Fingertips

“Primitive (The Way I Treat You)” – Ambulance LTD

The same young NYC band behind the gorgeous, spacey “Stay Where You Are” reveals a gratifying versatility as they’ve come forward with their first full-length CD. In place of the ringing melodicism of “Stay Where You Are,” “Primitive” arrives with a down-and-dirty groove, complete with a stomping keyboard riff and squonky guitars. Singer Marcus Congelton alternates fetchingly between a blase, Lou Reed-i-ness in the spoken-sung verses and a sweeter, yearning vocal in the chorus. Here is one new band fully comfortable with the length and breadth of rock’n’roll history, a fact further revealed by what they’ve chosen to call their CD: LP. Gotta love that. The MP3 can be accessed through the TVT Records web site, but you will need to provide an email address and postal code to get it.

“Slung-lo” – Erin McKeown

Before there was Nelly McKay, on her teenaged rampage to become the next fresh face of pop, there was Erin McKeown, mining some of the same territory from a twenty-something perspective, but unfortunately (or not?) lacking McKay’s publicity machine. This song has an old-fashioned, finger-snapping jauntiness to it (much like McKay’s “David,” which came later) that charms me enough to overlook the lyrical theme, which appears to be writer’s block. I don’t really like hearing from writers—be they book authors or songwriters—about writer’s block. Either write, or don’t; writing about having trouble writing is a cheap dodge (unless you’re Charlie Kaufman), and usually boring as hell (unless you’re Charlie Kaufman). But, heck, at least the vibrant McKeown doesn’t belabor the point (the song’s only 2:47). The MP3 can be found on SXSW.com’s elusive but worthwhile MP3 storehouse (soon to be written up in the Music Site Guide). The song can be found on her 2003 CD Grand, released on Nettwerk Records.

“Grave’s Disease” – Matt Pond PA

Another accomplished, nuanced, and engaging song from Matt Pond PA. While continually associated with the so-called “chamber pop” movement, for its use of cello and violin, the band is more instructively associated, to my ears, with ’80s bands like the Cure (in its radio-friendly phase) and the Smiths—the Cure for its easy way with driving pop (not to mention a tone in Pond’s voice that brings Robert Smith to mind), the Smiths for that band’s idiosyncratic way of using upbeat but minor-key acoustic rhythms to drive their unusual yet accessible songs. Propelled by clipped, enigmatic vocal phrases, “Grave’s Disease” unfolds with a gentle sort of urgency and a subtle acquisition of musical themes over the course of the song. It will be found on the band’s new CD, Emblems, which is scheduled to be released next week on Altitude Records; the MP3 can be found on Insound.

“Of Course It Is” – Clann Zú  link no longer available
I am immediately engaged by the way musical elements accumulate through the course of this song’s unhurried introduction: first a warm, deep guitar and a spare bass; then the drum kit, cymbally and intriguingly off the beat; as the drums settle on firmer ground, the guitar moves up in register, and clarifies the riff; a rolling snare opens up both space and tension, the music gains in intensity, and then, at the moment of greatest frenzy, in comes something that sounds at first like a voice singing in another room. Actually it’s a violin. Fully two and a half minutes thus pass before we hear the singer, a Bono-like lad from Australia named Declan de Barra. His entry galvanizes the rest of the piece, which has dynamics aplenty to offer during its second half, including some inspired drumming, dramatic violin colors, and a simple but unexpectedly poetic lyric that infuses the music with depth and grandeur, even as the music does the same for the words. The band comes from Melbourne; “Of Course It Is” can be found on an EP released in 2001. A full-length CD, entitled Rúa, came out in the fall of 2003, on G7 Welcoming Committee Records.

“Motel Sex” – Danny Cohen  link no longer available
With a musical history dating back to the early ’60s, Danny Cohen is something of an underground legend, about which not much is known and a fair amount has been invented. But along the way he acquired some impressive fans–including Tom Waits and Ray Davies–and is about to re-emerge after decades on the fringe with a release on a semi-major label, entitled Dannyland. Cohen’s voice may be quirky and unpolished but the overall musical package is anything but–the playing is beautiful and nuanced, the setting extraordinarily well-crafted, oozing with a full-bodied knowledge of rock history, and yet full of neat little surprises, particularly in the skewed edges of the guitar work. In a touch apparently indicative of his subversive humor, the song is really about Motel 6, but of course he couldn’t use a company name like that so altered it by one letter. Dannyland is due out later this month, on Anti Records.

“Fashion Party” – Daniele Luppi  link no longer available
And when the aggressive harshness of human life in 2004 becomes too much for me, I have now a wondrous musical escape hatch. Daniele Luppi is an Italian composer who has written, produced, and arranged an album that is a living homage to the indelible sound of late ’60s and early ’70s Italian film scores. Inspired by composers such as Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota, Luppi has himself written music that equally evokes (to quote the precise and effective description on his web site) “a glorious, color-saturated world of zippy sports cars, plastic pop-art furniture, luxurious villas and all-night discotheques.” And here’s the thing: Luppi isn’t some young, mad computer genius alone in a room with a 32-track digital recorder. Rather, he knew he could not legitimately recreate the music without employing the musicians who themselves had made it. And so he hired the three surviving members of Marc 4 to play his new compositions (Marc 4 was the name of the quartet that played on literally hundreds of ’60s and ’70s Italian film soundtracks, much the way the Funk Brothers played on so many Motown records). He even recorded everything in the studio of Marc 4 bassist Maurizio Majorana, where much of the original music was produced. The resulting sound leaps from the speakers: sprightly guitars strumming against a dark, slithery bass line, setting the stage for–of course!–a whistle. (Luppi, true to form, hired the same whistler employed famously for Sergio Leone’s spaghetti-weseterns.) Much of the atmosphere and charm of the song, to me, emerges from the whistled melody’s snarky intervals–that is, the musical distance between adjacent notes: half-steps here, minor-sixth leaps there, and many other sly twists. The whole thing is driven by an assured, funky beat, colored by a bit of Hammond organ below and a sexy trumpet up on top. The CD is called The Italian Story, and was released on Rhino Records in February.

“Fall or Stumble” – Lying in States

Simultaneously thumpy and smooth, discordant and musical, “Fall or Stumble” is a shot of intense 21st-century rock’n’roll—complicated, smart, edgy, and well-produced. I knew I was in good hands from the start, when the big-beated groove established by the drums was joined first by a gentle, subtly off-kilter bit of keyboard vamping and then by a couple of buzzy, offbeat blurts from the electric guitar. Pay attention to the guitar all the way through here—the band has two guitarists, in fact, and they work together to inform the song with a searing buzz underneath and a razor-like brassiness above. Singer/guitarist Ben Clarke’s voice sounds electronically compressed—a la Julian Casablancas in the Strokes—but the effect isn’t in your face as much because of the gratifying musical texture that exists around him. And while Clarke sings in the same range as Casablancas, I find his ability to sing powerfully both with and without restraint to be more reminiscent of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke than anyone else I can think of. Lying in States is a Chicago-based band that has been playing live to much acclaim since 1999; “Fall or Stumble” comes from their first full-length CD, Most Every Night, released earlier this year on Flameshovel Records.

“One More Time” – the French Kicks

Notwithstanding the itchy dance beat and drummer/singer Nick Stumpf’s vocal resemblance to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s Andy McCluskey, “One More Time” emerges with repeated listens as far more than an ’80s retread. The synthesizer that cascades down as if from heaven in the first verse is actually more of a hip-retro sound (trip-hoppy, perhaps) than something from, say, Depeche Mode; the shining electric guitar brought in to mirror the synthesizer line in the second verse is also not an ’80s sound. Then there’s the strange, momentum-shifting chorus, which consists more or less of one repeated note, in what sounds like three-part harmony. This brings 10cc to mind, oddly enough, the second time in particular, when the voices are accompanied by the pounding of an insistent keyboard beneath the surface. So we’ve got a lot of generations of rock’n’roll at work here, to shimmering effect. The French Kicks are based in NYC; “One More Time” will be found on Trial of the Century, due out in May on Startime International.

“On Parade” – Electrelane

After releasing an all-instrumental debut, the British band Electrelane has opened itself up to a bit of vocalizing on its second CD, The Power Out. Keyboardist/guitarist Verity Susman’s singing is idiosyncratic to say the least, alternating between gruffly spat, largely inaudible phrases and wordless whoops, but the chugging energy—part ska, part surf, part punk—of the two-chord riff keeps me engaged throughout this short song. The shortness itself is interesting, as the band’s first CD, Rock It to the Moon, was notable for a number of extended, noodly instrumentals (including one that clocked in at 22 minutes). The Power Out was released in February on the fiercely arty British label, Too Pure Records.

“2nd Gun” – Volcano, I’m Still Excited!!

The excessively punctutated, impenetrably silly name may not even be the strangest thing about this group–I vote instead for the fact that the band is a trio featuring guitar, drum, and a $10 Casio keyboard. Now that’s strange. What emerges from the combination is a little strange too, but urgent and oddly compelling nonetheless. For a short song, “2nd Gun” covers a lot of ground, its twitchy intro and nervous chord progressions giving way to a cathartically catchy chorus. For me, this music recalls the effect Talking Heads:77 had, the way the songs were both over-the-top quirky and yet somehow, underneath it all, comforting and familiar. Time will tell if VISE has Talking Heads-like substance and innovation to offer us, but today’s diffuse and insular rock scene could sure use a strange-pure blast like that. The song comes from the band’s eponymous debut CD, released in January on Polyvinyl Records. There are 16 songs on the record, most between two and three minutes in length; the one I’m most curious about is the last one, which is called “Two Exclamation Points.” Perhaps the name is explained? At least a hint or two?

“Alone Again Or” – Calexico

This is all but irresistible–on the one hand because of the power of the original song but on the other hand for how giddily well this ’60s nugget works when run through Calexico’s Southwestern blender. “Alone Again Or” opened Forever Changes, the 1967 masterpiece from the West Coast band Love; here it is brilliantly re-conceived as a Mexican-style rave-up, from the precision of the acoustic rhythm and lead guitars to the hand-clap accompaniment and, best of all, the poignant, incisive trumpet solo. This is one of those songs that brings an involuntary smile to my face as I listen; music (as opposed to lyrics) that prompts smiling or laughing is often some of the best there is. The song comes from Convict Pool, a six-song EP–featuring three covers–released this month on Quarterstick Records. MP3 via Insound; the link does not show up in the media player here but it is still live, and will download when you click.

“When I Laugh” – the Glands

The Athens, Georgia-based Glands mix a lot of influences in their sonic stew, but it’s the Kinks in particular who haunt this chugging little number. Fading in on a distorted guitar riff, the song hits the ground running when singer/songwriter/guitarist Ross Shapiro gives us his best Ray Davies-ish drawl (listen in particular to his delivery of the words “laugh” or “everybody”) over a deceptively tight beat; the background “doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo”s drive home the Kinks homage, along with a Dave Davies-like guitar break two-thirds of the way through. Me, I like to champion the overlooked Kinks whenever I can, and particularly enjoy discovering younger musicians who have studied the monumental Davies songbook. “When I Laugh” can be found on the band’s second CD, simply called The Glands, released on Velocette Records in 2000; the MP3 comes courtesy of Epitonic.

“Underdog Victorious” – Jill Sobule

Jill Sobule has an uncanny gift for putting big, memorable melodies into her offbeat songs, where I kind of least expect them. From the piano-driven opening stomp to the beautiful modulation in the second half of the verse (that is, the mysteriously gratifying chords she shifts into with the words “Four o’clock when he got home…”) to the seriously anthemic chorus, “Underdog Victorious” blazes with confidence from beginning to end. With sonic heft and lyrical grit, Sobule consistently undermines my expectations of what a singer/songwriter can sound like; her large and polished sound likewise runs counter to what one typically hears from musicians who record independently. Warren Zevon once called her “a cross between Tolstoy and the tomahawk thrower at the Cheyenne rodeo.” Not sure what that means, but what the heck, it’s a good quote, and indicative if nothing else of Sobule’s depth, talent, and wacky artistic courage. This song is new, not yet released on an album, but available on her web site.
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“Lie in the Sound” – Trespassers William

With a big, melancholic tip of the hat towards bands like Mazzy Star and the Cowboy Junkies, the California band Trespassers William serves up a fetching and affecting version of that sort of sad, deep, and distant dream pop. The key to this song’s success, to my ears, is the strength of the melody in the chorus. Too often bands on this path bog down in their own dreaminess; Mazzy Star’s well-known “Fade Into You,” offered little more than four- or five-note melodic phrases, repeated. “Lie in the Sound” gives us both the dreamy vibe and the extra lift of an honest, beautiful melody anchoring the song at its center. “Lie in the Sound” can be found on Different Stars, released in 2002 on Bella Union Records.

“Perfect Weapon” – Communique

A big, brash homage to the so-called “New Romantic” movement of the early ’80s, “Perfect Weapon” comes at us like an ABC reunion, complete with a re-use of the phrase “poison arrows” (the British band ABC had a hit song called “Poison Arrow”) and a lead singer who sounds vaguely British, even as the band hails from Oakland. The dance beat is pure ’80s; the minor-key urgency of the synthesizer riff will have you glancing over your shoulder for Midge Ure (the emotive singer who fronted Ultravox at the height of their hit single career phase). And yet for all the echoes from a bygone era, the song has a here-and-now chutzpah to it. Communique’s debut CD, Poison Arrows, will be released in June on Lookout Records. MP3 via Better Propaganda.

“Cloud Room” – Laura Veirs  link no longer available
Hang in there through the up-front, wavering, slightly out of tune vocals at the outset of this one–the pay-off is deep and moving. Laura Veirs may well be one of the most accomplished of America’s unknown singer/songwriters; “Cloud Room” hits a groove quickly, snaking into my consciousness with its assured beat, astute instrumentation, and some wonderful chords. For a performer with a somewhat geeky presentation (according to one British critic, she resembles a young Woody Allen, of all people), Veirs has an unexpectedly commanding presence. The music floats in a dream-like place straddling the familiar and the entirely fresh; a few listens to “Cloud Room” has me realizing once and for all that the 21st century has fully arrived. Indicative of her tendency to perform frequently in Europe, her new CD, Carbon Glacier, where this song comes from, has been released overseas but not in the U.S. at this point.

“The Dream is Over” – MK Ultra
Time to dip back into the rich John Vanderslice MP3 trove, this time to point you in the direction of his unheralded work with the band MK Ultra. “The Dream Is Over” opens with an itchy, insistent acoustic guitar, on top of which arrive some lush but unresolved harmonies (they sound like suspended fourths; so okay this must be great chord week here), and now he’s got you set up, the subtle musical tension extending through a repetition of the words “It’s unbelievably sad”; on the second “sad,” the music glides into unabashed gorgeousness, with melodies and harmonies straight from the Simon & Garfunkel songbook. And yet there’s still a keen skewedness about the song, both lyrically–“I was relieved/As a broken sweat”–and instrumentally (listen for a great duet between distorted fuzz guitars about halfway through). MK Ultra recorded between 1993 and 2000; Vanderslice has been on his own since then, and is really worth looking into. In case you’re curious, the band’s name came from a secret (and rather terrible) series of mind control experiments apparently performed by the CIA in the 1950s. Now you know.

“Believe” – Earl Slick (with Robert Smith)  link no longer available
How almost foolishly tickled I sometimes feel to hear an old familiar voice, after a long time, singing something new. This can happen even when I don’t remember being a particular fan of the voice in the first place. So here’s yet another ’80s icon (watch out, they’re popping up all over the place these days), the Cure’s Robert Smith, lending his distinctive style of fragile solidity to a dreamy piece of space-guitar pop from Earl Slick. It’s fun to hear Smith slowed down, a bit more vocally naked than I recall him from those Cure hits he spun out back in the day. Slick is himself a reappearing icon, although a background variety; he was David Bowie’s guitarist in the mid-’70s, on both Young Americans and the great Station to Station. This song doesn’t strike me as any sort of classic, but putting Smith’s voice against that arching, swelling guitar creates a pleasant few minutes that rewards some repeat listens. “Believe” can be found on Slick’s CD Zig Zag, released at the end of 2003 on Sanctuary Records.

“Good Luck” – Eszter Balint

A potent melting pot of scratchy avant-funk and boho folk, “Good Luck” comes from a new CD by the world’s only (I think!) Hungarian-born, NYC-based singer/songwriter/violinist/actress. From the opening syncopation of the brush-tinged drumbeat, I feel myself in good hands here, even as I’m never really sure what’s going on. There’s a bit of Suzanne Vega in Balint’s deadpan spoken-sung delivery in the verses, and a touch of latter-day Tom Waits floating around the fringes of the production, particularly in the odd aural space created by the somewhat dissonant, squonky guitar work, the wash of vibraphone in the background, and the intermittent oddity (alarm clocks?). Whereas today’s music scene encourages the often gratuitous tossing together of sounds, Balint appears to have earned the right to her idiosyncratic mish-mash, given her unusual background as the daughter of Central European avant garde theater artists. Balint’s recently-released second CD, Mud, is available on Bar/None Records.

“Cars Can’t Escape” – Wilco

While Wilco fans await A Ghost is Born (the next CD, due out in June), here comes a nugget left from the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot sessions. While this may not grab your attention if you don’t already love this seriously great band (okay, I already love them), there’s a lot to hear here if you relax with it. To begin with, there’s Jeff Tweedy’s gift for meandering melody, and his perfectly matched lazy-but-insistent voice. (Has enough been made of Tweedy’s unexpected but gratifying resemblance to the Kinks’ Ray Davies?) This song is also a showcase for the band’s unparalleled capacity to blend the acoustic and the electric, here most effectively embodied by the way a recurring melodic theme is passed from one sound to another. Based on the opening acoustic chords, the theme is developed into a melody by an unstable penny-whistle-ish synthesizer break, then handed to a banjo, which proceeds to pick it out against an increasingly cacophonous background of swirling, unidentifiable noises. In and around the musical nuances, lyrical phrases emerge here and there, hinting at hidden emotions and untold stories (“In my sleepless head our love’s been dead a week or two”). Me, I’m looking forward to the new CD a whole lot. (Thanks to our friends at Glorious Noise for the heads up on this one.)

“Just Another Number” – the Cribs

In less than three minutes, this trio of brothers from West Yorkshire has done something subtly magical, uniting past and present sounds so seamlessly as to concoct something solid and memorable out of the union. While the song is driven by a high-pitched, crinkly guitar sound that brings the Strokes obviously and immediately to mind, the Cribs have done the brilliant service here of taking the Strokes’ sound out of the well-worn Velvet Underground-Television family tree and cross-fertilizing it with less obvious influences, adding in particular a welcome dose of new wave pop (I’m thinking a band like the Teardrop Explodes) into the mix. You know this song is going in an interesting direction when the lead singer breaks into some good old “ooh-oohs” during the bridge-like chorus. And then there’s the unexpected shift into unresolved, open chords as the guitar heads down into a normal register during the chorus-like bridge, and that wonderful point where the harmonies go into alluring octaves (“I disappear for hours/Over the smallest things, yeah”), followed by even more unanticipated “ba-da-ba-da-da”s, and okay at this point it’s probably better to hear it than to have me describe it but it’s pretty cool. This comes from the band’s eponymous debut CD, released this month on Wichita Recordings, a small London-based label.

“Line Up” – Elastica

Okay, so every now and then I want to silence the questions; I want something I already know and love, something I don’t have to sit and listen to over and over and wonder, “Hmmm…is this really good, or really not good?” It’s such a crazy fine line, sometimes. And okay this may not be my favorite song from Elastica’s memorable debut album (geez, nine years old already), but it sure starts the disc off with a crunchy wallop. Guitars don’t squeak and squawk much more satisfyingly than Elastica’s guitars; jammed against Justine Frischmann’s bored-yet-sultry voice, the effect was captivating. There’s even something endearing about the rhythmic grunting that intermittently accompanies the crunch here. While at the time it may have seemed that Elastica arrived rather way too late (long after the original new wave), in retrospect they act as a sort of bridge between a sound that had nearly died at that point and one that seems to be in the middle of a welcome resurgence here in the new century.

“Lazy Afternoon” – Bree Sharp

A different kind of crunch is on display here—brighter, punchier, and unabashedly mainstream-oriented. “Lazy Afternoon” is a straight-ahead rocker, fueled by crisp production, classic rock harmonies, and a heavy dose of Sheryl Crow-ish-ness. Despite her polish (and despite a truly sensational name) Bree Sharp seems to be rather unfortunately betwixt and between in today’s music world: neither a teenybopper nor a baby boomer, she records like an indie rocker (i.e. she has her own label) yet sounds like Crow’s younger sister. “Lazy Afternoon” comes from her second CD, 2002’s More B.S., which probably did not receive as much attention as her 1999 debut, A Cheap and Evil Girl. That one came out on a small label (Trauma Records), and was juiced by something of a novelty song—“David Duchovny,” a love letter to the X-Files actor (featuring the memorable couplet: “David Duchovny/Why won’t you love me?”).

“Never Believe” – Elf Power

Talk about a crazy fine line—what is the fine line between celebratory mainstream pop like “Lazy Afternoon” and celebratory indie pop like this song, from a dedicated bunch of “lo-fi” musicians based in Athens, Georgia (itself something of an indie-rock center-of-the-universe)? It’s another question for the ages. Elf Power has one of those complex histories that indie fans are used to–overlapping bands with interweaving personnel and lots of funky names along the way (like Neutral Milk Hotel and the Olivia Tremor Control). Well, wherever they’ve been and whoever they are, this song is two and a half minutes of hard-driving, cathartic melody, with acoustic rhythm guitars buzzed by an advancing and retreating wall of electric fuzz and artful feedback. Singer Andrew Rieger’s voice has its own sort of solid rock vibe to it, a wonderful amalgam of, oh, maybe Paul Humphreys (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) and Justin Hayward (the Moody Blues), somehow. “Never Believe” can be found on the CD Walking With the Beggar Boys, to be released in early April on Orange Twin Records.

“I Win” – Abra Moore

A stark, hypnotic minor key piano ballad from the sweet-voiced Abra Moore, returning after a long absence from recording. Once a member of the neo-bohemian band Poi Dog Pondering, Moore released two engaging solo CDs–Sing in 1995 and Strangest Places in 1997–then disappeared. She has had quite the experience in the interim. Clive Davis took Moore with him when he left Arista to start J Records; the new label wanted to run her through the Vanessa Carlton-Avril Lavigne machine, basically, with team-based writing and production, teenybopper songs, the works. Moore was open to the experiment going in, but found she couldn’t live with the results, artistically. Despite having finished a CD called No Fear for J in 2002, the label–unusually–allowed her out of her contract, stopped the record’s release, and let her keep the masters. Moore regrouped, re-established her independent vibe, and has now emerged two years later with the aptly named CD Everything Changed, just released last week on Koch Records. Moore is an engaging musical presence; blessed with a voice that is at once lithe and hardy, her subtle variety of vocal tone and emphasis gives this simple, brooding song a great deal of weight.

“Little Black Ache” – Bishop Allen

Punchy, quirky, and catchy, this one brings you back to the Kinks in 1965, but with a Pixies-like or perhaps an Ass Ponys-like edge. The sound is at once loose and tight, and I’ll admit I’m a pushover for songs with a goofy call-and-response hook like this–“I’ve got my little black little ache”/(“What you got?”). Now Brooklyn-based, the band was founded in Cambridge; they took their name from their location on Bishop Allen Drive in Central Square (the street itself was named after Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episopal Church, if you must know). “Little Black Ache” comes from the band’s debut CD Charm School, which was self-released in May 2003. These guys have an appealing silliness to them, some of it planned (on the web site, where they present their lyrics, the band writes: “For increased prestige, we type them in Garamond”), and some not exactly (of the four members, two are named Christian but one of them is a man and one of them is a woman; go figure).

“Under Control” – Shutterspeed

Talk about bringing you back, here are five lads from Brisbane who come to you through a ’70s rush of Keith Richards riffs, horn charts, swaggering vocals, and back-up “woo-oo-oohs.” Lead singer Andrew Petersen has more than a little Southside Johnny in him, somehow–not that the decaying ambiance of an aging South Jersey beach town has anything in common with the up-and-coming subtropical splendor of Australia’s third largest city. It’s a small world after all, I suppose. While there’s always a danger Shutterspeed will lose itself under the weight of its influences, the band’s sheer brash energy pulls them through, to my ears; like Paul Weller (another guy grooving on that ’70s thing), Shutterspeed at once mimics and rises above the mimickry. “Under Control” comes from the band’s second album, Custom Made Hit Parade, released in June 2003.