Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Black City Lights (grand & memorable, if you wait for it)

A slow-developing opening minute leads us eventually into something grand and memorable.

“Rivers” – Black City Lights

I am a patient person—except when it comes to music. Songs that delay the entry of sensible structure or noticeable melody tend to annoy me, if I may be blunt. So I’m not sure how I managed even to listen to “Rivers”—with its 30 opening seconds of ambient electronic sounds and 30 additional seconds of instrumental introduction—without hitting stop and delete and moving on to the next thing. Sometimes, it seems, my ear hears things that my brain doesn’t initially latch onto. And I am in any case very glad I didn’t throw this one in the scrap bin, because that opening minute leads us into something grand and memorable.

It turns out this song, musically at least, is all about delayed gratification. After the long (long) introduction, the melody, in a series of ways, keeps edging near resolution and backing away. You can hear it, maybe, at 1:20, and then in an extended way at 1:40—note that Julia Catherine Parr then literally starts singing about being “so lost,” as the music retracts into background noise. We wait and wait and find deliverance with the line she belts at 1:57. I can’t understand the words but the music, at last, tells us the wait is over, and at 2:01 we plunge into something that feels deep and grounded, while also kind of sparkly and flowy. We are led to a point of resolution at 2:11 (on the words—no coincidence—“take you home”) that feels both solid and liquid: we resolve, and yet we keep flowing. The second half of the song is like that, at once robust and feathery, and the fact that it leads to a coda of heavenly voices seems exactly right. I suspect that not one moment of this song is accidental. It’s a fine ride, and reminds me to be patient in music as in life. At least sometimes.

Black City Lights is the project of Wellington, New Zealand producer Calum Robb and vocalist Parr. Either a sign of the times or a complete aberration, Robb just began writing and producing music late in 2010. “Rivers” is one of six songs on the Black City Lights debut EP, Parallels, released last week on Stars & Letters, a small NYC-based label. MP3 via Stars & Letters.

Free and legal MP3: Orquesta de Perros (pining melody, lots of guitars)

An edgy crooner with a stuttery heart, a guitar-driven soul, and the capacity to make an unexpected amount of noise.

“Los Polacos” – Orquesta de Perros

“Los Polacos” is an idiosyncratic winner—an edgy crooner with a stuttery heart, a guitar-driven soul, and the capacity to make an unexpected amount of noise. There is no doubt a bass player in here too, and obviously a drummer, but everything I hear works in support of the guitars and the singing, and centers around the pining drive of the cycling melody.

Similarly to “Rivers” (see previous post) but in an entirely different-feeling song, the melody here offers a long hesitant journey through an unresolved chord progression. When we finally end up on solid ground, we don’t really get to rest there—listen, for example, at 0:40, to how the melody resolves but then instantly resets itself back to the beginning. Or, in another case, we arrive at resolution only to have our minds are scrubbed clean by a wall of guitars (1:17). And if the ongoing lack of resolution leads the ear on, the earnest playing is what engages the soul. No doubt there are cultural influences at work that go beyond my understanding, but I get such a strong sense of a group of actual musicians interacting in real space, with their instruments and their voices, in a way that feels ancient and true, transcending the rock’n’roll setting entirely. Musicians making music, as they always have and always will, long past the time anyone remembers what a laptop was.

Orquesta de Perros (“Dog Orchestra”) is a five-piece band from Buenos Aires. “Los Polacos” is the lead track from Roles y Oficios, the band’s first full-length album, released this month on Buenos Aires-based Uf Caruf! Records. MP3 via the band. The entire album, worth a listen, is available for free, from Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Unison (dreamy, determined electronic pop)

Dreamy, determined, enticing electronic pop.

“Brothers & Sisters” – Unison

With a clicky, sampled undercurrent and a seductive, eardrummy beat, “Brothers & Sisters” is an effortlessly wonderful piece of electronic pop—dreamy, determined, and enticing. The music is, in fact, as likable as our current-day tendency to micro-label such music is unlikable. (There is a whole side story here about Unison making music that is part of a genre called “witch house,” which started as a joke and then became a thing, even as debate continues whether it actually is a thing or not. Boring.)

Much of the allure lies in the substantive soprano of Melanie Moran. Don’t let the airy whisper fool you; here is a woman who sings with the resolute agency of an indie diva. (And I’m passing no judgment here on her personality, just on the consequence of her voice.) In the context of Unison, her voice is one of many sonic elements—some percussive, some keyboardy—but note how, through the first two-thirds of the song, she is never subsumed; even whether other sounds appear louder, Moran is always given space. Her tone is weighty from low register to high, and I would say it is precisely her authoritative tone that allows the band to throw all the whooshy/clackety electronics onto the track so successfully.

And when, at last, the kitchen-sink background rises fully to meet her (3:37), we may lose some of her articulation but her bell-like sonority still anchors the swelling soundscape, which by now is full of beats and ghostly backing vocals and something resembling a doorbell having a nervous breakdown.

Unison is the French duo of Moran and Julien Camarena. “Brothers & Sisters” is a song from their self-titled debut, which was released in France in September, and arrives in the U.S. next month on Lentonia Records.

The Most-Often-Featured-Artists List

So this week, I featured a song by The Mynabirds, and earlier this month I featured a song by http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=10702. And in both cases I noted to myself that each artist had now been featured here on Fingertips three times. Which got me thinking.

To be featured three times here strikes me as significant. Almost any artist I feature can randomly end up releasing one more song I like a lot and therefore be featured twice. But I think there’s a line drawn after two times that becomes indicative of a band or musician consistently making the kind of quality music that I search for weekly on Fingertips. And so I wondered: who else, over the years, has been featured at least three times?

After a few minutes wandering through the Artist Index, I found my answer. You may or may not be similarly engaged, but I found it kind of fascinating. Some of the artists are pretty well-known in 21st-century indie rock circles (Okkervil River, Heartless Bastards, Yo La Tengo), others less so (Steve Goldberg, anybody?). Some I would clearly identify as among my favorite artists (Laura Veirs, Midlake, Over the Rhine, and the current all-time features leader John Vanderslice), while others kind of surprised me by their presence on the list (I did not expect to see Portugal.The Man and their unexpected period). Some of the artists would probably have more features by now but got a bit too successful to continue to offer up free and legal MP3s (I’m looking at you, Portland bands!). At least one might have had more had he survived (RIP, Joe Strummer).

I especially appreciate those who have been featured not just in a short stretch of time but who have had staying power over the years. The “winner” of this category appears to be The Ladybug Transistor, a band featured as long ago as December 2003 and as recently as March 2011.

Anyway, for the select few who might find this both interesting and helpful (perhaps a good way to check out some folks you haven’t yet listened to), here’s the list, in alphabetical order. After each name is the number of times featured to date, and then the month and year of the most recent feature.

To keep this from being too time-consuming a project, I do not offer any links on this list. Those interested are encouraged to visit the Artist Index; all the links you need are there. Apologies in advance for any links that are dead—I’m still working on cleaning that up. Talk about a time-consuming project!

Annuals – 4 – Mar 10
Asobi Seksu – 3 – Dec 10
Nicole Atkins – 3 – Oct 10
Bettie Serveert – 3 – Mar 10
Bishop Allen – 3 – Mar 09
Blonde Redhead – 3 – June 10
British Sea Power – 3 – Dec 10
Isobel Campbell – 3 – Sept 06
Decemberists – 3 – Mar 05
Eux Autres – 3 – Mar 12
Steve Goldberg & the Arch Enemies – 3 – Aug 11
Heartless Bastards – 3 – Dec 11
Innocence Mission – 3 – July 10
The Ladybug Transistor – 3 – Mar 11
Land of Talk – 4 – Aug 10
Matt Pond PA – 5 – Apr 11
Cass McCombs – 3 – Nov 11
Midlake – 3 – Feb 10
Kate Miller-Heidke – 3 – Nov 11
The Minor Leagues – 3 – Aug 11
Juana Molina – 3 – Sept 08
The Morning Benders – 3 – Feb 10
Múm – 3 – Oct 09
My Brightest Diamond – 3 – Nov 08
The Mynabirds – 3 – Mar 12
Marissa Nadler – 3 – Mar 11
Okkervil River – 5 – May 11
Over the Rhine – 6 – Jan 11
Portugal. The Man – 3 – Jun 09
The Raveonettes – 3 – Oct 08
Sambassadeur – 3 – Jun 10
Shearwater – 4 – Feb 12
The Shins – 3 – Nov 06
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros – 3 – Jan 04
13ghosts – 3 – Oct 11
John Vanderslice – 7 – Sept 10
Laura Veirs – 3 – Sept 10
Wheat – 3 – Dec 11
Wye Oak – 3 – Jan 11
Yo La Tengo – 4 – Jul 09

Free and legal MP3: The Mynabirds (stompy rave-up/protest song)

Stompy, sultry, vaguely threatening. A rave-up of a protest song. Prescient and relevant and delightful.

“Generals” – The Mynabirds

Stompy, sultry, and vaguely threatening, “Generals” is a wondrous rave-up of a protest song. And given that this was released last month, and recorded however many weeks or months before that, it sounds positively prescient. They might want to be singing this one in Texas, Kansas, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else that male politicians have been medievally attempting to trample on the rights of living, breathing citizens who happen to be women. “Calling all my generals, my daughters, my revolutionaires/We’ve got strength in numbers and they’re going to pay for it.” We can only hope. And I mean pay for it in November, at the ballot box, just to be clear.

I am an unabashed fan of Laura Burhenn, the Mynabirds’ Omaha-based front woman/mastermind—two songs from the 2010 debut album were featured here, in January and May of that year. (She also stopped by, virtually, for a Q&A in April.) I love her dusky, hungry voice, and how she embraces and embodies the past to create such spirited sounds in the here and now. “Generals,” all bass and war drum, has a harder edge than anything on the debut album, even as it retains a sense of poise and playfulness. It seems at once memorable and hard to get a grip on, probably because of how the verses chug to an adamant backbeat while the chorus, without effecting a time signature change, grinds to a heavy, half-time chant of a melody; and then the catchiest part turns out not to be in either the verse or the chorus, but is that “Haven’t I paid my dues?” bit between the two. Keep listening to this one, it burrows into the soul.

“Generals” is the first track made available from the Mynabirds forthcoming album of the same name, due out on Saddle Creek Records in June. MP3 via Magnet Magazine, or Burhenn will give you the download herself if you join her mailing list.

photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Free and legal MP3: The Van Allen Belt (off-kilter, extraterrestrial instrumental)

Cheery and off-kilter, a semi-angelic and vaguely extraterrestrial instrumental.

“Solar Crosses Stolen From Cemetery” – The Van Allen Belt

Why does this song attract me so? There seems a magnetic pull here. And there was me just a few weeks ago talking about how no one knows what to do with rock’n’roll instrumentals. This one is an entirely different animal than the Dirty Three song, arriving all cheery and off-kilter, semi-angelic and extraterrestrial (or at least Star Trekky), churning through the ether with its chimey, upturning melody. And yes, it’s not strictly speaking an instrumental in that there are vocals here, but they are wordless and choir-like. And so, to me, an instrumental. (Typically, the band does employ vocals with lyrics, via singer/multi-instrumentalist Tamar Kamin.)

The time signature—the ear-grabbing yet awkward 5/4—is central to its appeal. When the rare someone comes along who can harness 5/4’s freakishness into a flowing piece of music, we pay attention. And “Solar Crosses” does it without relying on any kind of swing or in-between beats that 5/4 and 7/4 songs often employ to sound agreeable. What we get instead is a straightforward five count and an open-ended chord progression that gives the melody an Escher-like sense of climbing ever upward. There is no time to catch one’s breath, the music just keeps piling on itself, with bonus flourishes and fluctuations along the way. I like the four-second, two-chord guitar burst at 1:37 and the factory-like drumbeat that takes over at 1:50, to name two.

The Van Allen Belt is a four-person experimental ensemble from Pittsburgh featuring music written and produced by Benjamin K. Ferris. Ferris began writing avant-garde material in the late ’90s and the band coalesced through the ’00s into its current lineup. Everything about the outfit’s background and music is too complicated to sum up succinctly; even their discography (two full-lengths and one EP to date) is muddled by the fact that the EP and their most recent album were released on the same day in January 2010. Their titles are generally too long to mention. “Solar Crosses” has a similarly involved back story, being a song featured on one of four seasonal compilations released in 2008 on the Vancouver label Peppermill Records. Bands participating had seven days to record a song, the title of which had to be taken from a headline in the news that week. (There’s more to it than that but I’m running out of space.) How it came to my attention here in 2012 is yet more complication, plus a dollop of serendipity. Let’s just be happy it did. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Lux

Fuzzy-buzzy guitars, w/ pop know-how

“Coroner’s Office” – Lux

A fuzzy-buzzy mix of guitars and electronics, “Coroner’s Office” succeeds where a lot of this kind of lo-fi fuzz-buzz (to my ears) fails, and this is because David Chandler and Leah Rosen may love the DIY thing but they also love the pop song thing. This is a real, complete song; even if partially electronic and programmed, it feels actually crafted by actual human hands. Developing over a sturdy, repeating four-chord progression, the same one for both the verse and the chorus, “Coroner’s Office” is generously sprinkled with delightful songwriting moments. Such as: the back-door, idiosyncratic hook we get here at the end of the verse with the repeating lyric “This is really real” (first heard at 0:39). And check out how the melody, which feels simple note to note, has the winsome tendency to leap up and down.

Note too how well Chandler’s blasé, wavering voice serves this kind of melody, and how well his phrasing serves the lyrics. Such as (0:57): “But you don’t know what she’s capable of/In the back of an old Chevrolet,” and listen to how he phrases that exactly as he might speak it, running the “know what she’s” part together whereas most singers would be tempted to accent the “know,” which makes sense singing but not talking. I appreciate too how his voice may be somewhat muffled but is still entirely present, the lyrics intelligible rather than turbid.

And then there are the tangential sounds, like the bright bell-like synth we get at 1:14 in the chorus, and then that wind-like synth that sweeps in at 1:50, and, further, that even more bell-like sound that chimes in at 1:58. This is what adds texture and heft.

The Seattle-based duo came together via Craigslist, each looking for a bandmate. Their mutual love of pioneering alternative rock bands (Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, New Order, Pavement, Jesus & Mary Chain, et al) spawned Lux in early 2010. A first EP emerged five months later. Their self-released debut album, We Are Not The Same, is coming in early April.

photo credit: The Ripper

Free and legal MP3: Centimeter (melodic, synth-pop-like guitar rock)

If Depeche Mode had lightened things up a bit and laid off the synthesizers, they might’ve sounded something like this.

“Motorhead” – Centimeter

Elegant and elegiac, “Motorhead” has the sweet sad momentum of an old synth-pop anthem and yet—it takes a while to realize this—there aren’t really a lot of synthesizers here. This is mostly guitar rock, even though that fact is skillfully disguised by the pounding of a piano-like keyboard and the strategic use of glockenspiel in the introduction. And then maybe the coolest misdirection of all is the human drummer here who mimics an electronic beat but is indeed an actual person (Henrik Holmlund, to be specific) with drum sticks.

Even though the lyrics are in English and are understandable word by word (if not thought by thought), I am not sure where the title comes from and whether it has anything to do with a) the old metal band Motörhead or b) the Hawkwind song “Motorhead” that inspired the band’s name in the first place or c) Lemmy Kilmister, who wrote the song while in the latter band but later founded the former band. I do know that the lyrical climax is at once jarring and potent, which is when the initial lyric “Before the time has come/And we end up in bed” (0:59) is altered one minute later to “Before the time has come/And we all end up dead.” I also know that singer Johan Landin has a wonderful, effortless baritone, hitting the elusive sweet spot between blasé and theatrical. If Depeche Mode had lightened things up a bit and laid off the synthesizers, they might’ve sounded something like this.

Centimeter is a Stockholm-based foursome who have been together since 2004. Their first album, recorded in Swedish, was self-released in 2006. “Motorhead” is from their first English-language album, expected out later this year. MP3 via the band. They haven’t gotten much attention yet in the blogosphere so spread the word on this one.

Free and legal MP3: Sea of Bees (sweet and powerful)

“Broke” – Sea of Bees

At once sweet and powerful, “Broke” appears the picture of simplicity: straightforward melodies, one ear-catching effect in an otherwise uncomplicated arrangement, matter-of-fact singing. But there is strength and mastery on display here if you listen for it.

The song is built upon two related but slightly different verse melodies and an extended chorus that comes with a sort of addendum to it. This is how it manages to have the feel of accessible clarity and gratifying complexity at the same time—that is, it’s on the one hand just a verse and a chorus but on the other hand not really. The moment that seals it for me is the wonderful chord change we hear in the chorus (first time at 0:45, along with the words “somebody hear me out”). It’s especially effective because the chorus has just started, and had already engaged us with the textural change delivered when the swirly electric guitar is replaced by a richly strummed acoustic just as the drummer kicks all the way in. And so the chord change at 0:45—taking us into momentarily into a minor key—was not “required” by the ear. And is all the more persuasive as a result. This is neither rocket science nor avant-garde music theory. But it’s a great moment, which anchors the song as it recurs in each iteration of the chorus.

“Broke” is one of 11 songs on the forthcoming Sea of Bees album Orangefarben (Team Love Records), all of them with one-word titles. (If the web is to be trusted, “orangefarben” appears to mean “orange” as an adjective in German, as in “orange-colored.”) This is the second album that Sacramento-based Julie Ann Bee (birth name Baenzinger) has recorded as Sea of Bees. This one arrives with a pretty heavy-duty personal back story (conservative upbringing, coming out, first same-sex relationship, and then break-up), and yet also, as is apparent here, with great musical joy and know-how. MP3 via Team Love. Sea of Bees was previously featured on Fingertips in June 2010.

Free and legal MP3: Lemonade (sleek, slow-motion dance music)

Conclusive proof that electronic music can have heart and soul.

“Neptune” – Lemonade [stream]

“Neptune” is the type of sleek, slow-motion, electronics-heavy dance music made by bands that music writers and/or record labels seem to need to employ three or four different over-specialized genres to begin to describe. Lemonade’s record company, for instance, goes with: “90’s R&B, UK 2-step Garage, Balearic house, and NY freestyle.” Come on, people. Is it that tricky? This surely sounds like a Portlandia sketch waiting to happen.

Let me simplify this and say that “Neptune” is conclusive proof that electronic music can have both heart and soul. Informed by old-school R&B and filtered through a seamless 21st-century aesthetic, the song appeals not for the number of obscure genres it can claim to embody but for the lustrous sheen of its aural landscape, its canny array of percussive sounds (both organic and electronic), and its unremarkable but affecting portrayal of a heart being broken. Yeah, it’s just a guy trying to talk to the girl, “to sort this out.” And then when she finally calls him she’s at a party and he can’t even hear her. Ouch. Hung upon an unrelenting four-note synthesizer riff and the tender vocals of front man Callan Clendenin, “Neptune” is as welcoming as you want it to be—chilly background music if you’re not paying attention, a swaying, bittersweet lament if you fall into it. The central moment, to me, is the line on which the chorus fades off (1:20): “And this really won’t do/No, no,” with those despairing melismas each time on the word “no” (a melisma is when the singer extends one syllable through multiple musical notes). Note how the second one ends conclusively rather than in an unresolved place. This is probably a bad sign for our narrator.

“Neptune” is the first song made available from Lemonade’s second album, Diver, to be released in May on True Panther Sounds. ~~MP3 via True Panther.~~ Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up. [MP3 no longer available; above link is for the stream.]