Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Mark Tulk (plaintive but upbeat, piano-driven)

A fetching constant throughout is Tulk’s warm, strong singing voice, with a tone at once earthy and buoyant.

“Universal Code” – Mark Tulk

While tinged with a bittersweet air “Universal Code” likewise comes across as friendly and comforting. Piano-based rock music can have that effect on me, I think. Maybe it’s just because I grew up playing piano, and hearing a good amount of piano music in the house. Or maybe—just maybe—there is something built into the sound of a piano, perhaps its unique capacity to be at once melodic and percussive, that feels human-scaled and reassuring.

More to the point, see what Tulk is doing with the piano here—two things I am noticing in particular: first, the incisive, eighth-note motif that opens the song, with its accents on the one and two beats (at once basic and somewhat unusual), right away asserting the instrument’s rhythmic potency, and racing the pulse a bit; second, the song’s central chord change, heard first at 0:14, which is a homely but affecting up-step from G major to A minor. Written into the right context, moving up just one tonal interval can be a poignant thing. Which is to say he had me at hello, basically.

Which is not to say there are not engaging elements throughout, of course. The instrumentation is deftly done—the song expands beyond its piano foundation, with subtle electronic flourishes and offbeat vocal layering, without losing its piano-centric-ness, which seems its own sort of accomplishment. And then what’s this?: a coterie of reed instruments sidle in somewhere along the way, and become undeniable past the two-minute mark. An appealing constant throughout is Tulk’s warm, strong singing voice, with a tone at once earthy and buoyant.

“Universal Code” is the lead track on Embers, Tulk’s third full-length album, released in March; he has also put out two EPs. You can listen to the entire album as well as purchase it via Bandcamp. Born in Australia, Tulk, who identifies himself on his web site as a “writer, philosopher, and musician,” is based in Boulder, Colorado. MP3 courtesy of the artist.

Every bird that goes by gets me high

Eclectic Playlists Series 3.05 – May 2016

As mother nature decided not to limit its downpouring to April this year here in the U.S. Northeast, I sneaked one more “rain” song into the mix this month, and it is nothing less than my favorite Beatles song of all. To counterbalance I’ve got a “summer” song in here too, perhaps jumping the gun a bit. The Tammi Terrell I just recently learned about, and in so doing discovered that this terrific Stevie Wonder tune, which appeared on 1980’s Hotter Than July (titled simply “All I Do” at that point), was actually written and recorded in the mid-’60s; the arrangement is both shockingly different and equally effective. Other mainstream performers float in and out of this mix in unusual guises, from Carly Simon’s poignant rumination on adolescence to Joni Mitchell’s Mingus experiment to the Police’s brief, offbeat return to light-hearted, rhythmically engaging pop even as they were otherwise veering towards the maudlin, not to mention their own demise. And most importantly of all there’s Prince, and because all of the tributes we’ve all watched have mostly involved the big hits, I felt good about offering up something lesser-known, from one of his somewhat-overlooked later albums, Planet Earth. This song (how was this not even a single?) has an effortless, timeless vibrancy to it, as did all of his best work, in retrospect.

“The Queen of Eyes” – The Soft Boys (Underwater Moonlight, 1980)
“The One U Wanna C” – Prince (Planet Earth, 2008)
“Summertime” – The Sundays (Static & Silence, 1997)
“All I Do Is Think About You” – Tammi Terrell (single, 1966)
“I Don’t Want To Be Here” – Andy Partridge (Fuzzy Warbles, Vol. 2, 2002)
“Not Harmless” – Laura Gibson (Empire Builder, 2016)
“The Man in the Moon” – Adrian Belew (Lone Rhino, 1982)
“The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines” – Joni Mitchell (Mingus, 1979)
“Sunflower” – Paul Weller (Wild Wood, 1993)
“That’s When the Tears Start” – The Blossoms (single, 1965)
“Boys in the Trees” – Carly Simon (Boys in the Trees, 1978)
“Sandie” – Devin Davis (Lonely People of the World, Unite!, 2005)
“Martian Saints” – Mary Lou Lord (Martian Saints! EP, 1997)
“Miss Gradenko” – The Police (Synchronicity, 1983)
“Prelude #3” – David Sancious & Tone (True Stories, 1978)
“Ophelia” – Marika Hackman (We Slept At Last, 2015)
“Rain” – The Beatles (B-side, 1966)
“Belleville Rendez-Vous” – Ben Charest, w/ Beatrice Bonafassi (Triplets of Belleville soundtrack, 2003)
“Too Much Time” – Captain Beefheart (Clear Spot, 1972)
“All or Nothing” – Eddi Reader (Mirmama, 1991)

Free and legal MP3: Acapulco Lips (half-goofy half-serious surf-punk-pop)

With its lead vocals buried almost cartoonishly in reverb, “Awkward Waltz” displays a joyful zing greater than the sum of its garage-rock-y parts.

“Awkward Waltz” – Acapulco Lips

With its lead vocals buried almost cartoonishly in reverb, “Awkward Waltz” displays a joyful zing greater than the sum of its garage-rock-y parts. This may have a lot to do with the old-school organ that floats through the mix, and it may have to do with the inherent appeal of a minor-key melody presented in a foot-tapping context. Or, maybe it has to do most of all with the irrepressible “oh-oh-oh” vocal descent we hear throughout the song from Austin-born singer Maria-Elena Juarez, each time delivering a frisson of catharsis, surf-punk style.

In any case, this is half-goofy half-serious fun, a song with a seeming simplicity belied by its unabashed devotion to an aural landscape that sounds more and more timeless as each new half-generation rediscovers it. Listen to drummer Davy Berruyer (who is from France, for goodness’ sake) and remind me again why electronic percussion exists. I know there’s a good reason but it’s slipped my mind in the presence of such precise and evocative pummeling. Listen to Christopher Garland and recall for a brief shining moment why we all used to love electric guitars so much—fingers on steel, sounds squealing and bending in direct relationship to sheer physical force. Juarez, meanwhile, mirroring the lead guitar with her bass, both grounds the song and frees it to splay towards its roiling conclusion. (Note that the crucial, aforementioned keyboards are supplied here by Yann Cracker, drummer Davy’s French pal.)

Acapulco Lips (coined to play coyly off the word “apocalypse”) is a trio based in Seattle. “Awkward Waltz” is the lead track off its self-titled debut album, which was released in mid-April on the brand new (?!) record label Killroom Records. You can listen to the album and purchase it via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Christopher Bell (cello-led, Waits-ian chamber pop)

A little bit Tom Waits, a little bit Elvis Perkins, “Darlin’, I Am Fine” is a quirky slow-burner–chamber pop at once dexterous and skewed.

“Darlin’, I Am Fine” – Christopher Bell

A little bit Tom Waits, a little bit Elvis Perkins, “Darlin’, I Am Fine” is a quirky slow-burner—chamber pop at once dexterous and skewed. An unusual assortment of instruments (brass, winds, strings) trade off in the background with odd little licks and frills, adding to the song’s forceful if carnivalesque vibe, however slowly it insists on moving. Anchoring the ensemble is Bell’s cello, alternating long, melancholic bowings with tetchier scratchings, all in service of lyrics that manage quickly to assert via subtext the exact opposite of the title’s pronouncement.

Two-thirds of the way through, at 2:36, the idiosyncratic arrangement coalesces into an oddball instrumental interlude. Tom Waits famously gave his musicians an instruction during the recording of Rain Dogs to “play it like a midget’s bar mitzvah” (that’s a direct quote; I don’t mean anything insulting by the term and I don’t think Waits did either). Our instrumental passage here may not conjure the aforementioned bar mitzvah but we might be at the after-party.

Christopher Bell is a cellist, multi-instrumentalist, and engineer based in Jamestown, New York. “Darlin’, I Am Fine” is a track from the album Rust, which the prolific Bell released in September 2015. If I’m counting right Rust is Bell’s sixth full-length album, dating back to 2012; before that there were five EPs, the first coming out in 2009. In March 2015, Bell also released two albums collecting all of his work up to 2013; you can see everything on his Bandcamp page, and listen to and/or purchase all of it.

Free and legal MP3: The Jayhawks (classy classic Americana)

The gracefully descending minor-key melody, this thing hits the ground like archetypal Jayhawks, which is more or less equivalent to archetypal Americana.

“Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces” – The Jayhawks

Have you heard this before? Of course you’ve heard this before—even if not this exact song. This is not a new sound. But my god, how sweet and solid this is, and how indicative that we lose something consequential when we demand only that everything be so friggin’ new all the time. I mean, come on: it makes no more sense to demand that everything only be new than to demand that everything only be old. Surely we desire and deserve a blend, much as we desire and deserve artists presenting visions and stories from all points on the adult human life spectrum, not just from those under the age of 25. The insidious pressure to require music to sound somehow continually “new” can always be sensed when writers approach a veteran band like The Jayhawks: if a new album is favorably viewed, there are always statements lauding the idea that the band “didn’t just revisit the past”; if unfavorably viewed, it’s either because they’re “stuck in the past” or tried too hard to reinvent themselves. You can’t win for losing when the New police are on patrol. So many witches to burn.

Anyway: that opening acoustic strum, the gracefully descending minor-key melody—this thing hits the ground like archetypal Jayhawks, which is more or less equivalent to archetypal Americana, complete with (say it with me) jangly guitars. As with a lot of Americana when it’s really good, there’s a lingering strain of ’70s country-rock in the air (think Poco, or Pure Prairie League), contributing to the music’s uncanny ability to feel mournful and jubilant at the same time. If Gary Louris’s silvery tenor shows some fetching wear around the edges, it serves merely to accentuate the beautifully crafted melodies he, yet again, sings for us.

The Jayhawks, from Minneapolis, have been playing in one incarnation or another since 1985, with one mid-’00s hiatus. The band still features two original members—Louris and bassist Marc Perlman—while the other two are veterans in their own right: keyboard player Karen Grotberg first played with the band from 1992 to 2000, then rejoined in 2009, while drummer Tim O’Reagan has been on board since 1995. “Quiet Corners & Empty Spaces” is the lead track on the new album, Paging Mr. Proust, which was produced by Peter Buck, Tucker Martine, and Louris. It was released at the very end of April and can be purchased directly from the band, if you are so inclined, via their website. MP3 via the good folks at KEXP.

A pair of dancing legs

Eclectic Playlist Series 3.04 – April 2016

I don’t usually end up being that seasonally sensitive with these playlists but for whatever reason the idea of “April showers” stuck with me at least a little bit and you’ll see the end result in the song selection.

Beyond that I have no particular explanation for anything here. This month emerged as an intuitive flow; I claim no particular credit. I do know that Jane Siberry’s “One More Colour” is one of the best songs ever. And that I love the timeless feel of the gentle piano instrumental “Lorenz and Watson,” which nearly sounds as if it came from the year 1900 rather than 2000. And that Emma Pollock, has delivered yet another solid and overlooked album with “In Search of Harperfield,” which came out at the end of February. And segue fans? Check out Elliott Smith into Samaris; still don’t know how that exactly works. And Genesis again? Sure thing!; Phil Collins is cool again, didn’t you hear? And why not close out with another instrumental, gentle but jazzy this time? It’s where the flow took me. Oh and thanks to George from Between Two Islands for the Samaris track, the title of which I dare you to pronounce. I have no idea what they’re singing about and yet at the same time I feel I know exactly. In other words, music.

“Oh Mandy” – The Spinto Band (Nice and Nicely Done, 2005)
“One More Colour” – Jane Siberry (The Speckless Sky, 1985)
“Criminal” – Eliza Hardy Jones (Because Become, 2016)
“Painted Dayglow Smile” – Chad and Jeremy (The Ark, 1968)
“Emotional Traffic” – The Rumour (Frogs, Sprouts, Klogs & Krauts, 1979)
“Bled White” – Elliott Smith (XO, 1998)
“Hljóma Þú” – Samaris (Samaris, 2013)
“Walking in the Rain” – the Ronettes (single, 1964)
“Eyes of the World” – Fleetwood Mac (Mirage, 1982)
“Lorenz and Watson” – Ryuichi Sakamoto (BTTB, 2000)
“Expecting Your Love” – The Roches (A Dove, 1992)
“Kaya” – Bob Marley (Kaya, 1978)
“Wire Wire” – Jen Olive (Warm Robot, 2010)
“Behind the Lines” – Genesis (Duke, 1980)
“Just Walkin’ in the Rain” – The Prisonaires (b-side, 1953)
“Cannot Keep a Secret” – Emma Pollock (In Search of Harperfield, 2016)
“Paint Her Face” – The Records (B-side, 1979)
“Joey” – Concrete Blonde (Bloodletting, 1992)
“Nashville Shores” – Jemina Pearl (Break It Up, 2009)
“Favela” – Antonio Carlos Jobim (The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, 1963)

Free and legal MP3: PJ Harvey (semi-stripped-down, agitative)

Wherein PJ Harvey continues in a sonic landscape related to the chugging, semi-stripped-down vibe of 2011’s Let England Shake.

“The Wheel” – PJ Harvey

The first song released from The Hope Six Demolition Project, “The Wheel” has fomented controversy but I am mostly going to steer clear of it, except to note that PJ Harvey has a long and unstinting career as a musical artist and deserves respect and benefit of the doubt. And: that I think it’s foolish and close-minded to find fault with her for taking artistic risks. When writing about real places with real issues, there is always the potential for uncomfortable overlap and/or interplay between someone’s artistic vision and the real lives real people are leading. But I don’t think criticizing an obviously intelligent and talented artist based on a kneejerk and probably limited understanding of song lyrics is either helpful or interesting. And with that let’s proceed to the song.

Continuing in a sonic landscape related to the agitative, semi-stripped-down vibe of 2011’s Let England Shake, “The Wheel” is propelled by an insistent, chant-like melody. At first, each lyrical line is delivered as a stand-alone pronouncement—call and response with the response, basically. The chorus gives us a slight variation on the verse melody and now with the response filled in. Keep your ears on the edges of the carefully constructed mix, where some feisty guitar work can intermittently be heard. And check out the hand claps—I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for songs that use hand claps with which you can’t really clap along. I’m easily amused, what can I say?

And can I also note that I’m delighted to have an available free and legal download at this point in time from an artist of Harvey’s gravitas and caliber? Don’t get me wrong, I love finding lesser-known acts to feature but can’t help noticing the shrinking supply in recent years of free and legal MP3s from the not-lesser-known camp. We are indeed at the tail end of the (almost) late, (almost) great Download Era, but this is the first time I’ve been able to feature Polly Jean Harvey. I’m not sure that means anything but enjoy the offering.

The Hope Six Demolition Project will be out in mid-April on Vagrant Records. Thanks much to the good folks at KEXP for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Patrick Boutwell (crunchy, complex power pop)

Rhythmic imbalance is central to the crunchy charm of “Scotch the Snake”; the melody wants to soar but is repeatedly hemmed in by the offbeat beat.

“Scotch The Snake” – Patrick Boutwell

We get un-clap-along-able hand claps in song one, and extended bits of 7/4 time in song two. 6/4 too. It’s my lucky week.

Of course there’s more to the crunchy, incisive “Scotch the Snake” than an asymmetrical time signature, but the rhythmic imbalance remains central, and keeps straight-ahead catchiness at bay—the melody wants to soar but is repeatedly hemmed in by the offbeat beat. And it’s kind of a good thing: we get the big guitar riffs and plaintive tenor lead of classic power pop without, quite, that genre’s simplicity (or over-simplicity). Another wrinkle here: what appears to be the verse delivers the big melodic hook, as soon as the singing starts; and what appears to be the chorus feels more bridge-like, connecting the payoff delivered each time by the verses. It’s an extra way that “Scotch the Snake” keeps the ear pleasantly off-balance.

As it turns out this is the second song heard here in recent months that offers up the aural vocabulary of power pop while undermining the genre’s tendency to be ear-candily catchy (see, previously, Cotton Mather). I’m not saying this is a national trend (if only) but I like it in any case.

Boutwell is front man for the Rhode Island-based band The Brother Kite, which one or two Fingertips veteran followers might (possibly?) remember from the early early days—they were not only featured here in 2004 but the following year the band’s song appeared on the one and only Fingertips compilation CD (Fingertips: Unwebbed, of which I still have a batch in my closet). (Anyone want one?)

“Scotch the Snake” is a track from Boutwell’s album Hi, Heaviness, which was released at the beginning of March. The phrase is Shakespearean, from Macbeth, where it refers to temporarily debilitating but not actually destroying something dangerous. You can hear the whole thing on Bandcamp, and choose to pay for it whatever you’d like. Thanks to the valiant Powerpopulist blog for the head’s up on this one. And thanks to Patrick himself for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: The Casket Girls (bright, buzzy, unsettling)

Bright and buzzy cosmetics and solid pop instincts on top, something unsettling underneath.

“Western World” – The Casket Girls

Bright and buzzy cosmetics and solid pop instincts on top, something unsettling underneath. But what else to expect from a band called the Casket Girls, named for a group of poor but probably chaste young women sent by France to 18th-century New Orleans as prospective wives to the colonists there—and whom, over time, have been deemed by local legend to be vampires? Never mind that the band is from Savannah, and that the original casket girls got their name because they arrived with small suitcases that were called “casquettes.” Vampires make a better story for NOLA locals giving ghost tours, and Casket Girls has a disquieting ring for an indie rock band with two female lead singers.

In any case, “Western World” burbles with intent and strata, each sonic element—glitchy percussion, rubbery bass synth, blasé mirroring lead vocals, a smorgasbord of keyboards—adding fluently to the song’s overall sense of things at once coming together and falling apart. While many of the words flow past the ear in a portentous brew just beyond comprehension, one key, repeated lyric hits an insightful target: “But you know disease is like progress/You can’t escape the way it all shakes out.” The implications of this one simile give “Western World” extra oomph, while the carnival of accumulated sound gives you an excuse not to think too much about what they might actually be saying.

The Casket Girls is a band more or less spontaneously generated by the prolific and mysterious Ryan Graveface, best known as guitarist of Black Moth Super Rainbow but also in three other bands now, including Casket Girls. Graveface randomly came upon sisters Elsa and Phaedra Greene one day, singing odd songs in one of Savannah’s picturesque city squares, and pretty much decided on the spot that they would form a band, if only to help him continue to work through his obsession with the Shangri-Las, a girl group from the ’60s (“Leader of the Pack,” “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” et al.).

“Western World” is a song from a split EP the Casket Girls released (on Graveface Records; yes that’s him too) with the band Stardeath and White Dwarfs for Record Store Day back in November 2015. The band’s third full-length album is due out some time this year.

I trust I can rely on your vote

Eclectic Playlist Series 3.03 – March 2016

This didn’t start out being about what it seems to have ended up being about. As if the choice were mine. If we hold on, maybe we don’t lose to the dark, maybe we come back from the edge of madness, maybe we don’t keep making all the same mistakes. In any case it’s worth a prayer or two at the end to the patron saint of television. She’s the one who brought us to this crazy party in the first place. Are you with me now?

“The Shape of Things to Come” – The Headboys (The Headboys, 1979)
“C’est La Mode” – Annie Philippe (C’est La Mode, 1967)
“Electioneering” – Radiohead (OK Computer, 1998)
“All the Same Mistakes” – Mieka Pauley (Elijah Drop Your Gun, 2007)
“Hold On” – Steve Winwood (Steve Winwood, 1977)
“Losing to the Dark” – La Sera (Hour of the Dawn, 2014)
“Temptation Was Too Strong” – Don Covay & the Goodtimers (B-side, 1966)
“The New Stone Age” – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Architecture & Morality, 1980)
“Sick Muse” – Metric (Fantasies, 2009)
“Madness” – Lucius (Good Grief, 2016)
“Silver Machine” – Hawkwind (In Search of Space, 1972)
“The Wood Song” – Indigo Girls (Swamp Ophelia, 1994)
“Come Back” – The Might Wah! (A Word to the Wise Guy, 1984)
“What Doesn’t Belong to Me” – Sinead O’Connor (Faith and Courage, 2000)
“As If The Choice Were Mine” – Plates of Cake (single, 2011)
“Can You Win” – Charlene & the Soul Serenaders (single, 1970)
“The Bright Light” – Tanya Donelly (Lovesongs for Underdogs, 1997)
“The Party” – Henry Mancini & His Orchestra (The Party soundtrack, 1968)
“Are You With Me Now?” Cate Le Bon (Mug Museum, 2013)
“St. Clare” – Suzanne Vega (Songs in Red and Gray, 2001)