Fingertips Flashback: Le Reno Amps(from October 2005)

Okay, the second installment of the Fingertips Flashback returns us to the year 2005 and a song that I thought never got the attention it so richly deserved. Fortunately, Le Reno Amps still seem to be active, and this song is still available online.


“Once You Know” – Le Reno Amps

[from “This Week’s Finds,” Oct. 9-15, 2005]

Scotland’s answer to They Might Be Giants, Le Reno Amps are two guys (Scott and Al) from Aberdeen with an idiosyncratic sense of song, playful ideas about making lo-fi production come to life, and an enviable knack for melody. The modus operandi is stripped-down, always geared around their two voices and two guitars. But there’s goofiness in the air too, lending an ineffable magic to the aural landscape. “Once You Know” sounds like it was recorded in a gym, with bouncing balls and/or stamping feet ingeniously employed as the rhythm section for this sharp and sprightly down-home ditty. The song gets off to a great start based on melody alone; when the “percussion” kicks in with the second verse, ably accented by some hardy background “hey!”s, the song is unstoppable. The fully-whistled verse that starts at 1:14 appears at that point both a crazy surprise and utterly inevitable. “Once You Know” is from Le Reno Amps’ archly-titled debut CD LP, released under their own (ha-ha) Vanity Project imprint last year. The MP3 is up on the band’s site. A second CD is apparently in the works for these guys, due out some time in 2006.

ADDENDUM: “We try to write with all the fat cut out so you can savour their buttery goodness,” says Scott Maple, who founded the band with Al Nero. Hard not to like that. Turns out the band’s second album did not emerge until 2007, but the good news is these guys still exist, and put their third album out just last year. The band’s name, mysterious as it sounds, is simply a pluralized anagram of the names Maple and Nero.

Free and legal MP3: The Fine Arts Showcase (melodic Swedish pop, w/ crooning)

“London, My Town” – The Fine Arts Showcase

The hand claps you hear at the outset of “London, My Town” aren’t just an intermittent percussive accent or atmospheric frill; they’re here for the duration of the song, soon acquiring a riveting sort of desperation about them. Hand claps are usually smile-inducing but these ones, not so much; whether organic or artificial, they have the sound of palms being driven together with an almost violent tenacity. That they do so underneath a most graceful melody adds to their disconcerting vigor. Neither for that matter does front man Gustaf Kjellvander, with his crooner’s baritone, have the kind of voice you expect to hear happy-claps behind.

And so check out how the song’s second section arrives, at 0:35, and immediately something feels like a clearing or a release. Yup: it’s because the hand claps have stopped for the moment. “And I’ve given up on truth,” Kjellvander sings at this point, accompanied by a pensive slide guitar line. “‘Cause I’m running out of youth.” Aren’t we all. And then the unyielding hand claps return. The song has something to do with Kjellvander’s moving back to Malmö from London after his relationship (the “Hanna” mentioned at the song’s abrupt end) has broken up; the entire album, Dolophine Smile, in fact, offers an unsparing look at the crumbling relationship. Set to graceful melodies.

The album, the Swedish quartet’s fifth, was released back in April 2009 on Malmö-based . “London, My Town” has just been made available as a free and legal MP3 via Adrian, in advance of the Fine Arts Showcase’s imminent German tour.

[Sad footnote: Gustaf Kjellvander passed away in 2011.]

Free and legal MP3: The High Places (beat-driven, but short and engaging)

“On Giving Up” – High Places

While beat-oriented songs usually puzzle me (okay: bore me) more than engage me, “On Giving Up” offers some extra hand-holds of interest and allure that make it more, to my ears, than just another manipulated groove of a song.

Let’s start with the beat itself, in which a blend of distinct sounds become difficult to pry apart aurally, and create, together, something larger than themselves. You can hear it at the very beginning: there’s the deeper, thumpier part; there’s something of an electronic tom-tom sound closely aligned with the thumpier sound (but note how the tom misses the third beat, playing only 1-2-x-4, which helps give the song its late-night swing); and then there’s this distinct, higher-pitched sound, almost like an electronic wooden drum, delivering, off the beat, what feels like the song’s central rhythm. And, phew, look: all these words to describe something happening nearly below conscious awareness and before the song even really starts. Maybe that’s why I usually steer clear of this stuff.

So anyway then comes that reverberant synth melody (0:09) and slinky bass line (0:17) and, lastly, Mary Pearson’s floaty, echoey, Beth Gibbons-y voice, equal parts burn and withdrawal. Partly I suspect this needs to be heard at ear-vibrating volume on a foggy and mysteriously lit dance floor while surrounded by blissed-out, slightly sweaty strangers. If you get there let me know how it is. “On Giving Up” is from this Brooklyn-based duo’s second album, High Places vs. Mankind, set for release in early April on Thrill Jockey Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: The Mynabirds (splendid neo-retro-gospel-pop)

“Numbers Don’t Lie” – the Mynabirds

A simple stuttering stomp of a keyboard vamp lies at the center of this nifty piece of neo-retro-gospel-pop (or some such thing; hey, I make this up as I go). While there are clearly a lot of nods to bygone times in the aural landscape of “Numbers Don’t Lie,” what charms me the most is the subtle but sure sense of currency that likewise defines this song. It is a song that belongs here in 2010 (numbers don’t lie, after all), and I think what gives me that impression has to do with clarity of presentation. From the plainly articulated keyboard notes to Laura Burhenn’s double-tracked vocals to the instantly enticing melody (note the hook-y chord change comes right in the second measure), all the pieces of the song ring with presence, with a “thereness” that separates a song that transcends its influences from a song that is smothered by them. (And, okay, those telephone-button blips in the bridge are a fun present-day touch too.)

Another point of clarity involves the song’s use of reverb, which is effective in its restraint. While the choral-like backing vocals get a reverb rinse, and the rhythm section also maybe a dose of it, Burhenn keeps her lead vocals clean. It makes an understated but incisive difference in the overall sound, and even though reverb is popular in present-day indie rock, this song’s judicious use of it makes it seem more real, more its own new thing as a result.

Laura Burhenn is known to some as half of the D.C. duo Georgie James, which played together for three years and released one album on Saddle Creek Records before breaking up in 2008. “Numbers Don’t Lie” is the first song made available from What We Lose In The Fire We Gain In The Flood, her first release as the Mynabirds, slated for an April release on Saddle Creek. Burhenn by the way named her project after the Mynah Birds, a Canadian R&B band in the ’60s that signed to Motown but never released any albums and at one point, impossibly enough, featured both Neil Young and Rick James in its lineup. MP3 via Saddle Creek.

Fingertips Flashback: A. Graham & the Moment Band (from May 2005)

Fingertips has been reviewing free and legal MP3s since mid-2003, which first of all means yikes, that’s a lot of songs by now. And second of all this means no way anyone following this site in 2010 has read all the reviews and listened to all the songs lo these many years.

Some of them, by now, and alas, are gone with the digital wind, free and legal no more. The older they are, the more likely is this to be true. But a good many of them are still available, against all odds, and what I plan to do once a week is revisit an old post, complete with the link to the still-existing free and legal MP3. Let’s say we call it the Fingertips Flashback. Or Flashback Friday, as I’m planning on doing this every Friday, pretty much. Could be Fingertips Flashback Friday for that matter. Or we don’t have to call it anything at all, as the names are sounding goofy. But it is going to need a name. I’ll work on it.

This will be a feature-in-progress but the idea is to present the original review and the link, and then maybe follow it up with a few words looking back at the past through the lens of the present, because we are all older and wiser now and have so much more interesting things to say than we used to say. In theory. Here we go, the first Fingertips Flashback:


[from “This Week’s Finds,” week of May 8-14, 2005]

“Glorious” – A. Graham and the Moment Band

There are certain sorts of on-and-off-pitch voices that are so immediately friendly and unassuming that they welcome you in like an old friend handing you a beer. Andy Graham has one of those voices. Then again, this entire song is kind of like an old friend handing you a beer, most of all the loose-limbed, sing-along chorus, featuring four of the English language’s finest words–“Glorious/ Triumphant/ Optimistic/ Transcendent”– woven together with spot-on pedal steel accents. Like Doris Henson, A. Graham and the Moment Band are another endearing, worthy band from Kansas City, Kansas. “Glorious” is the lead track on the band’s 2004 CD This Tyrant is Free, released on Sonic Unyon Records. The MP3 is available via Lawrence.com, one of the better (if also unassuming) local/regional music resources on the web.

ADDENDUM: Well, even Google can’t seem to inform me of the fate of this crazy little band from the heartland. Nothing, apparently, has been recorded since their 2004 release. In its listing on Lawrence.com, the band claims to be “alive and kicking” but there are no signs of it I can see. The song remains as friendly and approachable as ever. I don’t always feel those four words but this song reminds me it’s never out of the question.

Free and legal MP3: Regrets & Brunettes (brisk & world-weary LA rock)

“Tough Love” – Regrets & Brunettes

“Tough Love” does so much so effortlessly in its first 15 seconds that a casual listener may not hear much more than an intriguing mood. But check it out: first the brisk minor key guitar strum, at once mellow and urgent; then the slightly dissonant second guitar line (harsher and crunchier but also somewhat distant); then–out of left field but instantly perfect–the wistful, Bacharachesque horn motif (and that could be a keyboard sounding like a horn, but no matter). It’s an extraordinarily compact introduction; Richard Bivens begins singing, with the compellingly blasé tone of any number of great rock’n’roll singers–at 0:16. Better believe I’m listening.

The opening’s terrific atmosphere sustains. This is one of those unusual pop songs in which the chorus is less catchy than the other elements, and truly this seems part of the plan–as Bivens repeats “I can’t shake it,” I can just about feel the physical gesture suggested and it’s not supposed to be entirely pleasant. Everything works together here; in fact, I’m half convinced one reason the music withdraws a bit in the chorus is to give us a chance to ponder the curious lyric Bivens left us hanging with: “You used to take off your clothes/You used to curl up your toes with me.”

“Tough Love” is as song off the L.A.-based band’s debut album, At Night You Love Me, which was self-released last month.

Free and legal MP3: Lay Low (twangy Icelandic toe-tapper)

“By and By” – Lay Low

Doing musical business as Lay Low, Icelandic singer/songwriter Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir combines a genuine feel for–of all things–classic country and western with the ability, consistently shared by musicians in her home country, to tap into something marvelous and otherworldly.

On the surface, yes, the song is an upbeat, twangy little thing, but me, I am for some reason paying extra attention to how Lovísa meanders away from the regimen of the sprightly beat that appears at first to define the song. In the verses, only the first two words of each line are firmly on the beat; by the end of the verse, she willfully ignores the momentum of the song, her voice all but purring with an unusual blend of intimacy and puckishness. The chorus, meanwhile, sounds like a return to alignment (0:59) but for the life of me even when the melody appears to be in lockstep with the beat I swear she sounds like she’s laying off ever so slightly. And then soon enough (1:04) she lets it go entirely. Listen to how she manages the transition between the words “before” and “I”; I cannot describe it. And behind her it’s all just perky country playing, as if nothing is awry, as if it’s maybe just a big guy in a cowboy hat who’s on stage and we’re group-imagining this (marvelous, otherworldly) Nordic visitation.

“By and By” will be found on Lay Low’s second album, Farewell Good Night’s Sleep, due out in March on Lovísa’s own Loo label.

Free and legal MP3: Matt Pond PA (stellar effort from indie-pop stalwart)

“Starting” – Matt Pond PA

All these years and personnel changes later and Matt Pond PA, founded in 1998, still holds it own on the strength of its front man’s voices–both his singing voice and his writing voice, that is, each of which is indelible.

Vocally, Pond trades on a pensive graininess of tone and an elusive range that gives him the sound of neither–or both–a baritone and a tenor. Once you’ve heard his singing voice it is thereafter unmistakable, which is a splendid, if probably random, characteristic. And yet his true strength is the means by which he gives himself something to sing: the staunch, well-crafted songs that he writes, full of concrete words to draw us in (dead bolts, gasoline, hips, knees), parallel structures (i.e. lyrical lines that share a certain construction) to display offhand authority, inaudible lyrics to make us listen harder next time, and bright turns of melody that in fact make us want to listen any number of other times. I especially like how, in a largely inscrutable song, he manages to slip in a conclusion as pithy and suasive as: “Make no mistake/There’s no love/When the words are gone.”

Matt Pond PA was one of the first bands whose sound and depth impressed me as Fingertips was first getting going back in the ’03-’04 time frame, and indeed became one of the first 21st-century indie bands to hit some semblance of the big time via exposure on broadcast TV soundtracks. But the ’00s showed us that there is indeed a fine line between up-and-coming and down-and-going. I feel sorry for quality bands stuck navigating their careers through a fickle and fragmented culture that hews to a shallow and imaginary view of good and bad, but I am happy that Matt Pond and company persevere. “Starting” will appear on the album The Dark Leaves, the band’s eighth full-length, slated for an April release on Altitude Records. MP3 via Paste Magazine. Note that this is not a direct link; click on the song title here and you will be taken to a page from which you can then download the song.

Free and legal MP3: Woodpigeon (spacey strummer becomes hoedown)

“Empty-Hall Sing-Along” – Woodpigeon

A multifaceted musical adventure awaits you here. What begins as a sort of spacey, choral Fleetwood Mac-ish strummer takes a left turn at 1:37 and reinvents itself as a western hoedown a la Poco or Pure Prairie League (reference for those of a certain age). Front man Mark Hamilton clearly likes to surround himself with musicians–Woodpigeon is a shape-shifting ensemble featuring eight semi-regulars and a dozen and a half potential guests–but here their presence is as much vocal as instrumental. If you listen carefully, you’ll discern more than the usual number of guitar and percussion sounds, yes, but what ultimately dominates the song are an unexpectedly large chorus of voices. Five of the central eight are listed as singers and while there’s no telling who exactly is singing what, what I’m liking a lot is the vibe of a group of singers singing together, which creates an entirely different feel than multi-tracked harmonies. This is a “sing-along,” after all.

Woodpigeon is based in Calgary and issued its debut album in 2006. I don’t think I can stop myself from telling you that Hamilton called his first band Woodpigeon Divided By Antelope Equals Squirrel. That was while he was living in Scotland and it didn’t apparently amount to much. “Empty-Hall Sing-Along” comes from Die Stadt Musikanten, Woodpigeon’s third album, released this week in Canada on Boompa Records; the American release will be in March. MP3 via Boompa.

Free and legal MP3: White Hinterland (mysterious-sounding, beat-driven electro-pop)

“Icarus” – White Hinterland

Arriving on the indie scene in 2006 as a precocious, Nellie McKay-ish singer/songwriter/pianist, Casey Dienel has since taken on a band name (White Hinterland), a band mate (Shawn Creeden), and a new musical setting. I for one am happy to hear it, as I believe the world can use propulsive, mysterious-sounding, beat-driven but melodic electro-pop a bit more than it needs a second Nellie McKay.

Underscored by swooshing wind-like white noise, “Icarus” has a slinky sound that gains traction via the interplay between Dienel’s airy, plaintive singing style and the clattering rhythm sticks that are placed front and center in the mix. They are unavoidable there, and are thus transformed from percussive accent into full-fledged musical statement, particularly when Dienel sings the wordless refrain of “oo-oo-oohs” that functions as a chorus-like link between verses. Check out how the clacking rhythm stutters and syncopates along the way, just enough to keep your head in the game, to keep the song from fading into over-smoothness. Time passes much more quickly because the ears aren’t being lulled to sleep; every time I get to the end–at 3:47, the song is not notably short–I feel a little startled.

Born and raised in the Boston area, Dienel studied classical voice and composition at the New England Conservatory of Music before leaving to have a go as a pop musician. She is now located in Portland, Oregon. “Icarus” will be found on White Hinterland’s second album, Kairos, which is due out in March on Dead Oceans. MP3 via Dead Oceans.