Fingertips

I’m still over here (Eclectic Playlist Series 6.11 – Dec. 2019)

So you already know that I don’t buy into the internet’s addiction to one-type-of-music playlists. Turns out this holds true for me even for holiday music. Personally, I’d rather hear a few choice holiday nuggets sprinkled into a diverse playlist than an unending parade of Christmas songs. As such, this isn’t a holiday playlist in any meaningful way. And yet, I do like how the seasonal offerings mixed in here seem sometimes to infuse a subtle holiday spirit—joyful or melancholy, it can go either way—into their secular neighbors. “My Heart is a Drummer,” “Everybody Come Down,” and even the decidedly temporal folk song “Sally Ann,” these all seem to take on something of the season here, as, maybe most of all, does the Paul Simon masterpiece “Something So Right.” And then the even more interesting twist: I like how much more naturally we can hear the Christmas songs as actual music in this setting. Fittingly, I guess, we end with a Christmas song in name only: “Anorak Christmas,” from the reclusive and now-retired Sally Shapiro, makes the barest mention of a “cold December night,” but other than that, there’s no Christmas here, and no anorak either—unless (this is a stretch!) we go with the informal British meaning of “a person who is extremely interested in something that other people find boring,” and figure that the singer is commenting on an incomprehensible crush. I doubt it but it’s a theory.

Lots of other stuff:

* Payola$, eventually known as the Payolas, were a Canadian band formed in the late ’70s. Born with a punk-ish sound, they signed with A&M Records and evolved into more of a mainstream outfit over the course of four albums. According to the internet(!?), they never made much of a dent in the U.S. because radio stations didn’t want to say their name on the air (because: guilty consciences). I always loved this simple, new-wave-y Christmas song, and can’t remember ever hearing it anywhere except on my record player. The album, Hammer on a Drum, released at the tale end of the original vinyl era, has never been released on CD, and isn’t on Spotify either.

* I’m still absorbing the new New Pornographers album, released in October, but I’ll admit that I so enjoy the opening track, the second song you’ll hear in this mix, that I haven’t given the rest of it as much attention as I know I should. I just keep playing this one, which features the mighty Neko Case on vocals, and the sort of wonderful melody A.C. Newman is supposed to be known for but (to my ears) doesn’t deliver as often as he’s credited. This one is great.

* There was a strange and unheralded moment in the history of American rock’n’roll radio when pure, free-form progressive formats were morphing into the more commercial album-oriented rock (AOR) concept. This soon enough turned into an artistic disaster, but for a few years there, before the consultants kicked in with their tiny playlists, there were commercial FM stations that were simply trying to play good, album-track songs, with more playlist discipline than free-form idiosyncrasy favored. It was during that era in the mid-’70s that a beautiful and distinctive song such as “Love and Affection” ended up an FM staple, and a popular one at that. Imagine hearing something like this on the radio now. Of course you can’t; hell, it was bumped off the radio within three or four years, thanks to Consultant Rock, rarely to be heard from again.

* Vanity Fairy is the newer musical incarnation of a 2010s Fingertips favorite artist, the musician previously known as Daisy Victoria. She was featured three times between 2014 and 2016, then seemed to disappear. When she reemerged in 2018, she had changed her name to Daisy Capri, and began to put music out as Vanity Fairy. Moving beyond her earlier, Kate-Bushian soundscape, Daisy has embraced her inner disco diva and now pays homage to a different type of ’80s music. But to my ears, talent is talent. I’m glad to have found her again. Check out what she’s done so far at https://soundcloud.com/vanityfairy.

* This playlist contains within it an unplanned salute to three of the most notable and long-lasting musicians of the classic rock era. All three were launched in the context of a group setting; all three here are presented via overlooked songs from later endeavors of theirs. We have Paul McCartney’s terrific “To You,” from the last, little-regarded album he made with Wings, Back to the Egg, released in 1978. Further down you’ll stumble upon one of the great lost tracks of rock’s aforementioned AOR phase, Pete Townshend’s “Slit Skirts,” from what I believe to be his best solo record, 1982’s All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (okay, not a wonderful title). That forced on me a segue into Paul Simon’s “Something So Right,” which was on his popular There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album, of 1973. It was not single material, and as such was overshadowed by the huge hits “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock,” not to mention the downcast, resonant beauty of the progressive-era favorite “American Tune.” “Something So Right” makes a series of thorny chords sound as natural as an in breath; and those lyrics!:

When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
The first to admit it
And the last one to know
When something goes right
Oh it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
Oh I can’t, I can’t get used to
Something so right

Full playlist below the widget.

“The Invisible Man” – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (Punch the Clock, 1983)
“You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver” – The New Pornographers (In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, 2019)
“The Man in the Santa Suit” – Fountains of Wayne (Out-of-State Plates, 2005)
“You Beat Me to the Punch” – Mary Wells (single, 1962)
“To You” – Paul McCartney & Wings (Back to the Egg, 1978)
“My Heart is a Drummer” – Allo Darlin’ (Allo Darlin’, 2010)
“Good King Wenceslas” – Dixieland Ramblers (Dixieland Snowman, 1998)
“Walk Away” – The English Beat (Wha’ppen, 1981)
“Love and Affection” – Joan Armatrading (Joan Armatrading, 1976)
“Overture (Nutcracker Suite)” – Duke Ellington (Three Suites, 1960)
“Sally Ann” – The Horseflies (Gravity Dance, 1992)
“The Fading” – Joan Shelley (Like the River Loves the Sea, 2019)
“Everybody Come Down” – The Delgados (Universal Audio, 2000)
“Christmas is Coming” – Payola$ (Hammer on a Drum1983)
“You’re Absolutely Right” – The Apollas (single, 1965)
“He Can Be Your Lady” – Vanity Fairy (single, 2018)
“Field of Fire” – For Stars (For Stars, 1998)
“Slit Skirts” – Pete Townshend (All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, 1982)
“Something So Right” – Paul Simon (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, 1973)
“Anorak Christmas” – Sally Shapiro (Disco Romance, 2006)

Free and legal MP3: Smug Brothers

Charming, GBV-adjacent indie rock

“Every One is Really Five” – Smug Brothers

They are probably tired of Guided By Voices comparisons, but what the heck: here is a scruffy indie-rock band from Dayton who specialize in inscrutable yet melodic lo-fi compositions, many not even two minutes long (sample song titles here: “Antenna Chariot Quarterfinals,” “Fuel for the Maypole Osmosis”). Oh and the drummer used to be in Guided By Voices. So, you can’t blame me for using GBV as at least a point of reference.

That said, if Smug Brothers are inspired by Guided By Voices, they also seem somewhat more interested in recording songs you don’t have to try quite so hard to like (or feel like a failure if you don’t). Although still lo-fi, the mix is a bit cleaner, the melodies super-agreeable; this is the sound of a band inviting you very happily down its rabbit hole rather than seeming indifferent to whether you’ve dropped in or not. Charming from beginning to end, “Every One is Really Five” launches off rock’n’roll’s primal backbeat, yet puts us from the start in the middle of a mundane but intriguing scenario: “I recall/You were heading the other way/I recall/I was just starting my day.” You might wonder just what is going on here, and you probably won’t really find out—by the time the chorus gives us the titular assertion that “every one is really five,” I’m not sure that will make any more or less sense than the rest of it. But the completed couplet—“We’re all just lucky to be alive”—is sung with such poignant good humor that you can let the whole thing make sense in that way that has nothing to do with how unintelligible the words mostly are. This is one of music’s super powers and these guys have it going. The song chugs along with a general sense of band noise in the background until around 1:30, when a couple of nonchalant guitars decide to speak up, just a bit—clanging out some measured melody lines before fading back into the good-natured swirl of sound.

Smug Brothers have existed in one form or another since 2004, at that point consisting of Kyle Melton and Daryl Robbins. Drummer Don Thrasher (great name for a drummer!) came on board in 2008. The lineup went through a major turnover in the 2017-2018 time frame; Melton and Thrasher remain, the others are new to the party. Because these guys love their sub-2:00 songs, their discography presents a challenge in determining what’s an album versus what’s an EP; they can put 11 songs on a 20-minute record. In any case, they’ve released 15 different stand-alone recordings, six or seven of which seem to be full-length endeavors, including their most recent, Serve a Thirsty Moon, which was released earlier this month via Gas Daddy Go Records. You can check it, and the entire Smug Brothers catalog, out via Bandcamp. “Every One is Really Five” is the 21st track on the 21-track album.

Free and legal MP3: Theater Kids (Enticing groove, accomplished debut)

Musicians that have enough confidence in their material so that they don’t have to fill our ears with sounds in every moment are usually worth paying attention to.

“Pratfall” – Theater Kids

Delectably groovy and smoothly melodic, “Pratfall” is an accomplished debut single from Philadelphia duo Theater Kids, fronted by Benny Williams. Call me a sucker for a classic chord progression, but here we have a well-known harmonic pattern wrapped in a wonderful sort of DIY sleekness (an oxymoron? actually not) which is right in my wheelhouse.

There’s something wonderfully old-school in how the introduction slowly builds the song’s soulful sound-world in way in which each addition seems inevitable, and with Williams’ vocal entrance, at 0:32, feeling as much like a resolution as an opening salvo. The lyrics are set against the back end of each measure, creating that enticing little space at the end of each line where the new measure starts musically but not lyrically. A lot of presence is created here without a lot of sonic embellishment; one of the beautiful things this song does is allow a certain amount of space around the notes being played (the bass offers a particularly lithe example). Musicians that have enough confidence in their material so that they don’t have to fill our ears with sounds in every moment are usually worth paying attention to.

I would like to articulate why this sort of chill but steady groove, these sorts of carefully laid-together textures, combined with a sterling melody, affect my ears so much much more positively than the beat-centric, effects-heavy tunes, so often about the most surface-oriented subjects, that dominate both the hipster blogs and the pop charts. (This has been an unprecedented alliance; that’s food for a separate post.) But there’s probably no useful way to put this into words. It all would appear to come down to individual taste; but, what I guess I’m always on guard against is when individual tastes have been unduly shaped and warped by larger, profit-oriented interests. Paul Weller said it most incisively a generation ago, in a song in which the lyrics initially say “The public gets what the public wants,” only to have the line flipped later, as a conclusion: “The public wants what the public gets.” The internet has made this an all the more unwieldy and complicated situation, combining technology that can make and record music without regard to an individual’s actual musical talents, with algorithms that amplify surreptitiously, and with an audience now trained to respect and notice quantity more than quality at every turn.

I digress. This is all to say that underneath “Pratfall” I sense human and musical intelligence, and I want to remember to applaud that as often as possible. I am happy to know there are individuals out there who can absorb today’s inputs and influences and still create something that feels removed from the thoughtless hubbub of SoundCloud uploads and Spotify links.

“Pratfall” was released in September. Theater Kids have released a second song, “Echoes,” earlier this month. Check everything out via Bandcamp. Thanks to the band for the download.

Free and legal MP3: Katy Vernon

Americana, with ukulele, and grandeur

“Undertow” – Katy Vernon

December approaches, which means that it’s time here to take stock of those songs I’ve been listening to for a good part of the year but which somehow never broke through to a feature. This can happen for any number of random reasons, often just because a song doesn’t seem to want to fit in with the other songs being presented in a given month. (No one else might, but I always listen to each group of featured songs as a linked set; I like them to work well when heard, in order, one after the other.) Needless to say this is all an idiosyncratic mess, but it’s my mess.

So, here at long last is Katy Vernon, a London-born singer/songwriter/ukulele player who has been living in Minneapolis since the late ’00s. “Undertow” has a casual but distinctive grandeur about it; listen, for instance, to the lap steel intro: sure, a standard motif in country or Americana music, but the tone here is both keening and a little whimsical. It sets your ears up for something wonderful, somehow. Maybe this has something to do with the lap steel’s partner here, which is Vernon’s omnipresent ukulele, a less standard companion. When she starts singing (0:12), her voice traces a stately verse melody bookended by two half-interval descents; this feels grounded and inevitable but, after the second pass through, primes us for something grander, which we receive in the chorus.

Now then, the chorus. First, that lap steel swell that brings you in is pretty great. Second, you are not imagining it if you hear a strong melodic echo of June Carter’s “Ring of Fire” here—it’s not only that upward leap by thirds, tracing a D chord, on “Took me down” (0:36), but also the follow-up descent (“way along the shore”); the melody is quite similar to the chorus melody in the Carter classic but the altered rhythm and feel transform it into something distinct. And, whether intentional or not, the way Vernon veers off into new territory in the resolution (starting with the words “till you” at 0:52) keeps sounding like a deft and welcome surprise. I can attest that the song is definitely a grower; I’ve been listening since March, when the Current featured the download in the “Song of the Day” feature. Something about it kept it hanging around, prompted me eventually to investigate the rest of the album (which is good!), and now, finally, here you go.

“Undertow” is the ninth of 12 tracks on Vernon’s third album, Suit of Hearts, which was also released in March. But, to make things nominally current, the last track on the album is called “Christmas Wish,” and has just been put online as a single. Visit Vernon’s Bandcamp page to listen to everything, and buy what you’d like.

(MP3s from The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the established 192kbps standard, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on ordinary equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to download the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I still urge you to buy the music. It’s still the right thing to do.)

Another day in product placement hell

Warning: I’m going to steer out of my lane here, because every now and then I feel the need to apply my skills as a writer and my temperament as a compassionate human being to matters that extend beyond digital music. I’m signalling first, so you don’t have to follow me if you’d rather not.

So, I’ve come here today, first, to consider the phenomenon of product placement. By 2019 product placement has been a standard-issue capitalist strategy for a long time. While there are examples of real-life products seen on camera in movies that date back to the earlier part of the 20th century, the idea didn’t become a conscious, proactive corporate advertising strategy until the 1980s; the famous story of how Hershey’s agreed to do a major advertising tie-in for Reese’s Pieces with E.T. in exchange for the candy’s use in the movie remains a bellwether moment. (M&Ms had been the first choice, but Mars, the parent company, either didn’t want to make the investment, or didn’t want to create this association, or both.) Decades later, we all know that corporations spend millions of dollars annually to slip their products onto movie and television screens as naturally as possible. What better advertising, the theory goes, than to have a character, in the context of a story being told, drinking a Diet Coke or driving a BMW or otherwise engaging, however briefly or tangentially, with an identifiable consumer product?

A prominent example from recent years is how Heineken paid 45 million British pounds to change James Bond’s drink of choice from the famous “shaken, not stirred” martini to a familiar green bottle of Dutch beer in the 2012 movie Skyfall.

Heineken, and all the other corporate entities who push their products, for pay, into movies and TV shows, do not do this for their health, or to subsidize the art of movie-making; they do it because they believe there is behavioral impact. You may think that you personally are immune to such huckster-ish ploys, and you, personally, maybe are. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t many more millions of others who, consciously or not, are influenced by the appearance of recognizable brands within films and TV shows.

The bottom line is that product placement would not exist if it weren’t working.

Which makes me wonder, with an aching heart and accumulating rage, why so few people seem to think twice about the impact of violence in movies, and gun violence in particular. The relentless parade of characters incessantly pulling out guns and firing them at will has become so commonplace that maybe collectively we don’t even seem to see it any more.

So: Heineken paid big money to have James Bond drink a Heineken, because it assumed that real-life people will be influenced by this particular screen behavior. And yet we’re supposed to think that people are not at all, ever, influenced by screen behavior that involves firearms?

The NRA must be laughing all the way to the bank. Consumer product companies have to pay a pretty penny to have their products placed on screen. When it comes to guns, Hollywood is perfectly happy inserting them however and wherever they can and the NRA doesn’t have to pay a dime.

Now then, many people point out that we in America are hardly the only ones exposed to gun violence in our daily entertainment, which is obviously true. This argument is used quickly and incessantly to deny any link between on-screen behavior and real-life mayhem. If the movies and the video games were the problem, goes this theory, then there would be gun violence everywhere, not just in the U.S.

But this is rhetorical sleight of hand. To conclude that exposure to relentless violence via entertainment has no impact on actual behavior is to ignore at least two important differences that afflict American audiences uniquely. First is the general environment of gun worship that exists pretty much only in the United States among so-called “advanced” countries, which has been accelerated in recent decades by how the 2nd Amendment has come to be interpreted, regardless of its original intent. (Only two other countries include a right to bear arms in their constitutions—Mexico and Guatemala—and in both cases severe restrictions are involved.)

The second difference is the obviously related fact that it is far easier to own a gun here than just about anywhere else on earth.

And so it is sophistry at best to say that real-life gun violence in the U.S. must, without question, have no connection to the preponderance of on-screen gun violence simply because everyone around the world watches the same violent movies and plays the same violent video games. This argument continues to conveniently overlook the fact that people in other countries don’t watch these movies and play these video games within a culture that fetishizes guns, and within the boundaries of a country that shamefully disregards the inherent danger of firearms by allowing these products to be so easily purchased and so flimsily regulated.

Meaning that on-screen gun violence simply can’t provoke real-life violence in other countries the way it can here. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

(Note that I am avoiding arguing against gun violence in entertainment on the merits. I am not saying it is almost literally insane to be so consistently entertained in our movies and in our games by things that would in real life be horrific. Well actually I guess I just said that but that’s not the point of this particular post.)

Let’s assume as so many seem to that there is in fact not a thing wrong with gun violence in the entertainment sphere. But let’s put aside this collective delusion that the truly lunatic amount of gun violence we are subject to on the screen can’t possibly be influencing gun violence off the screen, not in a guns-for-everyone-all-the-time country such as ours.

Side note: remember how movie characters always used to smoke in movies? Once the cultural tide shifted, as the ’80s blurred into the ’90s, and it was clear to one and all that smoking cigarettes presented a major public health risk, Hollywood stopped the ubiquitous presentation of characters matter-of-factly smoking cigarettes. Cigarette smoking is common now only in period pieces—so we can all say, “Wow, in the ’60s, look how much everyone smoked!”—and (think about it) to signal bad behavior in a particular character. Movies by and large never feature heroes who smoke all the time for the simple reason that Hollywood doesn’t want to be seen as endorsing something known to be so harmful. Because everyone knows that what people watch on a screen as entertainment can affect personal behavior. Everyone knows this but stops knowing it when it comes to gun violence.

With common-sense—which is to say, strict—gun regulation, sure, okay, if you must, bring on the violent entertainment. Make it all but impossible for someone to be behaviorally influenced by heroes (and anti-heroes) firing guns in movies and we won’t have to worry about the influence. The way most other countries don’t really have to worry about it, because they have the common good of their citizenry in mind via restrictions and regulations in place regarding the ownership of deadly products.

But without anything resembling a responsible or rational approach to gun ownership, the ceaseless and often outright mindless use of guns in our entertainment vehicles is nothing more or less than product placement for the NRA.

When a gun in some cases is as easy (or even easier?) to buy than a six-pack of Heineken, I can’t see how there aren’t people out there taking all the gunfire to heart. We of course can’t know, without close and careful study, the extent of the connection, but it is morally and intellectually bankrupt to turn a complete blind eye to the issue, to look at the horrific norm we’ve created around gun violence in our entertainment and just say “Nope! Nothing to see here!” Remember: product placement wouldn’t be a thing if it didn’t work.

Every dream has a name (Eclectic Playlist Series 6.10 – Nov. 2019)

Iteration 6.10 of the Eclectic Playlist Series, featuring music from seven decades, and many genres. Because you can handle it.

As noted in my recent review of a song by Sarah Lee Langford, the Ken Burns documentary on country music, recently airing on PBS here in the U.S., pretty much blew my mind. I may not have been actively anti-country but I was never a fan, just generally ignoring the whole genre. Sixteen hours of spellbinding television later, I have, to paraphrase Hank Williams, seen the light. Not because I now love everything I used to not like, but because I now know the genre’s origin story—the fascinating and circuitous paths both the music and the musicians took through the years, and the differing branches of music that too often gets glumped into one generic bin. It brings a neglected but huge area of music into my range of knowledge and interest and that can only be a good thing. I somehow especially loved learning that the stereotypical look and sound of what most generically has come to be seen and heard as “country music” (the cowboy hats and clothes, the twangy vocals, the banjos and fiddles) was, from the very start, a self-consciously inauthentic effort to sell “old-time” music to everyday people suddenly equipped with radios and record players. The fact that the mainstream version of country music has always been a bit of a marketing ploy was oddly reassuring in a way I can’t exactly explain.

Anyway, yes, here’s a Hank Williams song, in and among the more usual (but still unusual) array of genres and decades, as the Eclectic Playlist Series nears the end of its sixth year. As maybe a tie-in to what I’ve generally done here, I didn’t select a Hank tune from the documentary, but one that I had first heard via Elvis Costello: “Why Don’t You Love Me,” slightly re-named, was the super-short lead track on his out-of-left-field, widely misunderstood record of country music covers back in 1981. Elvis’s version rather defiantly upended the original in a way that in retrospect seems brilliant. If you’ve never heard it, here it is via YouTube. As different as they are I now love both versions.

More stuff:

* You’ll notice that this mix includes three tunes that offer up 21st-century re-boots of artists associated most closely with the 1970s: Jeff Lynne, Blondie, and Robert Plant. Mr. Plant I salute in particular, for managing in our current century to create a new and mature version of his musician self that feels strong and secure. The other two present trickier situations, first and foremost because it’s hard not to suspect economic motivations. But then again, William Shakespeare wrote for money. What counts is the output when all is said and done. Blondie’s 21st-century oeuvre strikes my ears as erratic at best but this little-heard song, from their 2003 album The Curse of Blondie, is mysteriously compelling. As for Jeff Lynne, as off-putting as it is that he has clearly been required to label his new stuff “Jeff Lynne’s ELO” versus Electric Light Orchestra (lawyers no doubt were involved), and as un-hip and written-off as his old band has variously been through the years, the man’s musicianship (he’s playing all the instruments these days), ear for melody (always superb), and vocal chops (I mean, that voice! come on!) seem undiminished by the years. This new one, laced with melancholy, is very ELO-y indeed, and I see nothing wrong with that.

* The new Bon Iver record is nearly as thick with texture and inscrutability as the band’s last one, but with more straightforward vocals and a bit more of an organic feel. It seems to be rewarding repeated listens, but the stately “Hey, Ma” was an immediate winner, to my ears.

* Many years after the somewhat confusing back story marring the True Stories album by Talking Heads has faded from memory, the songs remain in place, and some of them, including this long-time favorite of mine, “Dream Operator,” are terrific indeed. The 1986 album, the band’s seventh, consisted of songs David Byrne had written for a movie of the same name, which he directed and co-wrote. In the movie, the songs were sung by the actors (who included John Goodman and Swoosie Kurtz), in situations that you would have no clue about just listening to the band’s versions. At the time it was all seen as kind of a mess, the movie not well received, the band’s album seen as something betwixt and between, somehow not a “real” Talking Heads album. Adding to the muddle was the release that same year of the album Sounds From True Stories, which was a partial soundtrack recording. In retrospect, the film has gained a bit of cult status, and the album, taken on its own terms, while not the band’s best, is actually pretty good. Hey, Thom Yorke and friends liked it enough to name their band after one of its songs; that’s an impressive seal of approval right there.

* Generally speaking I aim for these playlists to be composed of songs that are each accessible and easy to absorb, because that’s generally my taste. And yet there are times when a song that’s a bit more ornery and/or less straightforward seems like just the thing—especially when couched inside a generally easy-going playlist. Towards that end, we this time encounter Kate Bush’s “Sat In Your Lap,” the lead track from her rather ornery and unstraightforward album, The Dreaming. The album is not an easy listen from start to finish but the more you give yourself over to it, the more engaging it becomes. Plus, if nothing else, this was the album that led, three years later, to the treasure that was and is Hounds of Love, which makes me inclined to keep digging into The Dreaming after all these years.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Tilted” – Christine and the Queens (Christine and the Queens, 2015)
“This Old Heart of Mine” – The Isley Brothers (single, 1966)
“Dream Operator” – Talking Heads (True Stories, 1986)
“Being Number One” – Black Box Recorder (Passionoia, 2003)
“From Out of Nowhere” – Jeff Lynne’s ELO (From Out of Nowhere, 2019)
“Alison” – Slowdive (Souvlaki, 1993)
“Four on Six” – Wes Montgomery (The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, 1960)
“Crayon Angels” – Judee Sill (Judee Sill, 1971)
“3 Bells in a Row” – Tenpole Tudor (Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary, 1981)
“Why Don’t You Love Me” – Hank Williams (single, 1950)
“Freefall” – Laurie Anderson (Bright Red, 1994)
“Rules for Living” – Blondie (The Curse of Blondie, 2003)
“Songs Out of Clay” – Al Stewart (Orange, 1972)
“I Got My Baby Back” – Lorraine Ellison (b-side, 1966)
“Hey, Ma” – Bon Iver (i,i, 2019)
“Sat In Your Lap” – Kate Bush (The Dreaming, 1982)
“Shake Some Action” – The Flamin’ Groovies (Shake Some Action, 1976)
“The Highest Tree” – The Eighteenth Day of May (The Eighteenth Day of May, 2005)
“Power World” – Sam Phillips (Omnipop (It’s Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop), 1996)
“The May Queen” – Robert Plant (Carry Fire, 2017)

Free and legal MP3: Nancy (psychedelic romp)

With a haunted, psychedelic flair, “When I’m With You” chugs to a friendly beat before busrting, in the chorus, into a wall-of-sound carnival of echoey organ and sing-along lyrics.

“When I’m With You (I Feel Love)” – Nancy

With a haunted, psychedelic flair, “When I’m With You (I Feel Love)” chugs to a friendly beat before bursting, in the chorus, into a wall-of-sound carnival of echoey organ and sing-along lyrics. The Brighton-based Nancy keeps personal details to a minimum but surely pours his heart and soul into music that manages to feel at once tightly designed and loosely thrown together. This warped melange of a song also performs the wonderful balancing act of sounding both vintage and up-to-date at the same time, adding idiosyncratic 21st-century frenzy to a classic core of melody and riff. The fact that the tune clocks in at 3:33 feels like a purposeful hat tip to the trippy ear worms that made their way to the radio back in the late ’60s. One half churning atmosphere, one half catchy pop song, “When I’m With You” does its business and gets out. Bands that feel the unaccountable need for beat-heavy intros and endless repetition should take notes.

Nancy is a musician who uses just the one name, and it might be an homage to Nancy Sinatra, but, as noted, details about the guy are sketchy. He doesn’t mind describing his music, however; this song he calls a “swirling head rush, a shot of adrenaline, an oscillating distorted cacophony of noise and melody.” I’ll go along with that.

“When I’m With You” was released early last month via B3SCI/Cannibal Hymns. And earlier this month, Nancy released two more tracks, which you can find up on SoundCloud. An EP is in the works for the spring.

Free and legal MP3: Pieta Brown (feat. Mark Knopfler) (Warm & steady, w/ luminous guitar work)

“The Hard Way” – Pieta Brown (feat. Mark Knopfler)

Warm and steady guitar work drives “The Hard Way,” and who is a warmer, steadier guitar player than Mark Knopfler? A brilliant stylist, Knopfler is at the same time an impressive team player, willing to figure out the best way to contribute to a song without taking it over. I can’t completely figure out how much my enjoyment of this song, and Knopfler’s part in it, is due to the nostalgic rush of that guitar sound of his. I mean, he just has to do that little lick at 0:20, and my god, it’s like the late ’70s come flooding back in all their innocent glory. It presents like a call back to one of MK’s greatest guest appearances of the era, on Dylan’s Slow Train Coming, in particular the song “Precious Angel.” It’s odd how nostalgia can sometimes slay you even over things you didn’t really have particular feelings for at the time.

Anyway: back to the current century, shall we? Pieta Brown has been releasing albums of well-crafted, acoustic-oriented music since 2002—music that floats around an engaging gray area where folk, blues, jazz, and Americana interweave. She sings with an intimate sort of slurriness, sounding maybe like a cross between a young Rickie Lee Jones and Shawn Colvin; in “The Hard Way,” the lyrical phrases are spread out against the song’s steady pulse, generating a restrained urgency that is ongoingly echoed in Knopfler’s flourishes. The words emerge with such intentionality that small phrasing choices acquire lovely consequence (as a small but distinct example, how she sings the word “sending” at 1:16).

“The Hard Way” is the sixth track on Brown’s new album, Freeway, her first for Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe Records. I’d like to think of it as the first song on the second side, as this is the kind of smart, organic music one can imagine living on a vinyl record, even if as of now it exists only digitally. You can listen to the whole thing, and buy it, via Bandcamp. Note that Knopfler also appeared on a song from Brown’s previous album, 2017’s Postcards. And, for the record, note too that Brown was previously featured on Fingertips way back in March 2006. MP3 via The Current (see below).

Free and legal MP3: Bombay Bicycle Club (curiously satisfying, w/ a hypnotic groove)

Being obsessed with reuniting with your band in times of trouble seems, indeed, more righteous than just being another 21st-century guy eager for his lover’s body.

“Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)” – Bombay Bicycle Club

Here, in the midst of a buzzy, quasi-anthemic piece of late-issue indie rock, I’m finding that the moment that sells me is when an abruptly perky synth lick grabs the ear at the top of the mix after the third of the three-word choral incantation (“wake,” first heard at 0:34). If you re-listen you’ll hear how well set up the moment is, a climax emerging from the rubbery noodling the synthesizer has been doing from the start. And yet when you first hear it it’s this marvelous upward prompt that punctuates and re-sets the piece in a curiously satisfying way.

In fact let’s call the entire song curiously satisfying, starting with how its hypnotic groove, emphasized by a nearly sub-aural bass line, is no mere sonic affectation, but is in fact germane to lyrics that speak of obsession so thorough as to render days a rote ritual of waking and sleeping, as if hypnotized. And even though this may seem to be about someone in thrall to an absent lover, front man Jack Steadman is actually here expressing his desire to get back together with his band mates, as Bombay Bicycle Club had been on a hiatus for a few years. This seems a helpful distinction, and to me accounts for the musical uplift of the aforementioned synth lick; being obsessed with reuniting with your band in times of national uneasiness (they’re from London) seems, indeed, more righteous than just being another 21st-century guy singing about his lover’s body.

I’m also taken with Steadman’s vocal delivery, which conveys a shaky determination, half resigned and half resolved, reminiscent of Conor Oberst on a sturdy day. The verses acquire a claustrophobic momentum, with Steadman barely taking a breath, but we are always led back to the chorus and that mind-clearing synth lick. Note too another song that does not overstay its welcome; I’ll never understand why some bands take the positive quality of insistence and depreciate it into redundancy. (In fact, all four songs this month clock in within the perfect 3:33 to 3:49 range. Well done, everyone!)

A quartet whose origins date back to 2005, Bombay Bicycle Club recorded four albums between 2009 and 2014, to a good amount of critical and popular success, did a bunch of touring, then decided to go their separate ways in 2016. Both singer/guitarist Steadman and bassist Ed Nash pursued solo projects, but after three years the group found its way back together. “Eat, Sleep, Wake (Nothing But You)” is their first new recording in five years, and will be found on their the album Everything Else Has Gone Wrong, which is due out early next year. The song was produced by John Congleton, known in recent years for his work with St. Vincent and Alvvays. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: Sarah Lee Langford (authentic country goodness)

It’s gorgeous stuff, grounded in a melody as stern and lustrous as a sermon, all minor chords and heart-rending turns.

“Growing Up” – Sarah Lee Langford

I’d like to think I’d have noticed the beauty and strength of this song no matter when I first listened. But as it turned out, “Growing Up” crossed my desk while I was in the middle of watching the Ken Burns documentary on country music that recently aired on PBS. Were my ears therefore more open to the backwoods twang of the song more than they might previously have been? Quite possibly. The documentary, an extraordinary work, demonstrates two things: one, that you don’t have to think you like country music to be absorbed by the film; two, that understanding the history and the context of music can profoundly impact your reaction to it. And so while I might not go and listen to a bunch of George Jones records now (although maybe I might!), I find myself with an unprecedented (for me) regard for a lot of the music that has been conveniently if often simplistically labeled “country.”

And “Growing Up” surely has the earmarks of something you’d likely want to give this label to, complete with brisk Mother Maybelle guitar work, ghostly pedal steel lines, a shuffling front-porch beat, and vocals stripped of all gloss and pretense. It’s gorgeous stuff, grounded in a melody as stern and lustrous as a sermon, all minor chords and heart-rending turns. Langford lets the melodic descent do a lot of the work for her, but listen to how potently she wields standard country melisma (stereotypically employed in yelpy little yodels) to beautiful effect (e.g., “pill” at 0:52, “pocket” at 1:45, “up” at 2:04, and many others). As fine a singer as she is, she also lets the music breathe around her, allowing her top-notch backing band to stretch out in and around the verses, with restrained honky-tonk spirit and that steel guitar floating through the atmosphere.

“Growing Up” is a track from Two Hearted Rounder, Langford’s debut album, coming out next week on Cornelius Chapel Records.