Fingertips

“Hold On” – Windsor For The Derby
     “Hold On” indeed: this song begins with an extended introduction, featuring a rhythm both brisk and soothing. Listen closely and for all the apparent movement you really can’t discern a whole lot of obvious activity: there’s a guitar strumming without quite wanting to call too much attention to itself, there’s a fuzzy organ that seems to dissipate as soon as you hear it, there’s a bass that appears to be playing only one note the whole time, and all one minute and six seconds of the intro features an alternation between just two chords, separated by a simple half-step.
     Then the vocals start, rather wispy and mixed down in that Yo La Tengo, resolutely-indie sort of way. But pay attention at 1:20–we finally hear a third chord. It’s a great moment but it flows quickly by, and is itself easy to miss except that the song shifts and deepens at this point. Though exactly towards what end we still don’t know. (Remember: hold on.) The melody leads us through a few more chords rather quickly (considering the context), the verse repeats, and then, at long last, two full minutes in, the chorus arrives, complete with–of all things–soaring, Brian Wilson-inspired backing harmonies. Nothing about this song signaled that it was going there. It’s a startling juxtaposition, and well worth the long and subtle buildup.
     Led by Dan Matz and Jason McNeeley, Windsor For The Derby has gone through a number of personnel changes since the group’s formation in Austin in the mid-’90s. The band is now a quintet; Matz and McNeeley, recently relocated to Philadelphia, are the only the remaining original members. “Hold On” is a song from the CD How We lost, the band’s eighth, released last month on Secretly Canadian records. MP3 via the Secretly Canadian web site.

“SK Final” – Ndidi Onukwulu
     Happy-sounding blues, with horn charts, “SK Final” hides its musical inventiveness beneath a brassy, old-fashioned vibe. Onukwulu is a British Columbia native born to Nigerian parents, and in her songs seeks to combine blues, jazz, and African music. Check out, for instance, how the song starts: those reverberant drum beats are not directly blues-based, but evoke another continent’s rhythms. When Onukwulu starts singing, she’s accompanied further by an acoustic rhythm guitar, softly marking the beat as she sings off of it, while an electric guitar soon begins to supply gentle flourishes that, again, bring a world-music flair to the musical landscape.
     In the end, however, “SK Final” is dominated by pretty much two things: Onukwulu’s vibrant alto, with its fleeting vibrato, and those snappy horns, which kick in right before the chorus. While providing traditional horn-chart-y punctuation to the lyrics, the horns also offer a mellower sort of instrumental aside (1:07, for example; even better, 1:39) that to my ears gives them a sneaky and enticing spirit, even when finishing the song off in full rave-up mode, as Onukwulu assures us, with frisky defiance, that she’s not going to cry over you again. Like I said, happy blues.
     “SK Final” is the lead track on Onukwulu’s second CD, The Contradictor, released this week on the Vancouver-based label Jericho Beach Music.

There’s a new Fingertips Contest online: the prize this time is a copy of the movie Control on DVD. Control is the acclaimed biopic of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis. Deadline for entry is June 18; click here for details.

“Being Here” – the Stills
     There’s a mystery to the majesty of good pop music. Seemingly lacking both surface-level complexity and a weighty philosophical foundation, pop music has always been dismissed by “serious” musicians and critics as insubstantial at best, culturally harmful at worst. What pop’s most supercilious critics don’t understand, however, is that just because pop isn’t “high art” (whatever that really is) doesn’t mean it can’t, in the right hands (underline that part), be an artistically valid mode of creative expression. Pop music cannot be dismissed simply because it does not measure up to the standards of so-called “serious music” (whether classical or avant-garde); that would be like criticizing a cat for not being a dog.
     And so can an apparently simple composition like “Being Here”–even the title communicates the ultimate in unadorned declarations–deliver something ineffably beautiful and moving in a swift three and a half minutes. You’ve heard these chords before, and the plain descending melody, centered around four adjacent notes. You’ve heard the guitars, you’ve heard the large, anthemic vibe. Whatever this song has can’t and won’t be “explained” by its constituent parts. There’s something in the sound, in the presentation, and maybe in singer Tim Fletcher’s big-hearted voice (a voice that brings to mind the late, lamented Stuart Adamson, of the Scottish band Big Country), that rivets the ear, that makes me, in any case, stop, listen, and feel truly–if mysteriously–affected.
     “Being Here” is a song off the Stills’ third album, Oceans Will Rise, which will be released on the Arts & Crafts label in August. This is the Montreal quintet’s third appearance on Fingertips (check the Master Artist List for details). Thanks to Jonk Music for the lead. MP3 courtesy of the Canadian music magazine Exclaim.

“I Lost the Monkey” – the Wedding Present
     From its gentle, even poignant opening, “I Lost the Monkey” blossoms into a loud-but-controlled midtempo construction of prepossessing precision, with consistently impressive guitar work and a brilliant chorus.
     Just listen to those guitars–whether it’s the semi-dissonance of the second “intro” (the extended instrumental after the quiet opening verse, starting at 0:34) or the melodicism that emerges in the middle of the chorus, and then more prominently in the second verse (starting around 1:57), the guitars are used here with unusual care and sensitivity. This is not just a couple of guys strumming to fill in empty space. And then there’s that terrific chorus, which is rendered all the more affecting by lead man David Gedge’s restrained, almost whispered vocals, which make no effort to rise above the guitars, but somehow create a quiet clearing in the middle of the noise in which they can nonetheless be heard.
     A veteran band from Leeds, the Wedding Present has been through a number of lineup changes since its formation back in 1985; by now, the only constant through the years has been Gedge, now 48. (Note that in 1992, the Wedding Present released a new single on the first Monday of every month–a very internet music scene-like thing to do, well before the birth of the internet music scene.) For their new album, El Rey, the band has brought studio whiz Steve Albini back to the controls (Albini previously engineered CDs for the band in 1989 and 1991; he does not want to be called a producer, by the way). I’ve no idea what the rest of the album sounds like, but this one soars.

Time for an update about the Fingertips Top 10, which has changed significantly since the last Top 10 post in April. Here’s what the list looks like as of June 4; newcomers since April are marked with an asterisk:

1. “Cat Swallow” – the Royal Bangs
2. “Right Away” – Pattern is Movement*
3. “Animé Eyes” – the Awkward Stage*
4. “Torn Blue Foam Couch” – the Grand Archives
5. “To Be Gone” – Anna Ternheim
6. “Yer Motion” – Reeve Oliver*
7. “Boarded Doors” – the Morning Benders*
8. “Big Sound” – the M’s
9. “Black Lungs” – the New Frontiers*
10. “Fire” – Alibi Tom*

“Cat Swallow” is not new to the list but is new to the number-one slot, replacing “Beyond the Door” by 13ghosts, which held the spot for the previous two months. The Top 10 list is my way of putting a little bit of extra attention on ten particularly wonderful songs at any given time, but remember that Fingertips only features carefully filtered music to begin with, so you can’t go wrong with any of the MP3s featured here. Songs remain in the Top 10 for a maximum of three months, before they are retired to the Retired Top 10 Songs page, logically enough. (Note that the music player on the blog cannot find the Alibi Tom MP3 because of a technological quirk, but the song still can be downloaded if you click on it.)

“My Mistakes Were Made For You” – the Last Shadow Puppets
     If the Decemberists were to write a James Bond theme song, they might come up with something like “My Mistakes Were Made For You.” Echoingly atmospheric, with melodramatic strings, an ominous surf guitar, and melancholy horn charts, “My Mistakes Were Made For You” has at the same time a pleasantly wordy feel, which strikes me as an unexpected twist for a song with this sort of spy-movie vibe. (Songs from James Bond movies are, rather, renowned for the relentless fatuousness of their lyrics.)
     Another amiable difference here is Alex Turner’s simmering vocal delivery; more well known as the front man of the Arctic Monkeys, Turner here turns from the more frenetic, ejective singing style he uses with his “other” band to a softer, almost soulful sort of approach. Turner does not lose his accent (apparently a Sheffield accent) while singing; while American me is accustomed to hearing an accent like this in a hard-rocking setting (a cliche perhaps but that’s mostly what we hear of it here), I can’t say I’ve been treated to it in quite this context before. I find it rather charming.
     The Last Shadow Puppets is a collaboration between Turner and his friend Miles Kane, who’s also in a band called the Rascals. “My Mistakes Were Made For You” is from the duo’s debut release, The Age of the Understatement, which came out last month on Domino Records.

“Black Lungs” – the New Frontiers
     Here’s a prime example of an oft-repeated Fingertips theme: music does not have to be new to be great. A band need not blaze trails to be worthy. I think we’d have more consistently good music being played out there, in fact, if bands weren’t so often trying too hard to be different.
     A quintet from Dallas, the New Frontiers do not try to be different; they try to be good. With “Black Lungs,” they succeed, for reasons that are a bit difficult to pinpoint, since this appealing, well-crafted song seems to be trying not to stand out; it sounds like something we’ve all loved for a long time and kind of take for granted by now. But let’s see: that crying, arcing guitar line that launches the song is one terrific thing; singer Nathan Pettijohn is another, with his tender-rugged voice and his refusal to leap into falsetto, even when the song threatens to go there; and then there’s the chorus, which delivers a great back-door hook–which happens right around the words “back door,” in fact. The hook delights me, because it sounds like we’d already heard the hook (the leap up at 0:56, around the words “everything’s fine”), and then, in the second part of the chorus (“don’t you kick me out the back door”), the melody slyly returns to the eighth-note pattern used in the first part of the verse and that just nails everything together. There’s something old-timey and classic at work here. Close your eyes and breathe it in.
     The New Frontiers were previously known as Stellamaris, and recorded one CD in 2005 under that name. “Black Lungs” is the opening track on Mending, their first CD as the New Frontiers, which was released in April on the Militia Group.

“Boarded Doors” – the Morning Benders
     The Morning Benders return with their elusively familiar brand of sturdy yet off-kilter pop. “Boarded Doors” shuffles between a cartoony menace (that prickly guitar, that schemingly descending melody line) and a yearny sort of wistfulness, to great effect. Chris Chu sings so casually he may as well be talking, but the more I listen, the more impressed I am with his tone and tunefulness. The entire band tends to sneak up on me like that–they sound like they’re just sort of rehearsing, but underneath the informal surface lies a tight little song and a lot of expertise.
     I’m fascinated by the concise, unresolved chorus, which gives us a quick shot of something that sounds like a backward guitar and perfectly placed “oo-oo” backing vocals and then vanishes before one quite realizes hey, that was the chorus. If, in fact, a song could have a verse and a bridge and no chorus (which I think is impossible by definition) then the Morning Benders have managed to write it.
     An amiable quartet from Berkeley, California (they claim to have met while all working on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland), the Morning Benders released their first full-length CD last month, called Talking Through Tin Cans, on +1 Records. MP3 courtesy of Spinner.

“Three Women” – Stereolab
     The semi-legendary, relentlessly inscrutable Stereolab–with their sexy vocalist, arcane musical references, and Marxist leanings–may never hit the big time, but they sure know how to entertain the left of center. Perhaps the first band to be called “post-rock,” back in the early ’90s, this British-based outfit were spinning out intellectually giddy genre-mashups when today’s laptop-rockers were in preschool. As I’m not a long-time or super-knowledgeable fan, I always find myself surprised by how sunny and accessible a lot of Stereolab’s music sounds at the simple level of listening–never-minding the underpinnings of influence and philosophy. You really don’t have to know what they’re doing–intermingling krautrock, lounge music, funk, jazz, ’60s pop, and contemporary classical minimalism, among other things, leaning on vintage electronic instruments in the process–to like what you’re hearing.
     On Fingertips, we last visited with vocalist Lætitia Sadier not too long ago, as her side project Monarde was featured in February; here, she sounds just as sultry-sophisticated (she sings in French again, as she often does), but a bit more light-hearted, as the music this time bubbles along with great pep and texture. Launched off a classic R&B groove, “Three Women” features a sneaky, meandering melody and a bright instrumental coalescence–I’m hearing Farfisa organ, marimba (or, perhaps, vibes?), trumpets, maybe even a celesta–that effortlessly evokes some other time and place without it being quite clear what time or place that might actually be. Sadier purrs, the music rolls along, and if we really have no idea what she’s saying or why, well, this is Stereolab. Absorb the vibe, observe the craft, and enjoy the download.
     “Three Women” can be found the band’s forthcoming CD Chemical Chords, not due out till August, on Duophonic UHF Disks/4AD. MP3 courtesy of Beggars Group.

“In a Cave” – Tokyo Police Club
     Buzzy, driven, incisive indie pop from a Toronto quartet with a knowledgeable vibe and the added attraction of having a singing bass player (discussed when last we met these guys). This songs strikes me as very smartly constructed–elements added at just the right time, pieces interacting with a casual sort of precision. Example of element added at just the right time: those unexpected, shouting background vocals that chime in at 0:49; example of casually precise interaction: the almost feedbacky guitar line that enters at 0:40 and, first, mimicks the melody line as it’s sung but then continues even as the melody moves on (right into the shouting vocal part in fact).
     And what are they singing about? The cave is metaphorical, to be sure, and there’s that nice touch about reversing the effects of being in the cave once deciding to leave (“All my hair grows in/Wrinkles leave my skin”), which is skillful way of extending the metaphor; beyond that we get a skittery atmosphere, both musically and lyrically, and we’re left to figure out exactly what’s going on on our own.
     As per last week’s comment about web writers who disparage music when it’s not “new” enough, TPC is likely to catch some flak in this regard–and already have, in fact: “Tokyo Police Club aren’t smashing templates or changing lives,” proclaims Stereogum, “but this stuff is catchy [as hell], easily digestible fun.” Here’s a clue for you to take around the web: anyone who does that “damning with faint praise” routine is revealing more about their own insecurities than about the subject at hand. Either like something, don’t like it, or, even, partially like it–just do so clearly; ground it in observable fact. Is that so hard? “Easily digestible fun” means “this isn’t really ‘cool’ enough for me to like but I like it anyway.” Humbug. “In a Cave” is from TPC’s debut CD, Elephant Shell (the phrase comes from this song; listen carefully), and is another sign that these guys mean business. It was released last month on Saddle Creek Records.

“Shoulda Never” – Oh Darling
     This one clicks for me in the chorus, at the end of the second line, when the melody steps slightly down, into that unresolved place, and just stays there (around 1:11). Goes to show yet again that you never know where a hook is coming from, or why. And this sort of thing doesn’t happen in a vacuum–the whole reason that unresolved detour sounds so apt is because of everything that’s come before it. For a relatively new band, these guys have recorded something that glows with preternatural charm and know-how.
     Right away note the juxtaposition of that staccato bass-and-guitar intro, a reliable implement in the rock toolbox at least since the Cars came along, and lead singer Jasmine Ash’s pure, almost child-like tone–an intriguing blend that pulls us into “Shoulda Never,” establishing the song’s subtle push/pull of soft and hard, naive and experienced, female and male (the quartet features two men and two women, and includes a mixed-gender rhythm section–male drummer, female bass). Familiar-sounding in appealing ways, the song also offers its share of subtle surprises, one of my favorites being the whistly, almost flute-like synthesizer that creates a kind of lost-world ambiance, first heard in the instrumental break at 1:24.
     Formed in 2006, Oh Darling self-released an EP at the end of last year. The band’s full-length debut is expected out this summer, on Nice Records. “Shoulda Never” can be found on both discs. MP3 courtesy of the band’s wonderful-looking web site.