unfolds. I like the one that first comes, at 0:26, with the lyrics “in the scene between the window frames”; when we hear it (I think for the third time) at 2:21, with the lyrics “you should wonder what I’m taking from you,” it sounds like a climactic moment, but only because of how artfully we’ve arrived there.

Villagers is the name Dubliner Conor J. O’Brien has given to his musical project, which is kind of a band but kind of not a band. “Become a Jackal” is the title track to the debut album, to be released next month on Domino Records. MP3 via Domino.

Free and legal MP3: Hey Marseilles (rollicking 21st-century ensemble pop)

“Rio” – Hey Marseilles

Funny, if you think about it: the 21st-century to date has arguably contributed two abiding types of music to the rock’n’roll idiom, and they’re kind of the exact opposites of each other. One is the music played by a two-person band, with keyboards and synthetic sounds at the forefront; the other is the music played by a large-ish group of people (typically five or more) wielding an idiosyncratic assortment of often (but not exclusively) acoustic instruments. Not that each type of ensemble plays one precise kind of music, so I’m not really talking about two new music styles or genres as much as two new musical energies or platforms, both thriving over the last ten years or so.

Hey Marseilles, as you can almost guess from the name, is the second type–a seven-piece band from Seattle that plays things like accordion, cello, viola, mandolin, banjo, trumpet, and (wait for it) drumbourine. Now on the one hand, just putting a bunch of musicians with a bunch of instruments together is no guarantee for sonic success, and yet one could argue on the other hand that seven people who can play non-amplified instruments well enough together to make a coherent sound have an immediate leg up over a standard, four-person electric outfit. But then on the other other hand it also happens that larger ensembles can get so caught up in merely making the sound they make that the songs themselves–melodies, chords, structures–come up lacking. Not so with these guys, however. “Rio” is a joy from the opening hand claps, a sweetly rollicking neo sea shanty with terrific interplay between music and lyrics and delightfully rich instrumental layers. You never quite know which sounds are going to match up with which other sounds as the piece bounds along. It’s great fun, both light and deep.

“Rio” is a song from the band’s debut album, To Trunks and Travel, originally self-released in 2008, but which is getting a national re-release in June via Onto Entertainment. Thanks to the irrepressible Largehearted Boy for the head’s up. And if you want a sense of what this musical energy is like in person, check out this live performance of “Rio” from the band’s visit to KEXP:

Free and legal MP3: The National (brisk, deliberate burner)

“Afraid of Everyone” – The National

“Afraid of Everyone” starts spooky, slowly and surreptitiously picks up a pulse, then a driving beat, but even as it does remains tight and restrained. This juxtaposition of brisk and deliberate adds layers to the eeriness, just as the fear expressed lyrically broadens from interpersonal to existential: what begins with a reference to today’s poisonous political environment ends with Matt Berninger singing, semi-imperceptibly, “Your voice has stolen my soul.” Notice (this strikes me as important) that the song itself does not change tempo; what happens is that the band finally–first around 1:10 and then more fully at 1:25–picks up on the song’s implicit beat, and literally drives home the frightened and frightening message. Repeated listens give this one a palpably deeper and deeper burn.

Originally from Cincinnati, now in Brooklyn, the National has been steadily building a critical and popular following, as expansively discussed in a recent article in the New York Times. Personally, I’ve been reserved about them in the past, in part because I didn’t give Berninger’s portentous but limited (and mumbly) baritone enough time to let the intrigue of the music penetrate. Not sure if I’m in the process of full conversion, but I very much look forward to listening to the new album, High Violet, in its entirety (which you can do this week on NPR.) The album comes out officially next week on 4AD. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: The Mynabirds (L. Burhenn returns w/ more great retro pop)

Laura Burhenn takes the standard blues progression and shapes it into a fiery piece of retro pop. Every last detail is exquisite, and yet the thing just plain stomps too. Right away, I love how the song starts in such a hurry it feels as if we’re joining in midstream and then oops it stops at that place four seconds in for that great, conflicted “Oh!” from Burhenn.

“Let the Record Go” – the Mynabirds

I cannot resist a repeat visit to the Mynabirds album, with this second free and legal MP3 now available (and also given what a great little set of music this comprises with the previous two selections). I just mainline this kind of sound–open my veins and inject it straight in. Laura Burhenn takes the standard blues progression and shapes it into a fiery piece of retro pop. Every last detail is exquisite, and yet the thing just plain stomps too. Right away, I love how the song starts in such a hurry it feels as if we’re joining in midstream and then oops it stops at that place four seconds in for that great, conflicted “Oh!” from Burhenn.

So many parts to like in such a short song!: the extended, melismatic “Oh” that functions as something between a verse and a chorus at 0:26; the repeated way the music stops or slows at just the right moments, without ever giving us the feeling of being interrupted; the fleeting bit of theatrical singing we hear at 1:04, as if maybe Lene Lovich has made a brief cameo; and then oh man when that opening “Oh!” comes back a third time right near the end (2:15) it completely melts my heart.

So if you missed it the first time, please rush back and listen as well to “Numbers Don’t Lie,” the first Mynabirds MP3 featured back in January. And then do yourself an even greater favor and buy What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood, which was released just last week on Saddle Creek; it’s a strong strong effort from a gifted musician.

Free and legal MP3: The Silver Seas (buoyant pop w/ faux ’70s-soul sheen)

Effortlessly enjoyable pop with a faux ’70s-soul sheen. And I mean the faux part in a good way–after all, it’s not the ’70s anymore (by a long shot). It’s far more fun to hear a group of 21st-century popsters re-imagine this sound with a present-day oomph than to hear some slavish recreation of the distant past.

“The Best Things In Life” – The Silver Seas

Effortlessly enjoyable pop with a faux ’70s-soul sheen. And I mean the faux part in a good way–after all, it’s not the ’70s anymore (by a long shot). It’s far more fun to hear a group of 21st-century popsters re-imagine this sound with a present-day oomph than to hear some slavish recreation of the distant past.

But there’s no doubting that the ’70s are the musical mother lode for this Nashville-based trio. Last time we heard from them they were more in James Taylor/Jackson Browne mode; this time Daniel Tashian and company have swung, literally, into Hall & Oates territory, with a loving, twice-removed nod to the Philadelphia Sound that that duo themselves mined. It’s a breezy R&B groove poised brashly between Motown and disco, and the breeziness is exactly why slavish recreation would be self-defeating. You have to sound sharp but you can’t sound rigid, and these guys strut it just right, propelled by a melody that steadfastly refuses to align with the beat in a song filled with large and small pleasures. A favorite smaller moment comes with the third lead-in to the chorus (2:34). The previous two times, the chorus begins after two smooth H&O-like “oo-oos,” covering four brisk measures, which is exactly what the song appears to demand. The third time, they sing the two “oo-oos” once and then repeat them, which if you’re not listening carefully you might not even notice. But it’s one of those great songwriting tricks, giving us a subtle, unexpected, hang-on-what’s-not-quite-right delay before the final payoff.

“The Best Things In Life” is a song from the band’s new album Chateau Revenge, which was released digitally by the band this month; the physical album is due out in July. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: Patrick Wolf (both channeling and reinterpreting K.Bush)

“Army Dreamers” – Patrick Wolf

I can count on one hand the number of cover songs I’ve posted here on Fingertips over the years; I’m not at all against them in theory, but I don’t usually feel compelled to talk about them. It’s more of a “Oh, that’s interesting,” and on we go. But this was a no-brainer from the opening drum-and-piano salvo. How different from the original and yet immediately exactly right. Wolf here has done the near impossible with a cover version: he has revealed the depths awaiting us in a song that even its writer hadn’t quite plumbed.

And that is to take nothing away from Kate Bush, whom I love unabashedly. But she wrote and sang “Army Dreamers” for her 1980 album Never For Ever, which found her in transition between the lush, piano-based, teenaged sounds of her first two records and the more complex, Fairlight-fueled, experimental direction she would develop fully with The Dreaming and Hounds of Love. Her original was a delicate, string-filled waltz, with a hint of weird around the edges. (But, note, a #1 record in the U.K.) Wolf–an intense, theatrical character in his own right–has done nothing as much as show us how Bush herself might have recorded this once she truly hit her stride. The martial rhythm, the creative synthesizer flourishes, the inventive percussion, the ghostly backing vocal (whether real or synthesized, an obvious homage), not to mention the exotic counter-vocal, are all evident Bushisms. But perhaps Wolf’s most splendid and mysterious accomplishment is singing in his shadowy baritone–not doing an imitation, not in fact remotely sounding like her–and yet all but channeling the great and mighty KB. Thirty years later, he delivers a cover that sounds at least as authentic as the original.

“Army Dreamers” is a track from a massive compilation album put out by the Spanish music collaborative Buffetlibre in support of Amnesty International. For five euros, you get 180 MP3s from 50 musicians from around the world, including Marissa Nadler, Ra Ra Riot, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the Antlers. All songs are exclusive and previously unreleased. Visit Buffetlibre for more information.

Free and legal MP3: Marching Band(Swedish indie pop duo)

“It Will Never Slip” – Marching Band

Marching Band is a duo. If you were Sherlock Holmes, that should tell you everything you need to know about this song, which engages and delights largely via a subtle, playful contradiction between the big and the small. “It Will Never Slip” is full of grand, large-scale gestures performed in a modest, almost intimate setting. The song is big and echoey but also small and unassuming. It opens and closes–as do any number of bloated, album-rock standards of the ’80s–with an elusively familiar acoustic guitar riff. But note that otherwise you don’t even hear the acoustic guitar, because, after all, there are just two guys in the band. They’ve got other instruments to tend to.

And there are pretty much just two chords in the whole song. I do not believe this is because they only know two chords. Instead, consciously or not, it’s another sly way of being big and small at the same time: you’ve got the fleet-footed melody, alternately bouncing and running up and down, but you’re framing it onto those two chords–which are, in fact, C and G, perhaps the two most basic chords in the whole game. Verse and chorus, both the same two chords, but check out how they sew it all together in the chorus, between the lyrics, with that anthemic downward trio of notes (so it’s like mi-re-do). That’s typically heard in a huge, stadium-rock gesture, complete with slashing guitar chords. Here I think I’m hearing a banjo.

Marching Band hails from Linköping, Sweden, a small city roughly halfway between Göteburg and Stockholm. They’ve been playing since 2005, and released their first album in ’08. “It Will Never Slip” is from the forthcoming Pop Cycle, due out next month on U&L Records. The MP3 is another available via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Middle East

Slowly unfolding, deeply engaging

“Blood” – The Middle East

Over a stately acoustic guitar noodle that wouldn’t sound out of place on a mid-career Genesis album, “Blood” unfolds slowly yet engages the ear instantly. (That’s an advanced maneuver in the rock’n’roll style book, by the way.) The anticipation is delicious; the song doesn’t fully cook until 2:55 but I don’t think you’ll be bored. Engaging musicianship, sensitive and creative arrangement, affecting vocals, intriguing and well-crafted lyrics, short-term melodies, long-term structure: this six-piece from northern Queensland offers a full arsenal, even–what the heck–a children’s chorus before the thing is through.

I read somewhere that this song tells the story of three different relationships, two ended by death, one by divorce, but don’t expect to pick that up easily; the band’s singer has a lovely, Bon Iver-esque tenor that functions more like an instrument than a tale-teller. We pick up the occasional sonorous phrase–“She woke up in a cold sweat on the floor”; “Burned by the sun too often when she was young”–but as the song develops musically, the words fade into the fabric of the composition, eventually to be left aside entirely once the central musical motif–a refrain first heard as a whistled melody at 2:01–rises in climactic, wordless, choral repetition two-thirds of the way through (the aforementioned children’s chorus).

Formed in 2005 in a quiet village near the Great Barrier Reef, the Middle East self-released an album entitled The Recordings of the Middle East in 2008. And then decided to break up. And eight months later decided to re-form, with some personnel changes. The original album was then given an Australia-wide re-release in abridged form as an EP by Spunk Records, an Australian label that happens also to release a lot of big-time American indie rock (Spoon, the Shins, Joanna Newsom, Okkervil River, et al). The EP made it to the U.S. late in 2009, and the band itself arrived for the first time this spring and is currently touring here. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Love Language

Brisk, shuffly indie pop

“Heart to Tell” – the Love Language

This one also begins with an acoustic guitar riff, but an entirely different kind that goes in an entirely different, happy-shuffly Shins-meet-the-Left-Banke direction. A brisk slice of indie pop sparkle.

Attentive visitors may recall the Love Language from “Lalita,” a song featured here last May that ended up on the year-end “Fingertips Favorites” list. “Heart to Tell” likewise swings on a pronounced one-two rhythm, but with a gentler vibe than “Lalita.” This time around the band has jettisoned the distorted vocals and funneled its penchant for harsh guitars into one short–but memorable–instrumental break. Also jettisoned this time around, in fact, is the band itself–Raleigh-based master mind Stuart McLamb has let go of the four or five or six others (reports varied) who last time functioned as the Love Language, now doing the mad genius thing by himself, aided and abetted by producer BJ Burton. The end result is a less lo-fi Love Language, but no less loose and energetic.

“Heart to Tell” is from the Love Language’s forthcoming Merge Records debut, Libraries, slated for a July release. MP3 via the fine folks at Merge.

Free and legal MP3: CocoRosie

Gentle, invigorating, inscrutable exotica

“Lemonade” – CocoRosie

Ah, CocoRosie: I do not know what planet these two women live on but it is surely a richer and more exotic place than the one the rest of us inhabit. Or maybe it’s just that they inhabit a far greater percentage of this planet than most of us do, being quite the globe-trotting pair of sisters. This new album of theirs alone was recorded in Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Melbourne. Good thing this was before the volcano.

Fortunately, you do not have to understand what they are trying to do, or why, to find yourself captivated by this gentle but invigorating song. A soothing, chime-filled opening measures leads to a lovely piano line, alternating major and minor arpeggios, and the tender but haltingly sung verse. Not sure if it’s Sierra or Bianca here but the phrasing is odd and the words are odder, offering images but no discernible story. A fat synth joins in, and some horns, which play in slow motion but lead to the jaunty, double-time chorus, enlivened now by some deep, rubbery drums. Lyrical clues now tell us we are in childhood memory territory, but there’s still no narrative, just image-moments, and a magic realism sort of sensibility (“Shot a rabbit from the backseat window”?). But with the Casady sisters, given their unusual, itinerant childhood, this could all be a simple tale of a family outing. I’m not sure I’d’ve wanted to be there, but I do love hearing about it.

“Lemonade” is from the duo’s new album, Grey Oceans, which is coming out next month on Sub Pop Records. MP3 via Sub Pop.