Fingertips

September Q&A: The Silver Seas

This month the Q&A is visited by Daniel Tashian, front man for the Silver Seas, a ’70s-obsessed band with a flair for making older sounds sound new again. The Silver Seas were featured on Fingertips in April for their wonderful song “The Best Things in Life,” from their most recent album, Chateau Revenge; they were also written up here back in 2007, shortly after the band had changed their name from the Bees.

Tashian (all the way to the right, below) happens to be the son of Barry Tashian, who led the legendary Boston garage-rock band the Remains back in the ’60s. But we didn’t talk about that; we talked about the present and the future, as always here in the Q&A…..

Q: Now that music has been available digitally for about 10 years (time flies when you’re having fun), what do you make of the whole thing at this point? Do you like dealing with MP3s?

A: I love the technology for convenience purposes, I just think that because the industry is so single-track-driven it’s harder for some people to get into those songs that they might not get on the first play, i.e. the ones that grow on you. Also, I very much enjoy records and CDs. I still wish I had all my tapes from high school! Mixtapes!

Q: There’s a lot of talk these days that says that music in the near future will exist in the so-called “cloud”– that is, on large computer networks — and that music fans will not need to “own” the music they like any longer, since they will be able to simply listen to everything on demand when they want to. How do you feel about this?

A: I think it’s an excellent idea. I think it will be much easier to track that way, and easier to compensate the artists and musicians.

Q: How has your life as a musician been affected–or not–by the existence of music blogs?

A: I think it’s a democratic thing. The people have spoken. It’s just that sometimes the voice of the people is not always discerning. Sometimes it’s reactionary, sometimes spiteful. That troubles me, but on the whole, I can’t say it’s a bad thing.

Q: What are your thoughts about the album as a musical entity– does it still strike you as a legitimate means of expression? If listeners are cherry-picking and shuffling rather than listening all the way through, how does that affect you as a musician?

A: Well yes they are, but they’ve always done that I guess. I just hope that the great bands and songwriters will continue to make great records and not just collections of singles. I like those b-sides and odd tracks. “Glad and Sorry” by the Faces for instance. But I think the technology and ability for anyone to make a kickass record on their laptop has balanced out the shuffling thing. It’s sort of like you can’t say that the single driven market has prevented you from making a long-form masterpiece because you can make one on Garage Band!

Q: What is your personal preferred way of listening to music at this point?

A: I listen to whatever I want. I like to listen in the car and Rhapsody is great. It doesn’t pay shit but it’s a great resource. I just need the phone version to work better!

Free and legal MP3: Eux Autres (lo-fi Springsteen, w/ charm & gusto)

The appealing, DIY-ish duo Eux Autres (say “ooz oh-tra”) have discovered an unexpected lo-fi core in the middle of this Bruce Springsteen rave-up.

“My Love Will Not Let You Down” – Eux Autres

The appealing, DIY-ish brother/sister duo Eux Autres have discovered an unexpected lo-fi core in the middle of this Bruce Springsteen rave-up. A fan-favorited cast-off from the Born in the USA sessions, “My Love Will Not Let You Down” is exuberant fun when Bruce does it but to my ears can’t help sounding like a bit of a retread; it’s almost too Bruce-y for its own good. Here, Heather and Nick Latimer strip out the brash “No Surrender” echoes and find a different kind of beating heart. The song still rushes along, but minus the well-oiled E Street guitar orchestra (note how the song fades rather than barges in); here we get a piano, an off-kilter, rumbly drum, and probably just one kind of guitar. And in place of Bruce’s throaty rasp we have Heather’s attractive but decidedly unschooled voice, which I urge you to listen to carefully. It’s not just that she aches rather than roars—the shift from male to female “narrator” is significant—but her tone is almost a miracle of reverbed, lo-fi sweetness, offering a shifting stream of heart-melting nuance that can’t possibly be thought out but boy does she have it going here from beginning to end.

Springsteen by the way is nearly alone among his classic-rock peers in combining three 21st-century accomplishments: 1) He continues to have active high school- and college-aged fans; 2) He has seriously influenced a number of important current bands; and 3) He still puts out meaningful records himself. It is just about a unique trifecta for someone of his generation here in 2010, but I guess they don’t call the guy The Boss for nothing. While there have been no shortage of indie bands covering his songs in concert, I haven’t heard too many noteworthy free and legal MP3 covers before this goodie caught my ear last month, via the Philadelphia-centric culture site Philebrity. It’s been out since 2009, actually, but any song is new if you haven’t heard it before, right?

Eux Autres was featured in Fingertips back in 2005, and have released two albums to date. Their next full-length release, Broken Bow, is due in November. The band’s name, as you might have been wondering, is pronounced “ooz oh-tra,” with the “oo” as in “good.”

Free and legal MP3: Jenny Wilson (idiosyncratic Swede)

“Hardships (Gospel Version)” – Jenny Wilson

I am a fan of strange songs with hooks, which no doubt explains my fondness for Tom Waits, Jane Siberry, and They Might Be Giants, among others. Knowing how to be both weird and catchy is rare gift—it requires both smarts and humor—and surely weeds out both the uninformed and the formulaic.

No stranger to idiosyncrasy—her first band’s first release was named “worst album of the year” by a major Swedish rock magazine, according to Allmusic.com—Jenny Wilson sings and arranges with whimsy and determination and little concern for convention. While grounding her songs somewhere within an R&B-like setting, Wilson has no apparent interest in creating either an Amy Winehouse-style homage or a Dirty Projectors-esque deconstruction. Lord knows where the marimba came from but it works, as does the back-and-forth tension between the semi-minimalist verse and the (almost) sing-along chorus. The chorus is in fact one big inscrutable delight, both sticking in your head and continually running from it: there’s the hook-y moment at the beginning, with the words “If I…,” but see how it tails off into lyrics that are difficult to follow and the musical equivalent of a run-on sentence. It’s very engaging somehow.

“Hardships!” is the name of Wilson’s first U.S. release, which came out in late August on her own Gold Medal Recordings label. (The album was previously released in Europe in 2009.) This so-called “gospel version” of the title track is the only free and legal MP3 available so far; it has a slightly different instrumental accompaniment than the original and augments her multi-tracked voice with forceful, gospel-choir-ish backing vocals that replace a prominent violin that is now nowhere to be heard. MP3 via IAMSOUND Records, which is distributing the album’s first single, “Like a Fading Rainbow” (good song too); “Hardships (Gospel Version)” is the b-side.

Free and legal MP3: The Migrant (guitar, voice, & graceful parade of sounds)

“The Organ Grinder” – The Migrant

With guitar and voice, “The Organ Grinder” starts off simply, plaintively—think Thom Yorke doing a Neil Young imitation—only to acquire offhand grandeur as a graceful parade of instruments (accordion, melodica, organ, guitalele [?], various percussive devices) add their voices to the mix. For a simple-seeming singer/songwriter composition, the song unfolds with an unerring sense of drama and beauty. Check out, as one example, the whistled motif that enters, almost as an afterthought, at 0:58, and then the unexpected but almost touching way the guitar joins the whistle in delivering the second half of its melody.

And if all songs showed such attention to dramatic development as this one—the last minute here is rich and surprising—the world would surely be a better place. The rhythmic shift at 3:07 is alone worth the price of admission, even if you (to think!) had to buy it, which in this case you don’t.

The Migrant is the name that Danish singer/songwriter Bjarke Bendtsen has given to his musical project, which represents the culmination of a couple of years spent living in Texas and also traveling around the U.S. The record itself, however, was recorded with friends when Bendtsen was visiting Denmark last summer. The end result, Travels in Lowland, will be self-released later this month.

Site up and running normally

Don’t know how many people noticed, but Fingertips was hacked somehow back on Friday and it took the tech team most of the weekend to get things back on track. At no point was the site as “dangerous” to visit as implied by the god-awful messages Google felt the need to insert in place of access to Fingertips over these last few days. I’m not very happy with this “Stop BadWare” organization, which makes everyone look not only guilty but evil until proven innocent, and intend to look into what exactly they’re up to and why.

But anyway, we’re good now. Note that there will be no standard updates this week, as Fingertips goes from being hacked to being on vacation. New free and legal MP3s will be back on or about Wednesday September 8th.

Free and legal MP3: Land of Talk (gorgeous & expansive, w/ FMac feel)

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency.

“Quarry Hymns” – Land of Talk

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency. Powell’s slightly fuzzy voice serves her well in Christine McVie territory like this, and her guitar playing—often tough and slashy in the past—here becomes the picture of monumental restraint. Check out how she clears the way, at last, for a solo at 3:06 and then check out how few notes she plays, and how quietly, and with what graceful dissonance. I recommend listening to the guitar throughout, as Powell is relentlessly interesting, even with the volume turned way down.

While “Quarry Hymns” is on the long side—more than five and a half minutes, which can be dangerous for pop songs—the effect is expansive rather than lengthy. Give a lot of credit to the hook in the chorus, which is so strong and effortless that it carries the song along in a timeless, almost trance-like state.

The Montreal-based Land of Talk is an established Fingertips favorite, having been featured previously in ’07, ’08, and ’09. Each song is worth checking out. Powell is the singer, songwriter, and centerpiece; the band has shape-shifted around her, with each recording offering a different iteration. They appear currently to be a trio. “Quarry Hymns” is from the group’s second full-length album, Cloak and Cipher, due out next month on Saddle Creek. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Sarah Kirkland Snider (Shara Worden-sung orchestral drama)

Part of a song cycle inspired by the Odyssey, “This Is What You’re Like” is an adroitly constructed composition for female voice, chamber orchestra, and electronics that treads the sometimes blurry line (in New York City, anyway) between indie pop and art song.

“This Is What You’re Like” – Sarah Kirkland Snider (featuring Shara Worden and Signal)

Part of a song cycle inspired by the Odyssey (let’s hear it for the classics! anyone?), “This Is What You’re Like” is an adroitly constructed composition for female voice, chamber orchestra, and electronics that treads the sometimes blurry line (in New York City, anyway) between indie pop and classical ensemble piece.

For all its stringed drama, layered presentation, dynamic changes, and uncertain chords, however, this is a song that does not forget that it is in fact a song—an impressive accomplishment for a classically trained composer, who would be excused if she had had all semblance of recognizable melody and structure knocked out of her in graduate school. But no: the Yale School of Music-educated Snider anchors the intermittently dense proceedings with a recurring, bittersweet melodic refrain that I’d call a chorus except that she plays with it each time so it’s never quite the same twice. It’s a lovely and affecting melody, with an enticing added beat in the second half, as the lyrics change (the first time we hear it) from “This is what you’re like,” to “This is what you once were like.” I especially like the refrain’s second visitation, when the lyrics change and the melody is almost but not quite swallowed by surging, dissonant orchestration. The song benefits greatly from Shara Worden’s dusky, charismatic presence; her eclectic background makes the My Brightest Diamond singer a natural for the project.

The overall work is called Penelope and debuted as a multimedia theater piece with music by Snider and lyrics by the playwright Ellen McLaughlin back in February ’08. It’s progressed through a number of revisions and performances since then; the song cycle version, featuring the ensemble Signal, premiered in May ’09 but even this was altered once Worden got involved. The first performance of the work in its current form came in April of this year; the long-awaited album will be released in October on New Amsterdam Records, a NYC-based label co-founded by Snider and dedicated to presenting the works of composers and performers “whose music slips through the cracks between genres,” says the web site.

Free and legal MP3: The Vaccines (catchy lo-fi goodness)

“If You Wanna” – The Vaccines

Joy Division meets—somehow—the Ramones. Don’t ask, just listen, it works. This is not a “composition”‘; this is not complex; it’s muddy and lo-fi (the band says it’s a demo, actually) but the spirit is shiny and polished and yikes is it catchy in the best possible way. And can I take a moment to rant about how badly the word “catchy” is misused in the age of internet music writing? Something isn’t “catchy” just because the singer repeats himself over and over, or just because the tune is like a nursery rhyme. Just because something gets stuck in your head doesn’t mean it’s catchy; it could be irritating and do that too. Something is catchy if the melody is smart, reasonably short, and somewhat familiar-sounding. Of course it’s a fine line between familiar-sounding and same-old, same-old. Catchy songs usually walk that razor’s edge with flair.

Oh and let’s underline the “smart” part. Others may disagree, but here in Fingertipsland, being dumb or badly-written disqualifies a song from being catchy. (And I mean dumb dumb, not smart dumb, like the Ramones were.) To me, catchy is a glowing word, the sign of a pure pop song; I don’t debase the word by using it on dumb shit. So, okay, “If You Wanna”: brilliantly gloriously catchy. With noisy guitars. The chorus sounds like an old friend but there’s a twist in the air here. Maybe it has to do with how the rhythm shifts from the Raveonettes-like drive of the verse, with its equally distributed beat, to the backbeat-heavy chorus, with such a strong emphasis of the two and four beats that you feel blown halfway back to a far more innocent time than ours (“It’s got a backbeat/You can’t lose it…”). Note how this shift coincides with the audible innocence of the song’s narrator, who seems certain that all be well should his lost lover, who obviously left of her own accord, suddenly decides she made a mistake. He sings hopefully; you the listener know there’s no hope.

The Vaccines are a brand new band from the U.K.; I can find no specific information about them anywhere—they just joined Facebook last week, for crying out loud. Thanks muchly to the fine fellows at Said the Gramophone for the head’s up on this one. MP3 via the band, at Soundcloud.

Free and legal MP3: Elsinore (well-crafted & melodic, w/ strings)

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, the melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places.

“Lines” – Elsinore

In a photography class I took some years ago, I learned that a satisfying black-and-white photograph is very likely to include the full range of the black-to-white spectrum, from the blackest black to the whitest white but also including many different in-between grays. I suspect, lacking of course any empirical evidence, that something similar is involved with music. For me, anyway, melodies that manage to hit the top and the bottom of the octave, while also employing most of the in-between notes, feel richer and often more meaningful to me than stingy tunes that stay within a more constrained range of notes.

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, its full-spectrum melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places. Ryan Groff has a crooner’s timbre and engages that ambling, string-festooned melody with a dreamy, charming nonchalance. (For the record, I’m hearing seven of the eight notes in the scale, many used more than once.) There’s that nifty chord shift in the middle of the verse (first heard at 0:15) that each time snaps the ear to attention even as nothing in particular announces it; it is not attached to either melody or lyric; and Groff lets it slide right under him, every time, most casually. The strings grow insistent, the guitars take the song back at 2:28, and the harmonies, suddenly all Brian Wilson-like, sing us up to the pensive coda. This is not some song someone dashed off on the back of a napkin in a bar.

Elsinore is a quartet from Champaign, up and running since 2004. The connection to Denmark and/or Hamlet is unaddressed by any promo material I could find. “Lines” is from Yes Yes Yes, the band’s third full-length album, released last week on Parasol Records.

Free and legal MP3: Icarus Himself (minimal, idiosyncratic trio)

That’s apparently something called an Omnichord that produces that distorted, tingly, music-box-like chiming that opens “Digging Holes.” It is among a number of unusual items this Madison-based band has in its musical bag of tricks.

“Digging Holes” – Icarus Himself

A teardrop-shaped plastic box called an Omnichord is the particular electronic gizmo creating the distorted, music-box-like chiming that opens “Digging Holes.” Introduced in 1981, it’s a homely thing, filled with slanting rows of small buttons, but also a then-futuristic “touch plate,” for mimicking strumming; and yet it is not the only unusual item this Madison-based band has in its musical bag of tricks. A baritone guitar is another—this being a low-voiced six-string that can sound like a bass but also be played like a regular guitar. Front man Nick Whetro’s minimally oriented sense of arrangement is yet another and probably the most important of the band’s idiosyncratic aural facets.

“Digging Holes” has one line of melody—it’s what the Omnichord sketches out at the beginning—and this is what we hear in and around offbeat accompaniment that veers from a reggae-like organ shuffle to Balkan-style trumpet and back again. The song develops slowly, but the stark interplay between the organ and the baritone guitar is oddly inviting, and when the “normal” guitar joins in, along with the faintest drumbeat, about a minute in, its offhand lead lines over the underlying syncopation feel for a moment as if this is all the song needs to be about. And, in a way, because the song itself barely exists—is the one repeated melody line a verse or a chorus or neither?—we really are captured, throughout, by necessarily passing moments, by sounds that appear briefly and move on (a series of four percussive slaps we hear between 1:46 and 2:00; the gate-shutting guitar sound that precedes the trumpet solo at 2:46; et al). Even those elements that persist a while, like the trumpet, or the ghostly, intermittently heard slide guitar, have the effect of being somehow apart from the song, adorning its minimalist skeleton but never supplanting it.

Icarus Himself is Whetro on vocals, guitar, trumpet, and sampler, Karl Christenson on the baritone guitar and Omnichord, and (so newly added to the lineup he’s not in the pictures yet) drummer Brad Kolberg. “Digging Holes” is a song from the band’s Mexico EP, which was released in May on Science of Sound. MP3 via Science of Sound.