Fingertips

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)

Free and legal MP3: The Spectacular Fantastic

Folk rock meets power pop, and then some

“Wasting All My Time” – The Spectacular Fantastic

Like a mutant folk-rock/power-pop amalgam from 1974’s re-imagined version of 1991, “Wasting All My Time” takes off seemingly in mid-riff, all forward motion and melodic processed guitar. And is it just me or is it both weird and comforting how the song on the one hand rocks reasonably hard but on the other hand seems only casually to display a rhythm section? I mean, there’s drumming, for sure, and there’s a bass (if you listen carefully!; I think), but they seem elusive for such an upbeat song—the percussion presents as almost an aural illusion, perhaps willed into existence by the guitars and the fact that of course a rock’n’roll song needs percussion (it’s got a backbeat; you can’t lose it). Intentional or not I’m finding the effect oddly ingratiating. Not that drumming is overrated by any means. But maybe a little.

And talk about an oddly ingratiating effect: listen as well (actually the two phenomena are connected) to how the duo of Mike Detmer and Jonathan Williams, doing musical business as The Spectacular Fantastic, manage somehow to turn the rhythm guitar into its own kind of lead guitar. All those crunchy-ringy accompanying chords you hear after the actual lead guitar moves out of the way seem not only to anchor the song percussively (thus allowing the drums to take a bit of a backseat; see above) but to my ears, give the song uplifting direction more forwardly than typical rhythm guitar work. Perhaps Detmer’s mixed-down vocal style contributes to the circumstance but it’s a fun ride and I have now over-analyzed it far more thoroughly than necessary. The song is a scruffy, well-crafted delight.

And hey are there any long-time Fingertips followers long-time enough to remember The Spectacular Fantastic from way back in the day? Two of the Cincinnati-based band’s songs were featured here in 2005, in June and in October. The band was a bit more of a band back then but not necessarily that much; it’s always been Detmer’s baby and I’m pretty sure Williams has been around for most if not all of it as well. Since 2002, The Spectacular Fantastic has recorded seven full-length albums and four EPs. The new one, Circling the Sun, released February 29th, is the first TSF recording since 2009. You can buy the CD via 75orless Records; the band is also distributing the digital files for free—you can listen and/or download the album here.

Free and legal MP3: Red Morris (pyrotechnic old-school instrumental)

The classic-rock familiarity of his sleek and fiery guitar tone is “Lady Rose”‘s fearless center and ongoing inspiration.

“Lady Rose” – Red Morris

Dramatic, and dramatically old-school, “Lady Rose” is an electric-guitar-driven instrumental, with castanets. I love castanets. I also love little time-signature tricks such as what you’ll hear in the opening melody, the alternating 6/4 and 4/4 measures that give the guitar line an asymmetrical bit of juice. And if that particular trick soon disappears, as Maurizio Parisi pretty soon dives too far into his pyrotechnics to worry about changing time signatures, oh well. The castanets stick around, so you should too.

Parisi, using the performing name of Red Morris, is a guitarist from Brescia, in northern Italy. He claims the likes of Santana, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Cream as inspirations. What I think I’m enjoying most of all is the sonic space in which he enfolds us, a steadfast march that develops as a kind of theme and variations: first we hear the grounding melody, then Parisi goes increasingly to town with his fingers and hands. The classic-rock familiarity of his sleek and fiery guitar tone is “Lady Rose”‘s fearless center and ongoing inspiration. Electric guitars may be going the way of the dodo bird in popular music but that’s just about trends and fads, not truth; there’s no reason to be finished with the electric guitar any more than we should ever be finished with the piano or the violin.

“Lady Rose” is the title track of Red Morris’s debut album, released back in September. MP3 via Insomnia Radio.

Free and legal MP3: YAST (awesome mix of noise and melody)

“I Don’t Think She Knows” – YAST

Equal parts noise and melody, “I Don’t Think She Knows” is an awesome slice of 21st-century rock’n’roll, from a land (Sweden) that hasn’t given up on the genre quite as much as we have here, alas. But with this kind of thing still crossing the border, I can yet find my happy place—until, at least, a future president sees fit to seal everything and everyone out and all of us left here just end up shouting each other to death. Did I say shouting? I meant shooting. Or, better, shouting and shooting: that’s the American way.

But I digress. And present “I Don’t Think She Knows” as the kind of song that can (maybe) take your mind off the parade of unmitigated lunacy currently passing as normal here in the ever-amazing (not necessarily meant in a good way) United States. Launched off a yearning, fuzzed-out two-note guitar riff, scuffed up by noise and reverb, “I Don’t Think She Knows” succeeds with a lovely, minor-key verse melody, a wordless chorus, stellar guitar work, and a healthy dose of impenetrable commotion. That juxtaposition of identifiable guitar lines and blurry hubbub is, to my ears, one of the things that gives the song its sharp appeal. And don’t lose sight of the nimble bass line either; even when all hell breaks loose (e.g., 3:06), the bass keeps us grounded structurally and sonically. We know we’re in a pop song, which every now and then is still a good place to be. Especially when the shouting and shooting starts.

YAST was formed by three musicians from the Swedish city of Sandviken in 2007, and became a quintet after moving to Malmö for its more music-oriented culture (although the two new members were also, as luck would have it, from Sandviken). The band released its first single in 2012, its first album in 2013, and a second album in September 2015, called My Dreams Did Finally Come True, which is where you’ll find this song. If you want a higher-quality .wav file, visit Adrian Recordings on SoundCloud.

With the moon round his waist

Eclectic Playlist Series 3.02 – February 2016

If there is another playlist somewhere with Pere Ubu, Madonna, Shostakovich, Bettye Lavette, and Foreigner on it I’d like to see it.

So, okay: the Shostakovich. I have yet to venture into the Classical Music realm here, but of all the short Classical pieces I know, there are few that rock as hard as this crazy little piece from 1925. Do your best to give it at least 60 seconds, so you can see what happens when the strings really start driving it. If you don’t like the thing soon after that, well, that’s what the “skip” button is for. But hey, it’s the Eclectic Playlist Series, is it not?: ideally no music should be preemptively disqualified here merely for the matter of genre.

And, yes, Madonna. I always liked “Borderline,” a song that got quickly overshadowed by her impending Madonna-ness. I wish she hadn’t quite so quickly ditched the subtle musicality and low-key hookiness on display here. Yes it’s got an ’80s pop sheen but also some really nice melodic and harmonic moments. And this was so early in her career that I remember they played it on alternative rock stations. Those were the days.

“Frederick” – Patti Smith Group (Wave, 1979)
“Pony” – Charlie Hilton (Palana, 2016)
“The Trains” – The Nashville Ramblers (single, 1986)
“Run” – Kathleen Edwards (Asking for Flowers, 2008)
“Riding on the Back” – Francis Dunnery (Let’s Go Do What Happens, 1998)
“The Dark End of the Street” – James Carr (You Got My Mind Messed Up, 1967)
“Blue Morning, Blue Day” – Foreigner (Double Vision, 1978)
“Venus” – Anaïs Mitchell (Young Man in America, 2012)
“Oh L’Amour” – Erasure (Wonderland, 1986)
“Let Me Down Easy” – Bettye LaVette (single, 1965)
“Fix Me Now” – Garbage (Garbage, 1995)
“Sacred Heart” – Cass McCombs (PREfection, 2005)
“Bus Called Happiness” – Pere Ubu (Cloudland, 1989)
“Last Night” – The Mar-Keys (single, 1961)
“Keeps My Body Warm” – Abra Moore (Strangest Places, 1997)
Scherzo in G Minor – Dmitri Shostakovich (Two Pieces for String Octet – Opus 11, 1925)
“Unconscious Melody” – Viet Cong (Cassette, 2014)
“Borderline” – Madonna (Madonna, 1983)
“Darlin'” – Beach Boys (Wild Honey, 1967)
“John Saw That Number” – Neko Case (Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, 2006)

Free and legal MP3: Chris Storrow (updating a bygone sound, with horns)

“Raised the Bar” is as we speak blaring out of Top-40 radios everywhere in some alternative world in which politicians compromise and people still use taxi cabs.

“Raised the Bar” – Chris Storrow

With its anthemic horn charts, melodic bass line, and a retro-y, bittersweet bashiness, “Raised the Bar” is as we speak blaring out of Top-40 radios everywhere in some alternative world in which politicians compromise and people still use taxi cabs.

Let’s start with a hat tip to the introduction, which not only gives us those groovy horns right out of the gate but seems to accomplish a whole lot in a short time. After just 10 seconds not only does the song take off but it feels we are already smack in the middle of things, thanks to the ear-catching sixth interval on which the verse melody quickly hinges (it’s there in the second and third notes we hear). That’s one good way to write a song, for those who need more than rhythm to get the spirit fluttering. Another good way is to employ most of the notes of the scale in your melody, which “Raised the Bar” does in the chorus, skipping just one note out of eight (counting the home note in both its lower and upper registers). (End of music theory lecture.)

The bygone feeling in the air here is, according to press material, no accident—Storrow set out on this new album to write straightforward songs in the tradition of the hits one might have heard on AM radio in the 1960s. Based in Montreal, Storrow worked on these new songs with a number of notable Canadians, including musicians from the Fingertips-featured bands Stars, the New Pornographers, the Dears, and Young Galaxy, in addition to the multi-faceted singer/songwriter Patrick Watson (himself featured here back in 2006).

“Raised the Bar” is the second track on Storrow’s new album, The Ocean’s Door, released earlier this month. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp.