Category: MP3s

Free and legal MP3: Color of Clouds (lovely blend of acoustic and electronic)

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

“Brother” – Color of Clouds

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

And things only get better from here in a song blending the acoustic and electronic in a most gracious manner–the instrumental palette here is nothing short of delightful–and building towards a brilliant, light-footed chorus. I still can’t tell if that’s some sort of steel guitar in there or a nuanced synthesizer, but those are definitely stringed instruments that arrive for a first visit at 0:57, returning with the chorus to mesh almost heart-breakingly with that steel-guitar-ish sound and, most nimbly, that subtle persistent electronic glitch in the beat. And yes I’m afraid this is one of those songs that’s far more trouble to describe than to listen to. Rest your eyes and reward your ears with repeated listens.

All three band members were previously in the electronic band Moonraker, and Scarr has also been a frequent collaborator with Moby. “Brother” is a song from the debut Color of Clouds album, Satellite of Love, released digitally this week via Stuhr Records. MP3 via One Track Mind.

Free and legal MP3: Broken Social Scene (involving single from veteran Canadian collective)

Harboring as many as 19 people in its fold, the veteran Canadian ensemble Broken Social Scene is one of those loosely organized “collectives” that the indie rock scene has often favored. But on its first album in five years, Forgiveness Rock Record, set for release next month, the group was prepared to act more like a stripped-down (for them) six-man band, largely because of difficulties getting everyone together to record.

“World Sick” – Broken Social Scene

Harboring as many as 19 people in its fold, the veteran Canadian ensemble Broken Social Scene is one of those loosely organized “collectives” that the indie rock scene has often favored. But on its first album in five years, Forgiveness Rock Record, set for release next month, the group was prepared to act more like a stripped-down (for them) six-man band, largely because of difficulties getting everyone together to record. And so the six prime movers–led by co-founders Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning–did the writing and arranging; but in the end, go figure, pretty much everyone showed up after all, including Amy Millan and Evan Cranley from Stars, Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw from Metric, Leslie Feist, and some 15 others. It just can’t be a BSS record without a crowd.

“World Sick” is the album’s lengthy opening track, an almost seven-minute composition with the big bashy sound of an anthem, the unhurried development of a prog-rock opus, and an itchy-echoey ambiance that stitches its ambitions together. The band is guitar-heavy (four of the core six are guitarists) but uses its instrument of choice judiciously. What we get is nothing like the muddy, canceling-out effect of those silly rock-celebrity gatherings when they bring nine guitarists on stage to celebrate someone’s birthday and you can’t hear any of them. Here, it’s all about dynamics, about presenting an effective spectrum of sounds from soft to loud, from individual notes to chords, from melodic lines to crashing walls of noise. And while I’m normally not too keen on long instrumental outros, I don’t mind this one, both for its subtle interplay of guitar and rhythm and nature sounds and for the thematic statement it makes in the context of its somewhat inscrutable but obviously world-weary lyrics.

Forgiveness Rock Record is due out next month on the Toronto-based Arts & Crafts label. MP3 via Magnet Magazine

Free and legal MP3: Colleen Brown (girl-group theatrics meets D. Springfield)

“Boyfriend” marches to a big, retro, triplet-driven beat, delivering a vibe that’s part girl-group theatrics, part Dusty Springfield-style R&B, part something elusive and (dare I say it?) new.

“Boyfriend” – Colleen Brown

“Boyfriend” marches to a big, retro, triplet-driven beat, delivering a vibe that’s part girl-group theatrics, part Dusty Springfield-style R&B, part something elusive and (dare I say it?) new.

This is in fact a quality that strikes me again and again about Canadian musicians, if I may generalize (and I assume positive generalizations are somewhat less irritating than negative generalizations!): their capacity for drawing upon influences without either drowning in them or negating them through archness and irony. Here, Edmonton-based singer/songwriter Colleen Brown–with a slightly dusky voice, some sly lyrics, and an easy way with a time-shifting melody–has built a song and a sound clearly grounded in the past while managing, at the same time, to resist painting herself into a history-centric corner. I’m not exactly sure how this works up there north of the border but I appreciate it every time I hear it. In any case, “Boyfriend,” with its driving stomp and gleeful vocal energy, is very much a winner in the here and now.

You’ll find the song on Brown’s second solo album, Foot in Heart, which was re-released last month by Dead Daisy Records, an independent label run by Canadian singer/songwriter Emm Gryner. The album had been previously self-released in 2008. Brown has also recorded as a part of a duo called the Secretaries. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: Stanley Ross (slow & swingy w/ a nod to bygone styles)

“Bicycle” is fetchingly slow and swingy in a way that tips its hat to bygone stylings such as doo-wop and torch songs and the Rolling Stones trying to do country. And yet the music is at the same time entirely un-nostalgic–it is performed simply, without affect, with a grounding organ line, some nice back-porch guitar work, and a winning smidgen of idiosyncrasy in the guise of Nick Meiers’ slightly neurotic (I mean that in a good way) tenor.

“Bicycle (Take So Long)” – Stanley Ross

“Bicycle” is fetchingly slow and swingy in a way that tips its hat to bygone stylings such as doo-wop and torch songs and the Rolling Stones trying to do country. And yet the music is at the same time entirely un-nostalgic–it is performed simply, without affect, with a grounding organ line, some nice back-porch guitar work, and a winning smidgen of idiosyncrasy in the guise of Nick Meiers’ slightly neurotic (I mean that in a good way) tenor. None of this would work, I don’t think, with a more straightforward singer. But Meiers has an edgy voice that gives the impression of being more wavery than it actually is, an effect that–I like to imagine–is being generated by his shaking his head so deeply in time to the music’s slow-burning groove that he’s sometimes missing the microphone. This is no doubt an inaccurate conjecture but I’ll stick with it anyway.

Stanley Ross is another one of those “hm; is this a person taking on a stage name or is this a band?” acts. Press material is shifty on the matter. I do know that Meiers, the Chicago-based front man and singer/songwriter, has himself called Stanley Ross his “band,” and the Facebook page lists three “members” so let’s stick with band. In any case, “Bicycle (Take So Long)” is a song from Stanley Ross’s third release, an EP called MN-EP, which follows two previous full-length albums. The EP is out this week and may be downloaded in its entirety for free via the netlabel RockProper.com.

Free and legal MP3: Making Movies (crunchy Spanish-language rock)

Crisp and crunchy Spanish-language, Latin-spiked rock’n’roll from…Kansas City, somehow. Get this one going and check out how easily your body wants to keep the beat even as the music itself seems to snake and sway in and around but never, it seems, directly on that same beat.

<"La Marcha" – Making Movies

Crisp and crunchy Spanish-language, Latin-spiked rock’n’roll from…Kansas City, somehow. I’ll take it from wherever; to my ears, Latin rhythms are a natural for rock’n’roll–we haven’t over the years heard nearly enough of them in any sort of mainstream way (whether mainstream mainstream or, as it were, indie mainstream).

“La Marcha” vigorously exploits the dynamics of a style of music called cumbia, which is known for melding a lopsided rhythm to a steady 4/4 beat. Get this one going and check out how easily your body wants to keep the beat even as the music itself seems to snake and sway in and around but never, it seems, directly on that same beat. One of the delights of that group-sung grunt (first heard at 0:10) is how precisely on the beat it is, compared to almost everything else that emerges from the drums and guitars. I also like how effectively the band works a slightly distorted rhythm guitar sound, straight from the rock’n’roll textbook, into the chorus, and how it leads with the Latino chord changes in a gratifying way. Don’t miss, also, when the band drifts seamlessly into a salsa montuno (you may not know what that is but you’ll hear it) for an instrumental rave-up at 1:56.

“La Marcha” can be found on the album In Dea Speramus, which the quartet self-released last month. The album, by the way, was pretty much recorded live, vocals and instruments together in real time–yet another reason this song has so much energetic allure.

Free and legal MP3: Jen Olive (undulating acoustic guitar, layered vocals)

A swirly, heady stew of loop-addled acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–Björk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her sound–I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result.

“Wire Wire” – Jen Olive

A swirly, heady stew of loop-addled acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–Björk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her sound–I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result. Olive writes outside the box of the beat, floating the melodic line in the verse like elusive tinsel that decorates the tree without touching the branches. The warm sturdiness of the short chorus becomes all the more delectable, almost mysteriously so; she sings, “I could get/Lost in it/No regret,” to a straightforward melody that out of context might not strike your ear and yet here hooks and nourishes in a wonderful, almost uncanny way.

I have no idea how someone could conceive of writing this sort of song and it may well be because no one person did; it turns out that Warm Robot, Olive’s new album, is the product of a unique collaboration between the singer/songwriter and Andy Partridge, who personally signed her to his Ape House Records label. (The XTC front man has called Olive “this astounding allegro algorithm from Albuquerque.”) She recorded the basic tracks–guitar and voice and some idiosyncratic percussion sketches made on found objects like kids’ blocks and wine bottles–and Partridge arranged and enhanced to create the final songs. The two didn’t meet face to face until the album was already finished.

The Ape House blog by the way has a two-part podcast online featuring the entire album with track-by-track commentary by Olive, worth checking out if you have time.

And I stand corrected on the loop business. Which makes this song all the more original, says me.

Free and legal MP3: Annuals

Exuberant, complex, compelling

“Loxtep” – Annuals

Fingertips veterans from Raleigh, Annuals have been featured three previous times over the past four years and somehow are still only in their early 20s. I promise at some point to stop pointing out how young they are. But geez, just listen to the conviction with which they render their exuberant, unusually structured, complex yet relentlessly attractive 21st-century rock’n’roll. I need to keep noting their relative youth because otherwise you’d never know.

“Loxtep” is another shot of Annuals adrenaline, and if it again features a characteristic shift in dynamics, note how this pliable sextet continues to explore different ways to affect that shift. This time, it’s not a straightforward matter of going from soft to loud, or slow to fast; instead, when the band crosses the dynamic borderline, at 1:08 (and can’t you sense it coming, as it gets closer?), the tempo does not increase, and while the volume does to an extent, the song isn’t as much louder after the change as deeper, and more intense. Basically, the rhythm section has kicked in, both drum and bass adding bottom to the mix that wasn’t there before (the most significant percussion we heard in the first minute was, charmingly enough, castanets). But at the same time, strange stuff is happening, such as that funky-sounding synth joining in (1:21) apparently for the fun of it.

I won’t begin to try to untangle further “Loxtep”‘s structure–which features among other things a series of musical reconfigurations of previously heard motifs–except to point out how, at around 3:05, the song manages to turn something that wasn’t the chorus (namely, the lyrical phrase beginning with “lying around”) into a sort of second, de facto chorus. Here’s a band that is truly reimagining what a pop song can be even as you can still sing and dance along. “Loxtep” is from Sweet Sister, a five-song EP the band will release next month on Banter Records. MP3 via Banter.

Free and legal MP3:Tracey Thorn (EBTG vocalist returns w/ Brel-like waltz)

“Oh, The Divorces!” – Tracey Thorn

Just the sort of lovely, bittersweet song that Tracey Thorn, known best as half of Everything But the Girl, seems born to sing. A Jacques Brel-like waltz with both pathos and humor, minimally scored with piano and strings, “Oh, The Divorces!” deftly captures the exquisite sorrow of marital demise, viewed from that stage in life when one’s friends begin to break up, in seeming droves. “Who’s next?/Who’s next?” she sings at the outset. “Always the ones that you least expect.”

The nicely sculpted lyrics are a particular treat, and not just because they emerge from Thorn’s dusky yet velvety alto, although that doesn’t hurt. At once matter-of-fact and ever so slightly sly, some of the words shine with almost Sondheimian savvy (“And this one is different/And each one of course is/And always the same/Oh, the divorces”). There’s something gratifyingly grown-up about this song–from the wise, hurt depth of Thorn’s singing to the wistful (and yet also sometimes almost ironic) bowing and plucking of the violins–and those rock’n’rollers who persist in championing loud and aggressive music as the only legitimate means of expression are so incredibly missing the boat I’m beginning to feel sorry for them, rather than annoyed. (Although I’m still pretty annoyed. Essay to follow. But read Azzerad’s first if you haven’t.)

“Oh, The Divorces!” is the lead single from Thorn’s upcoming Love and Its Opposite, slated for a May release on Merge Records. MP3 via Merge. This is her second solo record since EBTG went on hiatus in ’02. Thorn remains married to band mate Ben Watt–happily, one hopes.

Free and legal MP3: Air Waves (snappy, lo-fi chugger w/ happy energy)

Airwaves

“Sweetness” – Air Waves

Lord knows I don’t think of Fingertips as me sharing playlists with the world (um, see essay), but I have to say I entirely love how the three songs this week interlock musically. In particular, check out the strummy warmth of the intro here and how welcome it feels after the swaying sadness of Thorn’s tune. (And how perfect, somehow, that we first get that solitary drum beat, which functions as an instant head-clearer.)

Front woman Nicole Schneit is another alto, but hers is a different instrument than Thorn’s–a fuzzy, plainspoken, lo-fi voice, happy to get almost but not quite lost in the mix, happy to deliver a sing-song melody over a rumbling, chugging, two-chord accompaniment. I keep listening for a third chord but I don’t think they get there, and it goes to show you how far a snappy melody and some good innocent instrumental energy will take you in a pop song…along with, okay, some “oo-oos” and other oddities in the background, including maybe bird noises. At least I think those are bird noises.

Air Waves is a Brooklyn-based trio founded by Schneit; the name comes from a Robert Pollard song and is definitively two words, not one. To date the band has released one EP–in 2008, on Catbird Records; “Sweetness” is a new song, released on a compilation Winter Review 2010 disc put out in December by the label Underwater Peoples. The band has recently added a fourth member; a full-length album is expected later this year.

Free and legal MP3: Judson Claiborne (Americana flavored, timeless)

“Song For Dreaming” – Judson Claiborne

A pleasantly droopy piece of Americana-flavored indie rock, with a sharp sense of melody and nicely integrated guitar work. Not only do the acoustic and electric guitars play beautifully in and around each other—the ear even loses track, somehow, of which is which at some points–but the lead electric lines are central to the song’s development. You don’t hear a lot of that kind of instrumental integration these days–what we hear instead all too often is a lot of what might be called instrumental hipsterism, when sounds are used merely to be unusual—and it lends something deep and timeless to this casually-paced song.

Judson Claiborne is a stage name adopted by the singer/songwriter Chris Salveter, of Chicago, who previously sang and played guitar for the band Low Skies. But the name also seems, maybe, to have turned into the band’s name; half the material I find online refers to Judson Claiborne as a band, an impression aided by current press material showing five people in a photo labeled Judson Claiborne. In any case, it’s Salveter up front, singing a melody with wistful leaps that accentuate both the warmth and idiosyncrasies of his informal, slightly quivering voice. He’s got a touch of Jim James in there, a touch of Roy Orbison even, for crying out loud, but he never goes too far, always retreats into seeming more like a guy who happened to wander up to a microphone and who’s happy just to play guitar than any kind of self-styled crooner.

The pseudonym and/or band name by the way comes from combining a first name his father had wanted to name him (his mother: nope, “too redneck”) and a last name from ancestors on his father’s side of the family. “Song For Dreaming” is from Time and Temperature, slated for release next month on La Société Expéditionnaire, a Pennsylvania-based label. MP3 via La Soc. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.