Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Annie Dressner (UK-based expat singer/songwriter)

“Falter” – Annie Dressner

Annie Dressner has one of those plainspoken voices that sounds like she’s singing and not singing at the same time. It works especially well with a song like “Falter,” which itself is simultaneously simple and maybe not so simple. An obvious complication is the time signature hiccup that Dressner employs in the intro and the verse, before allowing the song to slide into a more familiar groove.

Less obvious is the push/pull of the lyrical content. The song reads to me as a poignant testament to our imperfect lives. What might initially sound like a pep talk to the self (“Stop wasting time! Get to the finish line!”), comes across to my ears as a bittersweet recognition that there’s something inevitable to our falling short of our dreams, and that we go on anyway. The wisdom we gain through aging and perseverance may be more valuable than what we thought we wanted as young dreamers. Perhaps I’m reading more into it than is there? I’d like to think not. The hints I see suggesting the more complex reading are sprinkled throughout; if I try to explain in detail this would get too long, and potentially embarrassing, as I could well be off base. Let me just note that the title is, in fact, “Falter”: the apparent weakness itself, not the pep talk. Also, the chorus launches off the plaintive question “Can’t you get it right?”; expressed with the implicit negative, it becomes rhetorical: no, we can’t get it right. We’re human.

More to my usual concerns—I don’t often get caught up in lyrics but it could be that distinctive quality in her voice that focused me in this direction—the chorus is propelled by a wonderful feeling of musical inevitability, having to do with the unresolved chord at the outset, and the series of chords that bring it invincibly to resolution. I like too the unhurried, almost mournful guitar solo (starting at 1:58) that inserts itself between two iterations of the bridge, delaying the payoff of one last chorus, and (perhaps) adding subtle irony to the words “almost at the finish line,” since she ends up singing that twice.

Annie Dressner was born and raised in New York City; she moved to the UK in the early 2010s. Her new album, Broken Into Pieces, was released last week. You can both listen to it and buy it via Bandcamp. Thanks to Annie for the MP3.

I will fear no evil (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.08 – Oct. 2018)

With Fingertips operational again it’s time for the latest playlist, which as always features a wide mix of genres and decades of origin. A random preponderance of songs under three minutes this time makes this one of the shortest EPS mixes to date, for those keeping score—not much more than an hour total this time. Easy listening! And speaking of keeping score, with this playlist, both Kate Bush and the Kinks now tie for the top position as artists who have at this point been featured once a year for the five years that the EPS has been doing its artist-mixing, genre-mingling thing. David Bowie, Björk, and Elvis Costello may yet join them before year’s end. These are either my favorite all-time artists or I just like putting their songs in playlists. Or, probably, both.

Some random notes:

* Try as I might I can’t be exactly sure when Hattie Littles recorded this version of “Come and Get These Memories.” It’s a chestnut from Motown’s early days; as recorded in 1962 by Martha and the Vandellas, it was in fact the first hit produced by the legendary team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, charting in early 1963. Littles herself was on the Motown roster early on, but turned out to be one of those powerhouse vocalists who got overlooked and eventually dropped in favor of those considered to be more commercially viable. She recorded only one official single for Motown (and did open for Marvin Gaye on his first tour). After years out of the business, she was re-discovered in the 1980s and ended up releasing an album called The Best of Hattie Littles in 1996, which included a number of songs re-recorded from her Motown years, “Come and Get These Memories” among them. Let’s figure it was recorded in the vicinity of 1996, if not somewhat before.

* I have a lot of favorite Kinks songs but “Sweet Lady Genevieve” is one of my very favorite favorites, from the band’s otherwise troublesome Preservation Act 1 album (although not as troublesome as the seemingly related follow-up, Preservation Act 2). Apologies for the somewhat clunky segue from Sam Phillips here, I kept going back and forth between thinking it worked well and thinking it didn’t work at all, and by the time I figured it didn’t really work it was too late.

* Patti & The Emblems were from Camden NJ, and had this one hit, in 1964, which happened to be written by Leon Huff (one year before joining forces with Kenny Gamble). The group featured lead singer Pat Russell and three gentlemen backing vocalists. This is an unexpectedly great song, at once typical-sounding of the era and yet also somehow looser and grittier than the Brill Building fare that was still (but not for long) dominating the day.

* Véronique Sanson is a French singer, still active, who was married to Stephen Stills from 1973 to 1979. Her album Le Maudit was released in 1974, and recorded with a few members of Stills’ group Manassas.

* “For You To Do That” was a Fingertips featured song back in 2007, from an album that had come out a few years earlier. Mary Ann Farley only recorded two albums of music before veering off into a career as a painter. Still love this one.

* Speaking, earlier, of Holland-Dozier-Holland, we also dive here into the somewhat under-visited catalog of Mr. Lamont Dozier himself here. Dozier, now 77, has released a dozen or so solo albums over the years, all coming after the Holland-Dozier-Holland heyday of the mid- to late-’60s (and boy go look at the songs that team was responsible for if you want to be amazed, including 14 songs that went to number one on the Billboard chart). But he was no slouch on his own, if a good deal less commercially successful. One of my favorite semi-overlooked songs of his is “Invisible,” which was recorded by Alison Moyet on her first solo album, back in 1984 (and was featured on EPS 3.07 back in 2016, for those who, against all odds, are still keeping score at home).

* And if we’re talking about overlooked goodies, what about this entire album from T Bone Burnett? The Criminal Under My Hat is full of smartly-written, wonderfully accessible songs, but came out, in 1992, while Burnett was still laboring in obscurity, some years yet before the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack made him at least a little more famous. But he was from that point onward pegged as more of a producer than a performer, so much so that the next album he made, many years later, 2006’s The True False Identity, kind of just fell through the cracks without much notice, although also a good one. It’s not too late to pay attention, and give him his due.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Please Stand Up” – British Sea Power (Open Season, 2005)
“Billy Two” – The Clean (Boodle Boodle Boodle EP, 1981)
“I’m In Love” – Kate Pierson (Lost Songs of Lennon & McCartney, 2011)
“Come and Get These Memories” – Hattie Littles (The Best of Hattie Littles, 1996)
“Strawberry Blonde” – Ron Sexsmith (Other Songs, 1997)
“Rainbows” – Dennis Wilson (Pacific Ocean Blue, 1977)
“Cloudbusting” – Kate Bush (Hounds of Love, 1985)
“Everybody’s Happy But Me” – Cheryl Williams (single, 1964)
“All My Friends” – Lens Mozer (single, 2017)
“I Want To Tell You” – The Beatles (Revolver, 1966)
“Troubled Mind” – Everything But The Girl (Amplified Heart, 1994)
“Playing For Keeps” – Lamont Dozier (Working On You, 1981)
“World On Sticks” – Sam Phillips (World On Sticks, 2018)
“Sweet Lady Genevieve” – The Kinks (Preservation Act 1, 1971)
“For You To Do That” – Mary Ann Farley (My Life of Crime, 2002)
“Seems So” – The Apples in Stereo (Tone Soul Evolution, 1997)
“Mixed Up Shook Up Girl” – Patti & The Emblems (single, 1964)
“Pure” – The Lightning Seeds (Cloudcuckooland, 1989)
“Le Maudit” – Veronique Sanson (Le Maudit, 1974)
“It’s Not Too Late” – T Bone Burnett (The Criminal Under My Hat, 1992)

Free and legal MP3: Hatchie

Catchy dream pop

“Sure” – Hatchie

Breezing in on a vibe that explores the overlap between the Cranberries and the Sundays, “Sure” overflows with melody and nostalgia. And yet, the magic trick here is that Hatchie mastermind Harriette Pilbeam manages to put forth her music in a crisp, contemporary package. Which doesn’t (thankfully) mean she’s pandering to any of today’s all-but-unlistenable trends (over-processing, mindless digital rhythms, affected vocalizing). This is as solidly constructed a piece of music emerging from the remnants of the pop-rock spectrum as one can hope to encounter in the ongoing nightmare that is the year 2018.

I’m hearing a coy type of syncopation as one of the keys to this song’s earworm-y success. After the chiming, guitar-filled intro, the drums kick in at 0:22, and if you listen you’ll see that we get a direct second beat but in place of an equally accented fourth beat (which would be the classic backbeat rhythm), there’s a stuttered, off-center accent. This manages both to move the song along and to play with the flow in an agreeable way. Added to this is the way the lyrics in the verse begin only on the second beat of the measure, which creates a pleasant, head-bobbing lag, the hesitation pulling us forward rather than backward. Resolution comes with the sturdy descent of the chorus, melody now planted on the first beat, even as the drumming underneath stays with its offbeat swing.

And hey that’s a rather wordy explication; I could also just say: it’s really catchy.

Pilbeam is from Brisbane, which partially explains her easy way with this type of melodic, history-embracing music—Australia is one of a handful of countries (Sweden is another) that has figured out how to maintain cultural interest in rock’n’roll’s organic development long after the combined machinations of the mainstream American music industry and fad-obsessed internet crowds have left it for dead. “Sure” was originally released as a single in November 2017, and became more widely available with the release of her Sugar & Spice EP in May 2018. Hatchie is finishing up a US tour as we speak, with dates upcoming this month in LA and Brooklyn, among other places.

Free and legal MP3: Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

Sharp, creative rocker w/ back story

“And You Are?” – Perry Serpa (feat. Scott McCaughey)

So this is a crazy-great concept, but also a crazy-challenging one: take an imaginary album, laid out track by track in a popular novel, and actually write it and record it. This is what Perry Serpa decided to do with the fictional album Juliet, from Nick Hornby’s popular and affecting book Juliet, Naked. The book involves a deep dive into music fandom, among other things, and centers around a reclusive singer/songwriter of Hornby’s invention named Tucker Crowe. Near the beginning of the novel, Hornby invents for us the Wikipedia entry for Crowe’s 1986 masterpiece, Juliet, which includes a track listing for the album. These are the songs that Serpa set about to write.

Not too intimidating a project, huh? Write music good enough to stand in for a fictional masterpiece? Plus there’s already been a movie made of the album, which came out earlier this year. (The movie, however, only created two of Juliet‘s ten songs.) “For better or for worse, I led a fifteen-plus piece band for almost twenty years, so I’m no neophyte when it comes to foolish, time-consuming, lofty creative pursuits,” Serpa told me via email. So here we go: “And You Are?” is the opening track on the imaginary album, so likewise opens Serpa’s. And what a wonderful, evocative piece of retro, semi-baroque folk rock it is. Seeking to create from scratch an album from 1986 gives Serpa all the artistic license he needs to willfully ignore that the 21st century ever happened to rock’n’roll; not always a bad thing, says me. Half Dylanesque harangue, half R.E.M.-like invocation, “And You Are?” swirls around an ascending string motif that adds a textured hook without taking away from the song’s electric edge; I especially like it when the guitar gains ground in the second half of the song, eventually mingling its own lead in and around the recurrent strings.

Not all the tracks from Juliet are specifically discussed in Hornby’s book, but some not only are described in one way or another, they are given a lyric or two. For instance, the first line of “And You Are?” was straight from the novel: “They told me talking to you would be like chewing barbed wire with a mouth ulcer.” The next line, however, is Serpa’s: “But you never once hurt me like that.” Serpa says this kind of writing was “fun as shit to do.”

The real album that Serpa has made based on Hornby’s imaginary one is, cleverly enough, entitled Wherefore Art Thou?: Songs Inspired by Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked. And it’s even cleverer than you might think; the imaginary Wikipedia entry mentions a 2002 tribute album to Juliet that was called, yes, Wherefore Art Thou?—which was not merely a Shakespeare allusion but a reference to the fact that in this fictional world, Tucker Crowe had disappeared after he released Juliet, and more or less hadn’t been heard from since. One final, meta twist relevant to Serpa’s project: Scott McCaughey, who sings lead on the song I have for you here, was founder of the Minus Five, one of the bands Hornby mentions as recording a song for the imaginary tribute LP.

For the record, Hornby himself has said, of Serpa’s smartly-hewn creation, “I’m happy to think that my book has somehow produced work this good.” Serpa has announced that a portion of the sales of the album will go to the UK-based charity Ambitious About Autism, which was co-founded by Hornby. Wherefore Art Thou? comes out October 5; streaming and purchase links are here.

Lastly: Serpa’s aforementioned 15-plus-piece ensemble, The Sharp Things, have been twice previously featured on Fingertips, in 2013 and 2014.

photo credit: Margaret Gaspari

Free and legal MP3: Mikaela Davis (harp-based midtempo rocker; it works!)

Davis’s harp insinuates itself into “Other Lover” so naturally that I find myself smiling a great big smile.

“Other Lover” – Mikaela Davis

I can’t claim exhaustive expertise about harps in rock’n’roll. (And I mean harp harps, not harmonicas.) Basically all I know is 1) you don’t hear them very often; and 2) Joanna Newsom made a splash with the instrument back in the ’00s, which intimated that the harp was going to become the next hip thing but I guess it hasn’t. Now as much as I admire Newsom’s instrumental skills (not to mention her opinions about Spotify, which she has called “a villainous cabal”; you won’t find her music there), I have yet to acquire a taste either for her voice (it’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it things) or for her elusive songwriting tactics, and because she plays the harp and has that voice and writes those songs I’ve kind of intertwined all those things in my head to the extent that Mikaela Davis can come along, play the harp in an incisively crafted rock song and I almost can’t compute the circumstance. Doesn’t a harp have to involve all sorts of other idiosyncrasy?

Apparently not. After immediately making its presence known with a dreamy introduction that feels half sumptuous, half portentous (listen to the bottom of the mix), Davis’s harp insinuates itself into “Other Lover” so naturally that I find myself smiling a great big smile. Who knew a harp could work like this, could be the easy, arpeggioed backbone of a catchy, invigorating tune? There’s so much to admire here, beginning with the song’s basic structure, which draws us in through the ongoing push/pull of its half-time/double-time melodies—first two lines of the verse in half time, second two in double time, followed by a chorus in which the half-time/double-time change happens within each lyrical line.

Another sign of a well-built song: the second verse is put together against a subtly different backdrop than the first verse, underscored by a new harp technique, as Davis leaves off some of the arpeggios for a staccato plucking that calls more attention now to the bass line (which may not actually be a bass, but in any case delivers a heavier-sounding bottom this time). (Fun fact: the word arpeggio is derived from the Italian word for “play the harp.”) This is a sign of the canny production on display throughout. As merely one example, listen to the sounds accompanying the end of the chorus, on the repeated words “run away” (first heard around 0:54): we’re probably getting a harp’s natural glissando in there, but it sounds subtly augmented, and fully aligned with the lyrics. A more direct example of this is in the bridge, in which this wonderful swelling arises in the background starting around 2:34, which sounds mostly vocal, both involving the harp and imitating it.

Mikaela Davis is a Rochester, NY-based singer/songwriter. Classically trained, she spent four years playing in the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra before going to study at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music. Halfway through college, she decided she’d rather write and perform her own songs than play in an orchestra. After graduating, she made an effort to forge her path in Brooklyn, but eventually landed back in her hometown, where she found her footing and her voice.

“Other Lover” is a song from Davis’s first full-length album, Discovery, released on Rounder Records in July, available here. She has two previous EPs and one single available via Bandcamp. MP3 via The Current.

Back in the saddle

So I’m back.

And what did I do over my summer vacation? I spent oh let’s say a hefty portion of the last three months attempting to remove myself from promotional mailing lists, for one, and, secondly, deleting emails that arrive that via that feckless mechanism. It turns out that extricating oneself from a mailing list is not as easy as it should be, since PR folks have long since adopted the strategy of creating stand-alone lists for each of their projects; to remove myself from one of them does not often end the stream of emails arriving from any given PR person and/or agency. It’s wac-a-mole city.

And why have I been trying to reduce the number of emails I’m receiving? Because I’ve realized that it’s the endless, faceless avanlanche of promotion that has been getting me down, not the music itself. And—with apologies to all hard-working music PR people out there—I have also realized how very few times any of their emails have introduced me to a song I end up featuring here. Which is to say: among the many ways that Fingertips is out of step with the music industry in 2018 is the fact that it almost (but not quite) goes without saying that a band employing professional PR assistance is a band that is not going to interest me musically speaking. And let me immediately follow that up with the contrasting fact that there are a small handful of PR people who do, semi-consistently, promote music that I do in fact like. I’ve just finally been realizing that I can pay attention to them and ignore everyone else. I believe in the synchronicity that brings bands I like to the attention of PR people I like, and am at long last ready to act accordingly.

If, in eliminating bulk emails almost entirely from my life I miss out on maybe one or two songs I might otherwise feature, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. I feel much lighter in this regard than I did a few months ago.

As for the larger-scale question of whether it still seems useful and relevant to people to be featuring free and legal MP3s, I guess I’ll skirt that for now and just keep at it. I received enough heart-warming feedback back at the start of the hiatus for me to know that there is an appreciative audience for what I do. Not necessarily a large audience, but an appreciative one. Unlike the model of success presented to us by both the internet and, alas, by our tragically incapacitated US President, I do not need large numbers to prop up my sense of self. No one should; in any case, for me, ever and always, quality trumps (pun intended) quantity. Try it yourselves and see how it goes.

So, I guess I’m saying that things here will continue more or less the same as before. I will still be reviewing free and legal MP3s, and creating monthly(-ish) playlists. I may or may not decide to post the reviews in batches of three, as previously. I’ll see how that goes. It might be only one at a time, sometimes, or two. But the output here will more or less resemble what it was pre-hiatus. It’s my inbox that’s going to look and feel a lot different. Thank the lord.

Who needs a hug? (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.07 – Sept. 2018)

Fingertips is on hiatus for a little while longer but the Eclectic Playlist Series forges on, offering up a “Summer’s Over” playlist aimed to help you find a little bit of solace in a world gone wrong and wronger. We’ve got indie rock and classic rock, rocksteady and R&B, instrumentals and vocal duets, folk rock from the distant past and indie pop from the immediate present, and then some. Some random notes:

* Thanks to George from Between Two Islands for the opening track. I love the Bird and the Bee but had overlooked this song until hearing it in one of his inimitable playlists.

* Yet again illustrated here is the inscrutable difference between a hit and a miss from the classic Soul years—I mean, Diane Lewis, “Keep a Hold on Me”: shouldn’t this have been blasting out of car radios across the country?

* “The Devil Wears a Suit” sounds even more portentous now than when I featured it on Fingertips back in 2012. Kate Miller-Heidke is a force of nature, far more appreciated in her native Australia than here. (Answer to her musical question: We all do. We all need a hug.)

* “Anastasia” was a FM radio staple, at a certain sort of FM radio station, back in the day. You don’t hear much (i.e., anything) of Elliott Murphy these days but he’s been recording albums all these years, his latest in 2013. He’s had a career as a writer too, has been living in Paris for decades, and in 2015 had a documentary released about him. Lots of characters like Murphy have slipped through the cracks of our click-oriented culture, people you have to slow down to get into and appreciate.

* RIP Aretha. I sure hope she’s right, that we are, indeed, at long last, running out of fools. The country can’t survive much longer with so many of them in charge.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Witch” – The Bird and the Bee (Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future, 2009)
“Knocked Down, Made Small (Treated Like a Rubber Ball)” – Was (Not Was) (Born to Laugh at Tornadoes, 1983)
“Keep a Hold on Me” – Diane Lewis (single, 1968)
“Graffiti” – CHVRCHES (Love Is Dead, 2018)
“Island in the Sun” – The Paragons (single, 1967)
“Did You Miss Me” – Lindsay Buckingham (Gift of Screws, 2008)
“The Blacksmith” – Steeleye Span (Hark! The Village Wait, 1970)
“Orchids” – Monster Rally (Return to Paradise, 2013)
“I’ll Do Anything” – Doris Troy (single, 1966)
“Song Against Sex” – Neutral Milk Hotel (On Avery Island, 1996)
“Prime Time” – The Tubes (Remote Control, 1979)
“The Devil Wears a Suit” – Kate Miller-Heidke (Nightflight, 2012)
“Too Fast For You” – The Church (Too Fast For You EP, 1981)
“A Hard Day’s Night” – Sonny Curtis (Beatle Hits Flamenco Guitar Style, 1964)
“Frank Sinatra” – Cake (Fashion Nugget, 1996)
“Anastasia” – Elliott Murphy (Just a Story From America, 1977)
“Runnin’ Out of Fools” – Aretha Franklin (Runnin’ Out of Fools, 1964)
“Come Cryin’ to Me” – The Jayhawks (Back Roads and Abandoned Motels, 2018)
“No Guilt” – The Waitresses (Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?, 1982)
“Walk Away” – James Gang (Thirds, 1971)

The foggy web of destiny (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.06 – Summer 2018)

Yes, Fingertips is on hiatus. But here’s a playlist, which I had started previously, and just seemed to want to be released into the world. It’s suitably eclectic, as always, and manages to feature 16 artists, of 20, that have not previously been playlisted here, even as we are now in the middle of the fifth year of playlists. Some random notes:

* There are two 2018 songs on the list, from two albums that are likely to be among my favorites this year—Beach House’s aptly-titled 7, and the Arctic Monkeys’ strange but endearing Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino.

* There are two old songs I’ve only recently discovered:

1) The Northern Soul-reclaimed gem “Please Stay,” from a Chicago group called The Ivories (in its original pressing on tiny Despenza Records, the band was identified simply as “Ivorys”), another song that demonstrates the fine fine line between a huge hit and an ignored piece of vinyl.

2) The gorgeous Dylan song “Born in Time,” in a version that is far more successful, to my ears, than the one that was originally released, in 1990, on his puzzling Under the Red Sky album. This notably altered 1989 incarnation was recorded for the much more successful Oh Mercy LP, but left off it because, well, Dylan routinely left off some really good songs. That’s how he rolled. You can find it on the terrific Tell-Tale Signs compilation.

* Yes, that’s Twiggy, the model. The 1960s were known, among many other things, as an era when anyone who was famous for pretty much anything would eventually end up in a recording studio making an album. Occasionally the end result was a pleasant surprise, as this one is.

* Ian Hunter recently turned 79 and is still out there recording top-notch music. This one is from back in his relatively youth—he was 36 at the time, and had just left Mott the Hoople. The band petered out quickly without him; his solo career has been full of strong but overlooked albums, including 2016’s Fingers Crossed.

* Peter Case is one of those guys who will sometimes receive the ambivalent compliment of being a “songwriter’s songwriter.” I’m not always sure what that means but in his case it rings true, and in any event “Hidden Love” is one of my favorite songs ever.

Reminder: all songs on each Eclectic Playlist Series mix (including, now, this one) have been accumulated into a master mix on Spotify (minus the songs that Spotify doesn’t have); the link to that is:

https://open.spotify.com/user/fingertipsmusic/playlist/2EOYzqn90RRM8HB5R95ED3?si=UYBQKHApThKdKklxo_CdTw

Full playlist below the widget.

“Dark Spring” – Beach House (7, 2018)
“Once It Was Alright Now (Farmer Joe)” – Laura Nyro (Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, 1968)
“Black and White” – The dB’s (Stands for Decibels, 1981)
“Slimcea Girl” – Mono (Formica Blues, 1998)
“Floating Vibes” – Surfer Blood (Astro Coast, 2009)
“Yachting Type” – The Yachts (Yachts, 1979)
“Please Stay” – The Ivories (single, 1966)
“Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino” – Arctic Monkeys (Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino, 2018)
“If I Had a Boat” – Lyle Lovett (Pontiac, 1988)
“Girl Anachronism” – The Dresden Dolls (The Dresden Dolls, 2004)
“When I Think of You” – Twiggy (single, 1967)
“Once Bitten Twice Shy” – Ian Hunter (Ian Hunter, 1975)
“World Made” – Land of Talk (Life After Youth, 2017)
“Mockingbirds” – Grant Lee Buffalo (Mighty Joe Moon, 1994)
“Born in Time” – Bob Dylan (recorded 1989, Oh Mercy sessions; released 2008, Tell-Tale Signs: The Bootleg Series, Vol. 8)
“Apache” – The Shadows (single, 1960)
“Heard It All Before” – Emiliana Torrini (Me and Armini, 2008)
“Someone’s Looking At You” – The Boomtown Rats (The Fine Art of Surfacing, 1979) *
“Never Broken” – Cassandra Wilson (Traveling Miles, 1999)
“Hidden Love” – Peter Case (The Man With The Blue Post-Modern Fragmented
Neo-Traditionalist Guitar, 1989)

See you in September

Fingertips will be on hiatus until September.

And with one previous post spotlighting perennial Fingertips favorite Neko Case and a song from her terrific new album, Fingertips will now be taking a hiatus from MP3 reviews until September. Whether the reviews start back up at that point I actually don’t know. That is some of what I will be pondering these next few months. Part of me is happy with all the work I’ve done here over the past 15 years, all the worthy artists whose songs I have closely examined and offered as legal downloads; and by June 2018 another part of me wonders whether this particular effort has at last run its course. Music changes, technology changes, with (alas) no rational or humane actor steering things. The web has enabled both our better angels and our tireless devils. I’m on the side of the angels but it’s exhausting and often discouraging work.

I imagine I will continue to post playlists because it’s kind of my personal art form—I feel compelled towards expression in that medium regardless of who may or may not be paying attention. And the intermittent essays may continue as well. We’ll see how it all shakes out after some time off.

Thanks to all of you who are out there, paying attention. The world needs not merely attention but attention pointed in a helpful and hopeful direction. Keep the faith, stay in touch, and place yourself whenever possible in the path of beauty. Now and always, it’s our last best chance.

Free and legal MP3: Neko Case (enigmatic brilliance)

Neko Case is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of a voice.

“Hell-On” – Neko Case

Neko Case is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of a voice. The more confident she has grown as a songwriter and singer over the years, the less clear her intentions, the more obscure her references, the more involuted her song structures. There is no explaining “Hell-On,” the title track to her new album, unless you are somehow blessed with an intuitive understanding of lines like this:

Just at sorrow’s waterline
I drape you on tomorrow’s plate
Ferrous, metal marrow spilling
Not yours but mine
I’m an agent of the natural world

Say what? But: keep listening. You won’t understand it any better but you might grow to understand that understanding is besides the point. Case is indeed an agent of the natural world, otherwise known as a force of nature, and there is something in her haunted melodies and cryptic utterances that command not merely respect but something approaching exaltation. “Hell-On” begins like an oddball Waitsian waltz, tip-toes through an unremitting series of puzzling declarations before shifting time signature and tone at 1:52 and again at 2:24 before finding its way back to 3/4 time at 2:54 for a finish that matches the deliberately sung, vaguely off-kilter opening section. You listen once and you have little idea where you are or what she’s doing. Any sense it begins to acquire with repeated listens is sub-rational at best. She seems so determined in her opacity that she swallows the title phrase of the song beyond recognition (the lyrics at this point [3:27] go: “Nature can’t amend its ways/Boils hell-on and then replays”)—as a listener, then, your not knowing what she’s talking about is compounded by your not even apprehending the sounds she’s making.

A lesser artist might lose me here. (Alas, we live in a world dominated by lesser artists.) Neko is the real thing. I haven’t yet had the chance to listen to the entire album but what I’ve heard so far has wowed me; I’m pretty sure this is not nearly the best song on the album, but it’s the available free and legal MP3 (via KEXP) and you should still have it. Then go on to Bandcamp and listen to the entire album. Furthermore: please consider the radical act of buying the actual album for actual money (it’s only $8), in support of actual music.