Fingertips

“Technology” – the Whigs

Take the crunchy drive of the Strokes but loosen it up, make it sound a little more fun than hip, a little warmer than cooler, and you’ve got a quick sense of this exuberant trio from the semi-legendary indie rock oasis of Athens, Georgia. Just about all I need out of this song is that great barrage of fuzz-toned guitar chords in the intro–I mean, how primal and cool and perfect is that sound? Perhaps lead guitar is overrated after all, when so much dazzling musical force can be channelled through crisp, chord-based pounding. And yet the song hardly stops there, working itself up into two separate hooks—one delivered as those great intro chords return (at 0:30), the other right after that, where the chorus centers on one note (beginning at 0:44) with shifting chords underneath, leading to the line “Technology it needs me.” There are great rock’n’roll precedents for this kind of one-note melody, but two of the monumental examples that occur to me (“Subterranean Homesick Blues” and “Pump It Up”) use it in the verse rather than the chorus. Coming here after all the chord-crunching it seems like its own sort of brilliant release. “Technology” is a song off the Whigs’ debut CD, Give ’em All a Big Fat Lip, which was self-released last year, then re-released in September by ATO Records. The MP3 is via the ATO Records site.

“Too Many Pictures” – the Sheds

Listening to “Too Many Pictures,” I develop a theory on the spot: it’s hard to be quirky and nice at the same time, musically speaking. Usually something that’s quirky involves a prickliness of one kind or another–maybe some unusual vocals and/or lyrics, some challenging sounds, or at the very least some jarring twists and turns in the overall musical structure. To sound “nice,” on the other hand typically involves a significant amount of both prettiness and gentleness. So, yes—hard to be jarring and soothing simultaneously. One would think. But here come the Sheds, a duo from Kentucky that is more than happy to oblige. How do they do it? Well, clearly having a flowing melody and gentle instrumentation helps (as do those perky “ba-ba-ba” backing vocals). So the niceness is right up front. Whereas the quirkiness is subtler, based in the band’s lo-fi vibe, disarmingly unaffected vocals, and naked-seeming lyrics. “My family has a history of cancer/Addictive personalities/A tendency for excess intake/And our hearts are big”: that’s awfully quirky writing. And yet maybe here they’ve figured out where the quirky and the nice can overlap after all—in poignancy. Most of all, this song is poignant, as the narrator, rigorously honest with himself, describes his (quirky!) human need for the cigarettes he knows he shouldn’t smoke, singing a melody which takes plaintive, almost unplanned-sounding turns, sometimes upwards and sometimes downwards. “Too Many Pictures” is from the band’s recently self-released CD, The Sheds Quit Smoking, and all the songs do in fact have something to do with smoking. The MP3 is via the band’s site; as a matter of fact, the entire CD is available there for free and legal download. Thanks to the music blog Each Note Secure for the lead.

“Been Here Before” – Jeremy Enigk

Dreamy, grand, and effortlessly melodic, “Been Here Before” has many graces but to me its most notable achievement is its reclamation of a progressive rock aural vocabulary into a 21st-century pop setting. Enigk’s haunting vocal resemblance to Jon Anderson (Yes, anyone?) is not the only thing that sets off the prog-rock bells in my head (although it helps); there’s also the majestic ambiance (the soaring mountains and spreading valleys of sound), the supple use of 7/4 time, and okay maybe the organ solo too. Whatever happened once upon a time to make progressive rock the whipping boy of critics and music hipsters, who the hell cares anymore. In the hands of a talent like Enigk’s, the music comes across like a revelation. “Been Here Before” is packed with more musical ideas than most musicians realize are possible in a four-minute pop song—a series of fully-formed melodies and structural shifts that flow fluently and beautifully together. Lead singer of the pioneering but oddly controversial ’90s band Sunny Day Real Estate, Enigk more recently headed up the Fire Theft (with two Sunny Day compadres); now he’s got a solo CD coming out, his second. It’s called World Waits and is scheduled for release later this month. “Been Here Before” is the second track on the record.

“Wind Change” – Artisan

Crisp, rhythmic, and melodic, “Wind Change” sparkles with a not often heard sort of acoustic/electronic energy. Certainly there are any number of people out there attempting to combine these two disparate sonic camps; a sub-genre even emerged early in the ’00s—“folktronica”—that sought to name at least some of these efforts. And yet achieving a bona fide blend of acoustic and electronic instruments is harder than it may seem to the dial-twiddling crowd: what we tend to get are either blurry tunes heavy in atmosphere but light in actual song-iness, or simple guitar songs with distracting effects thrown in. None of that, however, for Artisan, a British outfit which combines a Simon & Garfunkel-like sprightliness with melodies and vocal stylings that owe a lot, in a wonderful way, to Thom Yorke. The beats here are so subtle and well-conceived they often sound like little more than guitar-body percussion, which merely reinforces how central the guitar work remains, through both the complex, chord-changey verse and the simple, sing-along chorus. I’ve rarely for instance heard harmonic accents worked so organically into a song without drawing undue attention (listen at 1:27 to see what I mean)–just one example of the stylish musicianship on display. “Wind Change” is available as an MP3 on the band’s site. It’s a demo but the band tells me that at this point it’s as finished as it’s going to be for some time. Sounds pretty good as is.

“No Backbone” – the Lemonheads

Talk about songiness: Evan Dando at his best always specialized in songiness of just about the best kind—the power pop kind. Now first of all, turn the volume up on this one. No, louder. You want to be sure to properly absorb the guitar barrage (and hey that’s the venerable J Mascis on lead, how ’bout that?). And talk about the blending of disparate sounds: what about that wall of guitars and Dando’s husky-honey voice? I think the potential to combine an all-out sonic assault with sweet melody has always been the grand allure of that intractable genre known as power pop. What “No Backbone” does particularly well is sound barely contained so much of the time—not just J Mascis but also drummer Bill Stevenson (with certfied punk credentials of his own), just bashing first, asking questions later. It’s a tricky balance, since a finely-wrought pop song is actually a pretty strict container, without a lot of room for loosy-goose drama. Written, as a few Lemonheads songs have been, by Tom Morgan, of the not-terribly-well-known Australian trio Smudge, “No Backbone” is a lean and shining container indeed, but the ensemble drives and pushes and keeps making it sound like implosion is but a few measures away. Until, that is, that wonderful part where things get a bit quieter, at around 2:20 (and doesn’t Dando sound intensely Costello-like right there?), for maybe 15 seconds, and then, never mind, the band is back and we’re kicked in the butt till someone pulls the plug at a tidy 3:09. “No Backbone” is a song from the Lemonheads’ self-titled new CD, due out tomorrow on Vagrant Records. No, the Lemonheads haven’t had an album for a long time (10 years); it’s a whole new band this time except for Dando. The MP3 is courtesy the AOL Music Indie Blog.

“Doctor Blind” – Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton

Lead singer for the band Metric and one-time member of the ramshackle Broken Social Scene ensemble, Emily Haines strips things down here for a haunting, piano-based reverie with a pointed message. I’m immediately attracted to the time-signature challenges in the chorus, which lend a meaty flavor to an already tuneful piece–I think she abuts a measure of 5/4 to a measure of 7/4, but I could be wrong; it’s beautifully articulated and engaging in any case, with Haines singing in a weary, not-quite-deadpan voice. Everything is draped in lamentation (listen to how the strings sound when they join those ghostly echo-noises in the background), which is perhaps as it should be when the subject turns, as it seems to here, to our society’s sickening reliance on pharmaceutical products for our quote-unquote well-being. And actually I’m loving those echo-noises, whatever they are (unearthly guitars? distorted vocal samples?); they acquire a more prominent place in the background during the last minute or so, sounding like a chorus of alien ghosts trying to warn us, through a some sort of interdimensional doorway, about something we wouldn’t understand anyway. “Doctor Blind” is a song from the CD Knives Don’t Have Your Back, coming out this week on Last Gang Records.

“Brother” – Annuals

This expansive group of North Carolina youngsters (front man Adam Baker is 19) sound like Arcade Fire’s younger American cousins. This is a good thing. Like that great Montreal band, Annuals show an impressive grasp of instrumental melody (note the recurring violin refrain), musical dynamics (they do both loud and soft with impressive character), and idiosyncratic production tricks as they transform a lilting, pastoral opening (complete with crickets) into a hard-driving rocker, showing both patience and passion in the process. It takes well over half the song to arrive at the visceral, propulsive beat that becomes its destiny—a beat that actually swings if you think about it: one-two; one-two. I really like when the percussion steps to the forefront at 2:45 and we hear the beat in a stripped-down and yet still nicely textured setting, and like as well the unusual guitar solo that led into the percussive section, at 2:26—unusual both for the complexion of the sound (not the typical searing guitar solo) and for the way it allows itself to be enveloped by the slightly unhinged background; typical guitar solos demand the front-and-center seat, perhaps at the cost of a richer musical flavor. Nice stuff from a promising ensemble. “Brother” is a track from the band’s debut CD, Be He Me, scheduled for release in October on Ace Fu Records; the MP3 is via the Ace Fu site.

“Day’s Looking Up” – Paul Michel

With its melancholic descending guitar line and casually assured presence, “Day’s Looking Up” sounds like some great lost classic rock ballad, particularly when we arrive at the chorus. What a beautiful, inevitable melody we get there, and what great lyrics: “Hope is an only child/And change is a desperate fool/Waiting for jealousy to clear out the room.” These are great not because they are unutterably profound (that would be asking a lot) but because of quite literally how they sound in the setting: big fat concepts to match the big fat beauty of the musical line. I am also impressed with the words because Michel is going for it here—he’s aiming at something beyond “I love you, baby” or “You hurt me, baby” while at the same time avoiding the two biggest problems in pop lyrics, which are 1) cliche and 2) obscurity. Mainstream pop veers towards cliche; indie rock veers towards obscurity, and I’m not equipped to say which is worse but neither is particularly satisfying. A Washington, D.C.-based singer/songwriter, Michel has also spent time in bands, and it shows in his singing—his voice is packed with more power and elasticity than the typical singer/songwriter, gliding effortlessly up and down to notes both higher and lower than they sound. “Day’s Looking Up” is a song from the CD These are Beautiful Things, released last year on Magic Bullet Records. Michel has a new CD called A Quiet State of Panic scheduled for a November release on Stunning Models on Display Records.

“Changing Emily” – Special Patrol

Anyone remember Pure Prairie League? Although I have never been a particular fan of that sort of country-pop-rock, there’s no doubt that the once-upon-a-time ubiquitous “Amie” had a certain compulsive charm. And everything sounds better draped in nostalgia anyway, so if a trio from Adelaide, South Australia decides to come along in 2006 and channel some Southern U.S. country-rockers from three decades ago, if the melody is there, and the harmonies, and if the effort has verve and more than a little compulsive charm of its own, what the heck. I’m on board. There is definitely something about the layered harmonies of the chorus, with those high voices on top, that just seems so comfortable and right. I like how the song in fact starts with the chorus, which is not something you hear every day—there’s just a ringing, vaguely Credence-like guitar line and boom, the chorus. I’m surprised more people don’t try that. Two of the guys in Special Patrol—the singer/guitarist Myles Mayo and drummer Rob Jordan—have been playing music together since ninth grade, and have known each other since second grade; they began recording in 1999. The band has been in its current form since 2003. “Changing Emily” is a song from their upcoming CD, Handy Hints From The Undertaker, to be released in October in Australia on Mixmasters Records.

“Into the Open” – Heartless Bastards

From its dreamy opening–the echoey, faraway keyboard, the reverby vocal–“Into the Open” kicks into an intensely engaging reverie of a midtempo rocker. And there: I wrote at least one sentence about this marvelous Cincinnati trio without extolling the unearthly talents of singer/songwriter/guitarist Erika Wennerstrom. She opens her mouth and the world shifts; she has the sort of voice that reminds me why I listen to music. When it’s aligned with such a stirring, almost sing-song-y tune, I can do little except sit and receive, rather insight-less. Notice by the way she doesn’t sing in her full voice at the beginning, in the echoey intro. And hey that’s an actual introduction, almost like the old days–a separate part of the song that leads into the rest but is never repeated. That’s kind of cool right there. Anyway, she doesn’t really start singing singing till after that–the line that starts (David Byrne-ishly) “And I find myself…” Just listen to that. Every syllable is imbued with substance in a way you can neither teach nor describe. Interestingly, Wennerstrom’s lyrics here employ Talking Heads-style declarations, sometimes repeated, as Byrne was wont to do. This strikes me as very likable, somehow, since otherwise the music and vibe, which wanders into some room-shaking noise here and there, has nothing to do with the older band. “I’ve got a wind in my face”: listen to that. Sit and receive. Wennerstrom is the real thing, and so’s her band. “Into the Open” is the first song on their new CD, All This Time, released in August on Fat Possum Records. The MP3 is available via the Fat Possum site.

“Little Sounds” – Judah Johnson

Judah Johnson is a band, not a person; and “Little Sounds” is not so little, but rather a large, yearning sort of rock song, at once familiar- and fresh-sounding, which is a nice combination. Just that great up-and-down sliding guitar line in the intro is enough to hook me; vocalist Daniel Johnson’s substantive yet tender vocal delivery is another plus. And yeah I don’t suppose we can know, stuck inescapably in our own cultural moment, whether the band’s ear-grabbing use of electronic accents in the midst of such a big-sounding piece of rock is going to sound really cool in the long run or really dated. While I’m having a hard time focusing on what the song is about, get the sense that it’s all very sad, an impression furthered by the intriguing “Ooh Child” reference in the bridge (with the lyrics inverted: “Ooh, child/It won’t get easier/It won’t get brighter”). Made me wonder for a moment if the Five Stairsteps were a Motown group (Judah Johnson is from Detroit), but no, I see they were from Chicago (thanks, Wikipedia!). “Little Sounds” is from the band’s second full-length CD Be Where I Be, released in late August on Flame Shovel Records. The MP3 is via the Flameshovel site.

“O Love is Teasin'” – Isobel Campbell

So like a lot of people lately I’ve been listening carefully to the gruff but lovable Bob Dylan, pondering at no small length his deepening embrace of traditional song structures, admiring the tenacity, really, with which he has pursued his troubadour destiny, which has a lot to with being at once a great student and interpreter of songs from the dustier alleyways of folk music. Things return and return again to the storied Anthology of American Folk Music and a-ha, here’s where I start talking about Isobel Campbell, in case you thought I’d forgotten. The melty-voiced Scottish cellist/vocalist, and one-time member of Belle & Sebastian, has a CD coming out later this fall that, of all things, is directly inspired by the recordings from the late ’20s and early ’30s that Harry Smith famously collected and released in the early ’50s that propelled the American folk movement later that decade. This seems even more unexpected than her highly unexpected collaboration earlier this year with Mark Lanegan. “O Love is Teasin'” is, apparently, a traditional song that Campbell has arranged, and it’s subtle and very simple (just guitar and voice with two–count ’em, two–soundings of a chime) but if you slow down you might just find it as achingly gorgeous and haunted as I do. Of course even if you slow down it’s over pretty quickly (it’s just 1:57); my suggestion is listen to it a few times in a row to catch all of fragile, breathy moments Campbell offers while delivering this almost medieval-sounding melody. Her distinction is that her voice is at once pretty and imperfect, which has an arresting effect in this minimally presented song. “O Love is Teasin'” is from a CD that will be released in November on V2 Records called Milkwhite Sheets–an album of “psychedelic lullabies,” according to the press material. The MP3 is available via Pitchfork.

“Like a Lily” – Out of Clouds

Unlike the other three seasons, which fade into their successors, summer ends with the sense of a door slamming. Everyone seems to hate it, but truly we are co-conspirators: against the reality of the Earth’s steady revolution, we insist on seeing a sudden end where there is none. So okay, it may be cool and rainy, and school buses may be back on the streets, but me, I’m not going to lose the full seasonal experience, and offer a most summery-sounding song to help recover calendar reality. Out of Clouds is an earnest six-piece band from Gothenburg, Sweden with an obvious affinity for innocent ’60s pop sounds of both the British and American variety. But don’t mistake the gentle piano chords, easy beat, and tender harmonies as purely an exercise in retro-ness; to my ears, “Like a Lily” has a vital and appealing heart. Singer Joel Göranson’s voice isn’t just sweet–listen closely and you’ll hear a subtle edge; it’s Brian Wilson with Thom Yorke mixed in. The chorus nails this all down for me with its unfolding melody and continually interesting series of chords. “Like a Lily” is the lead track on the most recent Out of Clouds EP, Into Your Lovely Summer, self-released in June. The MP3 is from the band’s site.

“Nature of the Experiment” – Tokyo Police Club

Listen to how quickly this band builds a compelling song: first comes that buzzy, lo-fi bass, then a quick cathartic grunt, then that really wonderful guitar line, at once chimey and dissonant, both careful and slightly unhinged. And then to top it off a splendid opening line—“We’ve got our tracks covered/Thanks to your older brother”—that plunks us right into the middle of a conflict of some sort, while simultaneously recalling spiky Britpop from some previous generation or another. We’re just 16 seconds into the song at this point; when the whole thing is only two minutes you clearly have to hit the ground running. The singer, Dave Monks, is also the bass player; and it could be my imagination but it strikes me that when the lead vocalist is the bass player, the bass is inescapably more interesting–let’s face it, a guy who sings lead is used to being heard, not blending into the background. A young band, the Toronto-based Tokyo Police Club sounds rough around the edges but the song is a winner, a skittering blend of melodic bursts and lyrical salvos (“It’s an ancient Russian proverb/I doubt it’s one that you’ve heard”) set to an invigorating Gang-of-Four-ian beat. “Nature of the Experiment” is from TPC’s debut EP, A Lesson in Crime (Paper Bag Records), slated for a U.S. release in October. It was originally released in Canada in April. The MP3 is via the Paper Bag site.

“Overgrown” – Darling New Neighbors

From Austin comes a different sort of rough-around-the-edges band. Darling New Neighbors is a trio that plays a lopsided, homespun sort of indie pop that veers, song to song, in a variety of directions. “Overgrown” is their take on something resembling country, but I don’t think you have to think you like country to like a tune that manages to sound so heartfelt and, well, goofy at the same time. Elizabeth Jackson’s forthright, naive-seeming alto, with its penetrating falsetto, seems the perfect vehicle for this landscape-driven tale of love gone wrong. All three members of the band play multiple instruments (things like mandolins and accordions and ukeleles); Jackson herself takes a solo on the violin in the middle of this one that goes on and on and makes me smile every time I hear it. “Overgrown” is the first song on the band’s debut CD, Every Day is Saturday Night, released in August on I Eat Records. The MP3 is via the I Eat Records site. (Note a delay of about five seconds at the beginning of the MP3; don’t worry, it’ll start.)

“Los Angeles” – the Rosewood Thieves

After the old-timey piano intro, the first thing you’re likely to notice here is singer Erick Jordan’s spunky vocal resemblance to John Lennon–whom he readily acknowledges as one of his musical heroes. (There’s even a lyrical reference to “that bird that flew,” for good measure.) If this already seems like a good thing, you’re home free with this song; if however you’re trained to be disapproving of transparent influences, I urge you to relax that learned reflex and simply listen to whether the song is pleasing. Me, I find “Los Angeles” a rousing good time, for a variety of reasons. The engaging melody and crisp production are a good part of it, but to me songs often prove their mettle in the details–the little things that go on that didn’t “need” to be there but, with their presence, make everything else seem deeper and stronger and truer. I like, a lot, the meandering course the melody takes from the fourth into the fifth measure of the verse–the part, in the first verse, where it sounds like Jordan is simply singing a drawn-out “ahhh” but it actually turns out to be an “I.” Formally this is called a “melisma”–where a group of notes are used to sing one syllable–and is more characteristic of classical than pop music. I also like the stutter (literally an extra beat) in the melody line–you hear it in the seventh measure in the introduction, and each time that point returns in the verse. Sometimes the more subtle the touch–like the way the piano intro is revisited in the middle of the song but with a major chord momentarily underneath (at 2:38)–the cooler the effect. All in all this seems the work of a band that knows what it’s doing. The Rosewood Thieves are a quintet from New York City. “Los Angeles” is one of seven songs on the band’s debut EP, From the Decker House, released last month on V2 Records.

“Lowlife” – Scanners

I’m in love with the opening riff here, with its fuzzy, restrained, melodic yet unresolved appeal; when it leads into a memorable opening line–“I know you’re not ready to live/Are you ready to die?”–I am solidly hooked. And even more is going on right away (check out that ghostly keyboard thing hovering above everything else), most notably the unexpected use of Sarah Daly’s violin, which provides a plaintive undercurrent to her full-throttled but pop-savvy vocal style. (I’m thinking she sounds like Grace Slick and Siouxsie Sioux’s somewhat more mild-mannered love child.) The more I listen to this song the more I am impressed with its precision and timeless pop know-how; while sounding completely contemporary, “Lowlife” displays a vitality that cuts across the generations–I hear all rock decades from the ’60s onward in different aspects of this song, which in another time and place might’ve been blaring from all of our car radios out on the wide open road but as of now is just a really cool little song you can download for free on the net. Bob was right: things have changed. “Lowlife” is from this London-based band’s debut CD, Violence is Golden, which came out in June on Dim Mak Records. The MP3 is available via the Dim Mak site.

“Lullaby in A” – Bel Auburn

A lovely melody placed over tasteful blips of tweaky fuzz and feedback, “Lullaby in A” starts slowly, almost as an incantation. A minute in, the song opens up sonically, but something of a reverie remains, as the earnest verse repeats and repeats–there’s no chorus, just an interlude of upward-swelling guitars and noise–against an assertive drumbeat and subtly shifting backdrop mixing the electric and the electronic. At around 2:50 we float into a new (but still lovely) melody; this one however slides quickly and refreshingly into a harsher section full of hammering guitars and electronic swoops before quieting back down and, soon, fading into a vibrating electronic wail. And, yes, okay: are they taking what Radiohead and Wilco have done and making it perhaps prettier, perhaps poppier, perhaps easier to listen to? Probably; and I for one say hooray for them. I love Radiohead and Wilco to pieces and have and will follow them anywhere (hey, I’ve even listened to the end of “Less Than You Think,” willingly, twice). But it’s a big planet, and there’s a lot of ways to make great music, only one of which is by being blindingly original. (Remember too that a whole lot of blindingly original music is also unlistenable; very little of it is effective pop.) Most of this rock’n’roll game is about absorbing and repositioning what someone else already did. And oops I guess I’m back on the “it’s okay to have obvious influences” soapbox, so I’ll step down merely to note that Bel Auburn is a quintet from Ashland, Ohio; “Lullaby in A” is a song from the band’s second CD, Lullabies in A and C, self-released in mid-August and available as well as a free and legal download on the band’s site.

“Walking the Plank” – Apollo Up!

A winning combination of melody and invective, “Walking the Plank” sounds as sharp and blistering as an early Elvis Costello or Joe Jackson song. But this is no wearisome nostalgia trip, as there’s likewise something very present and unbeholden to anyone about this trio’s disciplined, fiery sound. While vocalist Jay Leo Phillips (also the guitarist) has an Elvis-like timbre, his voice is deeper, and rougher around the edges; plus, he has his own intermittently explosive guitar to play off against, which seems clearly to add to the intensity of his performance. (And that’s the funny thing about most of those early EC gems–they rocked, but, largely, and strangely, without any sort of lead guitar sound.) Being a trio is no small point of differentiation–I really think that trios, at their best, offer rock energy that is as pure and focused as it comes. No matter how noisy a trio gets, there’s something concentrated and essential about the sound it makes; you can always hear each instrument precisely if you listen, which I find bracing somehow. “Walking the Plank” is the lead track off the band’s Chariots of Fire CD, their second, which was released in June on Theory 8 Records. The MP3 is available via the band’s site.

“Put On Your Light” – Hezekiah Jones (with Clare Callahan)

A slow, bittersweet foot-tapper, if such a thing is possible. But go on and see if your foot doesn’t for some reason want to tap along to this sad and swaying tale of troubled love. It’s not just the minor key that lends the song a woebegone air; listen too to how the achy melody is often sung off the main beat (the one your toe is tapping, remember)–this fosters a resistant, unsettled, I might even suggest unhappy vibe. Meanwhile, there’s a duet going on between the almost ghostly-sounding Callahan and the full-voiced Jones (whose name is actually Raphael Cutrufello), but it’s an odd duet. Callahan starts, Jones joining in to finish the end of both lyric lines in the verse. They sing the chorus together, but with the lyrics offering one side of a love relationship hitting a rough patch, the effect is disconcerting. By the presence of the duet, we are seemingly given both voices–both sides of the battle, as it were–and yet they’re singing the same words; they’re even singing the same musical notes, with no interval harmonies at all. The two lovers of the story sound all the sadder and more isolated as they sing without the other really hearing; the listener meanwhile is unnerved for lack of any clues about who’s done what, who’s “right” and who’s “wrong,” who to believe, who to side with. Very lovely and very sad. Cutrufello recently released the first Hezekiah Jones CD, Hezekiah Jones Says You’re A-Ok, on Yer Bird Records, but “Put On Your Light” isn’t actually on it; it’s available as an unreleased song via the HJ site.

“Town” – Richard Buckner

There’s no question, to my ear, where the center of this brisk but meaty song is: the first line of the chorus, that vocal leap Buckner takes at the end. The entire song is built upon short lyrical snippets and small melodic intervals; but there at the end of the opening line of the chorus, the last interval of the snippet, heading upward, is a fifth. A leap up always sounds larger than the interval actually described, and so right away there’s something startling and pleasing about it. I like how, the first time we hear it, Buckner is singing the word “down” as the melody jumps up. I like even more the grand character of this gruffly smooth (or maybe smoothly gruff) voice as it is exquisitely revealed in the process of taking, and making, that leap. Buckner heads to and hits just the one five-steps-up note, and yet as he holds it his voice stretches and intensifies in marvelous ways, every time that line-end comes around. It’s a subtle but beautiful and memorable hook right there; what solidifies it as the center of a beautiful and memorable song are the chords Buckner employs to create the structure around the hook. They are neither novel nor tricky but they are invitingly true and inevitable, a sweet descending series falling away from the initial leap upward. I keep wanting to hear this part over and over, and it sticks in my head for hours afterwards. “Town” is the first song on Buckner’s upcoming CD Meadow, which has a lot of one-word song titles for some reason. The CD–Buckner’s eighth–is set for a September release on Merge Records.

“Ghosts of York” – As Tall As Lions

“Ghosts of York” manages the clever trick of being both atmospheric and emphatic, combining the feel of a more noodly type of guitar rock with the smart, concise dynamics of a great pop song. Look at the ground covered here, so quickly: we get an introspective guitar line for all of 13 seconds before the vocalist sings a slow, emotive section for maybe another 15 seconds, and then, bam, the drummer hits the ground running, yet with everything around him still feeling restrained; at the same time you may notice a wall of sound building the energy towards something bigger. This is already engaging, very much so, but these guys have barely started. Just past 50 seconds, the sonic tension cracks open into a clear, decisive melody (note the nice use of octave harmonies right here), and even this is just a set-up for the central hook at 1:06—the melody there featuring a deeply pleasing modulation from a minor chord to the major chord one full step below. (There’s probably a name for that, theory-wise, that escapes me.) This is the part that completely slayed me, and even after this there’s more, including a bridge with a trickier time signature, then a dramatic building-back of the wall of sound, and then a combination of the time tricks and the wall at the very end. Good stuff. As Tall As Lions is a foursome from Long Island; “Ghosts of York” is a song from the band’s self-titled debut CD, released last week on Triple Crown Records. The MP3 is available via Insound. (This is no longer a direct link; go to the Insound page linked to above and you’ll see the download button.)

“Heartbeat” – Angela Desveaux

Sometimes there’s little as satisfying as a good old-fashioned song—nicely unfolding melodies and a sense of verse-chorus-verse structure, confidently presented, with an assortment of little touches so perfect that you barely even notice them. Because she does this so well, and because there’s an air of alt-country about her, and because she’s from Canada, Montreal’s Angela Desveaux may have trouble escaping Kathleen Edwards comparisons, but hey, all up and coming musicians are going to be compared to somebody, and Edwards is one of the very best singer/songwriters of our day—good company, says me. I think you know you’re in the hands of a true talent when there doesn’t necessarily seem like there’s anything unusual going on, and yet you’re hooked anyway. Desveaux here has hit upon a simple-sounding but resonant underlying motif: that basic 5-4-3-4-3-4 melody that drives the song, sung in that gently swinging rhythm, with her friendly, reedy voice the perfect accompaniment. Songs like this develop in ways that seem pretty much inevitable, even when they aren’t at all. For instance, despite my assurance about verse-chorus-verse structure, Desveaux here actually throws something extra between the verse and the chorus that’s like a pre-chorus–a great hook in its own right, and not a bridge. And it doesn’t matter; it all seems precisely as it should be. Listening to it, I feel the world, if only for four minutes and twenty-six seconds, is also precisely as it should be. Quite a feat during these unsettling times. “Heartbeat” is available via her web site, a stand-alone song. According to the site, an album is coming soon.

“Burn This Flag” – Boy Omega

Well it’s been at least a little while since we’ve dipped back into the Swedish talent pool, so here’s Boy Omega, the working name of a certain Martin Henrik Gustaffson. To begin with, do yourself a favor and try to listen to this straight out of “Heartbeat”—the segue is rather striking, if I do say so myself. Even as it’s driven by an acoustic guitar, “Burn This Flag” starts out all itchy and unsettled, a feeling augmented both by Gustaffson’s Robert Smith meets Conor Oberst vocal style and by the blippy-scratchy percussive accents. I am slowly but surely realizing that I love much of what electronica has to offer, sound-wise, when musicians bring it structurally into something resembling a song rather than presenting it in a relentless, beat-oriented setting. Gustaffson here crams a lot of know-how into a relatively short space: strong instrumental hooks, crisp production, an incisive melodic theme, and unexpected sounds, among other things; unusually for me, I’m left here feeling as if the song could actually have been longer than it is. That’s almost always a good sign. “Burn This Flag” is from Boy Omega’s forthcoming EP, The Grey Rainbow, scheduled for an October release (in Europe) on Riptide Recordings, a German label. The MP3 is via the Riptide site. Hat’s off to the consistently enlightening Getecho blog for this one.

“La Cage Appat” – Peppertree

So how much fun is this song? We get, out of the gate, a wonderful, mysterious tension built by a question-answer style alternation between a gently strummed electric guitar and a chimey organ. This kicks open into a melodramatic series of now-the-guitar-is-chimey chords, then pulls back again into a restrained verse, in French, reinforcing the song’s engaging sense of back-and-forth, of doing this then that, being here then there. See too how the musical accent is all off the beat, which generates more tension (listen to the guitarist to get the clearest sense of what’s driving the song rhythmically here, that ringing line you can hear between all the regular beats). Where it’s leading is to the heart-opening chorus, and I know exactly when this song lodges in my gut: it’s the surging-up melody in the (I think) third line, at about 1:06; and it’s not just the melody surge, it’s the chord underneath: listen to how suspended and unresolved that baby is. I love this a lot. There’s a great culturally far-away sound (to my American ears) that I’m also loving all the way through—some antique French-Canadian essence seems to be driving this thing, a sense reinforced by the unexpected “ba-ba-bas” singer Patrick Poirier unleashes near the end. And it’s all done in three minutes. Most excellent. According to Babel Fish I see that Poirier actually means “pear tree,” and I don’t doubt there’s a joke there, as the Montreal-based band displays quite the quirky sense of humor on its still-sketchy web site. “La Cage Appat” is the lead track on the band’s debut CD, self-released (I think) last year. The MP3 is available via the band’s site, and came to my attention thanks to the fine feathered folks at 3hive.

“Take Me Back” – Furvis

While the Peppertree song knocked me out right away, “Take Me Back” won me over steadily, over time. I think maybe the bashy guitar onslaught at the beginning blinded my ear (if I can engage in a bit of willful synesthesia) to the tune’s nicely constructed subtleties. The first verse is sturdy and amenable, four repetitions of a four-measure melody (three, really, with a guitar “coda”), until after the fourth time around, where we suddenly modulate through a couple of new chords, hit a brisk hand-clap, then go back into the verse. But things are now different: the melody this time extends into all four measures, and runs together to join the segments, including the end bit with the modulation and hand-clap. And then we get a sort of aural clearing—the insistent guitars peel back, as the chorus is sung against an acoustic rhythm guitar and lead electric guitar that sounds distorted into a steel-ish tone, while the melody takes some nice Wilco-y detours. And yeeks the more I dryly describe this the less interesting it probably sounds. My advice is listen, a few times. Furvis is a young quartet from the Boston suburb of Newton, with one self-released EP to its name so far. “Take Me Back” is one of the band’s as yet unreleased songs; the MP3 is available via their web site.

“Lonely Land” – Trentalange

Barbara Trentalange has a voice, all smoke and ash, made for singing about barstools and shotglasses and no-good men and infinite gazes. It’s a blessing and a curse, actually—because, I mean, really, how seriously can we take this slightly too cliched tale of a shadowy figure in a bar? Well, maybe not all that seriously—until my friend the chorus arrives, and oh boy: the soaring harmonies, the grand sad elegance of the melody, the despondent cello (which arrives the second time through) all work to transform, basically, everything. This song sticks with me, hard. On top of that, the chorus also yields a lyrical gem—the story of a woman meeting a shady man in a bar may seem a cliche, but the catch phrase “Follow me to lonely land” is brilliant in its catchy concise complexity—just want I want from a good pop song. So if “Lonely Land” does indeed walk that sometimes fine line between cliche and transcendence, perhaps it’s doing so, to interpret this generously, to teach us that transcendence may yet be a heartbeat away, even when we least expect it. In any case, Trentalange is the latest project from Barbara Trentalange, formerly the lead singer of a Seattle-based band called Spyglass; she also toured in a recent incarnation of Crooked Fingers. “Lonely Land” is a song off the forthcoming CD, Photo Album of Complex Relationships, scheduled for an October release on Coco Tauro Records. The MP3 is available via her site.

“Gone Gone Gone” – John Ralston

This one may start like just another weepy, acoustic ballad, but John Ralston has much more up his sleeve than weepy balladry, of the sort often practiced by the current pack of jam-band-inspired troubadours. First, when the full band kicks in after 19 seconds, the strength of the original melody becomes surprisingly evident. What sounded tinkly and precious with just an acoustic guitar playing now sounds vigorous and involving. I think it’s the drummer in particular: that just off the second beat accent he throws in, which adds unplaceable depth while likewise playing nicely off the ascending bass line. But then there’s also the fact that having a band to sing against brings something meatier out in Ralston’s voice, which veered towards the over-senstive (cute?) before the band rescued him. The real killer is the chorus, which sizzles with spirit, his voice transforming in its higher register into an instrument of power and bite, complete with a nicely emoted expletive (watch out who’s around when you listen). “Gone Gone Gone” is from his debut CD, Needle Bed, re-released in June on Vagrant Records after an earlier self-release. The MP3 is via his site.

“Odi et Amo” – Jóhann Jóhannsson

What we have here is a Latin poem from the first century B.C. set by an Icelandic composer to a string quartet and piano, with, oh yeah, a computerized voice “singing” the words. I invite you not to run away but listen once, twice, maybe three times, and see if you don’t become as mesmerized as I now am by the unearthly ambiance, the spellbinding combination of organic instruments, heart-rending melody, and subtle electronics. The vocal range is what classical people would call a “countertenor”; we can just call it “really high, but still male.” The poem is short, a so-called “elegiac couplet”; it’s repeated twice, with a plaintive yet tense instrumental break between. The words translate, roughly, to: “I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask?/I do not know. But I feel it happening, and I am tormented.” Remember, this is a computer singing. The effect is startling, both intellectually and emotionally. While getting his start as a rock guitarist, like everyone else, Jóhannsson quickly expanded his artistic scope beyond “guy in a band” to “avant garde guy with projects”–said projects including something called Kitchen Motors (“record label, think tank, art organization”), an ensemble called the Apparet Organ Quartet, and a dance/music collaboration called IBM 1401, A User’s Manual. “Odi et Amo” is from Jóhannsson’s first solo CD, Englabörn, which was released in 2002 on Touch Records. Thanks again to the delightful Getecho blog for the lead. Jóhannson’s next CD will be a recording of the music from IBM 1401, rewritten for a 60-piece orchestra, due out in October on 4AD.

“Pillbox” – Tomihira

Returning to a more expected context now, but still dreamily so, Tomihira being a San Francisco trio favoring a dreamy-droney-distorty guitar sound that makes everyone have to mention My Bloody Valentine so, there, that’s out of the way. “Pillbox” has a lot of things going for it, to my ears: an immediately distinctive instrumental hook, a delicate melody, a delicate melody set against some heavy guitar work (better, often, than a delicate melody on its own), a throaty vocalist, and a lower-register lead guitar solo, to name a few of them. Trodding the classic I-IV-V chord path, the song, gliding along without any obvious sort of chorus, oozes a crafty, slinky authority, with its syncopated beat, atmospheric guitars, and that sexy lead singer (Dean Tomihira, who lends the outfit his name). “Pillbox” is a song off the band’s debut CD, Play Dead; the song is one of six free and legal MP3s the band has available on its web site. They also offer you the entire CD for only $5, in case you like what you hear.