Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Division of Laura Lee (noisy, melodic, & urgent, w/ guitars)

Noisy, melodic rock’n’roll that buzzes at a higher degree of accomplishment than most of what seems to catch the internet’s ear.

“Rudderless” – Division of Laura Lee

Noisy, melodic rock’n’roll that buzzes at a higher degree of accomplishment than most of what seems to catch the internet’s ear. I love this song’s immediate and fervent one-two-ness, and how in particular the half-time “one-two” of that siren-y guitar lick in the introduction manages simultaneously to distract from and reinforce the faster one-two beat the song itself clocks to. All in all this opening 35 or so seconds of disciplined instrumental mayhem feels like rock’n’roll at its 21st-century best.

And with the singing, if anything, it only gets better—first of all because the melody is so urgent (all downward motion, or so it seems), second of all because the vocals are so convincing (featuring octave harmonies so subtle and hummy the ear feels them more than hears them), and lastly because underneath the singing the guitars are just about going crazy. No attempt at description will do it justice, just give a listen. “Rudderless” plows through the unsuspecting air with a kind of fevered self-restraint that feels at once hypnotic and cathartic. And don’t miss that moment almost exactly in the middle (1:56) when, for once, the melody’s relentless descent is contravened by one upward-turning phrase (coming at the end of the portentous line “And there’s no one to blame/But me and you”). Even as nothing stops or even slows down, it feels briefly like we’ve arrived at the eye of the storm. I like also what this song does in place of a bridge: two-thirds of the way through (2:28), the guitar seems to discover a new, slower, somewhat more optimistic-sounding melody, and hammers on that for 25 seconds, in way that turns rather Clash-like somehow, before returning us to our regularly scheduled program.

Division of Laura Lee is a band based in Gothenburg, Sweden that formed in 1997. “Rudderless” is the latest single from the band’s fourth full-length album, Tree, which was released back in April on the band’s own Oh, Really!? label. You can listen to it in full via Bandcamp, and buy it there as well.

Fingertips Q&A: Night Panther

Emerging seemingly full grown from the sleepy, conservative exurbs of Philadelphia, Night Panther is a band whose sound alone makes a statement: glittery, synthetic, groove-heavy, and unmistakably melodic, this is music that worships at the altar of ’70s disco, with a side trip through Freddie Mercury’s mustache. The trio’s giddy, deeper-than-it-may-first-seem confection “All For Love” was featured on Fingertips in May of this year, in advance of the release of the self-titled debut album, which came out in July on Small Plates Records.

The Fingertips Q&A, for the uninitiated, is a semi-recurring feature. More than three dozen artists to date have participated. The Q&A’s sole intent is to allow actual, workaday 21st-century musicians a forum for discussing the state of music in the digital age. We can all do with hearing less often from so-called experts who by and large have huge vested interests in their “future of music” pronouncements and more often from the musicians themselves.

Night Panther front man Farzad Houshiarnejad here handles the questions.

Q: How do you as a musician cope with the apparent fact that not everybody seems to want to pay for digital music? Do you think recorded music is destined to be free, as some of the pundits (not to mention all of the pirates) insist?

A: The model of this industry, along with many others, is constantly changing, and not for the worst. I believe the problem resides within human adaptability to change. With that being said, there is always monetary opportunity in any profession. The question is, how does one adapt to achieve monetary success within the ever-changing economics of present and future models? Personally, our goal as Night Panther is to create music to the best of our abilities with the hopes of incoming recognition, which in turn will hopefully fulfill the monetary requirements of a humble lifestyle. We try not to involve ourselves in the mechanics of how the model operates; high schoolers and twitter will do that for you.

Q: What do you think of the idea that music is destined for the “cloud”? How do you, as both a musician and a listener, feel about this lack of ownership, about handing a personal music collection over to a centralized location?

A: Nostalgia is powerful. I can understand how a tangible object, such as a record, could have an interpersonal relationship with someone. Although, if it does dissipate in the future and everything is in the “cloud,” I can assure you, evolution will pave away these distant memories. This could be unfortunate.

Q: Social media has fostered a pervasive clamoring for quantity: everyone (both artists and fans alike) are supposed to want more and more “friends,” more and more “followers,” more and more “likes,” more and more “views.” How do you personally stay committed to quality in this landscape?

A: Quality will always overcome quantity. Perhaps not in the short run, but certainly in the long run. The youth in our societies today are most susceptible, and yet responsible, for this erroneous popularity gain, which sets us up for the quantity contest of social media. Sometimes deleting your Facebook page and concentrating on your goals for a short while might be the best remedy.

Q: One obvious thing the digital age has introduced is the ease of two-way communication between artist and fan. Does this feel like a benefit or a distraction, or a little of both?

A: That depends on the individual and the band as a whole, so it’s a bit of both. Britney Spears, for example, must get a lot of hate mail, whereas smaller bands aren’t usually subjected to that type of abuse, so contact with the fans can be extremely rewarding. I’m not saying Britney doesn’t have that, but she probably stays away from her inbox quite often.

Q: There is clearly way more music available for people to listen to these days than there ever used to be. How do you as a musician cope with the reality of an over-saturated market, to put it both economically and bluntly?

I think it’s fantastic! Anyone and everyone should be able to have a try at anything. Economically, this seems like a prosperous opportunity for small businesses such as mom-and-pop music shop owners and instrumental/electronic builders to finally make a living off the vast community of musicians we see today. In turn, this causes a lot of crap, but at least people are able to have a go at it.

Free and legal MP3: The Cloud Room (NYC band returns w/ sound & swagger intact)

“Mrs. Marquis de Sade” – The Cloud Room

A stimulating combination of breezy and portentous, not to mention melodic and dark, “Mrs. Marquis de Sade” finds the elusive Brooklyn band The Cloud Room doing its New York City rock’n’roll thing with renewed vigor, even after all these years. (Many of you may remember them for their rather brilliant breakthrough song, “Hey Now Now,” featured here, and lots of other places, back in 2005.) This is a band with the enviable ability to have a “sound” without so much as breaking a sweat, based largely on the fortuitous way front man J Stuart’s Bowie-esque croon floats so naturally on top of Devon Johnson’s scratchy guitar rhythms and John Petrow’s athletic bass lines.

The sound is so strong and consistent that it transcends the material: “Mrs. Marquis de Sade” is not originally a Cloud Room song, but was written by filmmaker and songwriter Devon Reed as part of a project he conceived to support the non-profit organization 826 Valencia, about which more in a moment. The band clearly makes this one their own. I especially like how the chorus is split in two sections, creating an extra climax via the second, higher-ranging melody, during which Stuart conjures more than one rock’n’roll ghost (I’m hearing Richard Butler in particular) before handing center stage to a fabulously tuneful guitar line that ~~I’m guessing was added by the band and in any case~~ seals the wonderfulness of this brisk and oddly catchy number. (Editor’s note: Turns out I was wrong. Reed wrote the guitar lick too. More power to him!)

As for the project itself, Reed wrote a bunch of songs and then managed to corral an impressive list of top-tier indie artists to record them. The final product is an album called You Be My Heart, which will be released next week. 826 Valencia is a literacy organization focused on inspiring children to write, co-founded in San Francisco by the writer Dave Eggers. Among the other artists who recorded Reed’s songs for the album are Fingertips veterans Marissa Nadler, Bowerbirds, Saturday Looks Good to Me, and The Spinto Band. You can listen to a few songs from the album via SoundCloud. In the meantime, I should also note that The Cloud Room did end up releasing a long-anticipated second album in 2012, which was called Zither and kind of came and went without much fuss. You might want to listen to it at Bandcamp, where it is also for sale.

MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Juniore (cinematic French pop w/ ’60s élan)

With the mischievous energy of something vaguely furtive, “Dans Le Noir” unfolds with an intricate overlay of ’60s influences, from the folk-rock melodies to the spy-movie guitar accents to the psychedelic synthesizer flourishes.

“Dans Le Noir” – Juniore

With the mischievous energy of something vaguely furtive, “Dans Le Noir” unfolds with an intricate overlay of ’60s-like sounds, from the folk-rock melodies to the spy-movie guitar accents to the psychedelic synthesizer flourishes. Before we get to any of that, however, take note of the introduction, which effects the satisfying trick of introducing without simply vamping on the main motif—what we get instead is an engaging guitar duet, with a lower-register, half-time melody backed by busy runs in the upper register. The song is thereby introduced, but we still don’t know exactly what it’s going to sound like. I like this.

The song itself is equally likable, driven by front woman Anna Jean’s cool, shadowy vocals, singing a cycling, minor-key melody that seems to keep yearning upward before pitching downward, aiming over and over for something not apparently reachable. The concise chorus, flattened and reverbed and buoyed by nostalgic harmonies, feels cinematic in a black-and-white kind of way. Anna Jean floats through its melodic poignancy with her self-possession unruffled—which actually renders the music all the more poignant somehow. In a similar (or not?) way, the entire song’s surface-level simplicity manages to convey a deepening sense of complexity with repeated listens. Somehow.

Juniore is a new band from Paris about which information remains sketchy, besides the fact that Anna Jean is in charge. She has previously collaborated with an assortment of other French musicians, but this appears to be the first time she is taking center stage. “Dans Le Noir” is one of two songs on the band’s debut 7-inch, released in November. A full-length album and a tour is scheduled for 2014.

Free and legal MP3: Stornoway (attentive, gentle, artfully arranged)

“Tumbling Bay” is one of those songs so exquisitely constructed and artfully arranged that you can isolate any slice and find all sorts of goodness to relish.

“Tumbling Bay” – Stornoway

Attentive, gentle rock’n’roll that tells a tender story with an absorbing series of musical and lyrical details. “Tumbling Bay” is one of those songs so artfully arranged that you can isolate any slice and find all sorts of goodness to relish. At any moment, there are wonderful things going on with the guitar work, the percussion, and the vocals, never mind how these separate elements are continually weaving in and around each other, and working to create a whole that transcends its parts.

The song is named for a swimming area that used to exist in the Thames River in Oxford, the quartet’s hometown, and is a tale of unrequited love, told, unusually, from the perspective of the unwitting object rather than the tortured subject. Singer Brian Briggs has a distinctively innocent-sounding tenor, and he serves up the halting, affecting melodies with conviction; but don’t miss as well the background vocal efforts of his bandmates, as Stornoway is not averse to letting the whole band sing at the same time. (Indeed, the simple vocal coda we get at 3:36 is both haunting and oddly cathartic, not to be missed.)

“Tumbling Bay” is one of six songs to be found on the group’s newly-released “mini-album,” You Don’t Know Anything, which is a follow-up to its full-length Tales From Terra Firma, released earlier this year. Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC6 for the head’s up, and thanks to Rolling Stone for the MP3. Stornoway was last seen here in July 2010, for the fabulous song “Zorbing,” which ended up among my top 10 favorite free and legal MP3s of the year that year.

Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 1 (December 2013)

Enough with the genre-specific playlists and customized “radio stations” that serve up a steady flow of songs that sound as much as possible like the song previously played.

As recently affirmed in an essay posted elsewhere, I do believe we human beings are rather more interesting, musically, than the internet gives us credit for. Enough with the genre-specific playlists and customized “radio stations” that serve up a steady flow of songs that sound as much as possible like the song previously played. I mean, really? That’s the best we can do?

I for one am tired of it, if only because I grew up musically on playlists—we called them radio shows back then—that thoughtfully mixed music together from different rock’n’roll eras, creating an intriguing and enjoyable flow of songs, whether or not they were all the exact same kind of music. Indeed, the point was that they were not the exact same kind of music. And the larger point, now, many years later, is that we remain just as interesting and unpredictable as human beings as we ever were, and therefore, in theory, just as capable of being entertained and enlightened by eclectic playlists as at least some of us used to be.

This, then, is the kind of playlist I make an effort to construct here.

It’s an elusive art, putting something like this together. I aimed for a bit of live-radio-like spontaneity (“Ooh, after this, I’ll play this!”), while taking obvious advantage of this not happening in real time after all. Some of the songs work next to each other with purposeful effectiveness, others became neighbors serendipitously, but in all cases the list was constructed with the idea of linking decades together rather than segregating them in playlist ghettoes. I also like the idea of mixing together the perhaps less well-known with the probably more familiar—but this can itself be something of a slippery aim when offering a playlist to such a wide-ranging coterie of music fans as those of you who might in fact be reading and listening.

No eclectic mix, in any case, is perfect; while I did my best to keep the music bounding across musical sounds and time periods, I can see after the fact that I have (obviously) left out any number of genres and/or eras, even as I pushed the total number of songs to 20, after originally shooting for something more like 15. But hey, we all learn by doing. This is Volume One. More to follow in the months ahead, in and around the usual free and legal MP3 downloads and reviews.

This playlist was originally created via Spotify but has since been migrated to Mixcloud. Listen via the widget:

“Steady With the Maestro” – The Roches (Keep On Doing, 1982)
“Antiphon” – Midlake (Antiphon, 2013)
“Baby’s On Fire” – Brian Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets, 1974)
“Berimbau” – Nara Leão (Nara Leão, 1968)
“On Being Frank” – Ben Folds Five (The Sound of the Life of the Mind, 2012)
“It Won’t Be Long” – Alison Moyet (Hoodoo, 1991)
“Dance on a Volcano” – Genesis (Trick of the Tail, 1976)
“Run Baby Run” – Garbage (Bleed Like Me, 2005)
“Iceblink Luck” – Cocteau Twins (Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990)
“As You Said” – Cream (Wheels of Fire, 1968)
“The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul” – XTC (Skylarking, 1986)
“Love Has Left the Room” – A Camp (Colonia, 2009)
“Make Me Your Baby” – Barbara Lewis (single, 1965)
“America” – Laura Veirs (Warp and Weft, 2013)
“Come and Get Your Love” – Redbone (Wovoka, 1974)
“Motions” – King of Spain (All I Did Was Tell Them the Truth and They Thought It Was Hell, 2012)
“Leave Me Alone” – New Order (Power, Corruption & Lies, 1983)
“Route” – Son Volt (Trace, 1995)
“Man, It’s So Loud In Here” – They Might Be Giants (Mink Car, 2001)
“One Day” – Sharon Van Etten (Epic EP, 2010)

New essay: “Is There Any Hope for Eclectic Listening Online?” (off site)

For those who haven’t stumbled upon this one yet, I wanted to let you know that I have a new essay online at the Linn music blog.

Linn is a high-end audio equipment company, based in the UK. The new essay is entitled “Is There Any Hope for Eclectic Listening Online?,” and it addresses another one of my digital music pet peeves, this one being the relentless way that digital music tends to be divided by genre, especially when it comes to streaming and/or playlist services. I believe this genre fixation rather badly under-serves us as listeners. Read the piece and see if you agree.

Free and legal MP3: Carrie Ashley Hill (brisk & melodic)

“Lay Your Lazy Head” – Carrie Ashley Hill

Graceful and brisk, with chime-y guitars and spirited vocals, “Lay Your Lazy Head” is grounded in a simple, beautifully effective melody—so effective, in fact, that its basic motif is employed in both the verse and the chorus. Which is to say that the verses and the chorus sound largely although not exactly the same. This is not as easy to do as it might seem. It involves first of all offering a good amount of subtle variation in and around the basic repeating tune—not only, here, is it presented somewhat differently in the chorus, each iteration in the verse scans slightly differently based on lyrical and vocal discrepancies. This gives the ear something to reach for even as it has absorbed the basic reality of the repetition. The other thing required here, of course, is a strong enough melody to support the concept. To my ears, Hill has it in spades.

The specific power of “Lay Your Lazy Head”‘s basic melody comes from the unexpectedly large harmonic difference a mere half-interval makes to our ears. A clear place to focus on this is in the second visitation of the verse melody, and on the difference there between the notes that Hill lands on for the word “stray” (0:30) and then the word “own” (0:33)—they are just a half-step apart, and yet the underlying shift is from the I chord to the V chord. Which is a bunch of music theory yammering to say that this smallest available step, the half interval, can take you to a whole new harmonic neighborhood. And while I’m sure this has nothing to do with Hill’s intention, I even like how the simple half-step difference kind of reinforces the titular idea of laying down one’s “lazy head,” as there may seem nothing lazier than falling merely a half step down in a melody. Okay, a stretch, but that’s how my mind works.

“Lay Your Lazy Head” is from Hill’s debut EP, entitled Me At All, which you can listen to on her web site. The EP was released in August and was recorded with Jeff Berrall and Sam Hopkins of the band Caveman (themselves featured here back in August 2011). The Dallas-born, Brooklyn-based Hill is on tour this fall with Jane Herships, who has recorded as Spider, and is herself a Fingertips favorite with two previous features, in 2006 and 2009. Both Hill and Herships are both, also, members of the Brooklyn-based band Desert Stars.

Free and legal MP3: The Sharp Things

Piano-driven ensemble pop

“Can’t Get Started” – The Sharp Things

So very many decades after Jerry Lee Lewis first started pounding (and pounding) the ivories, the piano remains kind of a rock’n’roll outlier, in that when I hear rock’n’roll with a piano in it, I tend to think, “Oh, a piano.” This does not happen with a guitar, or a synthesizer. It doesn’t even happen that much for me with a violin these days, which is weird, and another story. A piano changes the texture of rock’n’roll, gives it a non-electrified sound powerful enough to drive the song’s core yet tender enough to offer both chiming atmosphere and melodic nuance.

That said, the piano, while giving “Can’t Get Started” its splashy opening, is hardly the only thing going on within the ensemble-pop sound of The Sharp Things. The most noticeable “ensemble-y” touches here are the various string voices you’ll hear if you listen carefully (some are unorthodox) and the group vocals, an effect that can either be tiresome or brilliant, depending to a good extent on the melody being group-sung. In this case, I love the collective vocals, which are effected with a beautiful, almost whispered restraint that accentuates the coiled energy of the verse melody’s center point—the way it gathers itself each time for that one aspiring, upward leap it takes (0:20, 0:37, et al.). Because of the discipline on display with the group vocals, the couple of moments when the voices break through for a sudden “hey!” are all the more potent.

The Sharp Things are a Brooklyn-based outfit that has often shape-shifted since its founding in the late ’90s, all the while fronted by singer/songwriter Perry Serpa. Currently they do business as a nine-piece band. “Can’t Get Started” is from the album The Truth is Like the Sun, due out later this month. It is the Brooklyn collective’s fifth album. Thanks to The Sharp Things for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Lydia Loveless

Hard-edged, alt-country-flavored

“Boy Crazy” – Lydia Loveless

Twenty-two-year-old rabble-rouser Lydia Loveless returns with another mercurial slice of hard-edged, smartly sung alt-country-flavored rock’n’roll. A talent to be reckoned with, Loveless knows how to put a song together from top to bottom, showing an accomplished grasp of structure and texture that renders her impressive vocal skills all the more striking. And while I don’t know how directly involved she is in production decisions, the fact that she in any case knows enough to end up in this setting speaks well for her vision. I am particularly taken with the combination we get here of limber bass work and droning guitar lines, which lies at the center of the song’s vigorous blend of bash and agility. I like loud stuff best when performed by folks who still seem to be paying attention to what’s going on around them.

Loveless was previously featured here in April 2012, and you should definitely check out that review if you want to learn a bit about her somewhat unusual past. The bottom line is whatever she’s been through and whatever combination of nature and nurture gave her her musical know-how, she’s a live wire who sings from somewhere deep inside; sparks fly from her smallest, instinctive shifts. Listen, for instance, to the end of the first time through the chorus, where one moment she tosses off a guttural “Uhh!” (1:58) only to swing seamlessly into a measure of lovely “oo-oo”-ing. I’m not sure you can teach that or even plan for it. And then, at the same place, the second time we hear the chorus, check out how she at once belts and breathes out the words “hit a home run” (3:15), somehow wrapping desire and frustration into one evanescent package.

“Boy Crazy” is the title track to a five-song EP released earlier this month on Bloodshot Records. The EP is currently streaming at American Songwriter. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.