Free and legal MP3: The Happy Hollows (ingratiating, noisy, whimsical song-as-journey)

“Lieutenant” – the Happy Hollows

I am no fan of indie music that veers too sharply into the DIY camp, as my ears will forever be jarred by sloppiness, however disguised by claims of authenticity or shred guitar prowess. When I first heard “Lieutenant,” I was attracted by its left-turn hooks but wary of its seeming disjointedness. For a five-minute song, this one unspools in an unnerving number of directions; it’s hard to get a handle on too quickly, and I was not initially convinced that there was any larger sense of purpose keeping the song from simply flying apart. (I am by and large unswayed by shredding.) And yet I surely did like lead singer Sarah Negahdari’s trilly, pixie-like (or Pixies-like?) sense of drama, the trio’s Belly-esque blend of heaviness and lightness, and the sly, quasi-martial swing of the song’s stickiest hook (first heard at 1:10).

I’m still not completely sure which side of the line between sophistication and random craziness that “Lieutenant” lands on, but the moment, probably, that won me over was this: the minute and a half in the middle of the song that features the most jumpy, unglued material climaxes, at around 4:00, with all three band members singing together and then just sort of shouting with jump-in-the-pool abandon. Weeeeeee. It cemented the song-as-journey concept, and I liked where it led: into a coda with a new, unexpectedly soothing melody. Well, okay, it gets wacky again for the last five seconds. They can’t help themselves.

“Lieutenant” is the lead track off the L.A.-based band’s second EP, Imaginary, which will be released by the band next week.

Free and legal MP3: Geoff Ereth (smartly paced orchestral folk)

“Surefooted” – Geoff Ereth

Deftly arranged and smartly paced, “Surefooted” packs a goodly number of instruments into a brisk three and a half minutes, but the sound remains clean and uncluttered. There’s piano and guitar and drums, there’s a string quartet, a trombone, an interesting keyboard or two, maybe a woodwind of one sort or another—“orchestral folk” is what Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Geoff Ereth calls it. But unlike much of what comes under the “chamber pop” umbrella, “Surefooted” leaves enough white space in and around its arrangement to feel fresh and easy rather than baroque and belabored.

The key, I think, is the strength of the song itself. I love instrumental variety in rock’n’roll as much as anyone, but too often the aural curlicues are covering up melodic staleness—underneath the ornamentation, there’s no there there, to use that old Gertrude Stein nugget. With “Surefooted,” there’s plenty of there, as both the verse and chorus feature strong melodies, put forward with gentle assurance by the smooth-voiced Ereth (and note the arresting way he offers harmonies on the middle lines of each verse but not the first and last). Symbolic, perhaps, of the song’s full but unadorned feel is the instrumental break at around 2:10—rather than any orchestral swell, we are stripped down to just the strings, playing with punch and punctuation (and pizzicato), which creates room for an uncomplicated but evocative piano line that wanders briefly through at 2:20. (The string quartet that plays with Ereth on his record is Osso, which is the same group that has performed with both Sufjan Stevens and My Brightest Diamond.)

Drunk With Translation was released digitally via iTunes last month, and will be out on CD in January; it is self-released, under the Deerly Records imprint.

The Fingertips Q&A: Brad Armstrong of 13ghosts


The Fingertips Q&A for October is now online and it’s a good one. Brad Armstrong sat down at his computer and typed out some articulate and thought-provoking answers to five questions about the future of the music industry.

Armstrong is one of the two guys who both sing lead and write songs in the Birmingham, Ala.-based band 13ghosts, a band that has twice been featured on Fingertips over the past few years.

“I think I’d live in a magical world,” he writes, in response to how things would be if he were in charge of how the music industry operated, “where you had to buy a blank download tape and put it in your analog download machine, and you had to listen to the whole thing while you were downloading it, and the only way you could get the link is if your friend told you about it and then sat with you while you downloaded it, otherwise it wouldn’t exist.”

Check out the entire interview on the main site.

Free and legal MP3 from Jolie Holland (rolling, deep-hearted music, enhanced by Ribot guitar)

“Palmyra” – Jolie Holland

I love the timeless, deep-hearted quality of the music here, as well as Holland’s fetchingly textured voice. Starting simply, with the acoustic guitar up front, the song picks up depth and punch when the drums and electric guitar kick in in full force, after about a minute. The electric guitarist is the masterly Marc Ribot, who plays with great invention and yet, somehow, without drawing any attention to himself. I suggest going back and listening to the song one time with the specific intention of focusing only on Ribot’s playing–not just his solo at around 1:55 but from beginning to end (and yes he actually is playing from almost the beginning, even as the acoustic guitar seems onstage alone). Although a wonderful experimental guitarist on his own, I find him particularly effective in this sort of ensemble work, in the context of a traditional-sounding song.

Beyond Ribot, one concrete element that adds to “Palmyra”‘s mysterious appeal, to my ears, is how Holland shifts the melody in the verse on and then off the first beat of the measure. You can hear this clearly at the beginning: the first two lines (beginning with “Only a few…” and “My little heart…”) are sung starting on the first beat of the measure; the next lines (starting with “You could tell…”) are sung beginning around the third beat of the measure, which creates more space between lines as well. The feel of the song settles into something deeper and yearnier, somehow, in the shift. And yet she does not do this the second time the verse comes around, which is the first time we hear it in the fuller band mode–she shifts the shift, as it were. It returns for the third verse. I have no idea precisely why but I do believe this sort of subliminal complexity enriches the listening experience. In other words: good song.

“Palmyra” can be found on Holland’s new CD, The Living and the Dead, due out this week on Anti Records. MP3 via Spinner. Jolie Holland was previously featured on Fingertips in April 2006.

Free and legal MP3:Your 33 Black Angels (concise, likable, hard-edged pop)

“New Song” – Your 33 Black Angels

Concise and good-natured while also flashing a bit of hard-edged sloppiness that makes it all the more likable. “New Song” is not only so concise it can’t be bothered with a title, it’s so concise that it pretty much uses the same central melody in both the verse and the chorus. It works musically because…well, who knows, actually. These things remain mysterious. No doubt it has something to do with how the rhythm speeds up in the chorus, and also—not to be underestimated—the rumbly, lower-register harmonies brought to singer Benji Kast’s slightly roughed-up tenor. But maybe the real trick is the fact that the melody remains unresolved in the verse. The verse kind of climaxes on the word “try” (listen at 0:19 or 0:32, for example), and that note, my friends, is unresolved. And it says right there in The Idiot Guide’s to Music Theory that “you don’t want to end your melody with unresolved tension.” (I kid you not; Google it.)

Well, you may not want to end the melody that way for good, but it’s pretty great when it sounds like you are ending it unresolved and then you wait all the way until the end of the chorus (which starts with the same melody) to arrive at resolution. I am fairly certain that the five guys in Your 33 Black Angels have not read The Idiot Guide’s to Music Theory.

“New Song” comes from the Brooklyn-based band’s self-released second CD, Tales of My Pop-Rock Love Life, which is due out next week.

Free and legal MP3: Gustav & the Seasick Sailors (jazz-tinged indie rock from Sweden)

“Homesick” – Gustav & the Seasick Sailors

Gustav & the Seasick Sailors return to Fingertips, after an almost three-year absence, with another piano-based, jazz-tinged composition. The drumming is soft and skittery, the chords open and Bruce Hornsby-esque, the melody brisk and wistful. The point at which this song settled into my psyche is right in the middle, the stretch from 1:20 to 1:28, when the melody picks up velocity and the chords progress with muted beauty, peaking at the lyrics “All the things we were/All the things we’re not.” The understated female harmony vocal here is beautiful, all the more so for sounding so casual and easy to overlook if you’re not paying attention.

“Homesick” is a song from Brilliant Hands, the third Gustav & the Seasick Sailors CD. Lead by Gustav Haggren, a singer/songwriter from Helsingborg, Sweden, the Seasick Sailors are labeled a “collective” by the band’s press material, which accounts for my inability to pinpoint, for instance, how many Seasick Sailors there happen to be. There seem to be five or six at the moment. And I don’t want to dwell on it but it’s interesting to know that Haggren was born without a right hand, and wears a special device that allows him to hold a pick and therefore play guitar.

The song “Nightlife” by GATSS was featured here in November 2005; it was also a #1 song on the Fingertips Top 10, for those keeping score at home.

Free and legal MP3: Annuals

Intricate, satisfying, melodic

“Confessor” – Annuals

Annuals prove yet again their capacity for producing intricate pop songs that defy standard structures while still offering catchy refrains and a satisfying sense of firm ground. “Confessor” develops upon two disparate rhythmic conceits: a stuttering, almost syncopated rhythm, which we hear for the first 26 seconds or so, accompanied by a melody featuring small intervals and drawn-out syllables; and a smoother, swaying beat, which you’ll hear for roughly the next 26 seconds. That second part features full-bodied vocal harmonies, a distinctive string section, and the song’s most prominent and inviting hook, starting around 0:30, which is the melody associated with the words “Through the windows in the chapel.” So the song’s a half-minute old, we’ve already experienced a how’d-that-happen? musical shift, and have come to a wonderful, old friend of a hook without quite knowing where we even are–verse? chorus? some mysterious other thing?

The somewhat XTC-like journey we’re on continues as the syncopation returns, the background music swells, and then–neat trick, around 1:21–we get the melodic hook overlaid onto the syncopated beat, aided and abetted by tight harmonies and a concise instrumental accompaniment, which feels full but not overcrowded. I like, after this, the swirling, climaxing instrumental section, and how it all but crashes ashore, wave-like, receding before the triumphant return of the “windows in the chapel” section. And with a few more swirly, wave-like swooshes, the song ends, less than three minutes after it has begun.

“Confessor” opens the new Annuals CD, Such Fun, which will be released next week on Canvasback Music, which is a Columbia Records spin-off. MP3 via Stereogum.