This is a brand new band but they don’t sound like it. Because in a way they’re not—four of the five guys in Shiv Hurrah grew up together in Rochester, New York, and played in a band there in the early ’00s. Ten years, two cities, and one additional band member later, they regrouped in Brooklyn early this year, and early this month released the first results of their renewed labors—a five-song self-titled digital album, available for free, that includes this unknown beauty of a song.
Or call it, more accurately, a diamond in the rough. The production is a problem, and I don’t just mean the mixed-down vocals (which some of course do on purpose). I don’t mind a bit of DIY but the oddly recorded drums are surely more accident than strategy; I suggest not turning the volume too high so that tom that reverberates weirdly every now and then is less distracting. And yet I keep coming back to it, charmed by the relaxed ease of the Wilco-ish groove and, truly, slayed by the strength of the songwriting. What a great great melody, and how quickly it arrives! Most songs need a lot more set-up time, but this one gives us a brilliant, back-door resolution right at the end of the first line of the verse (first heard from 0:44 to 0:46). It’s the kind of resistance-melting melody that enhances the lyrics so that they zing and pierce—get a hold of how it supports the line (1:04) “But I’m the one who taught you how to tie that knot.” Brilliant. Another strong sign is the fact that this homely song from an unknown band offers a great new rock’n’roll lyric, near the end, too: “I never get homesick/I just get sick of my home.” Production challenges and all, front man David Bechle sometimes sounds like a million bucks, and shows me that his new (old) band is well worth keeping an eye on.
“Oh Oh Oh” is the fifth and final song from the band’s debut EP, a digital-only release that is available for free via Bandcamp.
So we already knew that Eliza Jones (nee Hardy) has one sweet voice. Buried Beds was featured here in 2006 for the gorgeous, melancholy “Camellia,” and her pure-toned but lived-in presence gave a beautiful song extra depth and meaning.
This time, the band cranks and swings and bashes around a bit, orchestrally speaking, all in the service of some upbeat but slightly off-kilter, semi-Beatlesque pop. It’s less obvious than last time but I think the song still revolves around Jones; she’s a powerful singer, without having to belt or bray to demonstrate command. Her prowess is on display instead in subtle moments, like the way she drags the phrase “He can’t find the man he was” behind the peppy beat (0:14) or the abruptly delicate manner in which she delivers the song’s interesting punchline at 2:29.
Buried Beds is a five-piece from Philadelphia, where the band stays active on stage even as the recordings have been few and far between. “Breadcrumb Trail” is from the band’s just-released second album, Tremble the Sails. MP3 via the band’s site. Thanks to Bruce at Some Velvet Blog for the head’s up.
I decided not all Flashbacks need to go spelunking too deeply into Fingertips’ cavernous past when I heard this song the other day and realized: a) how good it is; b) how it never really caught on, as far as I can tell; c) how it seems like it came out longer ago than it actually did at this point; and d) how good it is. And did I mention that it’s a really good song?
I love the musical and lyrical drama that Pale Young Gentlemen manage to pack into not even three minutes here. We first hear only a cello, playing a jerky line with what sounds like a mysterious rhythm until we understand that it’s actually just accelerating into the right tempo for the song. Kinda fun. A crisp acoustic guitar joins in, and a violin (or maybe a viola? or both?). By the time front man Mike Reisenauer sings those not-your-typical-indie-fare opening lines—“You start to worry ’bout your health/As you reach a certain age”—this song has achieved liftoff (aided by a drum that enters with exquisite timing).
And it’s really only just starting; the rest of the way, “The Crook of My Good Arm” all but explodes with melodic vigor and instrumental dexterity: the strings play rascally melodies and rhythms, a cowbell clangs at precisely the right moments, and Reisenauer, his voice vaguely processed, handles the theatrical rhyme scheme (check out the spiffy A-B-C-C-B pattern in the verse, leading into the titular phrase) with the casual authority of someone who’s more interested in telling a story than simply singing. Sounding nothing like rock bands that are typically associated with the word, I’d say that Pale Young Gentlemen (a seven-person outfit that includes by the way three women) possess great swagger. This isn’t “Wail on the electric guitar and scream bloody murder” swagger or “Dig my blues riff and my street cred” swagger or even “Be awed by my laptop skills” swagger—it’s “We know exactly what we’re doing and don’t really sound like anyone else” swagger. The best kind, in other words.
The Gents were previously featured on Fingertips in Nov. 2007. “The Crook of My Good Arm” is a song from the band’s second CD, Black Forest (Tra La La), which will be released next month on the Madison, Wis.-based label Science of Sound. MP3 via the band.
ADDENDUM: Pale Young Gentlemen are alive and well and living in Madison, Wisconsin. There may be fewer of them now than are captured in the picture above. They are currently working on their third album. Visit them here.
That’s Jim James (ok, Yim Yames) at the beginning and it’s the same “Dear God” as appeared on the Monsters of Folk album—that is, until the Roots’ Black Thought takes over. (I like, by the way, how long he waits. This is a confident band. And check out that great “Uh-huh” with which he starts his rap after James, both times.) I don’t think you have to be a big hip-hop fan (lord knows I have no expertise in the area) to sense the glory in this performance. The voice rumbles more with weariness than anger, or even pain; words tumble out but with great discipline; thoughts pile onto thoughts almost haphazardly but stark themes emerge; and—nimble trick, this—words that don’t really rhyme are made to sound better than if they did. (e.g. “Why is the world ugly when you made it in your image?/And why is living life such a fight to the finish?”) And everything floating on top of a jazz-informed soul groove, soft but persuasive, with some really sweet chord progressions, if you wait and listen for them.
And listen, I know the distance I tend to keep from hip-hop is a generational thing. I find it hard to warm to music without melody and (often) without a lot of actual instruments, and hard to warm to vocalists who seem to all want to sound the same, not to mention lyrical content that often seems so bleak and short-sighted. But never mind all that right now. This song’s the real deal, and so is this band.
“Dear God 2.0” is from the Roots’ new album How I Got Over, due out next week on Def Jam. MP3 via Pitchfork.
Rich, deep, and flowing, “Marmalade” has the rumble of some muddy, alt-rock classic, complete with rubbed-out vocals and a battery of guitar sounds, from fuzzy-growly to acoustic-strummy to lonesome-seering. For all the ground-level noise and minor-key darkness, however, the song lifts and soars most wonderfully. It’s an intriguing effect.
Rich, deep, and flowing, “Marmalade” has the rumble of some muddy, alt-rock classic, complete with rubbed-out vocals and a battery of guitar sounds, from fuzzy-growly to acoustic-strummy to lonesome-seering. For all the ground-level noise and minor-key darkness, however, the song lifts and soars most wonderfully. It’s an intriguing effect.
Julie Ann Bee’s voice is central to “Marmalade”‘s appeal. Even as she buries the brighter and quirkier aspects of her singing under the song’s portentous textures, she doesn’t give in to cliched howling–an impressive feat especially as the song features plenty of wordless “oh-oh”-ing, which lord knows could’ve been howled. Instead she plays to a dusky quality in her voice that you almost don’t hear here but in almost not hearing it’s all the more engaging. I think. Meanwhile, listen to how the various guitars combine into an almost orchestral unity of purpose. Not a sound is wasted; propelled by a swift, unstinting rhythm and its plaintive minor key, the song is a fast, involving ride, ending, each time I listen, before I quite expect it.
“Marmalade” is from Sea of Bees’ debut full-length CD, Songs For The Ravens, released last month on Crossbill Records. Sea of Bees is a musical project masterminded and performed by the Sacramento-based Bee (nee Baenzinger), with an assist from producer John Baccigaluppi and a few guests.
The allure of electronic pop is also its abiding challenge: the transformation of an alienating aural landscape of beeps and tones and tinkles and ripples into music with some emotional impact. There’s a thin line between elegant and icy, and the best electronic pop music glides along that line without breaking a sweat.
The allure of electronic pop is also its abiding challenge: the transformation of an alienating aural landscape of beeps and tones and tinkles and ripples into music with some emotional impact. There’s a thin line between elegant and icy, and the best electronic pop music glides along that line without breaking a sweat.
“Star Receiver” glows with not only elegance but genuine warmth. Listen to how it builds itself up from a few meandering synth lines, grounding the song from the start in something not simply mechanical sounding. Even after the beat kicks in (0:16), the listener’s ear is drawn to the sounds that either float above or weave themselves gently around the basic rhythm. The effect is unhurried and idiosyncratic rather than robotic or clock-like. When the groove is completed by the deft integration of an acoustic guitar (0:48), the rhythm gets a discernible riff and, ultimately, after an entirely unhurried series of graceful repetitions, a genuine, resolving melody (1:32). And then, at long last, Sebastian Arnström begins singing. This is its own kind of treat–his lovely tenor is at once firm and delicate, the trace of an unplaceable accent adding to its subtle tremor. He backs himself up, elusively, with vocals that echo in a lower pitch, adding spaciousness and intrigue. Soon we get a sound nearly like a violin, or maybe a harmonica. The whole thing glistens and bubbles and moves.
Arnström is in the Swedish band Aerial; Simian Ghost is a side project. “Star Receiver” is from the debut Simian Ghost album, Infinite Traffic Everywhere, set for release in the fall on Nomethod Records, a Swedish label. MP3 via Nomethod.
Beginning as a pensive bit of Jane Siberry-like abstractness, fueled by little more than an egg shaker and a spare piano line, “Slip Away” unfolds deliberately, but never loses my attention. Despite the minimal instrumentation, the song opens with a strong melody and a prolonged sense of anticipation. It’s two full minutes before the music stretches out a bit and yet I’m with it all the way.
Beginning as a pensive bit of Jane Siberry-like abstractness, fueled by little more than an egg shaker and a spare piano line, “Slip Away” unfolds deliberately, but never loses my attention. Despite the minimal instrumentation, the song opens with a strong melody and a prolonged sense of anticipation. It’s two full minutes before the music stretches out a bit and yet I’m with it all the way. I’ve heard plenty of 20-second introductions that lose my interest way more easily.
And then at 2:15, the song really kicks in, and the kicking-in part is at once lyrically incidental–there are no lyrics in it at all, in fact–and musically central, radiating out both forward and backward in time, illuminating both what we’ve already heard and what we are about to hear. What I think we have here is a lyric-free chorus, sung without words, which I’m not sure I’ve heard too often. But what a wonderful, dynamic thing it is, with a melody taking almost yodelly leaps that would surely have defeated any effort to be burdened with language.
Calder is a singer and keyboard player from Vancouver who is best known at this point for being the least known person in the New Pornographers. She also co-fronts the band Immaculate Machine, which has been featured here in April ’09 and May ’07. “Slip Away” is the lead track from her first solo release, Are You My Mother?, coming in August via File Under: Music. MP3 via Spinner.com.
The June Q&A features Craig Barnes of the NYC-based quintet MiniBoone. MiniBoone’s song “The Devil In Your Eyes” was featured on Fingertips in February. The friendly and articulate Barnes had so much to say that he voluntarily divided the first question into two, so this month, the Q&A has six questions instead of the usual five. If you want to know why the wild people may not be making the music any more, keep reading….
The June Q&A features Craig Barnes of the NYC-based quintet MiniBoone. MiniBoone’s song “The Devil In Your Eyes” was featured on Fingertips in February. The friendly and articulate Barnes had so much to say that he voluntarily divided the first question into two, so this month, the Q&A has six questions instead of the usual five. If you want to know why the wild people may not be making the music any more, keep reading….
L to R: James Keary, guitar/keyboard/vox; Taylor Gabriels, drums; Sam Rich, bass; Doug Schrashun, guitar/keyboard/vox; Craig Barnes, guitar/keyboard/vox
Q:Should MP3s be free across the board? Why or why not? And if musicians can no longer make money off their recordings, as some presume, where does that leave you? What are your other options?
A: If music recordings are going to be free across the board, then people will need to accept the consequences. First off, free music requires the musician to find a source of income to replace what was lost. That could mean a number of things, for instance:
* Bands who in another era would have been opposed to licensing their songs or lending out their image will now accept it
* More bands will need to be funded by private donations
* The music industry will simply shrink (fewer record labels, fewer music magazines, fewer bands that can actually make music without working 9 to 5)
If music listeners are comfortable with the implications of those things, then I suppose it’s okay to for MP3s to be free.
I feel that another consequence of musicians’ shrinking incomes is that they will have less money to spend on hiring someone to handle the business side of things, and will have to take on more of this role themselves. It’s been interesting releasing and promoting our record, Big Changes, because while we’ve gotten a lot of invaluable support from our buds at Drug Front Records, we’ve also done a lot of work ourselves that in another era a band might have paid somebody to do. It’s not financially feasible for us to hire a PR company, so Sam and I have been reading and emailing hundreds of blogs to cover the record; we can’t afford a booking agent, so Doug and Taylor have been busy booking a tour for us this summer; and James has done a lot of research into buying a van and forming an LLC under the band’s name. It’s hard for me to imagine Joey and Dee Dee Ramone doing this sort of work.
I don’t know if there’s a way to actually prove or disprove this statement, but I think you could argue that the modern (independent) music industry isn’t going to attract the wild people anymore. The musicians themselves have to be super organized and disciplined in an administrative sort of way. And those kinds of organized people probably make different music than the wild people do, so it’s also going to direct the overall sound of the scene.
Q:If musicians can no longer make money off their recordings, as some presume, where does that leave you? What are your other options?
A: I was shocked to read on Wikipedia a while back that Peaches’ newest record sold 3,000 copies in its first week, and then promptly fell off the sales charts. I don’t think Peaches is very well known outside the underground, but nonetheless, I was surprised that an act that has been around for more than a decade and has a pretty popular live show sold so few records. So, rather than asking “IF musicians can no longer make money off their recordings, where does that leave you?” I would ask, “NOW THAT musicians can no longer make money off their recordings, where does that leave you?” And the answer is, touring and licensing.
For the most part, music fans seem to be accepting the licensing and increasing commercialization of their favorite bands. I think that’s actually a good thing, because if you download a record illegally–or, for that matter, legally and for free–then you’ve lost the right to protest when a band tries to make money in a more “commercial” way. Since you’ve already guaranteed that a band will not make a living off of you, that band has to figure out how to do it another way. Actually, on the Peaches topic, I just did a little search on Google and found out that one of her songs was used in a Gap commercial a few years back. So that’s where Peaches finds the money.
I think the question should no longer be “Should a band be active in the commercial realm?” but rather, “How can a band be commercial artfully, and with minimal intrusion in their art?” I do think this is possible. Bushmills has an awesome campaign going on right now with hand-painted ads of Chromeo, the heads of DFA Records, DJ A-Trak, etc. all over Brooklyn. Something about “Friends Since Way Back.” And although I’m not really a Neon Indian fan, I think his thing with Mountain Dew was a really cool idea. Normally I might look at beverage advertising and think that it’s cheesy and fake, but these campaigns are done with such class and with bands that actually make sense that the ads themselves become fascinating pieces of art.
Q:There’s a lot of talk these days that says that music in the near future will exist in the so-called “cloud” and that music fans will not need to own the music they like any longer. As a working musician who writes songs and puts out albums, at least in theory so people will own them, look at the packages, put them on a shelf, etc., how do you feel about this?
A: As a listener, I’m super excited to think that in a few years we might be able to listen to any song at anytime on our iPods simply by paying a monthly fee. I don’t feel I know enough about the record industry to predict if and how quickly this will happen, but it’s a cool idea.
Music sales are already such a small part of MiniBoone’s income that I’m not sure if it will make a big difference to us when people are no longer buying our record at all and are just listening to us on the “cloud” instead. I’m ready to accept it. As for the death of the physical product, I think that’s okay, because I do think people still care about the art, even if they’re viewing it on a computer instead of on a CD insert. I see people proudly displaying the covers of their most recent favorite records like badges on the walls of their music blogs. The record cover, even when represented in a 90 x 90 JPEG, is a symbol of pride.
Personally, I haven’t bought a physical CD for years, and I don’t feel that I have less of a connection with bands because of it. If you like a band’s music, you will want to know more about them, what they look like, how they act, what kind of scene they fit into, how they choose to visually express their music on a t-shirt, record cover, etc., regardless of how you heard the music.
Q:How has your life as a musician been affected–or not–by the existence of music blogs?
A: MiniBoone became a working band in the age of blogs, so I don’t know what it was like to be a working band before blogs existed. Personally, I find them a lot of fun. It’s fun creating a dialogue with a blog and I like it when writers actually come up to talk to us at shows. I think that musicians should not just create music for themselves, but also actively create a discussion with the listener. And it’s fun to look through blogs and find somebody who we think we will actually like us.
That being said, it’s difficult to say if we’ve actually yet gained anything financially from blog coverage. The amount of information that pours out from just one blog is too great to push favor in the direction of one band over the others. I would say that their value is in their ability to give you an immediate idea of how people are reacting to and processing your music, and they make it easier to open up that line of communication between musician and listener.
Q:What are your thoughts about the album as a musical entity– does it still strike you as a legitimate means of expression?
In your previous columns for the Q&A, you framed this question as something like “What do you feel about the death of the album”? Even though I still listen to full albums most of the time, I am fine with the “death of the album.” First off, the LP didn’t come into vogue until the ’60s, so it hasn’t been around for that long–not nearly as long as the sonata form in classical music, for instance. Exciting pop music was being made before the birth of the LP, but it was instead being presented on singles. The LP was an awesome artistic invention, but it’s kind of strange that it’s become the standard form for pop music. It would be like if modern classical composers were expected to write in sonata form all the time.
If the album does “die,” I think that all that means is that it will cease to become the main form of presenting music, and musicians will only put out a full album if it makes sense as a cohesive work of art: the songs are tied together conceptually, maybe there’s a central sound to it, or maybe they were just all written and recorded in a short period of time. I think it’s perfect for that. Otherwise, if there’s no central concept to a group of songs, the EP is a better and quicker way of presenting music. It captures the sound of a band at a certain point in its life without having the band worry about putting out an “important” record or anything like that. Better to capture that sound before it changes into something else. So far, we’ve only put out one EP as a five-piece and we’re planning for our next record to be an EP as well. Not sure yet what we’ll do after that, but for now I think the EPs make more sense for us.
Besides, I learned in a basic level science class in college that mass extinctions (i.e. The “Big Five” according to Wikipedia) are actually very exciting from a biological perspective, because after an extinction, the ecosystem opens up for the birth of new species. If the dinosaurs hadn’t gone extinct, then there might be no people! It’s very exciting to think of what will arrive to replace the album after its “death.”
Q:What is your personal preferred way of listening to music at this point?
A: When I was still in school, I liked to listen to music with my headphones on in a dark room with my eyes closed. I don’t feel I have the time to do that anymore, so when I listen to music now, it’s mostly while I’m doing something else at the same time: writing email, washing dishes, eating a meal, etc. That being said, I get distracted a lot when a good song comes on. I’ll stop whatever I’m doing, turn it up, and start dancing. Lately I’ve been listening to Peter Gabriel’s So and every time it gets to “Sledgehammer,” the invitation to dance is just too powerful. Actually, rather than dance, I really just freak out and march around my apartment. And sometimes, when I’m in a bar and a really awesome song comes on the speakers, I can’t concentrate on what people are saying to me.
Usually I put full albums on repeat and let them run three or four times through before I switch to another record. When I’m in the moment with one record, it’s hard for me to think of what else I might want to listen to, so I just like to let it keep going. I do not trust shuffle.
While apparently muddier, mix-wise, than the usual Fingertips fare–the very-bashy drums are up front, the vocals buried halfway down–“Oh Ivory!” succeeds through the giddy force of its melodic energy and the quirky chemistry of its not-really-that-muddy-after-all production. There’s something old-school at work here, something that puts me in the mind of the ’60s, though I can’t put my finger on it. And anyway, by the time I think I’m getting it, the song is over. It’s nice and short.
And yet, although just 2:29, check out how the tune meanders for more than 40 seconds in an orchestrally interesting but melodically static interlude–featuring the not often used but always engaging combination of classical stringed instruments and rock percussion. On the one hand it goes on a little too long but on the other hand if it didn’t go on that long the payoff wouldn’t be quite so stirring. And stirring those final 30 seconds are, featuring now a shouted, one-note melody over an engaging parade of chords. In the end, this brief song has an offbeat but resonant structure, giving it the feeling of a much longer journey.
Light Pollution is a quartet from Chicago; “Oh, Ivory!” is a track from the band’s debut album, Apparitions, which is set for release next month on Carpark Records. MP3 via Spinner.
“Clementine” creates an appealing sense of urgency without a lot of volume or density or high drama. I’m thinking it’s the cello. The cello has a deep tone, but not as deep as a bass; it registers more as melody than rhythm, but also colludes with an acoustic guitar in an elusive way. It’s there but it’s not there. It adds depth.
Jaffe’s voice doesn’t hurt either. She’s got a slightly roughed-up, Lucinda-like edge to her singer/songwriter delivery, and it’s particularly well-suited to a melody that gains traction from the purposeful repetition both of lyrics and of small musical intervals–few if any of the notes are more than two whole-steps apart. This might be almost claustrophobic if the song weren’t so fleet and insistent. And then, at 1:52, we get that new and different stringed sound–a clipped and itchy motif that sounds maybe like some pizzicato, maybe also on the cello–that helps drive the song even more insistently forward.
Jaffe is based in Denton, Texas, also home to Midlake, with whom she has toured. “Clementine” is a song from her debut album, Suburban Nature, which was released last week on Kirtland Records. The album came out digitally last month. MP3 via Jaffe’s web site. Thanks to Some Velvet Blog for the head’s up.
Fingertips 