Fingertips

“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).

“C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang” – Jane Vain and the Dark Matter

I like songs that bother to lay down a full-fledged instrumental melody—i.e. when an instrument (typically a guitar, sometimes a piano, sometimes something else) plays a melody that is not the same melody the lyrics have in either a verse or in the chorus. That’s what we’re greeted with right away here (0:00-0:14); and, as a bonus, we immediately get that same melody repeated by a high, squeaky, but somehow endearing instrument that is either a high-pitched guitar or a guitar-like synthesizer and as much as I keep listening I can’t tell which it is.

That high-pitched guitar-like thing returns at 1:42, when we are shown how the opening instrumental melody weaves into the main body of the song, which turns out to be in the verse. And while, okay, this sort of thing is not the be-all and end-all of songwriting, the craft and attention it takes to do something like this speaks of a band conscientious about the musical atmosphere it seeks to create. Atmosphere does seem to be Jane Vain and the Dark Matter’s specialty, from their fanciful name to the slidey, slinky rhythm to the smoky singing of Jamie Fooks (there is in fact no “Jane Vain”) to, most of all, the subtle dynamism of the musical landscape which unfolds along the way here. While the word “atmospheric” in music writing refers typically to spacey washes of psychedelia or shoegaze, these guys create atmosphere in a solider, truer sense of the word, via rhythm and harmony and texture and variety and a most satisfying, if somewhat dreamlike, acuity. The violin that adds some nifty drama between 2:55 and 3:05 had actually sneaked on the scene back around 2:20, without fanfare, and fades away afterwards without a trace. This is that kind of song.

Jane Vain and the Dark Matter are a quartet from Calgary. “C’mon Baby Say Bang Bang” is from the band’s debut CD, Love Is Where the Smoke Is, which was released in January.



“Volatile” – the Old Haunts

CBGBs may be dead and gone, but here’s a trio from Olympia, Washington that has at least one foot firmly planted in 1977. Combining the pretty-yet-prickly guitar lines of Television with the earnest-yet-comic punk drive of the Ramones, “Volatile” seems simultaneously well-crafted and slapped together, if such a thing is possible. What attracts me most about the song is its offhandedly industrious character: the band just keeps on plugging away, twiddly guitar leading the way, creating the most wonderful, busy-sounding thereness in the background that actually seems more the heart of the song, in a way, than do the melody and lyrics. This sensation is reinforced by the lyrics themselves, which aren’t really about very much other than the narrator assuring us that he’s “volatile,” and literally spelling it out to be sure we understand.

The stringy, nasally vocal stylings of singer/guitarist Craig Extine bring Tom Verlaine directly to mind, accentuating the Television-like sensibility; the fact that this anxious-sounding character, so clear about his emotional turbulence, bothers both to spell the word he’s singing (a concept usually reserved for more positive attributes like r-e-s-p-e-c-t and l-o-v-e) and take lovely little “ah-ah-ah” breaks in his singing is both charming and, basically, funny. The trio also includes drummer Tobi Vail, ex- of Bikini Kill, the pioneering ’90s “riot grrl” outfit. “Volatile” is a song off the band’s new CD, Poisonous Times, coming out this week on Kill Rock Stars. MP3 via Kill Rock Stars, which is in fact the name of a record company, if you were wondering.



“Sun Down” – Nik Freitas

From Kill Rock Stars to Team Love we go—Team Love being another unlikely record company name, pointing in the opposite direction, and co-founded by Conor Oberst (Bright Eyes). With its delicate but determined chug and wistful vocalizing, “Sun Down” is the sort of brisk, contemplative guitar and piano piece that you would have heard back on a Paul Simon record in the ’70s. Check out that evocative electric guitar he’s using—listen at 1:41 in particular; now that’s just a wonderful, decades-old sound you don’t hear much on a ’00s indie-rock platter (and I don’t guess I should be calling it a “platter” but that’s how nostalgic the sound is). This song offers pleasures which are so low-key they might have slipped right past me were it not for the song’s eminently pleasing center of gravity—I won’t call it a hook because it’s not quite that, but the way the melody takes that three-note ascent at the end of the verse (first heard at 0:24) is the kind of beautiful, slightly unexpected songwriting touch that goes a long way towards nailing an entire song into place.

“Sun Down” is the title track from Freitas’s forthcoming CD, his fourth, and his first for Team Love. Freitas–one-time staff photographer for Thrasher magazine–recorded the CD pretty much on his own, in a studio he pretty much built himself in a shed in his Los Angeles backyard. It’s slated to hit the streets next month. MP3 via Team Love.

“Big Sound” – the M’s

Giddily nostalgic and busily eclectic, “Big Sound” shakes and squeals to a tinny ’00s cavalcade of buzzy electronics, stomping piano, and echoey vocals, with a perky but disheveled horn section and some radio frequency sounds thrown in because, well, it’s a big sound. Neo-glam-garage-pop with an R&B chaser, or some such thing.

Most impressive of all is how this Chicago-based quartet mine rock history with such panache. With “Big Sound,” the M’s manage, almost uniquely, to evoke the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Stones pretty much at the same time, but with a magnetism that is independent of influence. This is one of those songs in which the chorus offers not too much more than a minor variation, melodically, of what we’ve already heard in the verse–and yet how compelling I find it, snaky guitar lines working with the pounding piano and nutty horns (listen to how the whole thing comes to a humorous halt for a moment at about 1:42) to drive us, with a sense of barely controlled chaos, towards, ultimately, well…complete chaos: the final minute of the song is a dreamy denouement of echoing feedback and tweedling guitars and electronics that feels oddly right and satisfying after the frenetic bustle of the previous three and a half minutes.

The M’s sound to me like the real deal. They’ve been around since 2000, recording since ’03. “Big Sound” is an advance track off Real Close Ones, the band’s third full-length CD, due out on Polyvinyl Records in June. MP3 courtesy of Pitchfork.

“Love Vigilantes” – Laura Cantrell

Nashville-born, NYC-based Laura Cantrell is a 21st-century anomaly–a country singer who falls neither into the syrupy, commercialized “country music” camp nor into the allegedly hipper and up-to-date-er “alt.country” camp. She seeks to sing something pure and folk-based that manages to sound at once very traditional and very present in the here and now. Her influences are clear to anyone who has tuned in to her acclaimed radio show, “Radio Thrift Shop,” a fixture on WFMU since 2000. There, she offers music from a wide range of often obscure artists (Pee Wee Crayton? Gitfiddle Jim?) from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, mixing down-home old-style jazz with western swing and plain old country–you are warned in advance that the songs are “often scratchy, swingy and stringy.” (RTS disappeared for a while in the ’05-’06 time frame; it has since returned in a biweekly, online-only format.)

Neither scratchy, swingy, nor stringy, “Love Vigilantes” is a plaintive, beautifully arranged reworking of a New Order song that was once upon a time a staple on “modern rock” radio. Cantrell sings with a straightforward tone, golden and nourishing, with a tincture of twang and ache, but without a trace of emoting. In direct contrast to commercially-motivated music, producers of which appear to believe that the straightest way to emotion is a combination of histrionic singing and overripe arrangements, Cantrell presents with true heart, and demonstrates the power of disciplined playing. Listen to the piano during the first 10 seconds–single notes, given their space–for an example. The fiddle, meanwhile, plays with such artful restraint, low washes coloring the mandolin, that you may not realize it’s there until it steps out for a sad, pensive solo at around 1:50.

First appearing on the soundtrack for the Iraq War documentary Body of War last year, “Love Vigilantes” is one of the nine songs on Cantrell’s new, digital-only CD, Trains and Boats and Planes. The songs are themed loosely around travel–perhaps natural enough for a woman who has been on hiatus from music for three years, taking care of her first child. Staying home with a baby is one of the surest ways to launch daydreams about seeing the world. Six of the songs are covers; three are new versions of previously released Cantrell songs. The album will be available digitally next month via Diesel Only Records.

“Sore” – Annuals

The relative youngsters from the North Carolina-based band Annuals (no “the”) are back with another dramatic aural landscape disguised as a pop song. As with “Brother,” from 2006, “Sore” starts gently, almost pastorally, but doesn’t stay there. The wondrous thing is that the louder, churning sections are nothing if not more gorgeous than the quiet sections. Also, this time, the song is not simply split into the “quiet first half” and the “loud second half”; the dynamics on “Sore” are more complex, and the end result is, I think, even more rewarding.

The beginning is certainly pretty, but subtly disquieting, as the time signature is hard to pin down, and rendered trickier when the drummer kicks in with a gentle, brushed swing rhythm at 0:32 that somehow fits on top of the existing structure even as it doesn’t seem as if it should. The subsequent two changes are cumulatively magnificent: at 1:14, when the music remains gentle but the new rhythm is now fully embraced; and then at 1:35, when the band erupts and lets loose. But not for too long, as a string-dominated instrumental section brings us back to a not-quite-as-quiet quiet section. The second time through, the verse is altered by some twitchy percussion, and leads more quickly back to the full-volume swing–alterations that keep our interest without causing us to lose our bearings entirely. Also, don’t miss the modulation at 3:30: it’s a simple trick but sounds so inevitable that when I go back to listen to the first half, I keep being surprised it’s not there also.

“Sore” is one of three Annuals songs on a new split EP the band has done with a group called Sunfold–a group which is, as it turns out, composed of the same six people who are in Annuals. In Sunfold, however, Annuals frontman Adam Baker steps aside and lead guitarist Kenny Florence does the writing and singing. The two Sunfold songs on the EP are apparently a bit more guitar-oriented than standard Annuals fare. The EP, called Wet Zoo, is out this week on Canvasback Music. The MP3 is yet another from Pitchfork. If you can overlook a certain amount of snooty (not to mention snotty) writing, Pitchfork has turned into a grand source for exclusive free and legal MP3s over the past couple of years.

“When Water Comes to Life” – Cloud Cult

Offbeat, earnest, eventually anthemic chamber pop from one of indie rock’s quirkiest outfits, the Minneapolis-based Cloud Cult. Assembled in the middle of the ’90s to support singer/songwriter Craig Minowa’s ambitious songs, Cloud Cult solidified into a band through the end of the decade and began, with the new century, to record regularly–the new CD, entitled Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes), is the band’s seventh of the ’00s.

Launching off a gypsy-ish violin riff, “When Water Comes to Life” begins orchestrally, a variety of strings leading the way, both bowed and plucked. Even the drums, when they appear, sound like percussion in an orchestra more than someone banging on a drum kit. Minowa doesn’t start singing until about a minute and a half in, and when he does, he repeats a simple, four-line verse over and over, as the music swells and transforms underneath him. The lyrics, meanwhile, are biblical and vaguely apocalyptic (visiting angels, the swirl of death and life, etc.). When the drums become rock’n’roll drums for good, at 2:36, the piece receives a powerful kick, heightened no doubt by the cumulative effect of the repetition and the ongoing musical and lyrical drama.

Cloud Cult was a pioneer in the still-developing “green band” trend, working at a commendably high level of environmental awareness across everything they do (although they do not tend to sing about it). Despite early offers of record contracts with established labels, Minowa kept the band independent largely because no record company could guarantee the level of environmental friendliness, manufacturing-wise, that Minowa’s own Earthlogy Records could deliver (i.e. packaging from 100 percent postconsumer recycled, plus nontoxic shrink-wrap; oh, and for everything 1,000 CDs sold, Earthology plants 10 trees). In performance the band apparently offers quite the experience; two of the seven members are listed as “visual artists”–they paint onstage during concerts. Feel Good Ghosts (Tea-Partying Through Tornadoes) is due out next month on Earthology, in association with the Rebel Group. MP3 via Pitchfork.

“Swimming” – Shelley Short

Chicago’s Shelley Short seems singularly able to combine an idiosyncratic approach to acoustic guitar-based songwriting with a warm, welcome, easy-to-listen-to vibe. This ain’t no freak folk, in other words. But Short’s music does have its subtler oddities, including dissonant chords, unexpected sounds, and offbeat arrangements.

Listen, for example, to the minimal accompaniment utilized in the verse—a series of deliberate, three-note patterns, based on the simple ascensions we hear in the introduction but continually blurred by unexpected harmonics. Throughout the song, when she sings the verses, the accompaniment sticks to these three-note patterns, without any other rhythm or flourish–a simple, unostentatious, but actually very strange way to go about things.

When we get to the chorus, the 1-2-3 rhythm of the three-note pattern is reflected now in the acoustic guitar strum, and the melody slows down to one syllable per triplet. And so without (I don’t think) changing the time signature, or the instrumentation in any major way, the chorus sounds like a whole different musical place than the verse did. Again, it’s subtle, but distinctive. And get a load of that burbly guitar sound she uses in the second verse, to add to the song’s watery setting. Very cool, but if you don’t listen carefully you might not notice.

And hey I guess I’ve got an unintentional watery theme going so far, as “Swimming” comes from the CD Water For The Day, due out next month on Hush Records. MP3 via Hush. (For those who might have missed it, check out too Short’s first appearance on Fingertips, back in February 2006.)

“Oh Yeah” – Morning State

End of watery theme, for those keeping score at home. Also, end of quirky theme, as “Oh Yeah” is about as straightforward as its title. Note that this does not mean it is uninteresting or lacking charm. Being unorthodox is not the only way to catch the ear.

This one works, for me, for its tight sense of pace and atmosphere, and for the unaccountably powerful chorus hook, which succeeds in large part via restraint. The verse–with its needly guitar line and steady bashing drum–feels itchy, and creates the sense that it’s leading somewhere large and explosive. We get the setup–that single drumbeat at 0:26–and then…we get the bass player, who come to think of it was missing in action till now. He gives the song a satisfying, Split-Enz-y bottom, but nothing otherwise busts out. Russell Ledford sings in succinct, mournful phrases; no yowling for him. And follow the guitars, if you will. They too remain reined in during the chorus, but begin to burst at the seams as they lead into and then accompany the second verse. No one should be surprised when they get to make some noise a bit later on, but even that retains an air of forbearance–after all, how bad-ass a guitar solo can you inject into a two-minute, forty-second song?

Morning State is a quartet from Georgia, based in Atlanta but also considered local in Athens. “Oh Yeah” is a song from the band’s debut CD, You Know People I Know People. It’s the band’s first CD, but, oddly enough, it’s the second version of the album. To make what is probably a long and painful story short and unemotional, Morning State spent four months on the album previously, and were four songs into the mixing process, when the record label they were signed with went belly up. The producer offered the band a deal but they couldn’t afford it; it was cheaper for them to go to Athens and record the entire album all over again. Which is what they did. The CD will be self-released in May.

“Torn Blue Foam Couch” – Grand Archives

This is one of those sweeping, evocative, thoroughly impressive songs that everyone more or less has to like—until, of course, everyone does like it, at which point there will be those who decide they don’t like it because too many people like it. You know the drill.

Lovely melodies are front and center in “Torn Blue Foam Couch”; they feel like bygone melodies, from another time and place, wafting through the window almost Twilight Zone-ishly—you’re sure you recognize them, but something seems a little off. There are some unusual instrument choices—the harp sound in the intro (might actually be a ukulele) isn’t something you hear every day, and that rubbery drum that kicks in at around 0:48 is not typically heard in a standard drum kit. But something else seems subtly awry as the song develops and after any number of listens I finally figured it out: this baby has a bizarre structure: it’s all verse for the first two-plus minutes, and then all chorus the rest of the way. The switchover happens at about 2:16, and you can really feel the shift in your gut at that point—it’s like you didn’t realize quite how much the tension was building until it finally released.

Lyrically the song escapes me—no matter how many times I listen, a combination of Mat Brooke’s pretty yet often unintelligible voice and some defiantly inscrutable lyrics continue to stymie. “Hey darling don’t you look fine/The dull look in your eyes/You’re terrified”: fascinating, but—huh? Brooke formed the Seattle-based Grand Archives in 2006, after leaving Band of Horses following their first CD for Sub Pop Records. Previously, he was in a band that has seemed retrospectively influential–the purposefully misspelled outfit Carissa’s Wierd, which also featured Jenn Ghetto and Sera Cahoone, and whose odd, neo-folk-rock sound presaged the likes of the Decemberists and Johanna Newsom. “Torn Blue Foam Couch” is from Grand Archives’ sort of self-titled debut CD, The Grand Archives, which was released last month, also on Sub Pop. MP3 via Sub Pop.

“Hush If You Must” – Brooke Waggoner

Brooke Waggoner may be the only singer/songwriter in Nashville who cites Chopin as an influence, never mind both Chopin and ELO. So she is not a typical Nashville musician; she’s from Louisiana but she’s not a typical Louisiana musician either. She seems, indeed, to have her eye on music that extends beyond any one regional palette—or any one genre’s palette, for that matter. “Hush If You Must,” while starting as a breezy piano ditty (the intro recalls “Daydream Believer” to these ears), quickly hangs a fuller-fledged, string-laden sound upon that original, recurring refrain. There are tempo changes and mood shifts throughout, centered on the basic dichotomy of the musically restrained vocal sections, featuring Waggoner’s double-tracked yet cozy voice, and the swifter, louder instrumental sections—which include one unexpected, tempo-shifting break, at 1:38, all honky-tonk and handclaps.

Waggoner has a college degree in music composition and orchestration, and is personally responsible for the string arrangements that play a central role here. But even when a soaring string display grabs your attention, I suggest keeping an ear on the piano. Waggoner has a sure touch at the keyboard–her playing has palpable personality, and not just during the honky-tonk interlude. I feel as if I can see her determined, playful, satisfied face as she nimbly hammers out her sure-fingered lines. Listen in particular to the extended piano solo she takes starting at 2:52—it’s not complicated, but it’s vibrant and personal in a way that more overtly virtuosic playing often isn’t.

Waggoner is 23, and has one EP to her name so far—Fresh Pair of Eyes, which was self-released last year. “Hush If You Must” is the lead track from the EP, and is available as an MP3 via SXSW, where Waggoner performed last week.

“Big Sky” – A Brief Smile

An exquisitely ambivalent song, musically speaking, “Big Sky” rings with unresolved chords, elegant dissonance, ringing harmonics, and finely-tuned noise–all hung on the unassuming frame of a sturdy little pop song. Succinct melodies, verse-bridge-chorus, you can even sing along. This is a marvelous accomplishment.

The chorus is a particular wonder; I can’t recall another song featuring such a blatantly unresolved musical setting in the chorus—normally the place where the song’s tension is released via melodies that come home to solid, grounded chords. None of that goes on here. The melodies lay out against a wash of chords that don’t match; the ends of lines leave us hanging musically until the very end, and even there, rather than a typical resolution we get an unexpected downward leap of six intervals—the aural equivalent of taking a last downward step on a staircase you thought you were already at the bottom of. You arrive surprised, unexpectedly reacquainted with gravity.

A Brief Smile is a five-piece band from NY and I’m just now stumbling upon them, and listening to this song, and liking it, and lookee here, it came out in September, and the band itself has been around long enough that they have “big fans” out there who apparently hang on their every note. Such is the unconquerable breadth and depth of the contemporary rock’n’roll scene. I will never get my arms entirely around it and neither will you or anyone else. The best we can do is work together to fill in one another’s missing pieces. “Big Sky” is a song off the band’s CD Now We All Have Horns, released on Wrecking Ball Music. MP3 via the band’s site.