Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird (evocative rocker w/ juxtaposed tempos)

Evocative rocker that manages to feel old-school and brand-new at the same time.

“Soothsayer” – Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird

Evocative rocker that manages to feel old-school and brand-new at the same time. While you are probably first going to notice the emotive and elastic vocals of front man Lachlan Rose, the song itself, upon examination, is a more than worthy vehicle for his talents.

To me, “Soothsayer”‘s charms are rooted in the way that, tempo-wise, it moves at a good clip on the one hand while not seeming to be in any hurry on the other. Interesting juxtapositions like this are often fun and rewarding in a pop song; this one in particular is accomplished, I think, by three different means. The first is the double-time accompaniment: while the song appears to be written in a moderately-paced 4/4 time, the rhythm guitars and some of the percussion are moving at twice that pace. Another element that reinforces the faster/slower sensation is how spread out and unrepetitive the verses are; the lyrics are given musical space, while the music comprises three separate sections, each picking up pace from the previous one. The overall effect is a 45-second, 16-measure melody that draws you in to a compelling but ambiguous story.

The third and perhaps most obvious thing creating this fast/slow tension down is the chorus, which feels like it slows the song down although doesn’t—all that happens is we lose the double-time backing: front man Lachlan Rose now sings with minimal assistance, but the song’s pace never actually changes. Most choruses in pop songs aim to burst forth with volume and energy, the better to come across as “catchy.” “Soothsayer” instead gives us a chorus that all but brings the song to a halt. “Catchy” seems suddenly besides the point when “arresting” is happening. (Such thinking might also underscore the recalcitrant fact that what might be the song’s most fetching moment, when the lyrics speed up with the phrase “thinking about yourself,” at 1:02, is never repeated.)

Cousin Tony’s Brand New Firebird is a trio from Melbourne. “Soothsayer,” their first single, has been out for a number of months, but their debut EP, Queen of Hearts, on which you’ll find this song, was released just last month in Australia. You can listen via SoundCloud. Thanks to Triple J Unearthed and the band for the MP3.

As you reach a certain age

Eclectic Playlist Series 2.08 – November 2015

Even within as curious and compelling a genre as Northern Soul (an odd, ex-post-facto, non-genre genre, truth be told; but a great one), “You Don’t Mean It” is a curiosity. Its origins are couched in contradictions if not outright mysteries, beginning with the simple fact that the singer, initially identified as Towanda Barnes, would later call herself Gloria, and pretty much disappear in any case. The recording itself, meanwhile, exudes such jittery energy as to sound warped and partially mistaken. The fact that it can lead us seamlessly into the acoustic stompiness of Carlene Carter’s Rockpile-fueled heyday tells us something about the profundity of what those Motown folks were up to for a blessed number of years (Northern Soul was founded upon nothing as much as an unmitigated worship of Motown castoffs). As for the seamless segue from Traffic’s self-titled semi-psychedelic 1968 album into a bravura reemergence in 2015 by the stately but beat-driven post-punk pioneers New Order, what that illustrates, clearly, is the aesthetic and emotional necessity of eclectic listening. (By the way, do yourself a monster favor and listen to the New Order song even if you don’t listen to the whole playlist. So good.) And yes: “October in the sky” I missed by a few days, but the closing song this month epitomizes the bittersweet joys of autumn with exquisite lyricism and melodicism, and on my Northern, soulful calendar it’s still autumn for a while yet, so drink it in and thanks for stopping by.

“Tayter County” – The Cavedogs (Joy Rides for Shut-Ins, 1990)
“Please Take Me Home” – The Bird and the Bee (Recreational Love, 2015)
“The Crook of My Good Arm” – Pale Young Gentlemen (Black Forest (Tra La La), 2008)
“The Story of a Rock and Roll Band” – Randy Newman (Born Again, 1979)
“When the Night Comes” – Jeff Lynne’s ELO (Alone in the Universe, 2015)
“You Don’t Mean It” – Towanda Barnes (single, 1967)
“Love is a 4-Letter Verb” – Carlene Carter (Blue Nun, 1980)
“Bothered” – Over the Rhine (Ohio, 2003)
“Don’t Change Your Plans” – Ben Folds Five (The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, 1999)
“Forty Thousand Headmen” – Traffic (Traffic, 1968)
“Nothing But a Fool” – New Order (Music Complete, 2015)
“Watch Your Step” – Anita Baker (Rapture, 1986)
“Survivor” – Cindy Bullens (Desire Wire, 1978)
“Somewhere in Between” – Kate Bush (Aerial, 2005)
“Bankrobber” – The Clash (single, 1980)
“Bud” – Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass (Herb Alpert’s Ninth, 1967)
“Trouble” – Shawn Colvin (A Few Small Repairs, 1996)
“You Get What You Deserve” – Big Star (Radio City, 1974)
“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” – Arcade Fire (The Suburbs, 2010)
“The Birds Are Leaving” – Boo Hewerdine (Thanksgiving, 1999)

Free and legal MP3: The Whales

Short, enticing, well-crafted

“Marguerite” – The Whales

Short and enticing, “Marguerite” chugs along in a semi-garage-y world of droning sound with the enticing addition of some time signature complication: the song’s 4/4 momentum is given knowing little tugs by some well-placed 6/4 measures. A little of this goes a long way to my ears, as it indicates first and foremost that someone is paying attention, that there is some vivid musical creativity at work. No offense to groove-oriented music (maybe) but personally I am less convinced of musical artistry via what are essentially decorations (i.e., interesting sounds layered on top of a beat); I am more impressed with a creative intelligence that can work at the structural level. I mean, there’s choosing a paint color or two and there’s architecture, right? Not everyone operates at the same depth and that’s completely fine. I’m just saying…well, what am I saying? I seem to have digressed.

Oh and then there’s the subject matter, which is offbeat and refreshing, as “Marguerite” turns out to be about the French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, the first woman elected to the Académie française. (In the U.S. Yourcenar is probably best known for the 1951 novel Mémoires d’Hadrien.) As I sit with this song over repeated listens, I’m getting more and more of a Kinks vibe, but in the very best way—not a slavish homage but an intriguing contemporizing of the band’s mid-’60s drive, some elusive amalgam of horsepower and brainpower that gives, in my mind, the best rock’n’roll from any era its appeal and staying power.

The Whales are a six-piece band from the UK formed in 2013, about which not a lot of information is readily discoverable (blame in part the generic name). “Marguerite” is available via an admirable project: the British label Fat Cat Records has an ongoing SoundCloud page where it makes available as free downloads the best demos it receives, acknowledging that they simply don’t have the resources to sign every band that sends in a good song. You can visit the Fat Cat demo page here. Thanks to the Powerpopulist blog for the head’s up on the song.

Free and legal MP3: Thin Lear (conflicted nostalgia, tender urgency)

There is sweetness here, and pining, and a sense that it won’t end well because, well, nothing does in the long run.

“Second Nature” – Thin Lear

And speaking of the Kinks (of whom we really can’t speak enough), here we are treated to two fleeting lyrical references to the great British band, reinforcing a lovely song with a (now that I think about it) distinctly Daviesian brand of conflicted nostalgia. Even without being able to make too much of the lyrics here (and I can’t), there is sweetness, and pining, and a sense that it won’t end well because, well, nothing does in the long run.

Effortlessly melodic, “Second Nature” is propelled by a rhythmic, gently plucked electric guitars emphasizing the “on” beats (one and three) versus rock’n’roll’s classic backbeat (two and four) orientation (cf.: “It’s got a backbeat, you can’t lose it”). One clear lyrical feature here is the purposeful repetition of words and/or sounds in successive lines (e.g., “Sick to death/Sick in bed/Sic the dogs on us instead”), which may or may not be intended as a subtle augmentation of the title phrase but in any case adds to the song’s tender urgency. And I suggest you pay attention to the saxophone when it shows up (1:47, briefly; then, closing the song out from 2:31)—not just because you don’t hear a lot of saxophone in 2015 rock’n’roll but because there seems something inexplicably moving about hearing this instrument presented in such a straightforward way, something about the pure sound of it that captures the subtle heartache of the entire track. And throughout of course there’s the obvious contribution of Longo’s gentle, agile tenor, which lends memorable complexion to every upward sweep of melody.

Matt Longo is a gifted singer/songwriter, based in Queens, NY, whose work has been featured here twice previously, in 2011 and in 2013. He is performing with the name Thin Lear this time around, partially inspired by an absurd image from a dream he had one night. A six-song EP is due out later this fall; you’ll be able to buy it via Bandcamp, and can listen there in the meantime to his past recordings.

Free and legal MP3: Gramma’s Boyfriend (loose-limbed Daniel Johnston cover)

“I Live In My Broken Dreams” – Gramma’s Boyfriend

All music (and in fact all art of any kind) exists as an ongoing dynamic between existing form and free expression. The tighter a song adheres to a form, the more (in theory) a listener’s capacity to connect personally with it will depend upon the individual expressiveness of the performance. This is why (in theory, and honestly I’m just making this up as I go along) it’s so counterintuitively difficult to play the blues (or, at least, to play it effectively): the music is structurally rigid enough to require all sorts of expressiveness to have an impact, and yet adding expressiveness to something so inherently structured is a challenge indeed.

And here is “I Live My Broken Dreams”—a Daniel Johnston song that is not exactly blues (though not too far from it), but certainly a composition offering a lot of familiarity in terms of melody and chords; you’ve heard this basic form before. And here is Haley Bonar (rhymes with “honor”), the singer/songwriter (featured here back in 2008 and 2011 on her own) now fronting the peppy, intermittently frantic Minneapolis band Gramma’s Boyfriend. Not the same sound as when last we left her. But the character of voice required to command attention behind a mere guitar serves her well in this new, noisier context. More to the original point, Bonar’s expressive qualities (from tone to phrasing to just general cool-sounding-ness) shoot through the song’s somewhat homely form and help transmute it from a fractured, fragile oddity into a chewy but loose-limbed rave-up. Her four band mates deftly assist, laying down a groove at once dirty and bouncy, a semi-chaotic mix of synth squiggles and reverbed noise. With a very sudden ending.

“I Live My Broken a Dreams” is from the album PERM, released this week on Graveface Records. The band previously released an eight-song album called The Human Eye in 2013.

photo credit: Graham Tolbert Photography

Free and legal MP3:Fort Lean (strong & nuanced rock’n’roll)

A well-crafted, astutely-produced song that feels almost like an anachronism here in our compressed, blinky-boopy mid-’10s musical landscape.

“Cut to the Chase” – Fort Lean

Transcending the sing-song-y swing of its 12/8 rhythm, “Cut to the Chase” pays dividends with a chorus of unexpected heft and resolve. Although I’m not sure how, the chorus’s arresting, bottom-heavy power doubles back and sheds new light on a verse I might otherwise have heard as lightweight and vaguely generic; in its second iteration the verse, to my ears, now seems altered, deepened, without changing in any significant way. It’s almost like the aural equivalent of an optical illusion, effected by a band with an uncommon capacity for both strength and nuance.

The subtleties are what add up for me here. For one, there’s this appealing percussive sound that launches the song and weaves itself through the mix; I have no idea what it is but it has the sound of an electronic beat that someone is somehow playing acoustically. It’s very engaging. Then there’s the ever-so-slight instrumental addition in the verse the second time through, another elusive sound, this one landing on the ear halfway between a guitar and a keyboard. This addition is less obviously engaging but surely adds to the song’s developing allure. The best nuanced change of all, to my ears, is the bass line that gets added to the song’s opening guitar riff when it recurs at the end—a mysteriously fabulous supplement all the more fabulous because it was so theoretically unnecessary. The end result is a well-crafted, astutely-produced song that spreads out and breathes and feels almost like an anachronism here in our compressed, blinky-boopy mid-’10s musical landscape.

Fort Lean is a five-piece band from Brooklyn. “Cut to the Chase” has been floating around the internet for the better part of a year; the group’s debut LP, Quiet Day, was originally slated for a spring 2015 release, but just ended up coming out here in October, on the Brooklyn-based label Ooh La La Records. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

I’d rather see this on TV

Eclectic Playlist Series 2.07 – September 2015

This month’s playlist prompts a series of questions, some of which have actual answers, others of which are somewhat more imponderable.

Jules Shear has written a lot of seriously great songs, but is any of them seriously greater than “If We Never Meet Again”?

How did the relatively short-lived and under-appreciated UK band Samsa manage also to write at least one seriously great song (“Throw My Weight”)? Extra bonus question: why wasn’t this song a big deal when it came out?

Why do I not seem to connect to jazz instrumentals except sometimes when I do?

Did you know that Sonny Bono wrote “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”?

And did you know Ronnie Wood was in a band called The Birds three years before joining the Jeff Beck Group and that this band’s manager tried to sue the Byrds to keep them from using the name when they came to England in 1965?

Why do I like the Scottish band CHVRCHES so much? Normally punctuational creativity is not my thing. Nor is overly-shiny 2010s pop. But these guys I love; this song gets better each time I hear it.

Speaking of punctuational creativity, why is the word “There’s” in parentheses in the Bacharach/David song Dionne Warwick covers here? It seems willfully perverse.

Lastly: why did everyone hate on the last Rilo Kiley album back when it came out? Always sounded good to me, and it seems to be growing finer with age.

“The Summer is Over” – Dusty Springfield (b-side, 1964)
“It’s Different For Girls” – Joe Jackson (I’m the Man, 1979)
“The Mother We Share” – CHVRCHES (The Bones of What You Believe, 2013)
“Bury My Lovely” – October Project (October Project, 1993)
“A Pillow of Winds” – Pink Floyd (Meddle, 1971)
“Throw My Weight” – Samsa (First, the Lights, 2005)
“(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me” – Dionne Warwick (The Windows of the World, 1967)
“Subway Station #5” – Patricia Barber (A Distortion of Love, 1992)
“If We Never Meet Again” – Reckless Sleepers (Big Boss Sounds, 1988)
“Mr. X” – Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls (Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls, 1980)
“Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” – Terry Reid (Bang, Bang You’re Terry Reid, 1968)
“Girls Chase Boys” – Ingrid Michaelson (Lights Out, 2014)
“You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties” – Jona Lewie (single, 1980)
“Half Acre” – Hem (Rabbit Songs, 2001)
“Don’t It Feel Good to Be Free” – Edwin Starr (Hell Up in Harlem, 1974)
“Everybody Loves Me But You” – Juliana Hatfield (Hey Babe, 1992)
“Dream Lover” – Destroyer (Poison Season, 2015)
“Sharkey’s Day” – Laurie Anderson (Mister Heartbreak, 1983)
“No Good Without You Baby” – The Birds (single, 1965)
“Silver Lining” – Rileo Kiley (Under the Blacklight, 2007)

Full of Schmidt

They’re at it again, those knucklehead Silicon Valley extremists.

They’re at it again, those knucklehead Silicon Valley extremists. Here is former Google CEO and current Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt, from a written op-ed published on September 12:

A decade ago, to launch a digital music service, you probably would have enlisted a handful of elite tastemakers to pick the hottest new music. Today, you’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world—what actual listeners are most likely to like next—and help you predict who and where the next Adele might be.

Schmidt’s piece, published on the BBC web site, wasn’t about music per se, but was more broadly a glowing look at the progress being made by artificial intelligence; what’s more, one might read the music comment as little more than a pointed dig at Apple and just move along.

And yet, really? “You’re much better off building a smart system that can learn from the real world”? When it comes to music? Or any artistic human endeavor, for that matter?

I am doing my best to control my outrage that this man is someone anybody listens to. It would appear that Eric Schmidt wants to be the last human standing; while he’s allowed to pontificate and prognosticate he seems to have no need for any other individual point of view, and seems not to value in the slightest the very things that make us human in the first place: our individual hopes and dreams and inspirations and passions. Nope, just put all of us into a big blender and spew out data and we’ll be a-okay.

This view of the world is already reductive and demoralizing; that he further resorts to straw-man populism is despicable. Uh-oh: better watch out for those “elite tastemakers”! You don’t want them getting in the way of your mathematically predicted music!

First off I suggest that Mr. Schmidt has to put his money where his mouth is if he expects to be taken seriously. If “everyone” knows better than those damned elitists who want to tell us what to do all the time, then why doesn’t Google (and Alphabet) hand corporate decision-making over to the social media mob? It’s very elitist of him, after all, to think he knows better than all of us combined, right?

Ah but it turns out the demagogues of Silicon Valley are themselves inveterate elitists who slyly and consistently employ populist rhetoric for their own profit-hungry purposes. They elevate the quantitative formulations of Big Data into unalloyed truth, conveniently overlooking the helplessness of quantity alone to identify quality (nowhere in the history of humanity have we ever seen sheer numbers equate with human value), and also conveniently overlooking the subjectivity that will always embed itself into algorithmic selection, because (hey, how about that!) algorithms are at some point in the process created and overseen by human beings and will ever more reflect subjectivity even when posing as immutably objective.

Second, I can’t help wondering why anyone listens to any technology executive when it comes to sweeping cultural generalizations. All Schmidt is ever trying to do is increase his company’s revenue. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that; that’s what capitalists do. The trouble begins when we confuse his professional motivations with anything resembling societal wisdom or personal insight. It’s all the more alarming when someone with so little apparent patience for the ineffable value of flesh-and-blood human beings becomes some kind of spokesperson for the future of humanity. Sounds like something from a Black Mirror episode if you ask me.

So: if we are going to continue to want to be blinkered and hornswoggled by digital ideologues into believing that humans have no qualitative place in the world, then fine: let us welcome the robots and algorithms of these mythical “smart systems” and let’s all be content to have music funneled automatically into our brains before we even know we want it there. Which also sounds like a Black Mirror episode.

But if anyone out there understands that beauty and inspiration cannot be manufactured out of data, that quantity does not have a one to one relationship with quality, that human beings are not now and never can be reducible to objective components, then join me in telling Mr. Eric Schmidt to go back to counting his money and leave the human endeavors to those of us with some humanity left in us.

Free and legal MP3: Daisy Victoria (swirling, anthem-y goodness)

Another striking, swirling, anthem-y slice of pop-informed rock’n’roll from a very promising young UK talent.

“Pain of Dancers” – Daisy Victoria

Fueled by a big-hearted guitar line, an unresolved chorus melody, and Daisy Victoria’s theatrical presence, “Pain of Dancers” leaps into the world with poise and vigor—just another striking,
swirling, anthem-y slice of pop-informed rock’n’roll from this promising young UK talent. (For those who missed her magical song “Nobody Dies,” from late 2014, go here, quickly.)

As much as I love pretty much everything she’s up to here, I think the deep allure is rooted first and foremost in her voice, which possesses a rare blend of richness and nuance; she invests herself fully in every note, and the subtle shifts from dusk to lightness are thrilling upon close listening. But unlike some performers blessed with natural vocal prowess, Victoria has her eyes and ears on all aspects of songcraft. Think of those synth squiggles we hear with the drumbeat in the opening seconds of the song: highly unnecessary and extremely wonderful. More centrally, there’s the super-appealing, low-register guitar line that introduces the song and recurs after each iteration of the chorus—an adroit counter-motif and nothing a singer merely trying to show off tends to bothers with. It’s this guitar line, in fact, that both grounds the song—the chorus never resolves on its own—and gives it its sky-high reach. I kind of can’t stop listening.

“Pain of Dancers” is a single, self-released last month. Thanks to Daisy for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Bread & Butter (garage-y rock w/ offhanded grace)

A singularly satisfying piece of concise, four-piece, garage-flavored rock’n’roll that launches off a sweet, nostalgic guitar lick and lopes along with off-handed grace.

“Shoot My Mouth Off” – Bread & Butter

It’s easy to think of garage rock as muddy, loud, and hard-driving but that’s not the extent of the garage palette by any means. Within the general auspices of a raw sound and humble recording circumstances, a top-notch band can create many kinds of magic, the most reliable, to my ears, being that grounded in melodic flair. (This is something often overlooked: how unerringly melodic a lot of garage rock turns out to be.) And not everything has to be fast and loud. Here we have a singularly satisfying piece of concise, garage-flavored rock’n’roll that launches off a sweet, nostalgic guitar lick (or, interlacing licks) and lopes along with off-handed grace.

“Shoot My Mouth Off” hinges musically and viscerally on the major-to-minor modulation on which verse turns to chorus (first heard at 0:55); it’s here that the song’s generous embrace of rock’n’roll past and present feels most emphatic, here where singer Shane Herrell glides across the subtle threshold of greatness. Don’t miss the bass line’s important punctuation marks in the chorus, and note too that Herrell is the bass player. Bands with singing bass players, in my experience, often give us beautifully textured songs. And Bread & Butter sport a lineup I don’t think I’ve seen before: a foursome in which neither guitar player sings; not only does bassist Herrell take lead vocals but drummer Mason Lowe sings back-up. Don’t underestimate the musical value of this arrangement.

Bread & Butter is from Seattle, with five songs released to date. You can hear them all on the band’s web site. “Shoot My Mouth Off” dates back to February, and is available as free and legal MP3 via KEXP, which is where I first heard this.