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There’s a new Q&A available on the main Fingertips site, this time featuring an email conversation with Dirk Darmstaedter.

Darmstaedter is a Hamburg, Germany-based singer/songwriter who spent his formative years in Teaneck, New Jersey. He hit it big in Europe with his band The Jeremy Days in the late ’80s; they remained together through 1995. Since then, Darmstaedter has released a variety of albums as a solo artist. He also co-founded Tapete Records, a record label notable for its good taste, in 2002. “We Are Waves,” a song from Dirk’s Our Favorite City CD, was featured on Fingertips in June 2007.

The Fingertips Q&A is a recurring feature; each month, a real, working, album-making musician will answer a few direct questions about the current state of music in the 21st century, and where things may be going.

The Fingertips Q&A debuted last month with singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke.

“Morning Tide” – The Little Ones

There’s lightweight-breezy and there’s substantive-breezy, and the Little Ones, a quintet plying power pop from Los Angeles, have nailed the wonderful but difficult job of being substantive-breezy. That’s really what great power pop is about: music that sails and soars but is nevertheless grounded in something deep and true and serious.

So, how to tell the difference between the lightweight and the substantive, when the music is in both cases so breezy and easy and catchy? I look to the craft of it for clues. When there’s more than one hook, that’s a good sign (“Morning Tide” has three, to my ears). When there the song is instrumentally interesting–when, that is, the instrumental parts are themselves worth listening to–that’s another good sign. (The Little Ones, it should be known, like to use a Mellotron, which is potentially a bonus.) Lyrics that aren’t totally vapid: yet another sign (unintelligible lyrics are fine, by the way). Best of all, I discern substance in the unexpected twist or turn–when the song goes somewhere you might not have expected but, once it’s there, it’s perfect. In “Morning Tide,” that moment for me comes halfway through the chorus, when the melody jumps up and shifts rhythms–the “It’s something to think about” part (1:49). Where did that come from? Wonderful stuff.

“Morning Tide” is the title track to the band’s second CD, which was released in the U.K. in July, and is scheduled for an October release in the U.S. on Chop Shop Records.

Lots of you appear to be doing the same. See you next week.

“Days Black Purple Nights” – Peppertree
     If the Montreal-based quartet Peppertree lacks to date the internet buzz of some of their French Canadian peers, it’s not for lack of talent or great songs. “La Cage Appât,” featured on Fingertips in 2006, was a number-one song on the Fingertips Top 10 that year; “Days Black Purple Nights” is another idiosyncratic winner–less overtly dramatic, perhaps, than its predecessor, but with a beautiful sense of development and atmosphere.
     The song starts with some sly misdirection. After a short, dreamy guitar line, we’re introduced to an insistent organ, alternating between one major and one minor chord, which hammers the song’s pulse into our heads. After 15 seconds of that, a lower-register guitar melody, staccato and ascending, glides in and takes over. This will prove to be the musical core of the song. Fifteen seconds later, the organ, without fanfare, disappears, having done its job. When singer Patrick Poirier enters, one minute into the song, the character of the piece has been altered. In an aching tenor that calls Thom Yorke to mind, Poirier sings over a musical clearing of sorts, acoustic guitar and crisp percussion now pushing us along, with the authority lent to it by the non-presence of the pounding organ. And here we feel the full effect of the minor chord the organ had earlier introduced us to: listen at 1:14 or so and experience the sense of loss induced by the march into the minor key. And then: pay attention to how Poirier is joined by singer Marianne Charland, who enters the song subtly–first harmonizing at the end of the un-chorus-like chorus (1:38) and then, more prominently, singing along with the wordless melody that the guitar had played in the intro. After that, she’s fully on board, singing prominent harmony lines and, sometimes, countermelodies. I think the 30 seconds in the middle of the song, from 2:00 to 2:30, with Charland most audible, nails everything together here.
     “Days Black Purple Nights” is one of four songs on Peppertree’s new EP, A Green Flash From the Sun. All four are available on the band’s site as free and legal MP3s.

“Buttons” – The Weeks
     This one teeters on an unexpected edge–between swagger and vulnerability–and pulls it off for no fathomable reason. I mean, the Weeks are five guys from Mississippi with an average age of 18; they have no particular business sounding so sure of themselves (without being obnoxious), never mind writing such a well-crafted song, never mind having figured out how to channel the best energy of straight-ahead classic rock’n’roll while sounding like neither a nostalgia trip nor a snore.
     Maybe the key to this song’s power lies in how well the chorus works both soft and loud. The first time we hear it (1:22), it comes after a lengthy instrumental crescendo, featuring 20 straight seconds of rat-a-tat drumming, building and building towards…an apparently quiet chorus, with singer Cyle Barnes using the cracked and drowsy side of his vocal style. The chorus is then repeated, much the same way, although now the surging drumbeat returns, and then we get yet two more repetitions, at full volume–Barnes now singing an octave higher and with a barely stifled scream in his delivery. The melody and the words somehow match both moods. And what a melody it is–there’s something deep and classic and surprising in it, like a power pop sheep in bar-band wolf’s clothing. Barnes attacks it with gusto and pathos each time, those final words–“Take a look at what we had”–sounding more and more heartbreaking as the song unfolds.
     “Buttons” is from the band’s debut CD Comeback Cadillac, released in July on the Jackson, Miss.-based label Esperanza Plantation.

“Jackson Leftfield” – Boxer the Horse
     Jaunty, nicely textured indie pop from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, of all (beautiful) places. Harmonica, acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and an intermittent electric guitar intermingle with uncanny merriment, while singer/guitarist Jeremy Gaudet exudes an amiable sort of lazy energy, sounding something like Ray Davies fronting a jam band (minus the jamming). This is music that makes you smile, as well as tap your toe.
     The harmonica brings you into the song and immediately makes me wonder: what happened to harmonicas? Outside of an earnest neo-folksinger or two, I don’t think I’ve heard much of this handy little instrument in the 21st century. I always like when it breaks out of its blues-based box. Here I’m reminded of the late great British band the Housemartins, who not only featured a harmonica now and again but even had a song lyric reference (“Played his harmonica ’til his lips were sore,” from the song “I Smell Winter”).
     “Jackson Leftfield” can be found on Boxer the Horse’s debut EP, The Late Show, which was released by the band this spring.

Just letting you know about a new feature on the main web site: the Fingertips Q&A.

For all the online discussion in recent years about the so-called “future of music,” it occurs to me that we rarely if ever hear a lot about what musicians themselves have to say. And I mean work-a-day musicians who are out there seeking a living wage in the middle of the indie jungle. Fingertips would like to correct this problem, via a short, recurring Q&A feature. Here, each time, a real, working, album-making musician will answer five direct questions about the current state of music in the 21st century, and where things may be going.

The first Q&A subject: singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke.

Time to check back in with the Fingertips Top 10, that shape-shifting, ear-bending list of pure free and legal MP3 goodness. Since the last post here on June 4, the chart has changed quite a bit, and now aligns as follows (songs that have been added since early June are marked with an asterisk):

1. “Albert” – Ed Laurie*
2. “I Lost the Monkey” – the Wedding Present*
3. “Animé Eyes” – the Awkward Stage
4. “My Mistakes Were Made For You” – the Last Shadow Puppets*
5. “Spirit of ’95” – Murdocks*
6. “Say Yes” – Afternoons*
7. “Yer Motion” – Reeve Oliver
8. “Boarded Doors” – the Morning Benders
9. “Black Lungs” – the New Frontiers
10. “Was I On Your Mind” – Jessie Baylin*

Ed Laurie’s haunting song “Albert” came to the chart this week, just as the previous number-one song, “Right Away” by Pattern is Movement, had reached its three-month anniversary and had to be retired. It’s not often that a song enters at number one, but timing, as they say, is everything. Songs can shift around a bit as the weeks go by, depending upon three things: which songs have to leave, which new songs arrive, and how songs grow on me over time. “I Lost the Monkey” is a good example of a song that just keeps sounding better and better to me; it might have moved up from number four to number one this week had not the compelling Mr. Laurie appeared.

For those relatively new to Fingertips, note that the Top 10 list is my way of putting a little bit of extra attention on ten particularly wonderful songs at any given time. It’s important to remember, however, that Fingertips only features carefully filtered music to begin with, so you can’t go wrong with any of the MP3s featured here.

Songs remain in the Top 10 for a maximum of three months, before they are retired to the Retired Top 10 Songs page, of all places.

There’s still a little time left to enter the Joe Strummer contest–deadline for entry is this Thursday, July 24. Three winners will each get two related prizes: a copy of the movie The Future Is Unwritten on DVD, and a copy of the movie’s soundtrack on CD. The Future Is Unwritten is a documentary about the life of the late, lamented Joe Strummer, released on DVD earlier this month.

The Fingertips Contest remains open for entry. Three winners this time will each get two related prizes: a copy of the movie The Future Is Unwritten on DVD, and a copy of the movie’s soundtrack on CD. The Future Is Unwritten is a documentary about the life of the late, lamented Joe Strummer, released last week on DVD. Deadline is Thursday, July 24; contest details here.