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.

Free and legal MP3: Ceremony (putting the pop into noise pop)

Ever since My Bloody Valentine there have been no shortage of bands choosing to wallop our ears with washes of noisy guitars while teasing those same ears with muffled vocals, but not enough of them–either in the original shoegaze era or in its current “neo” phase–have bothered mixing a strong melody into the sonic assault. The duo calling themselves Ceremony, on the other hand, while making themselves inaccessible Googlistically speaking, have decided to put the “pop” back into noise pop.

“Someday” – Ceremony

Ever since My Bloody Valentine there have been no shortage of bands choosing to wallop our ears with washes of noisy guitars while teasing those same ears with muffled vocals, but not enough of them–either in the original shoegaze era or in its current “neo” phase–have bothered mixing a strong melody into the sonic assault. The duo calling themselves Ceremony, on the other hand, while making themselves inaccessible Googlistically speaking, have decided to put the “pop” back into noise pop.

Springing from the same Fredericksburg, Virginia trio–Skywave–that ended up giving birth to NYC’s A Place to Bury Strangers, Ceremony are loud, no question. But right away see how they take the noisy, rapid-fire beat and use it to as a framework for a melody both leisurely and tuneful. The first hint we get is the lilting–in fact, rather Cure-like–instrumental theme that emerges from the beat at 0:16. That’s an ear-friendly hook before the singing even starts. The vocals, when they arrive, are buzzy but not buried; you can not only understand a good number of words, but the singer–either Paul Baker or John Fedowitz (both are listed with the exact same credits: vocal, guitar, bass, drum machine)–sings like he wants to be heard; he’s got a portentous baritone, but he enunciates, while singing a catchy little tune when all is said and done. Rather audacious of him, especially on a song with this straightforward refrain: “Take my heart and my life/’Cause someday you’ll be my wife.” Borrowing a bit from a recent post by Michael Azzerad, one might argue that in a loud and angry age such as ours, using this particular aural toolbox to deliver an unironic, non-violent message of love and connection is more subversive than any effort to be just noisy.

“Someday” was released on a 7-inch single in January, and will appear on Ceremony’s debut second full-length album, Rocket Fire, to be released next month. Both releases are on Killer Pimp Records, which also hosts the MP3. Thanks yet again to the indefatigable Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Emily Jane White (lovely, stark, textured, and sad)

“Liza” – Emily Jane White

“It’s not my job to create happy music,” says Emily Jane White, a San Francisco-based singer/songwriter. “I’m okay with that.” This may be a tricky stance to maintain for a long career, but you and I can be okay with that too for now if the end result is something as lovely, stark, and textured as “Liza.” Sure, there’s surface-level sadness in the air, but the music, while reasonably simple, offers an enticing depth of sound and spirit right from the outset. The introduction alone is mysteriously satisfying, with its evocative blend of picked electric guitar and violin, and that repeat musical line at the finish, which makes me feel like I’ve just heard an entire story in 24 seconds.

Certainly White’s subtly toasted alto is well-suited to the “not happy” vibe, but I’m actually enjoying more her phrasing and delivery than her tone. It’s not too hard to sound gloomy; it’s hard to sound interesting while also sounding gloomy. I like her off-handed delivery, the way she manages to sound like she’s just deciding what to sing as she sings it, rather than reciting lyrics committed to memory–a particular feat in a song featuring not many lyrics in the first place. And why does the abrupt entrance of the drumming, at 1:51, sound like precisely the thing that needed to be there? Curious. The first verse, re-sung, is transformed by that insistent drum beat, which soon drives the violins into a double-time swirl, creating the feeling of a chase through the woods. The subsequent slowdown (2:56) is likewise sudden but somehow wonderful. We hear the first verse yet again. And that repeat finishing line from the introduction gets an extra repeat at the end of the song, exactly as required.

“Liza” is from White’s second full-length, Victorian America, set to be released next month on Milan Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Efterklang (affecting blend of pop and classical)

“Modern Drift” – Efterklang

Beginning with compelling, quasi-minimalist piano lines, structured around two related melodic motifs, and brilliantly integrating strings and horns with electronics and percussion, “Modern Drift” is more composition than song. Consider this a good thing–a way of bringing some of classical music’s attractive complexity into pop music’s attractive brevity. Everybody wins. We just have to work on the fact that they only seem to be able to do this sort of thing in Scandinavia.

I suggest listening to this song four or five times in a row just to let it begin to make sense in a wordless way. But if you want some handholds through the process, I recommend keeping an ear on each instrument that makes an entrance after the original piano lines–the percussion, guitar, strings, horns, and electronics. Each interacts with the underlying piano spine in a particular way, and each will come front and center in the piece at a particular time–for instance, the way the guitar begins a complementary echo of the piano at 1:28, or the very satisfying horn punctuation we begin to hear at 1:47. And listen how the strings step forward at 2:27 and create an unexpected bridge to the electronics that start at 2:45, which in turn offer a beepier version of original piano line, but now it sounds like this is home, this is where it was leading. And then the electronics withdraw and leave the unusual–but, somehow, quite natural-sounding–combination of strings and drums to bring this dexterous and affecting piece to a close. Pay attention and you’ll also hear the guitar and piano return with background support.

Efterklang is a quartet from Copenhagen that has been active since 2001. The name is a Danish word that means both “reverberation” and “remembrance.” (Grieg, a Norwegian, once wrote a lyric piece for the piano called “Efterklang.”) “Modern Drift” is the opening track from the band’s third full-length album, Magic Chairs, which was released last month on the British label 4AD. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Bettie Serveert

Dutch proto-indie band returns

“Deny All” – Bettie Serveert

Moving into their 20th year together, the Dutch band Bettie Serveert may at long last be outlasting the “college rock” tag they earned as a proto-indie band in the mid-’90s. In any case, when their new album, Pharmacy of Love, is released later this month, they will have released more albums in the 21st century than they did in the 20th. So the time is ripe for listening to this engaging, not-quite-place-able-sounding band with new ears. It’s not 1995 anymore in any possible way that I can think of.

“Deny All” presents the Betties at their fastest and crunchiest. Guitarist Peter Visser couldn’t be having a better time, combining searing lead lines with exuberantly squonky chords–one moment barely choked out, another fraying with dissonance. Leave it, however, to the fetching Carol van Dyk to distract us rather unfairly from Visser’s heroics. The Canadian-born, Netherlands-raised singer has always helped to give the band a subtly inscrutable sound; moving to Amsterdam at age seven, she apparently never quite mastered a native Dutch accent but didn’t grow up speaking English as a North American either. If you don’t listen carefully you might not notice anything unusual but then again, given that lucid voice of hers, at once bright and dreamy, why aren’t you listening carefully?

“Deny All” leads off Pharmacy of Love, the band’s ninth album, due out this month on Second Motion Records. MP3 via Second Motion. Bettie Serveert was previously featured on Fingertips in December 2003 and January 2005.

Free and legal MP3: Steve Goldberg & the Arch Enemies (wistful-cheerful, horn-peppered)

Wistful-cheerful blast of horn-peppered indie pop.

“The Ballad of Cherry Hill” – Steve Goldberg and the Arch Enemies

Wistful-cheerful blast of horn-peppered indie pop. When last we left Steve Goldberg, in 2007, he was a graduating college senior in Pittsburgh who recorded an album as a senior project with a revolving-door cast of fellow students. He has since come east to Philadelphia, pared the basic outfit down to four, and continues doing business as the Arch Enemies.

While the basic sound remains intact—he comes across as a more extroverted version of Sufjan Stevens—the production value has improved, which has given his voice more depth and the music more oomph. I like that he has bothered to create two complete musical themes that are independent of the song’s eventual melodies—these are the first two things we hear in the introduction (the pizzicato strings theme, then the horn section theme). One of the pleasing things about the song, then, becomes listening for how and when these themes recur, woven back into or between the primary melodies. (Even if you don’t realize this is pleasing your ear, honest, it is.) Another perhaps unconsciously pleasing characteristic is the juxtaposition of downcast lyrics (here painting a scene of suburban alienation) and upbeat music. This itself is not an uncommon trick in pop music, but I like how Goldberg manages to bleed the two moods into each other a bit, thus further complicating the song’s complexion—the lively music somehow lifting the words beyond mere despair even as the words simultaneously lend a bittersweet air to the music.

“The Ballad of Cherry Hill” is from the band’s four-song EP Labyrinths, which was self-released in January. Inspired by stories by Jorge Luis Borges, the EP is available for a price of your choosing, with no minimum, via the band’s site. Thanks to Steve personally for the MP3.

Fingertips Flashback: The Fauves (October 2004)

Gruff but lovable guitar pop from an underappreciated Australian band. That is, in Australia they’re underappreciated; here in the U.S., they’re completely unknown. But there’s no way I for one am not going to like the heck out of a song with a sing-along chorus featuring this lyric: “Ooh, the dirt-bike option paid off/We never settled with the workers that we laid off.” The rumbly guitars balanced by spiffy harmonies in the chorus and a wonderfully cheesy organ line are further merits.

This was always one of my favorite, power-poppy Fingertips finds. Glad to see it’s still around, as, apparently, is the band.


“The Dirt-Bike Option” – the Fauves

[from “This Week’s Finds,” Oct. 24-30, 2004]

Gruff but lovable guitar pop from an underappreciated Australian band. That is, in Australia they’re underappreciated; here in the U.S., they’re completely unknown. But there’s no way I for one am not going to like the heck out of a song with a sing-along chorus featuring this lyric: “Ooh, the dirt-bike option paid off/We never settled with the workers that we laid off.” The rumbly guitars balanced by spiffy harmonies in the chorus and a wonderfully cheesy organ line are further merits. Plus I am bound to be partial to a song that arose as follows: “The title came from listening to Terry [Cleaver; the bass player] bang on backstage at a gig in Bateman’s Bay about a new computer game he’d been playing; one in which he had ‘exercised the dirt-bike option’. Songs about computer games are boring so the main lyric dealt with the somewhat unrelated topic of messiah complexes and cults living in fortified compounds.” It seems poetic justic, somehow, that the world-weary, self-deprecating Fauves have now lasted longer than the early 20th-century art movement after which they named themselves. Formed in Melbourne in the late ’80s, the band scored some commercial successes in Australia in the mid-’90s, but have struggled more recently to get themselves heard–a reality implied by the name of the 2000 single (“Celebrate the Failure”) which contained “The Dirt-Bike Option” as a B-side. The MP3 is available on the band’s web site, along with a number of other enjoyable B-sides and rarities.

ADDENDUM: The band has definitely been active since 2004. Their most recent album came out in the fall of 2008, and late that year they played a few gigs, including a special 20th-anniversary show in Melbourne. They seem to be laying low since then.

Free and legal MP3: Jump Into The Gospel (21st-century NYC rock)

“Flagship” – Jump Into The Gospel

At once prickly and resounding, “Flagship” shows that even in 2010 there somehow remains a recognizable New York City rock-band sound. Certainly things have gotten more convoluted and diverse since the days you could trace a clear line from the Velvets to the New York Dolls to Television and the Ramones and Patti Smith, and the 21st-century alone has spawned a wide-ranging new generation of New York rockers (and note that “New York City band” does not equal “Brooklyn band,” even though Brooklyn is of course part of New York City; anyone from New York knows this intuitively). And yet, as Jump Into The Gospel demonstrates, New York City rock endures, has a distinct vibe, and will apparently survive until the day the internet, because there’s so much music here–and so much interaction and so much sharing and so much you-too-can-be-a-musician–kills music altogether. (And when that happens I suspect the New York bands will be the last to go.)

So what sounds like New York here? Front man Louis Epstein, for one, all nasally and insistent and yet also edgily vulnerable. Second, the tick-tock beat, which functions just as well during the minimalist verse as it does during the expansive chorus, and is the sound of Manhattan’s street grid, and timed traffic lights, and the unstoppable flow of pedestrians immune to the buses and taxis hurtling by. And then, New Yorkiest of all, for no reason I can articulate, that place in the chorus where the melody takes a further step down than you might initially anticipate (first heard at 0:29, on the third syllable of “situation.” (Bonus points: the drummer’s name is Chris Stein, the previous Chris Stein being Blondie’s co-founder/guitarist/songwriter. Such a good NYC rocker’s name it’s been recycled.)

“Flagship” is from the band’s debut, four-song digital EP; all four songs are available for free at the band’s site. Thanks to Some Velvet Blog for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Kate Miller-Heidke (cheeky, theatrical, Australian)

“Politics in Space” – Kate Miller-Heidke

This has nothing to do with NYC, and maybe little to do with Planet Earth. A classically trained soprano, Australia’s Miller-Heidke took a left turn out of the conservatory and didn’t look back; she traces her musical lineage not geographically but aesthetically, and maybe even psychologically. Artists like Lene Lovich and Kate Bush and Björk come to mind once Miller-Heidke turns herself loose, and the process of singing becomes intertwined with something resembling performance art.

But the cool thing is none of this is remotely ponderous–wacky, humorous, and cheeky, yes, but not ponderous. (Listen to how she briefly puts her “conservatory voice” to use—around 1:04—and you’ll see how cheeky.) Musically, the song hues to a deliberate beat, with relatively austere accompaniment—there’s a rubbery bass, a deep drum beat, a simply strummed acoustic guitar, hand claps, and not much else—except, that is, for the backing vocals. Turns out this song is all about the backing vocals, pretty much. (“Pretty much.”) Follow them all the way through and you’re in for a smile or two.

Miller-Heidke has had hit records in Australia, and also reaped praise last year for her performance in Sydney of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Previously featured on Fingertips in 2005, she has not had any music released in the U.S., until now. (Although some may know her from the live-recorded song “R U Fucking Kidding Me? [The Facebook Song],” which has had some viral success on the social media circuit.) Curiouser, an album originally released in Australia in October ’08 (and actually recorded in Los Angeles), will be released here this month on SIN/Sony Australia. Thanks very much to Victoria, at Muruch, for the lead. MP3 originally from somewhere else but remains online courtesy of Art Nouveau magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Josh Rouse (sprightly faux Latin pop w/ P. Simon feel)

“I Will Live On Islands” – Josh Rouse

I’ve had this song in the listening pile for a few weeks and maybe it’s the (finally) receding snow that has allowed me to open my ears and enjoy this merry, warm-weather-inflected bit of lovingly crafted faux Latin pop. Perhaps I didn’t quite realize how aggravating the song was previously making me, its breezy narrator imagining his imminent escape to island living. No matter the narrator is literally in prison; the metaphor hit home (Seriously: “I want to see some green/Get me out of this place”).

But spring appears to be springing, however slowly. It’ll be May before all the parking lot piles melt around here but grass is at long last visible and this week I’m charmed by Rouse’s bright, Paul Simonesque romp. And I at long last listened closely enough to understand that the point is the guy’s infectious optimism, not his present confines. Should’ve featured the tune weeks ago. Anyway, musically, yes, the echoes of Simon are clear and, even, are emphasized by the singing voice Rouse adopts. (Listen to the way he sings the word “convicted” at 0:35–that’s an homage, no way it’s not.) But let’s of course remember that Paul Simon himself was borrowing existing styles and rhythms, and Rouse, a transplanted American who has lived in Spain for five years, knows the original sources very well by now himself. If you want to see just how well, check out the Spanish-sung “Valencia,” which has been quietly available as a free and legal download via Vanity Fair since the fall.

Both songs are from the album El Turista, which is set for release next week on Yep Roc Records. The “I Will Live On Islands” MP3 is via Spinner.