Free and legal MP3: Darker My Love (shoegazey almost-power-pop w/ psychedelic flair)

“Talking Words” – Darker My Love

I have mixed feelings about all the neo-shoegaze one is likely to hear as an active listener of new music here at the end of the century’s first decade. While inherently attracted to one characteristic feature of such music–the combination of loud washes of noise with compelling melodies–I am inherently put off by another characteristic feature, which is the muddy vocals. To the rescue comes the L.A.-based quintet Darker My Love, which here offers the first without the second, so I’m all over this one.

Thus “Talking Words” is both gigantic-noisy and kind of sweet-poppy at the same time, even as the sweet-poppiness is disguised further by the band’s psychedelic tendencies. (But, truly, many of the original psychedelic bands of the ’60s were nothing but pop bands in disguise as well.) Guitarist Tim Presley, who shares writing and singing duties in the band with bassist Rob Barbato, has the high, slightly strained tones of a classic power pop singer (think John Wicks from the Records, or Chris Stamey from the dBs); despite the underlying growl of guitar, Presley is never anywhere but at the center of the mix, often buoyed by some lovely Beatlesque harmonies.

“Talking Words” is from 2, the band’s (duh) second CD, which was released last summer on Dangerbird Records. The free and legal MP3, however, is new, via NME, in advance of the album’s UK release next month.

Free and legal MP3: Mew (streamlined “prog pop”)

“Repeaterbeater” – Mew

A Danish band that has referred to itself as making “pretentious art rock,” the good-natured members of Mew here offer a chewy morsel of something that might legitimately be called “prog pop.” With all the swirling, driving, off-balance magnitude of full-out prog rock, “Repeaterbeater” condenses its weighty, almost-pompous intro into seven seconds, then hits the ground running.

Over a pulsing but irregular beat, the verse divides its melody into syncopated spurts, carving up the time signature in the process. That’s an effective songwriting trick, to my ears: combining the illusion of a normal beat with a complex rhythm. The chorus is at once flowier but still oblique, with its guitar effects and a melody that’s smoother but still so resolutely off the beat that we have the impression of further adventures in time signature shifting. And yet the whole chorus is actually in 4/4 as far as I can tell. Another effective songwriting trick, the opposite of the last one: making a regular time signature sound offbeat. And then maybe the best trick of all is that “Repeaterbeater,” which wraps up in just two and a half minutes, catches the ear so emphatically and yet without the benefit of any sort of standard hook. It’s a mysterious thing.

“Repeaterbeater” is a song from the trio’s forthcoming album, the title of which is written as a poem: No More Stories/Are Told Today/I’m Sorry/They Washed Away/No More Stories/The World Is Grey/I’m Tired/Let’s Wash Away. It’s due out next month on Sony BMG. Before that, the song will also be featured on the five-song No More Stories EP at the end of this month. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Medders (sweeping, melancholy C&W-ish ballad)

“Gunslinger” – the Medders

A sweeping, melancholy ballad with solid (but not annoying) country-western roots, “Gunslinger” tells a woeful tale with care, finesse, and canny harmonies. Constructed without a chorus, the song steadfastly repeats an eight-measure melody, with some instrumental breaks, all the while building in intensity both musically and lyrically. I like the great combination of deliberation and power on display, which gives this slower-paced song a vehemence normally achieved, in rock, through speed and volume. And the male-female harmonies are not just a boon but may well be the ultimate key to how well “Gunslinger” works, adding to the song’s pathos and musicality simultaneously. The all-male Medders employed singer Priscilla Jeschke for the job; note she is also lead singer Cheyenne Medders’ girlfriend.

The Medders are a quartet from Nashville featuring three brothers–Cheyenne, Carson, and Will–who themselves are the sons of singer/songwriter Jule Medders. Their self-titled, self-released, and self-assured debut album is scheduled for a September release.

Free and legal MP3 from the Winter Sounds (energetic rocker with a Cure-like flair)

“Trophy Wife” – the Winter Sounds
     An intent, energetic rocker with an underlying Cure-ishness at its core, from its ringing, two-part guitar melody and mobile bass line to its yelpy-voiced front man, Patrick Keenan, who edges pleasantly towards the almost hysterical in his upper register. I’m mentally searching rock history for this voice’s precedent and I can’t find anything notable that goes further back than Robert Smith, truly the godfather of the almost-hysterical yelpers who’ve come along since 1979. I like how you can hear Keenan gulp for air in the middle of the chorus (e.g. 1:22); there’s a guy who’s singing first, asking questions later.
     For all its relentless flow, “Trophy Wife” is nicely put together. First, there’s the long introduction. Most long introductions just sort of tread water, and kind of bother me; this one sets the mood and contains actual melodic development. Much better. Second, note how the briskness and melodic movement of the verse is counterbalanced by the chorus, the first part of which is sung largely on just one note, and the second part of which is sung at half the pace of the rest of the song. Also, check out how the beginning of the second verse has a different melody than the beginning of the first verse. I like when that happens. And then there’s that strangely captivating bridge with interweaving falsetto vocals (2:39). Didn’t see that one coming.
     The Winter Sounds are a quartet that split their time between Athens, Georgia and Chicago. “Trophy Wife” is a song from the band’s second album, Church of the Haunted South, due out next week on Nashville-based Theory 8 Records.

Free and legal MP3: Sara Lov

Solo effort from sweet-voiced Devics singer

“Animals” – Sara Lov (with Alex Brown Church)

Sweet-voiced Sara Lov has been on Fingertips twice previously with her duo, Devics, most recently in 2006 for the beautiful, torchy “Come Up.” Minus partner Dustin O’Halloran’s evocative keyboards, Lov sings here over a simple acoustic guitar lick and allows her voice the hint of a Jenny Lewis-like twang. But if the verse sets us up for a light bit of alt-country, the chorus moves us in a somewhat different direction. The sudden presence of Alex Brown Church (front man for the band Sea Wolf) as co-lead vocalist definitely changes the aural palette, as his warm baritone has not a bit of country about it.

An important, albeit subtler, shift in the chorus comes via the melody line. While the verse works within a limited, sing-song-y framework (simple, repeated, two-measure phrases) that actually hides musical complexities that do exist, the melody in the chorus opens up into a nicely developed eight-measure line. This serves to relieve a claustrophobia that we didn’t quite know we were feeling until the relief arrived. Then comes an interesting sort of tag line after the chorus, sung jointly, that works to transition us comfortably back to the verse, only what’s this? The second verse is altered and all but nonexistent, the tag line then leads us into rather than out of the chorus, Church and Lov singing together again. And everything leads to the final line of the song, which is exactly the same as the first line. Well done.

You’ll find “Animals” on the album Seasoned Eyes Were Beaming, released rather too quietly in March by Nettwerk Records. MP3 via the free and legal music site RCRD LBL. Note that the link above is not direct, but you’ll see what to do when you click it.

Free and legal MP3: Deluka (appealing electro-dance-rock)

“Cascade” – Deluka

Appealing electro-dance-rock with a sweeping ambiance and a more difficult-than-it-first-seems-to-pin-down sound. As much as one may initially want to hear this as harmless retro-y fun, one problem is that it’s unclear exactly what era/genre this song is most reflective of, as it seems to gather everything from new wave and post-punk to disco and electro and then some under its sonic umbrella. Which maybe has the net effect of not seeming quite so retro after all. Certainly there’s something in not only the sharp production but in the sheer urgent musical delight here that lends “Cascade” a sparkling currency—you’ve heard it before, except maybe not exactly. More to the point, you’re likely to keep hearing this in your head moving forward. And surely this goes immediately to the top of the list of definitive summer songs for the summer of ’09, at least here in Fingertips land. At least for now. The summer is yet young.

Named after Laura San Giacomo’s character in the movie Pretty Woman, Deluka is from Birmingham (UK) but has taken up in Brooklyn after being signed by the Brooklyn-based VEL Records-. “Cascade” is the band’s first recorded song. A digital EP will be released this summer, with a full-length CD expected in the fall. MP3 via VEL.

Free and legal MP3 from Little Tybee

Sprightly indie rock w/ violin and an offbeat hook

“Glass Brigade” – Little Tybee

A brand-new Atlanta-based trio, Little Tybee (named after a small nature preserve off the shore of Savannah) plays a sprightly, light-footed sort of indie rock that combines organic and electronic sounds with offhanded flair. The unexpected center of the song, musically, is Ryan Gregory’s violin. We first hear it at 0:10, playing a distinctive grouping of twelve notes, launched by a pair of oddly accented triplets that end up as the song’s guiding hook when singer Brock Scott gets hold of it. He’s got a friendly tenor, with a bit of texture to it, so we’re happy to hand it over to him. And listen to how Gregory, in the background, while Scott sings that off-kilter motif (first at 0:23), now plucks instead of bows his strings.

Note also that it’s the violinist who takes the song’s primary instrumental solo (1:15), which offers an embellished pizzicato version of the recurring theme, and also leads the jaunty instrumental coda. And perhaps the ultimate tribute to the violin here is that Scott sings rather like a violin in the wordless chorus section, doing a playful bit of vocal “bowing” and “plucking” himself, which is accentuated by the fact that he sings notes but not words, some of them precisely aligned with the notes the violin plays simultaneously.

“Glass Brigade” is a song from the band’s debut release, a seven-song EP called I Wonder Which House The Fish Will Live In, which will be self-released next month, and features hand-printed and cut and individually put together CD covers, just so you know.

Free and legal MP3: A. A. Bondy (rootsy, atmospheric singer/songwriter fare)

“When the Devil’s Loose” – A. A. Bondy

Thick with atmosphere and aching with the majesty of something timeless and true, “When the Devil’s Loose” has me at hello, as it were. I love those guitars, at once fuzzy and bell-like, and the casual authority they immediately establish. The song, which refers at the outset to a river, itself flows with a river-like depth and grandeur, its potent melody sung with a rough-edged nonchalance at once sultry and defiant. I like how the guitars sometimes float off into a bit of dissonance, adding to the impression that some deep sort of force of nature was involved in the creation of this song.

Bondy is an Alabama-born singer/songwriter now based in upstate New York. He fronted a loud, Nirvana-like band in the late ’90s and early ’00s called Verbena, then using the first name Scott. His solo debut, American Hearts (2008), presented him in a folk-like, early-Dylan-ish setting, backed largely by acoustic guitar and the occasional harmonica. And yet the one or two songs featuring a bit more of a band sounded to me like the stronger cuts–in particular, “Lovers’ Waltz,” which “When the Devil’s Loose” resembles somewhat. To me, therefore, the news that his forthcoming album finds him more often playing with a band is promising. I look forward to hearing more of it.

This song is the title track to that second solo album, which is due out in September on Fat Possum Records. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: The Argument (mysteriously appealing organic electronica)

“Goodbye” – The Argument

A mysteriously appealing and almost mystically engaging piece of organic electronica. With a brisk, manufactured beat and circular melody, “Goodbye” unfolds in a lyrical haze, the song’s narrator offering a series of deadpan observations in a voice at once wavery and steadfast. Through a precise combination of concrete imagery and vague scenarios, the words themselves beckon to the unconscious, leaving the conscious mind lost in the song’s upward-climbing, downward-resolving tune.

A hint of how this works comes in the second verse: “And lights will start to fade/A car goes by and a window breaks/And scatters thoughts across the floor/They’re keeping me awake/They’re keeping me awake.” The window breaks, causing thoughts to scatter across the floor: the line between the external and the internal is blurred to the point of nonrationality. Note also the blurred aural line between acoustic and electric, and how the song, churning along with a homemade sort of charm, overlays clear musical resolution with lyrical elusiveness. And while I don’t usually connect to songs with long, noodly outros, the spacey but poignant last 80 seconds or so seems perfectly designed to help a listener integrate what he or she has just absorbed.

The Argument is a duo from Sweden, about which not much information is available; their names are Marcus and Niklas and that’s about all I can tell you. “Goodbye” is from their new self-released CD, Everything Depends, their second effort. The MP3 link above is not direct; you’ll have to click the words “Download Track” once you get to the page. The entire album is in fact available as a free and legal download, and is worth checking out.

Free and legal MP3 from T. Nile (Canadian singer/songwriter with a rich voice and a flair for storytelling)

“Cabin Song” – T. Nile
     With its yawning steel guitar and soft snare beat, “Cabin Song” on the one hand says “country” from the get go. And yet the Vancouver-based Tamara Nile, who prefers using just her initial, does not affect a country-music accent, which is something, I’m suddenly realizing as I’ve been listening to this, that appeals to me. The conjunction of country music sounds with non-country singing has the effect of liberating country from its typically parochial musical constraints. I’m sure there’s a place for twangy, cowboy-hatted music but if that sound doesn’t call to you, you end up dissociated from certain musical elements that in and of themselves may actually be pretty cool. Combined with Nile’s rich, athletic voice and sharp storytelling skills, the steel guitar’s ghostly wail is worth hearing as an aural experience, not just as something that says “I am listening to country music.”
     Nile was brought up in–yes–a cabin on Galiano Island, between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia, by musician parents, but the song may not otherwise be autobiographical. It doesn’t seem to talk about how she began busking on sidewalks with her multi-instrumentalist father in far-off places like New Orleans and San Diego at the age of six, for instance.
     “Cabin Song” is the title track to her brand new EP, self-released last week. Her first full-length CD, At My Table, came out in 2006; her second is due next year.