Fingertips

Another thorn in my side (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.03 – March 2018)

Spring is here so of course it’s snowing like Narnia. It’s been that kind of year. But the more I dive into the music, the more I root around, pick up a little of this and a little of that, the more I figure out (usually by accident) that these two songs sound pretty good together, and then this next one too–well, the more I do this, the calmer I get. There’s hope buried in here somewhere. Obscure Northern Soul singles are good, and so are big Madonna hits (sometimes) and semi-forgotten Grateful Dead album tracks and extended drone-y 21st-century electronic tracks with indomitable melodies, and so is Joni with her special chords and so is the first track we ever heard from Fountains of Wayne and so is a dollop of yé-yé to finish us up this time. RIP France Gall, who died in January. The young grow old, the old pass on, the music remains, and maybe that’s where the hope is buried. Don’t let them tell you that guitars are through, don’t let the people who bend over backwards to find art in interchangeable pop radio fodder hypnotize you into overlooking the actual artistry of songwriters who sing and singers who write songs and melodies that nourish you even when it’s the first day of spring and there’s still this shoveling to do.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Information” – Dave Edmunds (Information, 1983)
“Hurt the One You Love” – David Ruffin (single, 1990)
“Bitchenostrophy” – Rickie Lee Jones (The Evening Of My Best Day, 2000)
“Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde” – Ezra Furman (The Year of No Returning, 2012)
“Hope You’re Feeling Better” – Santana (Abraxas, 1970)
“Blue Rondo á la Turk” – The Dave Brubeck Quartet (Time Out, 1959)
“Live To Tell” – Madonna (True Blue, 1986)
“Only Shallow” – My Bloody Valentine (Loveless, 1991)
“Doctor Blind” – Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton (Knives Don’t Have Your Back, 2006)
“Remember Russia” – Fischer-Z (Word Salad, 1979)
“Compared to What” – Roberta Flack (First Take, 1969)
“Carlo What Do You Dream” – James Irwin (Shabbytown, 2017)
“Victoria’s Secret” – Lisa Germano (Excerpts From a Love Circus, 1999)
“Skin Deep” – The Stranglers (Aural Sculpture, 1984)
“See You Sometime” – Joni Mitchell (For the Roses, 1972)
“One of Us Should Go” – Heidi Gluck (The Only Girl in the Room, 2014)
“Radiation Vibe” – Fountains of Wayne (Fountains of Wayne, 1996)
“Keep It Clean” – Camera Obscura (Underachievers Please Try Harder, 2003)
“Estimated Prophet” – Grateful Dead (Terrapin Station, 1977)
“Nous Ne Sommes Pas Des Anges” – France Gall (single, 1965)

Free and legal MP3: Firestations (fresh, well-crafted British rock)

Firestations is a London-based five-piece with a straightforward mission statement: “We write simple alt-pop songs and then mess them up.”

“Receiver” – Firestations

Lord knows I am not going to single-handedly upend the 21st century’s predilection for unabated idiocy, whether on the airwaves or in the White House, but as long as I can I will stand up here for music that is well-crafted, both catchy and interesting, and sonically fresh without pandering to mindless trends and/or soulless technology.

Which is I guess a somewhat grumpy way of saying I love this song. With its propulsive (but not head-banging) beat, “Receiver” launches off a riff that repeats itself from 0:04 through to when the verse starts at 0:32, yet feels regenerative via the off-kilter interval leaps and syncopated shuffle it makes in the second of its two measures. And while you almost don’t notice the wordless backing vocals that accompany the resolute riff they’re also what keeps the ear gratified as the song builds a subtle nervous energy.

Once the lyrics arrive, it’s never quite clear where we are, structure-wise. There’s something that seems like a verse at 0:32, which repeats musically at 0:47; the vocals here are multi-tracked and wonderfully processed (one layer sounds like a whisper, the other like a megaphone). We are led through this to a stand-alone lyric (“I won’t be fine”? hard to decipher), at which point the opening riff and wordless vocals return. The tension is even higher now, and it breaks, at least somewhat, at 1:16, with what feels like a chorus (“You are the receiver/You get the message”), even if, musically, it’s not too far from the opening verse. Note the staccato synth line that bops and boops in the background, adding texture and oomph; it’s around now that the song for me goes from good to great. The electronics later come to the foreground (1:58) to introduce and accompany a satisfying guitar solo, constructed out of chords rather than pyrotechnics. Still later (3:04), the electronics and guitar collide and disintegrate and then land in a coda that first revisits the introduction then dissolves on a radio-receiver-like flourish.

Firestations is a London-based five-piece with a straightforward mission statement: “We write simple alt-pop songs and then mess them up.” That’s pretty much what took me two long paragraphs to say. “Receiver” is a track from their their second full-length album The Year Dot, coming out in April on Lost Map Records. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Hollie Cook (reggae-inspired goodness)

There’s something in the character of her voice, in the nature of the melody she’s singing, and in the texture of the mix that together lend a bewitching vibe to the dubby proceedings.

“Stay Alive” – Hollie Cook

The smooth-as-silk “Stay Alive,” from British singer/keyboardist Hollie Cook, undulates to a reggae beat, and manages at the same time to feel unshackled from genre conventions. There’s something in the character of her voice, in the nature of the melody she’s singing, and in the texture of the mix that together lend a bewitching vibe to the dubby proceedings.

So, look, it’s 2018, and reggae elements have obviously been roaming far and wide in the musical world for decades. Often it comes across as pastiche but so strong is the underlying premise that, to me, it works in just about any setting anyway. What I love here, though, is how fully committed to the sound Cook remains even while bringing genuine individuality to it. I’m not explaining this well but even as, to my ears, the song sounds fully ready to be filed under “reggae” (or “lovers rock,” for you sub-genre fans), there seems a contemporary charm and mystique infusing the music that transcends a pat label. I’m especially taken in by the melodies, which somehow combine a slinky nod to spy-movie music with a girl-group insouciance, while being supported by an acrobatic bass line (that would be Jah Wobble doing his thing), a haunted-house organ, and a creative, organic horn section (sax, trumpet, trombone, in the house).

Credit here to Youth, who produced (and who by the way is now 57), and to Cook herself, whose personal lineage has landed her among some notable musical friends and relations: she is the daughter of Paul Cook, drummer for the Sex Pistols, and Jeni Cook, who sang with Boy George in Culture Club. Here on “Stay Alive” we not only get Wobble, a one-time bandmate of John Lydon in Public Image Ltd, but Keith Levene on guitar, himself a founding member of both the Clash and PiL, as well as part of the semi-legendary band Cowboys International, and many other projects since then. Cook, meanwhile, cut her own musical teeth as part of Ari Up’s re-boot of the seminal British punk band The Slits from 2005 to 2010.

“Stay Alive” is the second track on Cook’s third album, Vessel of Love, released in January on Merge Records. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp. MP3 from the tasteful folks at KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: Loma (beautiful, dirge-like)

“Black Willow” – Loma

With its deep, deliberate beat and hushed group vocals, “Black Willow” floats into my ears like a visitation from a different, unsettling, yet somehow more benevolent dimension.

Listen to how the almost uncomfortable slowness of the groove is soon counteracted by the solace of the humming voices that rise up at 0:14. When the words start, 10 or so seconds later, they engage us with one of the most tantalizing words with which to begin a song: “Because.” The opening verse, in fact, delivers a series of “Because…” statements, which deftly engage the ear for the mystery implicit in an answer delivered without a question.

And talk about implicit mystery!: listen to what the sound of voices singing the same note brings up for you. It may take a while for this to register but there are no harmonies here, just a group of voices (two, maybe three) singing directly on the melody, all the way through. To me, this feels counter-intuitively enigmatic. Another moment of satisfying elusiveness is the soupçon of time-signature shifting that happens a couple of times (first at 1:20), which registers as a subtle hiccup, a passing “what was that?” moment in a song otherwise measured and resolute.

The song is grounded musically by the bass and the drums, with well-placed keyboard fills offering some counter-balancing brightness. A windswept synth sound is added at a lyrically opportune time (“I make a home inside the wind”; 2:28). And then check out how the voices themselves transmute into something wind-like at around 3:13. This leads us to the song’s delayed, haunting chorus, featuring the title repeated over and over, while the voices, at the end of each repetition, morph increasingly into the echoey, windy soundscape.

Loma is a band that seems to have begun inadvertently, when Shearwater front man Jonathan Meiburg was so taken with the music made by the Texas duo Cross Record (Emily Cross and Dan Duszynski), opening for Shearwater on a tour, that the three of them began playing together. Adding to the depth of the experience: Cross and Duszynski’s marriage was disintegrating when the three of them were writing and recording the music that would become Loma’s self-titled debut album. “Black Willow” is the tenth and last track on the record, which was released last month on Sub Pop. MP3 again via KEXP.

Why wouldn’t you try? (Eclectic Playlist Series 5.02 – Feb. 2018)

“I hate and I love. How do I do that, perhaps you ask?
I don’t know. But I feel it is happening and I am tormented.”

Those are what the words in the first song mean, translated from the Latin. They were written in the first century B.C. Here they are being sung by a computerized voice. It’s a piece by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannson, who, sadly, died this month at the age of 48. I have not heard too much of his music but did stumble on this one back in 2006 and featured it here. It’s odd but compelling, and enduring; I urge you to listen with full attention.

From there, we’re off into another irregular journey through the decades. I’ve branched back into the ’50s this time, twice for good measure, and for whatever reason cleared out a little bit of an instrumental section in the middle. It just seemed to want to work out that way.

Random notes:

* Another song I urge your attention onto is “Muddy River,” from Shelley Short’s sadly overlooked 2017 release Pacific City. What a beautiful and powerful collection of acoustic songs; you can listen to it and buy it via Bandcamp.

* There’s actually one more “memorial” song in the mix: the very satisfying if semi-forgotten R&B hit “Don’t Look Any Further,” to honor Dennis Edwards, one-time front man of the Temptations, who also died this month. The song has not only an incisive, melodic bass line, but a surprisingly effective off-the-beat synth motif threading through. Props too to Siedah Garrett, who sings here with Edwards.

* I just stumbled upon the band Scars recently, and enjoy the authentic mid-new-wave vibe of “All About You.” Their album is somewhat hard to find (it’s not seemingly digitized), but I’m going to see if I can track it down, short of paying $35 for used vinyl.

* Favorite segue this time around probably goes to Johnny Cash into the Casket Girls, with R.E.M. into Elbow as honorable mention, if you’re keeping score at home. And note that while I never completely took to the Bill-Berry-less version of R.E.M., I find “Walk Unafraid” to be one of a handful of classic songs they managed without him.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Odi Et Amo” – Jóhann Jóhannson (Englabörn, 2002)
“Chequered Love” – Kim Wilde (Kim Wilde, 1981)
“She Came Along To Me” – Billy Bragg & Wilco (Mermaid Avenue, 1998)
“I Still Miss Someone” – Johnny Cash (The Fabulous Johnny Cash, 1958)
“24 Hours” – Casket Girls (The Night Machines, 2016)
“Don’t Look Any Further” – Dennis Edwards (single, 1984)
“Muddy River” – Shelley Short (Pacific City, 2017)
“American Garage” – Pat Metheny Group (American Garage, 1979)
“Baby That’s Me” – The Cake (The Cake, 1967)
“Days of Steam” – John Cale (The Academy in Peril, 1972)
“Penthouse Mambo” – Xavier Cugat (Bread, Love and Cha Cha Cha, 1957)
“Swapping Spit” – Big Deal (June Gloom, 2013)
“What Do You Think?” – The Sundays (Blind, 1992)
“You Keep Running Away” – The Four Tops (single, 1967)
“Portions for Foxes” – Rilo Kiley (More Adventurous, 2004)
“The Holdup” – David Bromberg (David Bromberg, 1971)
“All About You” – Scars (Author! Author!, 1981)
“Moonshine Freeze” – This is the Kit (Moonshine Freeze, 2017)
“Walk Unafraid” – R.E.M. (Up, 1998)
“Weather to Fly” – Elbow (The Seldom Seen Kid, 2008)

Free and legal MP3: Calexico (fiery, melancholy rocker in 6/8 time)

Twisting and swinging with a melancholy pang, “Voices in the Field” is propelled throughout by organic percussion, and rendered fiery by the paired guitars that blaze and gyrate with character and intensity.

“Voices in the Field” – Calexico

Boy is there something to be said for experience. You wouldn’t know it from most of the emails I receive here, touting the latest sensations, accentuating how young someone is or how quickly this or that band has racked up video streams (or both). And of course there’s always room for new talent. But there will always be an untouchable quality to the talent that can (sometimes!) develop with years of playing, years of living, years of developing a craft and a voice.

Calexico, formed by the duo of Joey Burns and John Convertino, have been at their dusty blend of cross-cultural indie rock since 1995. There’s a world of musical know-how in the sounds they make; even the way the instruments in the introduction slide in and out of the 6/8 beat here strikes me as something you can’t do if you’re out there collecting likes for a living, and that’s just in the first 20 seconds. Twisting and swinging with a melancholy pang, “Voices in the Field” is propelled throughout by organic percussion, and rendered fiery by the paired guitars that blaze and gyrate with character and intensity. The lyrics tell a poetic tale of dislocation, with enough detail not to mystify, enough obliqueness to intrigue—yet another sign of a sure, experienced hand.

“Voices in the Field” is from the album The Thread That Keeps Us, released in January on Anti Records. MP3 via KEXP. It’s the band’s tenth release, not including live and collaborative recordings. Calexico was featured on Fingertips once previously, way back in April 2004.

Free and legal MP3: Becca Richardson (delightful, confident debut)

“Wanted” is a cool delight from start to finish, smartly crafted and produced in a most matter-of-fact way.

“Wanted” – Becca Richardson

“Wanted” is a cool delight from start to finish, smartly crafted and produced in a most matter-of-fact way. What begins as a bass-driven groove expands fluidly into a succinct, three-part song, with strong hooks in all three sections—verse (first heard at 0:13), pre-chorus (0:47), and chorus (1:03)—with each part nestled snugly against the next, while also offering nuanced additions to the soundscape. The climax at the chorus is sneaky-great, featuring a sly two-step reveal: the central question “Doesn’t it feel good?” sounds like a stand-alone as it’s asked three times in a row, only then to show itself as incomplete—the full question turns out to be “Doesn’t it feel good to be wanted?” The shift is subtle but affecting.

I’m impressed throughout by the clean and dexterous mix. Calling on a judicious bag of aural building blocks, “Wanted” feels all the richer for how nonchalantly the blend works. Bass and drum get us going, synths and guitars join in, each entrance at once precise and casual. I like, as an example, the guitar chords that slash in as background accents starting at 0:32, and especially appreciate the dissonant chord we get at 0:34, first of a series of quietly off-kilter accents. The pre-chorus follows, highlighted by swelling backing vocals and an underwater-y synth line deep below. The chorus then anchors us with psychedelic guitar blurts.

Not to be overlooked through it all is the enticing suppleness of Becca Richardson’s voice. She sings in slightly different registers in each of the song’s three sections—subtly shy and sultry in the verse, open-voiced and full strength in the middle part, and in the third a higher-register version of sultry, minus the shy. Among Richardson’s strengths here as both singer and songwriter is how little she strains to call attention to how good she is. It’s an unorthodox stance in our YouTuber age, and that may be at least part of what lends an old-school vibe to a song that otherwise zings along with solid 21st-century chops.

Richardson is based in Nashville. “Wanted” is the opening track from her debut album, We Are Gathered Here, which was self-released in October. You can sample it and buy it on iTunes. MP3 via the artist.

Free and legal MP3: Lowpines

Gorgeous 21st-century folk rock

“Broken Wing” – Lowpines

Static and fuzz lead us counterintuitively into a smooth, minor-key strummer. The melody, at first, is lovely, but contained—the verse, in fact, concentrates on just two different notes. But emerging from the mouth of Oli Deakin, doing musical business as Lowpines, the song sounds, already, rich and wistful.

Then the chorus slays with pure beauty. Deakin’s already multi-tracked voice opens into a wash of vocal sound as the melody expands into gratifying intervals—note in particular the two different landing spots for the word “wing” on the chorus’s repeated end line, “Be my broken wing”: the first “wing” dips down below an expected descent and then the second one, also against expectation, finishes higher up, in an unresolved place, with Deakin’s phrasing lagging behind the beat in a way that somehow adds both lushness and regret to the palette.

After the first chorus the song feels transformed into something silvery and resolute. The background fills with a soft sort of loudness, buoying the song into grandeur. The return of the chorus, with its Moody Blues-like pathos, just about brings tears to the eyes. At one point a clarion synth line finds its way through the sumptuous forward-moving haze. At the end we get a slowed-down coda in which the song ends without resolution, as if in mid-thought. There is little to do now but go back and listen again.

Deakin, based in the UK, has been recording as Lowpines since 2012. Earlier Lowpines material, while still melodic, was characterized by a more whispery vocal style that brings the likes of Iron & Wine and Bon Iver and, grandfather of them all, Elliott Smith to mind: by now the almost cliched woodsy-folksy 21st-century troubadour sound. “Broken Wing” breaks past the claustrophobia often looming in that approach, and lands us in some new kind of folk-rock firmament. It’s the second track on the second Lowpines album, In Silver Halides, slated for release later this month. You can check out his previous discography—one other album, three EPs, two singles—over on Bandcamp.

Another one of those dreams

Eclectic Playlist Series 5.01 – Jan. 2018

So it’s been two years now since David Bowie died. Is this even possible? January brings the man inevitably to mind, this time via an incredible cover of a song that was never previously a particular favorite of mine. But boy does Jesca Hoop give herself over to “John I’m Only Dancing,” doing what any great cover should do: opening the ears to a song’s true power. It is no accident that I selected a female vocalist covering a Bowie song, and no accident that this month’s playlist is dominated by female performances. Keep it up out there.

Meanwhile, the Eclectic Playlist Series this month enters its fifth iteration. In January, I reset the accounts, and all artists become available again. (For newcomers: no artist appears more than once a year here.) Even so, I’m happy to report that 15 out of 20 artists on this month’s list have never been on one of my playlists before, including, inexplicably, John Vanderslice, who has otherwise a strong history as a Fingertips favorite, and Lou Reed, who has an inimitable presence in rock’n’roll history.

Random notes:

* Rita Wright is more authentically identified as Syreeta Wright, but this was her first single, and that’s the name she was given for it by Motown chairman Berry Gordy. She was an early collaborator with Stevie Wonder, co-writing many songs, and singing on his albums. They were married in 1970; it only lasted a few years, but they continued to work together into the ’90s. She recorded eight solo albums in the ’70s and ’80s. Wright died at age 58, in 2004, from complications stemming from a long battle with cancer.

* Thanks to the always enjoyable radio show/podcast “The Many Moods of Ben Vaughn” for the classic Serge Gainsbourg song, which some part of me knew from a buried and mysterious point in the past but I’d never have recovered otherwise.

* I don’t think Britta Phillips got enough attention for her wonderful Luck or Magic album from 2016, the first solo release of her acclaimed career (Luna, Dean & Britta). Pitchfork among other places took her to task for the album’s having five cover songs out of 10 tracks, which strikes me as a stupid critique of someone with such a strong interpretive flair. (And never mind the fact that so many of today’s revered pop performers don’t write their songs in the first place.) The album casts a spell; I recommend it.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Trick of the Light” – Matthew Sweet (Tomorrow Forever, 2017)
“Who Do You Love” – Pointer Sisters (Priority, 1979)
“Whirlwind” – Sam Rivers (Inspiration, 1999)
“Keep It Tight” – Single Bullet Theory (Sharp Cuts: New Music From American Bands, 1980)
“Arrow” – Beaches (Second of Spring, 2017)
“La Chanson De Prévert” – Serge Gainsbourg (L’Étonnant Serge Gainsbourg, 1961)
“Crazy Feeling” – Lou Reed (Coney Island Baby, 1976)
“John I’m Only Dancing” – Jesca Hoop (A Salute to the Thin White Duke, 2015)
“Stranger Than You” – Joe Jackson (Night and Day II, 2000)
“We’re Gonna Hate Ourselves in the Morning” – Nursery Rhymes (single, 1967)
“Same Old Scene” – Roxy Music (Flesh + Blood, 1980)
“Diving Woman” – Japanese Breakfast (Soft Sounds From Another Planet, 2017)
“White Plains” – John Vanderslice (Cellar Door, 2004)
“I Can’t Give Back The Love I Feel For You” – Rita Wright (single, 1968)
“Never Go Back” – Christine Lavin (Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind, 1987)
“Nothing Has Been Proved” – Dusty Springfield (Reputation, 1990)
“Fallin’ in Love” – Britta Phillips (Luck or Magic, 2016)
“Forget About You” – The Motors (Approved By The Motors, 1978)
“The Storm” – The Hunters (single, 1962)
“Attagirl” – Bettie Serveert (Attagirl, 2004)

Free and legal MP3: Ages and Ages (a compassionate song for troubled times)

The lyrics, meanwhile, are awash with the empathy currently struggling to re-establish itself in a world seemingly gone vicious and unreflective.

“How It Feels” – Ages and Ages

A lovely strain of uplift runs through “How It Feels,” the latest offering from a band with currents of melodicism and humanity consistently twinning through their music. Maybe it’s there in the plinky, upturning synth line that, recycling, impels us forward, or in the inscrutable, airy, Lindsay Buckingham-ish declarations of the verses (“Feel the noise add up under my skin/Look around as if I only just noticed,” et al.). And then, the thing that really grips the heart: the chorus, which only subtly alters the verse melody, but with the incisive entry of a female singing partner, joining only for the phrase “But I wanted to tell you” (it’s “And I wanted to tell you” the second time, sung the same way). Notice the delightful little leap on the word “tell,” and the guileless conversion of “you” to “ya,” which itself feels like the hug the song is benevolently aspiring to offer via words and music.

“How It Feels” opens itself to us as it goes. Listen for the synth insertions—ambling, flute-like, nearly dissonant—that begin between verses (around 1:19) and proceed to work themselves into the mix. A later instrumental break finds a guitar infiltrating with neither warning nor fuss (2:23), like a long-lost relative at a family reunion. The lyrics, meanwhile, are awash with the empathy currently struggling to re-establish itself in a world seemingly gone vicious and unreflective. This too shall pass, and in the meantime, we hold onto each other, those of us who believe in good hearts.

“How It Feels” is a single offered up by Ages and Ages back in October. It was recently featured as a free and legal download via KEXP, which is my source here. The band is from Portland, Oregon; they have released three full-length LPs to date, the most recent, Something to Ruin, in 2016. They have been previously featured on Fingertips in 2011 and 2014. The band lists five members in its core, but with a couple of dozen others in its “extended family.” There are six people in this photo because I’m not sure.