Fingertips

“Goes On Forever” – the Catalysts

Anchored by a shimmering guitar-and-harmonica sound that will take you back to the ’60s even if you were never actually there, “Goes On Forever” is one part pure breeze, one part bittersweet homage to times gone by. The relentless good nature of the solid backbeat and genial melody is counteracted by enough suspended chords in the chorus to give you the impression of clouds passing in front of the sun. The words tumble out in a sort of Dylanesque swirl; some of the ones that I can catch do in fact, either coincidentally or not, appear to refer to music from the ’60s and ’70s (“I’m a Believer,” “It’s a Beautiful Day,” and the way the title phrase comes right after the word “dream,” which calls the old Todd Rundgren song to mind).

The Catalysts is a band name, but there’s really no band at this point—just a guy named Ulric Kennedy, from Glasgow, with a history in a number of independent bands dating back to the late ’80s. Kennedy is a bass player by trade, and he lays down a particularly interesting bass line here—listen closely and you’ll hear how he plays bass more like a lead instrument than a bit player in the rhythm section: not only is the bass given the melodic lick that drives the entire song, but Kennedy also plays sustained notes that frequently drop the bass out of the rhythm altogether. It’s not the kind of thing your ear is supposed to notice consciously, but it does add subtle sonic interest to the song as it develops. And don’t miss the fake fade-out—not subtle at all, but mysteriously alluring nonetheless.

Kennedy is getting the Cloudberry Records treatment for this new Catalysts release: a three-inch CD-R three-song single, released in a hand-numbered batch of 100; “Goes On Forever” is one of the two “b-side” songs on the “Autumn Everywhere” single, due out next month. MP3 courtesy of Cloudberry.

“Out at the Wall” – Soltero

This song has an unexpectedly spacious presence for something so relatively quiet and contemplative, thanks in part to the in-the-distance production effects, which include a hammering, machine-like noise, an electronic surf sound, the whistle of a ghost train, and echoey, drop-like percussion accents, with some mysterious tinkly sounds thrown in for good measure. And it’s not just the sounds themselves that create the space, it’s the fact that these sounds are dropped behind the tidy pulse of an acoustic guitar. Note too how the reverb that Tim Howard uses on his voice feels somehow crisper than the often muddy wash of reverb we tend to hear in indie-land in this day and age; while muddy reverb veers sonically towards both the claustrophobic and the impersonal, what Howard does here feels open and vulnerable.

Quiet, contemplative songs also don’t tend to move along in this brisk and shuffly sort of way, which is another juxtaposition that enriches the vibe. Then we get that part of the song in which Howard unleashes his upper register, at which point the guitar pretty much drops out and it’s all the echoey ghostly carryings-on in the background. Cool stuff.

And the theme this week so far, unintentionally, is bands that aren’t bands, since Soltero this time around is pretty much a solo effort for Tim Howard (over the years, Soltero has sometimes been a band and sometimes not; Howard’s previous appearance on Fingertips back in ’04 was also a solo affair). “Out at the Wall” is a song from the new Soltero CD, You’re No Dream, being released this week on the Pennsylvania-based label La Société Expéditionnaire. MP3 via the label’s site.

“Rebel Side of Heaven” – Langhorne Slim

I have a soft spot for songs that start off the tonic chord–that is, songs that open on a chord that feels obviously not the song’s home base. I’m never sure how we even know this so quickly but we do. Listen to the first three or four seconds of “Rebel Side of Heaven” and you’ll hear it yourself, and then enjoy the way the song slides itself into the tonic, then—oops—out again, before settling in at 0:12, just before the singing starts.

And what singing! Langhorne Slim (nee Sean Scolnick, who grew up in Langhorne, Pennsylvania) has a high-pitched warble that manages still to be warm and approachable, kind of like if Jeff Tweedy were singing with Neil Young’s voice. With its good-natured swagger and great horn charts, the song is a rollicking good time, but unlike the vast majority of rollicking-good-time rock songs, it’s neither uncomfortably dumb nor way too long. The lyrics, in fact, are not only idiosyncratic and engaging, but feature at their heart what strikes me as a novel idea (“And though we have sinned all of our lives/We ain’t going to hell/Well we’re going to the rebel side of heaven.” Whether he got it from something he read or made it up himself, it beats the pants off the lyrics to most good-timey songs in the rock canon.

“Rebel Side of Heaven” is from the debut, self-titled Langhorne Slim full-length, released last month on Kemado Records. MP3 via Kemado.

“Animé Eyes” – The Awkward Stage

This one has the driving grandeur of mid-’70s Roxy Music, but with the arty quirkiness replaced by power-poppiness: “Animé Eyes” positively rings with clarity and catchiness. And yet there’s more going on here than might be immediately apparent. Inspired, I imagine, by the subject matter, the verses are based on a pentatonic scale, the five-tone scale historically associated with Asian music. The pentatonic scale has an inherent sing-songy nature (at least, to my Western ears), which serves the goal of a pop song nicely, even as it also lends a slightly exotic je ne sais quoi to the musical setting (especially since the pentatonic underpinning here is subtle; no jokey musical cliches—think “Turning Japanese”—for these guys).

In the chorus, the music shifts subtly but firmly back to a Western orientation, even as there are now some Japanese words being sung—another sure-footed but subtle touch. The guitar break that comes at 2:16, however—all pentatonic. Songs that mix straight-ahead, simple-sounding pop with behind-the-scenes craft strike me as close to brilliant most of the time. It helps, I think, to have as charismatic a singer as Shane Nelken, the mastermind behind the Awkward Stage, whose voice has the sort of melodramatic gravitas we heard a lot of back in the New Romantic days of the early ’80s, but floats along with less pomposity—he even distorts it through some sort of filtering that keeps him from sounding too full of himself.

“Animé Eyes” is from the CD Slimming Mirrors, Flattering Lights, to be released next month on Mint Records.

“Strawberry Wine” – Trevor Exter

Finger-picking and generally slapping around a beat-up cello, Trevor Exter makes music that is both seriously unusual and thoroughly, pleasingly accessible.

First off, dig the long, funky introduction. I don’t usually like long, funky introductions, but I have never before heard one coaxed and charmed and pulled and plucked out of a cello before. In Exter’s hands, the instrument generates a soft, incandescent groove, neither bass-like nor guitar-like—nor especially cello-like either, given his unconventional technique. It’s kind of mesmerizing, and gets even friskier once the singing starts (after two and a half minutes) and the cello is used as punctuation, in a variety of creative, textured ways. Then again, once the singing starts, it’s hard to keep one’s ears entirely on the cello, since Exter has a grand instrument right there in his throat—a lithe and buttery tenor, full of soul but light as air. Never before (I don’t think) have we heard a cello and a voice perform so intimately and knowingly together, since the cellist and the vocalist are usually two different people. The galvanizing impact on the fabric of the song—the way the cello riffs and rhythms work so tightly in and around the vocal lines—is hard to overstate. And let’s not overlook the song itself, which is more than just a pleasant groove; he’s written a spiffy hook in there as well (the “trembling, shivering, I am under your spell” part).

Exter grew up, home-schooled, in upstate New York, found the cello at an early age but never took to classical music, and eventually spent a lot of time in South America absorbing a rich array of Brazilian pop into his psyche and repertoire. He’s come and gone from New York City over the years, but is currently back there, gaining a following for the crazy, lovable thing that he does, playing both solo and with a band. “Strawberry Wine” is a song off his CD Flying Saucer People, which was self-released this year. MP3 via Exter’s site. MP3 no longer available but you can listen and/or buy it via Bandcamp.

“Yer Motion” – Reeve Oliver

And then there remains, even now, much power in the simple formulation of “rock band,” just three or four folks banging and strumming and hitting their regular ordinary guitars and drums and maybe a keyboard. Reeve Oliver is, in fact, a band—a trio, from San Diego. “Yer Motion” has nothing unusual going for it except that it happens to be a great song. (And are you tired yet of writers and bloggers who act like music that isn’t somehow “new” is somehow bad? A great song is always a revelation.) So let me rephrase this: “Yer Motion” sounds really different than most songs because it’s good and, well, a lot of the 7.8 trillion songs currently circulating online (that’s an exclusive Fingertips estimate) do not actually qualify as “good.”

Why is it good? Energy, arrangement, performance, and (always the kicker, for me) melody. One thing “Yer Motion” does exceptionally well is build on itself: the verse is immediately engaging, with its alternating major and minor chords; then we get a second section that grabs the ear even more, and it turns out to be merely a transition into the chorus, which to my ears is the melodic climax of the song, with its sophisticated twists and tight tight harmonies. Nicely done.

Reeve Oliver has been around since 2000. Signed by Capitol Records in 2006, they were among the bands that were summarily dropped when Capitol merged with Virgin early last year. “Yer Motion” can be found on the band’s Touchtone Inferno album, their second full-length, which was self-released digitally at the end of 2007, and is now coming out on CD. A bonus: the album features a great retro look, from the font to the design to the cool B&W photo. Also nicely done.

“Inside a Boy” – My Brightest Diamond

Shara Worden, once again up and running as My Brightest Diamond, has the uncanny ability to create the most expansive musical landscapes within the bounds of what seems merely to be a three-minute forty-second pop song. “Inside a Boy” shimmers, boils, drives, plunges, and aches with an idiosyncratic zeal that should thrill Kate Bush fans, and appeal to anyone with curious ears and an open heart. After an ethereal opening section, featuring a twinkling electric guitar line underneath a heavenly wash of sound, the song finds its central motif–a dark, diving theme that acquires a fierce, orchestral feel as it recurs throughout the piece. Worden produces and arranges her songs, and one of her signature talents is integrating inventive string arrangements with some serious rock’n’roll drumming and, when it seems a good idea, some noisy electric guitars as well. The end result is curious and satisfying.

For all of the musical drama unleashed, the song is more lyrically sparse than it might seem, given the inherent theatricality of Worden’s elastic voice. The words, instead, arrive like poetry, and pack a metaphysical wallop: “We are clouds, we are vistas/Like fawns and shape shifters/Our ages can never be found out/No our edges keep moving further out.”

The song can be found on the CD A Thousand Shark’s Teeth, an album with a number of other jewels to be discovered. It’s scheduled for a June release on Asthmatic Kitty Records.

“Fire” – Alibi Tom

Rapid-fire handclaps play off a crisp guitar lick for a series of quick measures and then–bang: I feel like I’m smack in the middle of a full-grown, fully-developed song–as if I opened a hallway door and discovered a band playing behind it. The verse presents an interesting aural contradiction: it feels very active, with a jumpy melody and the continuation of the crisp guitar line, but chord-wise, we’re pretty much standing still–as far as my ear can pick out, the entire verse revolves around one chord. (And if it’s not precisely one chord, the verse feels harmonically in one basic place all the way through.) The net effect is of serious anticipation, because whether we’re aware of it or not, our ears, when listening to music (pop music, specifically), continually anticipate the next chord, as each chord arrived at becomes its own center on the one hand yet implies its displacement on the other. There’s always another one coming, and we know it.

This is no doubt a good part of why the chorus, when it arrives (at 0:39) seems so wondrous–it comes after 25 seconds of this paradoxical sort of itchy-standing-stillness. Also, it’s a pretty great chorus, all effortless melody and breezy harmony. Now that I think about it, the idea of matching a dynamic melody to a single chord strikes me as the equal-but-opposite effect of having a one-note melody over a changing chord pattern, which is a well-established rock tradition (classic examples being “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Pump It Up”). Note, by the way, how, after the chorus but before the next verse, the song fully incorporates the introductory section (handclaps and guitar). This speaks to attention to craft; I always like that.

From Gothenburg, Sweden, the five-piece band Alibi Tom used to be the six-piece band Out of Clouds; as Out of Clouds, they were previously featured here on Fingertips in September 2006. “Fire” is from Scrapbook, the band’s debut as Alibi Tom, slated for release in Europe next month on a new British label called Leon. MP3 via the band’s site. (Not that the MP3 is not available for the media player, but it is available to download.)

“Right Away” – Pattern is Movement

Songs rarely manage to be simultaneously catchy and unusual, but the distinctive Philadelphia duo Pattern is Movement has done it with this odd amalgam of noise, cabaret, and glee. Launched off a fuzz of sound that sounds like a sustained accordion (but probably isn’t), “Right Away” hooks me, um, right away–as soon as the singing starts, with the lovely, harmonized melody that becomes the backbone of this sturdy, crazy little number. The oddities are too numerous to list (don’t miss the cartoony violins that arrive like meddling relatives to punctuate the lyrics), but topping them all is probably the piano solo at 1:45–just past the midpoint of the song, right where a more traditional band would put the blazing guitar solo, we get instead a muddle of notes such as might happen if you put your hands down anywhere on the keyboard and just sort of let them sit there while you drummed your fingers in place.

Speaking of drumming, sort of, pay attention to the percussion here. Despite an overall rhythm that is nearly mechanical in its one-two-three-four-iness, Chris Ward’s drum work is continually creative, utilizing all manner of pitch and accent to keep the texture interesting. Some of this has arisen out of necessity–the band used to have five people in it; down to just a drummer and a keyboard player (Andrew Thiboldeaux, who also sings), Ward has found it useful to be more ingenious. If in so doing he accentuates the duo’s overall vibe of purposeful but wacky vigor, all the better.

“Right Away” can be found on the band’s third CD, All Together, which is due out next week Hometapes Records. MP3 via Spin.

“Cat Swallow” – the Royal Bangs

A potent display of ramshackle rock’n’roll that brings the Replacements to mind both for the sloppy-tight ensemble playing and for lead singer Ryan Schaefer’s simultaneously offhanded and passionate voice, which is agreeably Westerbergian. The Bangs aim for a glitchy sort of sound, but only at the very beginning and at the very end are these glitches electronic in nature; otherwise, the band achieves its goals via a squeakily insistent, oddly memorable lead guitar line, cymbals-heavy percussion, the well-timed use of phased vocals, and, eventually, a clickety-clackety sound that might in fact be electronic after all but feels organic even if so. All in all there’s a certain wild grandeur at play as the piece shambles and swings along. I like how a searing instrumental break suddenly finds the band backing off, at 2:44, to offer a wonderfully subdued bit of guitar work that sounds completely different from what they’ve been doing but also, somehow, seamlessly part of the whole.

A quartet from Knoxville that is an outgrowth of Schaefer’s previous band, a trio called the Suburban Urchins, the Royal Bangs have been together since 2004. “Cat Swallow” is from the band’s second CD, We Breed Champions, due out next month on the Akron-based label Audio Eagle, a high-spirited outfit with the unambiguous message “Buy our fucking records!” on its home page.

“To Be Gone” – Anna Ternheim

Sad songs don’t always have to be slow, nor do pretty songs. Both sad and pretty, “To Be Gone” nevertheless moves at a steady, initially slinky, and ultimately almost finger-tapping pace, while Ternheim’s accented but clear and open-hearted singing style suggests, I think, greater pathos in this hardy setting than most singers convey who seek a melancholy ambiance through hushed tones and drowsy pacing. None of that mush for Ternheim here; “To Be Gone” is a firm-footed beauty, combining a keen if ineffable nostalgia with crystalline presence in the here and now. While there does seem to be something very late ’60s- or early ’70s-like going on here, the effect is peripheral–listen directly and it disappears.

At the heart of this song is a gorgeous, melancholic moment in the first line of what appears to be the chorus (although the lyrics shift from one iteration to another): it’s when the melody pushes forward but the chords lag behind, going seemingly in the opposite direction of where your ear seeks resolution. You can first hear this at 0:36 and then again, somewhat more clearly, at 1:13. I can’t completely describe this but the effect of the entire line is almost breathtaking.

Ternheim is from Stockholm, and released her first CD in Sweden in 2004 to great acclaim. “To Be Gone” was available on that CD, and is also now on her first U.S. full-length, Halfway to Fivepoints, coming out next week on Decca Records. The CD features mostly songs from Ternheim’s 2006 Swedish release, Separation Road, along with the older single “To Be Gone” and a few other songs from EPs and/or bonus discs from Sweden.

“Crooked Legs” – the Acorn

Opening with an appealing if unassuming bit of finger-picking, “Crooked Legs” begins like pretty much any 21st-century indie rock song written by someone who listened to a lot of old Paul Simon records (him again!; see last week). Except…listen carefully to the background percussion underneath the acoustic guitar. It’s syncopated, with a distinctly non-rock’n’roll flavor to it. That’s hint number one that this song may not end up where it appears at first to be going.

Hint number two: the trumpets that glide in at 0:48. There is some musical force seeking to enter here from beyond the realm of either standard-issue indie rock or gimmick-driven blog rock. You can hear it come to full expression at 1:09, when the complex, polyrhythmic percussion kicks in and we find ourselves in the middle of a genuine musical adventure. Which is only fitting, given the real-life adventure on which this song (and album) is based. “Part biographical narrative, part surreal fairy tale,” as the band describes it, the CD Glory Hope Mountain was inspired by the harrowing story of Gloria Esperanza Montoya (her name roughly translates to the CD’s title), mother of the Acorn’s singer and songwriter Rolf Klausener. Barely surviving a childhood of poverty and abuse in her native Honduras, Montoya eventually found her way to Montreal without any money or contacts and slowly made a new life for herself.

Writing a concept album about your mother is however not the best way to win over your bandmates, but the power of the story, and the accompanying music, got everyone on board. The Ottawa-based Klausener researched the history and mythology of Honduras, and listened to recordings of the country’s folk music; he became particularly inspired by the rhythms of the Garifuna music indigenous to the area, which developed from a blending of native traditions with music that came over with slaves who arrived from West Africa. The final product was less specifically about Montoya than a dream-like musing on the individual’s struggle to live a meaningful life.

The Acorn began as a solo project but ultimately became a band when Klausener decided that being a bedroom rocker wasn’t all that much fun. There are now five members. Glory Hope Mountain was released on Paper Bag Records in Canada this past fall, and saw its official U.S. release last month. MP3 via Paper Bag Stereogum (but no longer a direct link).