Category: MP3s

“Symptoms” – New Ruins
     Evocative, echoey, and hypnotic, “Symptoms” unwinds to an irresistible 7/4 beat that manages to move with clock-like precision and yet also with that irregular seven-count glitch. The odd but resolute beat, kept largely by an acoustic guitar lick (and only intermittently by any percussion at all), works as a central focal point, a reliable ground on top of which muddier elements–the reverbed vocals, the indistinct background drone–can operate without entirely deconstructing the song. “Symptoms” feels at once dainty and rough-edged, traditional and experimental; the way the strings (cello and violin, it seems) bow plaintive melodies over and around a loose mash of softly clanging, echoing guitars (in particular beginning at 1:48), with a drumbeat that rarely rises about the sound of a heartbeat, kind of sums up the idiosyncratic amalgam the band appears to be seeking.
     Once a duo, New Ruins, from Illinois, has expanded to quintet for their second CD, entitled We Make Our Own Bad Luck, which was released at the end of April on Parasol Records. MP3 via Parasol.

“Come Monday Night” – God Help the Girl

Me, this is the voice I most feel like hearing after McCauley’s. I love that last song but listening to it makes my throat hurt. “Come Monday Night” is a delicious lozenge.

God Help the Girl is the name of a side project by Stuart Murdoch, the principal singer and songwriter of Belle & Sebastian. B&S fans will clearly hear the Murdochian touch here in terms of the lilting melody and the general (for lack of a better word) twee-ness. After the dreamy, wordless vocal introduction, featuring a spare piano and a touch of strings, “Come Monday Night” picks up speed and lushness as vocalist Catherine Ireton sings with a sweet but solid presence—her tone is pure but not sugary—and that place in the verse where the melody takes a gentle turn upwards, three times in a row (the phrase we first hear starting at 1:01): isn’t that just meltingly gorgeous? Each successive upward turn is a whole step above the previous one, and Ireton’s voice makes the expanding leaps with airy aplomb; this phrase is the song’s distinct hook, and a mighty example of Murdoch’s melodic gift. Who plants hooks so casually in the second half of a verse? There’s no chorus in the song; he didn’t need it.

Described as “a story set to music,” God Help the Girl is name of both the group and the album; it’s a project Murdoch has been working on intermittently since 2004. Ireton, from Scotland, is lead singer on 10 of the 14 songs; the vocalists were initially recruited via an internet ad in 2007. Ireton is otherwise one half of the duo Go Away Birds (Murdoch sings on one of the songs on the band’s EP); she is also the woman pictured on the sleeve for “The White Collar Boy,” a B&S single. There’s a nice video introduction to the whole thing on the project’s web site (scroll down). The album will be released next month on Matador Records; MP3 via Matador.

“Fetal Horses” – John Vanderslice
     Long-time Fingertips hero John Vanderslice returns on a new record label but with more of the wonderfully produced, smartly written music that has characterized his work to date. “Fetal Horses” is not necessarily a grabber but is a grower at once beautiful and unsettling.
      The first handhold into the piece, for me, is that gorgeous transition from the end of the verse to the bridge, as he sings, “I wanted you/To come back to me again.” The line begins, actually, as if the beginning of the verse again, but drifts on the “you,” which meanders–while also enhanced by octave harmonies–into the rest of the line, hewing to a heartbreaking melody that is vintage Vanderslice, its beauty simultaneously enhanced and subverted by disquieting piano fingerings, deftly placed strings, and, oddly, the wheezing, high-pitched carnival organ that plays through much of the song. Keep an ear on both piano and organ, as they each seem sometimes to be accompanying a different song than this one, offering enticing juxtapositions and textures that play off the beauty much as the grim and elusive lyrics do. The guitar solo at 1:58 is another jarring-but-engaging highlight.
     “Fetal Horses” is from the CD Romanian Names, to be released next month on Dead Oceans. And here’s a nice JV touch: the first 100 fans who pre-ordered the CD received an immediate download, plus a nicely-packaged snippet of the actual analog master tape used in recording the album. MP3 via Dead Oceans.

“Sound the Alarms” – Immaculate Machine

With a clipped, martial beat, multifarious percussion, and gang vocals, “Sound the Alarms” has the vibe of something at once urgent and good-natured. It’s hard not to feel welcomed in by a song that begins: “Bad luck, my generation/The good ideas have all been taken.” Most of the lyrics, except the title phrase, are subsequently swallowed up by the ambiance, but a worthy ambiance it is, with the refreshing feeling of musicians actually playing and singing together at the same time in the same room. We’re I think supposed to get worked up about something, but not quite so worked up that we want to put down our instruments.

And I say yes, if you’re going to have a song dominated by a strong, repetitive beat, do exactly this: throw all sorts of percussive sounds into the mix, and if some of them sound like pots and pans, all the better. Invite a guitar in for a scorching solo two-thirds of the way through and you’ve just about got your song. (To be clear, I speak here without irony. I like this a lot. Sometimes I like tragic, sometimes I like fun. It’s a big world.)

A quintet from Vancouver, Immaculate Machine is fronted by childhood friends Brooke Gallupe and sometime New Pornographer Kathryn Calder; the band, at that point a trio, was featured on Fingertips in 2007. “Sound the Alarms” is from their fourth full-length CD, High on Jackson Hill, released this week on Mint Records.

“Pastures” – We The They
     Crisp, well-recorded modern pop with a knowing touch of the ’60s about it, “Pastures” does in fact put me in the mind of open fields: this feels like a romp in the fresh air compared to a lot of what our glitchy, mashed-up, over-programmed decade has produced. No laptops were harmed in the creation of this song.
     From their quick Roy Orbison nod at the beginning (both lyrically and vocally) to their winsome Kinks-meet-the-Beach-Boys vibe, We The They manages to look backward without getting stuck there. Familiar snippets of words and melody shoot by, the background harmonies soar (and, sometimes, sink–check out that merry down-sliding note at 1:15), and everything is enlivened by the briskness of the beat and an underlying silliness that one can’t quite put one’s finger on but it’s definitely here somewhere. Front man Robert Wayne has a rubbery voice that is equally convincing emoting and being a goofball. Consider it a useful skill.
     “Pastures” is a song from the band’s three-song EP The Shabby Road Sessions, which came out last year in a limited self-release, then a digital release; and then, more recently, a video for the song has caught on amongst those who like to watch their music, so much so that the EP is going to be re-released this summer on an actual record label. No word yet on which one. The band is likewise at work on their first full-length album, which they’re hoping to release before year’s end.