Free and legal MP3: Tahiti 80 (carefree English-speaking French pop)

“Unpredictable” – Tahiti 80

Carefree English-speaking French pop from a band doing it before it was a genre. There’s something not only charming but truly satisfying about a song that works quite so well both for people who are barely paying attention and for people paying close attention. This is no small feat. For the first group, a jaunty, smoothly sung tune is all that’s required. Great background music. The second group is trickier to please, as the music has to display a sort of depth that jaunty, smoothly sung tunes by their nature often lack.

The depth here, for me, is rooted in the song’s offhanded musicality. “Unpredictable” is full of interesting moments that whisper rather than shout as they unfold. Listen, for instance, to the very start: we hear a basic drumbeat that the ear expects to be established through four standard measures but instead–there for us to notice, or not–it’s interrupted after three seconds, in the second measure, which grounds the song in a sort of percussive pre-introduction. Only after that comes the standard four-measure intro. Listen, as another example, to the subtle adjustments the melody makes in the verse and how seductively singer Xavier Boyle wraps his faintly textured tenor around them: the way the melody mimics the keyboard riff at 0:23; the slow then fast pacing in the phrase “knock me down” at 0:31; the way the verse line is shortened and turned on the unresolved phrase “on the wall” at 0:35; and that’s just in the first verse. I give the band points, too, for an entirely different kind of craftiness–how the song title comes not from the chorus but from the verse. That’s rare in a chipper number like this one; anyone seeking only the inattentive audience will place the title where it repeats most obviously.

Bouncing along since 1993, Tahiti 80 is quartet from Rouen, France. “Unpredictable” is from the album Activity Center, the band’s fourth, which has been out for a year in Europe; its U.S. release comes, at last, later this month.

Free and legal MP3: Múm (melancholy mystery from Iceland)

Múm

“Illuminated” – Múm

The fact that Múm wrote the music to its most recent album in the middle of Iceland’s economic meltdown and political upheaval adds poignancy to the already melancholy beauty of “Illuminated.” Against a bed of mystical tinkling and mysterious vocal arpeggios, “Illuminated” doesn’t so much start as float into being. The extended chord progression described by the angelic arpeggios becomes the framework of this soothing but enigmatic song. A minute passes before front man Gunnar Örn Tynes begins a lyrical exploration of the central chord progression, a 30-second vocal segment that we hear just twice, the second slightly altered from the first: in both cases, a dreamy, impressionistic account of a man falling off his bike, into the snow, and then melting the snow and drinking it.

There is nothing to analyze here intellectually. The song floats into being and floats out of being. A man falls in the snow, illuminated. Voices sing wordlessly, unusual keyboards play, and a string quartet. Somewhere a country is falling apart. Somewhere else someone falls off a bicycle into the snow.

You’ll find “Illuminated” at the tail end of Múm’s latest album, Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know, the band’s fifth. MP3 via Better Propaganda.

Free and legal MP3: Surfer Blood(instantly engaging, unusually constructed)

“Floating Vibes” – Surfer Blood

“Floating Vibes” has that deep guitar thing going right away, which I always find gratifying. And which always makes me wonder why rock’n’roll has so consistently (and, to my ears, stupidly) glorified the sound of a wailing guitar played so high up on the neck that there’s no room left for the guitarist’s fingers. I’ll take the robust, thoughtful tremor of the lowest register over screechy wails any day. And check out the countervailing seventh notes that begin appearing at 0:20, floating with offhand precision above the darker sound, the quasi-dissonance of that interval perking the ear up in a most welcome and curious way. This song is pretty great before singer John Paul Pitts–known merely as JP–opens his mouth.

And it gets better. The basic guitar refrain of the introduction becomes the verse melody, with the seventh-note question marks now removed, giving the melody a newly grounded sense of certainty. The harmonies that accompany the melody the second time through (1:00) are subtle and ingenious–the harmony voice is pretty much singing one note–and solidify the melodic construction so firmly that the song never returns to it. It turns out that for all its easy-going tunefulness, “Floating Vibes” is subversive with respect to form: there is no standard chorus and no verse that repeats throughout the song. Rather, there are three different verse melodies, separated by instrumental breaks. The first is the one rooted in the introduction, the second is introduced at an instrumental break at 1:16, and the third (2:35) is a kind of mash-up of the first two. The final instrumental section moves onto yet another melody and features a violin, as unexpected as it is effective.

Surfer Blood is a quintet of non-surfers from West Palm Beach. “Floating Vibes” is the lead track from Astro Coast, the band’s debut, slated for released in January on Brooklyn-based Kanine Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Audra Mae (singer/songwriter w/ big voice)

“The River” – Audra Mae

With clear roots in country and folk, two very structured genres, “The River” hooks the ear with a series of surprising melodic and harmonic shifts. We hear this first at 0:15, when Mae follows the opening two traditional-sounding lines with a third (“The river’s gonna wash my sins away”) that runs unexpectedly up through a diminished chord. How did we get here? Suddenly the music is unresolved, and remains so until one more surprising shift, at 0:26, on the words “make me forget.” Resolution comes on the succeeding phrase, “my sorrow.” That’s some nifty songwriting–uncomplicated but subtly startling–and Mae uses it all to set up her bittersweet chorus. It begins with one more musical shift: that heartbreaking half-step she takes in the phrase “I can’t swim” (1:02), which starts the major-key chorus with a minor-key twist. Even the lyrics provide a subtle shock here, aurally–when she gets to the phrase “even if I could,” the lack of rhyme isn’t what the ear expects. But she has slyly shifted the rhyme scheme, which the listener catches onto as the chorus continues. More niftiness.

And maybe niftiest of all is how everything is delivered by a young, big-voiced singer who seems anachronistically delighted to use her vocal substance in service of small musical moments. No “American Idol”-ish histrionics for this big voice. One example: listen to how differently she sings the word “I” the first two times she says it: first, the opening word of the song (“I done a bad thing, it’s okay”; 0:05) and second, the beginning of the second line, four seconds later (“I’m going down to the river today”). The first “I” is fast, easy, almost evasive; the second “I,” made resonant with the contracted “m,” feels deep, mighty, and mournful as it encompasses an extra half-beat in the singing. Words don’t do it justice so now I’ll be quiet.

“The River” is the lead track from Audra Mae’s debut EP, Haunt, released last week on SideOneDummy Records. The Oklahoma-born Mae is now based in L.A. and, speaking of big voices, happens to be Judy Garland’s grand niece.

Free and legal MP3: Bear in Heaven (driven yet spacey indie rock)

“Lovesick Teenagers” – Bear in Heaven

Can a song be spacey and determined at the same time? “Lovesick Teenagers” seems to manage this unusual effect. Determination is heard through the relentless pulse of the snare-free beat along with front man Jon Philpot’s purposeful tenor, which sounds like someone with a wavery voice trying not to waver. And the melody itself seems also to possess an endearing sort of tenaciousness in the way it keeps leaping up a fourth on every syllable it seeks to emphasize.

But the spaciness too comes in various guises. Echoey, rocket-like synthesizers, sure. You’ll hear those right away. But it’s also there in the synth’s ongoing throb, which moves at twice the pace of the drumbeat, and lends a sci-fi-cartoon-iness to the proceedings. The chorus, when it arrives, arrives in a wash of psychedelic effects–soaring synths, fuzzed-up vocals, glitchy accents–even though, if you listen, you’ll see that the driving drumbeat persists underneath it all. And look how the song’s final moment pretty much encapsulates the underlying aural paradox, being at once the epitome of driving determination–a “sting,” as we used to call it in radio (meaning a sharp, abrupt ending)–and moony vagueness, since the sting echoes afterwards with the faintest of synthetic wind sounds.

Bear in Heaven is a quartet of Southerners who landed in Brooklyn and have been recording since 2003. “Lovesick Teenagers” is a song from Beast Rest Forth Mouth, the band’s third album, released this month on Hometapes Records.

Free and legal MP3: Holopaw (pensive, inscrutable)

“The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion” – Holopaw

Airily idiosyncratic, not to mention lyrically inscrutable, “The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion” required repeated listens for me to really hear it. Songs with vocal (rather than purely instrumental) introductions are a bit hard to get one’s pop-oriented mind around, to begin with. And when Holopaw’s John Orth is the one doing the vocalizing, maybe it’s even harder. He’s actually got an engaging, feathery sort of voice, but when it’s the very first thing one hears–without the grounding of obvious melody or structure–it seems a challenge, to me.

But here’s something to listen for early on: the two notes he sings on the word “breath,” at 0:12 (which are E-flat and D-flat, if my keyboard widget is to be trusted). These are soon revealed as the two notes the rest of the song consistently turns on, the two notes which, magnet-like, attract and re-attract the melody–for instance, at the end of the recurring lyric “Couldn’t we just get lost?” The musical phrase described by these notes is unresolved, but listen to how the violin follows (e.g. 0:56) with a countermelody that does then resolves it, and with folk-like poignancy. Keep your ear on the violin all the way through; I think the yearning ballast it provides is what lends the song, at least after a number of listens, its quirky majesty.

From Gainesville, Florida, Holopaw was previously featured on Fingertips in August 2005, but are rather a whole different band now: three of its original five members moved north after that second album, replaced slowly but surely by four Gainesville-based others. “The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion” is the first song on the band’s Oh, Glory. Oh, Wilderness. album, due out next month on Bakery Outlet Records.

Free and legal MP3: Slideshow Freak (glam-ish bedroom rock)

“Something More” – Slideshow Freak

This song, on the other hand, had me at hello, pretty much. A simple arpeggio, some electro-tinkling, some smooth keyboard vamping, then, boom–“Something More” begins right in its sweet spot, with its full-out, neo-glam-rock chorus. Somehow that’s really all it needs. Yes, there are verses in between and surely they kind of have to be there–a song can’t be all chorus, can it?–but you’ll be hard-pressed afterwards to remember exactly what they sounded like. I’m thinking you’ll be equally hard-pressed to dislodge the chorus from your head, not least for the way its swinging, backbeat-driven melody offers up pronouncements as big and dauntless as its sound: “It takes a better man than me/To save a broken heart”; “I spend my life on my back/But never see the stars”; et al.

Slideshow Freak is another one of those “not a band, just a guy” acts made possible by 21st-century technology, musical know-how, and a lot of time on one’s hands. The guy this time is one Jamie Wright, who was born and raised in the UK but appears to be living in Florida now. “Something More” is the lead track to the debut Slideshow Freak EP, We Should Swing, which was released in July on Filthy Little Angels Records. Thanks to the typically excellent Low Slung Podcast for the head’s up. MP3 via Filthy Little Angels. Note that you can download all six songs from the EP on the FLA site.

Free and legal MP3: Headlights (breezy & memorable, a la NRBQ)

Consciously or not, “Get Going” offers up delightful echoes of a band few may remember, and fewer probably listen to anymore, NRBQ. During their late ’70s comeback years, in and around their goofier bar-band numbers, NRBQ let loose a bunch of simultaneously breezy and memorable pop songs a whole lot like this one in tone, vibe, and spirit.

“Get Going” – Headlights

Consciously or not, “Get Going” offers up delightful echoes of a band few may remember, and fewer probably listen to anymore, NRBQ. During their late ’70s comeback years, in and around their goofier bar-band numbers, NRBQ let loose a bunch of simultaneously breezy and memorable pop songs a whole lot like this one in tone, vibe, and spirit. The airy charm of Tristan Wraight’s tenor further recalls the unexpectedness sweetness infusing gems like “Ridin’ In My Car,” “I Want You Bad,” and “Me and the Boys.” Even the title sounds like something the ‘Q might have recorded.

But “Get Going” should likewise please the ear of the NRB-clueless. (Sorry; didn’t mean that as an insult, just couldn’t resist coining that phrase.) Listen to the way the melody in the verses keeps being drawn up: the lyrical lines each ending with an upward third interval, the middle of the line often pivoting on an upward fifth. Pop melodies much more typically lead in a general downward direction, the way water naturally heads towards lower ground. There’s something invigorating, if subtly off-kilter, in going against the norm in this way. The other thing I’m enjoying here is the guitar work, which engagingly interweaves an acoustic rhythm, an old-fashioned electric lead, and something unexpectedly drone-like. The way Erin Fein–normally the band’s lead vocalist–appears through a kind of underwater filter during the short bridge (1:36) is another whimsical highlight of this brief but emphatic song.

“Get Going” is from Wildlife, the Champaign-based quartet’s fourth album, released on Polyvinyl Records earlier this month. The band was previously featured on Fingertips for the wonderful song “Cherry Tulips” in January 2008. MP3 originally via Polyvinyl, but song lingers online on the music review site One Track Mind.

Free and legal MP3: Old Canes(drum-fueled folk rock)

“Little Bird Courage” – Old Canes

It’s unusual for a song that feels like some kind of folk rock to have this much percussive appeal, but “Little Bird Courage” is all about the drumming from the get-go–we pretty much don’t even hear anything else until almost 20 seconds in. And this is in fact how Old Canes front man and master mind Chris Crisci envisions his songs—he records the drum tracks first, and builds the songs up from there.

Everything ends up feeling rhythmic and propulsive as a result. With its vibrant but informal energy, spurred by relentlessly strummed acoustic guitars and accentuated by Crisci’s mixed-down vocals, “Little Bird Courage” has the vibe of a happier incarnation of Neutral Milk Hotel, an impression accentuated by the homely chorus of trumpets that appears halfway through, just when the whole thing seemed to be grinding to a halt. While it’s hard to pick up a lot of the lyrics, I get the impression of something transcendent and triumphant here; the title alone speaks volumes.

Chris Crisci is perhaps better known as a member of the Appleseed Cast, the Lawrence, Kansas-based band usually identified as being a “post-rock” pioneer; Old Canes has been a side project of his dating back to 2004. “Little Bird Courage” is from Feral Harmonic, the second Old Canes album, slated for release next week by Saddle Creek Records.

Free and legal MP3: Rainbow Arabia(stylish, engaging world music admixture)

“Harlem Sunrise” – Rainbow Arabia

This one morphs before your startled ears from a vaguely Middle Eastern sounding dance with an electro-beat and kitchen sink percussion into a vaguely Caribbean steel-drum-inflected shuffle with some African guitar thrown in for good measure. Too much pastiche for its own good? Or is “Harlem Sunrise,” rather, an audacious 21st-century stylistic mash-up? I vote for the latter. Nothing this warm and welcoming can be disparaged, in my book, nor something that manages, for all its sonic salmagundi and home-built vibe, to proceed with an air of the timeless about it. Even singer Tiffany Preston’s slightly pouty and distant voice, artfully reverbed and tweaked, works better here than it maybe should.

And I in any case am entirely in favor of major-key songs with minor-key introductions. That’s a nice songwriting trick you don’t hear much of in modern pop.

Rainbow Arabia–and the band name kind of immediately hints at what they’re up to–is a L.A.-based husband-wife duo (Tiffany sings and plays guitar; Danny does the keyboards and electronics). “Harlem Sunrise” is a song from their Kabukimono EP, which was released in July by Manimal Vinyl, also based in L.A. (Manimal Vinyl, by the way, is a name that does not hint at what they’re up to; the label does in fact release things on CD and digitally in addition to vinyl.) Thanks to Linda at Speed of Dark for the head’s up on this one. MP3 via RCRD LBL, and note that the link is not direct; just click “Download MP3” and it’s yours.