Brooklyn – Page 2 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Hollands (thoughtful art pop, w/ extra oomph)

Even when it isn’t quite like anything else you’ve heard it always manages to be at least a little like something else you’ve heard. This is fun and as it should be.

“Great White Shark” – Hollands

With confident cockeyed momentum, “Great White Shark” is a fun-house blend of thoughtful art pop and something bashier and more direct. A dignified violin break collides with a chugging, minimal rhythm section; articulate guitar lines locate clearings between earnest chunks of elusive lyrics; a basic verse melody repeats, with reappearing variations, while something resembling a chorus slips in once or twice; the song, while pushing five minutes, passes in something of a fever dream. Welcome to what has become of rock’n’roll in the mid-’10s, devolving and evolving simultaneously into whatever two people in Brooklyn (it’s almost always two people in Brooklyn) feeling like recording. Even when it isn’t quite like anything else you’ve heard it always manages to be at least a little like something else you’ve heard. This is fun and as it should be.

Anyway, I have listened to this song like a thousand times and I am left with two conflicting impressions: 1) its various complexities (in structure, nuance, texture, rhyme) continue to elude me; 2) its sturdy simplicity is grounded in the relentless recurrence of a basic three-note, ascending melody. And I am guessing that if I can train my brain to hold these two antithetical notions simultaneously, I may achieve some new level of enlightenment. Or, at least, would be better able to explicate a song named “Great White Shark” only, it seems, because the phrase slides quickly by in a lyric two-thirds of the way through the song.

Hollands is the married couple of John-Paul and Jannina Norpoth. John-Paul is the multi-instrumentalist, Jannina, classically trained, plays violin. Both are children of professional musicians. Among their favorite artists, according to the band’s Facebook page, are Igor Stravinsky, Frank Zappa, and Randy Newman—a mighty trio if ever there was. “Great White Shark” is a song from Restless Youth, their full-length debut, which was released last month. You can listen to the whole thing and buy it (vinyl is an option!) via Bandcamp. MP3 courtesy of Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Ward White (art-y & stylish but very approachable)

“Sabbath” is as arch and distinctive as a rock song can hope to be in the year 2014 without sounding fey or contrived.

“Sabbath” – Ward White

With sly hints of the old Hot Chocolate nugget “Every 1’s a Winner,” “Sabbath” chugs off the launch pad with delicious authority, featuring the splendid songwriting trick of beginning your lyric with the word “And.” I’m kind of a sucker for that one. And Ward White’s rounded, art-y tenor, a less adenoidal version of someone like David Byrne, it turns out I’m kind of a sucker for that too.

“Sabbath” is as arch and distinctive as a rock song can hope to be in the year 2014 without sounding fey or contrived. The verses feel like we’re already in the middle of the song, and lead us into a section (0:47) that bridges us without hurry to the chorus, accumulating lyrical lines while not quite coalescing musically; and the chorus, when it arrives (1:02), turns out to be less a chorus than a single sentence, rendered memorable by a vivid chord change in the middle (on the words “in front of my face,” at 1:08). The lyrics, meanwhile, feel rich and involving without easily forming a narrative. But any song that can include these lines—

And what of all these women?
They come and go but mostly go
And when they come believe me I’m the last to know

—is surely doing something right. And then, as word-oriented as White appears to be, he unexpectedly closes the song out with an increasingly scintillating minute-and-a-half of droning guitars and bashing drums. Fun!

The Brooklyn-based White has been releasing stylish, accomplished recordings since the late ’90s, floating around the edges of the NYC music scene without quite breaking through, even to the blogosphere. Which may also mean the man is doing something right. “Sabbath” is a song from his eighth solo album, Ward White is the Matador, released earlier this month. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Meenk (minimal & melodic)

Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter May Rio, doing musical business as Meenk, wastes no time plunging you into her songs.

“Up” – Meenk

Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter May Rio, doing musical business as Meenk, wastes no time plunging you into her songs, eschewing introductions for cold starts. Rio in fact goes further here and pretty much eliminates instrumental breaks of all kinds, a move that subtly increases her song’s sense of purpose—it’s all swimming, no treading water. There is a four-second, beat-driven riff that recurs as an intrinsic part of the song (and acts as an exclamation point at the end), but other than that, all song moments here are singing moments. As both singer and songwriter, Rio is up to the task, moving us deftly forward with her frank, Liz-Phair-esque vocal style and the juxtaposition of “Up”‘s blunt, two-section verse with the lovely, flowing chorus.

An interesting side effect of the vocal dominance here is how minimal an impact the instruments consequently appear to have, offering accompaniment so unobtrusive you are hard-pressed even to notice the arrangement at all. And yet this is obviously not an a capella performance. I am tempted, in fact, to find something incredibly able and robust in this elusive a musical landscape. Listen around the edges and you’ll hear some very cool things, including a wavering keyboard that straddles the thin line between old school and new, and a jangly rhythm guitar that, Johnny Marr-like, ends up feeling more than a little like a lead.

“Up” is one of four concise songs on the debut Meenk release, entitled Scamu Scau, that was released digitally in June. You can listen to it and download it via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Joe Marson (soulful, w/ great restraint)

“Love You Safely” is an unexpected shot of pure soul music: deep, heartfelt, and effortlessly melodic.

“Love You Safely” – Joe Marson

“Love You Safely” is an unexpected shot of pure soul music: deep, heartfelt, and beautifully crafted. This last bit is extremely important, at least to me. It’s one thing to set up a soulful groove and emote in a rich and convincing way, it’s another to do it while you happen to be singing a song that is itself rich and convincing.

The minimal but evocative introduction grabs attention immediately, with its muted, percussive guitar lick and terse, strategic organ fill. The verse begins before anything else kicks in, and Marson clearly doesn’t need much more than his voice to command the stage. (That the first word he sings is the name “Sara” sounds like a nice hat-tip to his blue-eyed soul progenitors, Daryl and John.) And yet he keeps the reins on his voice at nearly every moment, understanding how much more powerful understatement is than overstatement. Likewise the song’s accompaniment, which consistently dials itself back in the service of greater power and persuasion. And so the 10 or 12 seconds in the song where Marson cuts loose vocally (beginning around 2:50)—and still, probably, just a hint of what he might be capable of—is all the more moving and effective. Even the song’s title is a sort of understatement, breaking as it does the usual rule of deriving from a song’s most repeated phrase.

All the while the heart of “Love Your Safely” is its sturdy chorus, which unearths great power (not to mention a killer hook) in a simple, down-stepping melody. In music you don’t usually have to reinvent the wheel, you just have to take it for a good ride.

Born in San Diego, the itinerant Marson has ended up (where else?) in Brooklyn. “Love You Safely” is the first song made available from his EP Electric Soul Magic, due out in July. He has previously released one EP and one full-length album. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Ponyhof (elegant, dynamic, emotional)

An elegant, emotional ballad that builds with great poise and features a vibrant electric cello.

“Tiger” – Ponyhof

An elegant, emotional ballad that builds with great poise, “Tiger” hooks me quickly, with its opening juxtaposition of warm keyboard and what sounds like a distant, distorted guitar but is actually an electric cello. Then Carrie Erving starts singing and I’m hooked further by that minor-key swerve at the end of each line of the verse and the persistence of Chris Loxley’s droning cello, squealing and squalling in the background like the some weirdly positive version of nails on a blackboard. It’s a great vibe they’ve got going here.

At the chorus, the song opens up with satisfying heft, as both the drums and, now, a more standard-sounding cello kick in at the same time (1:09)—not a typical pairing but an effective one. Erving’s voice here becomes both smoother and sturdier, and acquires a male background singer who happens to be Will Butler from Arcade Fire, singing here with a kind of intense restraint that transforms his voice into a shadow of hers. As the song returns to the verse at 1:37, the momentum feels unstoppable; in truth, the verses in the song from here onward advance with the power of a chorus, while what initially seemed the chorus section reveals itself to be the subtler structural partner in a increasingly forceful union. In any case, the song climaxes at the unfolding of the last verse, beginning at 2:46 (“There’s a tiger in your heart…”), which veers through lyrical changes into what will surely prove to be one of the year’s wildest guitar solos, especially since it is in fact being performed by Loxley on that electric cello of his.

Carrie Erving is the singer/songwriter at the center of Ponyhof, a Brooklyn-based foursome which Erving says might be called a band or maybe more accurately a collective of musicians who gather to play her songs. “Tiger” is from the debut Ponyhof album, Empires, which was released last month. You can download the song from the above link, or via Ponyhof’s SoundCloud page, where you can also hear the album’s title track.

Free and legal MP3: Dawn Landes (sweet, gentle, sad)

Sweet and gentle and ineffably sad, “Love Song” creates bittersweet mystery from a string of simple words, set to a sing-along rhythm.

“Love Song” – Dawn Landes

Sweet and gentle and ineffably sad, “Love Song” creates bittersweet mystery from a string of simple words, set to a sing-along rhythm. The melody is plain and sturdy, with an elegant balance of upward and downward motion, while the song is structured around verses that end, Dylanishly, with a repeating lyrical conceit that serves as a truncated chorus. The recurring line—“I want to write you a love song/With my life”—is itself achingly elusive, both a profound intention and an implicit confession (of what, is not clear). Landes sings with a tenderness that seems equal parts reflection and regret; when she sings, strikingly, of “the technicolor of a loving soul dimmed to black and white” I find it impossible to know whether she is talking about her own or her ex-lover’s or (most likely) both.

I would be remiss if I did not, now, point out that Landes was married to fellow singer/songwriter Josh Ritter for a portentously short 18 months earlier this decade, and that Ritter was the first of the two to release the so-called “divorce album” (2013’s The Beast in its Tracks). Landes’s upcoming Bluebird, arriving next month on Western Vinyl, is hers. Disliking both gossip and speculation, I leave it at that.

Landes was born in Kentucky, moved to New York City to attend NYU in 1999, dropped out after two years, and, as a self-professed studio geek, finagled her way into recording studio jobs while also working on her own music. Based in Brooklyn, she owns a studio there with two partners which has been up and running since 2008. Bluebird was co-produced by Landes and Thomas Bartlett (Doveman); among the album’s performers are Bartlett, Rob Moose, and Norah Jones. Landes was previously featured on Fingertips in February ’08 for the beguiling “Bodyguard.” Bluebird is her fifth full-length album; she also has released two EPs, including 2012’s charming but largely disregarded Mal Habillée, a French-language tribute to the yé-yé music of the early ’60s.

Free and legal MP3: The Bushwick Hotel (fiery new rock w/ old-school bones)

Propelled by some serious classic rock swing (wailing guitars division), “Graffiti of the Young Man’s Mind” comes to us in 2014 from another place and time.

“Graffiti of the Young Man’s Mind” – The Bushwick Hotel

Propelled by some serious classic rock swing (wailing guitars division), “Graffiti of the Young Man’s Mind” comes to us in 2014 from another place and time. And yet what might have seemed a retread hits my ears as an all-out re-imagining of both what rock’n’roll was and can yet be.

The key, to me, is the combination of dirty, garage-y production and some serious chops, which together accentuate the fiery, contemporary presence this band has. I have, since about 1983, been tired of bands that dial up a few basic blues riffs, add some guitar pyrotechnics, and strut around like saviors of rock’n’roll. Personally, I find a lot more potential for redemption in a band that can snake some vivid guitar work through a heavy 5/4 (!) groove and find a sticky hook in an abbreviated howl of a melody. Front man Gregory Ferreira has a blessedly unfashionable voice, cutting loose like an errant blues-rocker from 1974, minus the posturing that often afflicts the trade.

For all of the retro sound involved here, I would suggest that The Bushwick Hotel is actually offering cutting-edge music, since by now, on the digital music scene, there may be no more revolutionary stance to rummage through the vault of generic classic rock for a spirited new sound, all the while playing three-dimensional instruments in real time and space, in communion with others. And, surely, no software program is going to lead you to swing with electric guitars over a 5/4 beat. I’m not exactly sure what’s up with the extended fadeout, except to note that this is the last track on the album, so it may have more resonance in that context.

“Graffiti of the Young Man’s Mind” is the title track from the band’s debut, a seven-song, 28-minute album that came out in November, available via iTunes. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

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: Lemonade (melodically engaging dance music)

That rare rock’n’roll bird: melodically engaging dance music.

“Skyballer” – Lemonade

Are bands just not interested in creating melodically engaging dance music or is such music just kind of difficult to make? I am honestly not sure. All I know is that after the seminal work of New Order, not a whole lot of bands have come along in the rock world to carry this particular torch. It is a specialized niche, to be sure. If the aim is to keep the trance going on the dance floor, melody may not only be superfluous but downright distracting. On the other hand, if one sees a purpose to music in one’s life beyond the confines of the club scene, music that engages the mind as well as the body isn’t a bad goal.

In any case, here’s “Skyballer,” which, for all its ear-candy trappings and dance-floor length, plunks a simple/great melody into the proceedings and everything makes sense. And while the sonic palette isn’t exactly the same, there is something rather New Order-y going on here in both the band’s commitment to grounding dance music in melody, and the particular kind of straightforward but compelling melody employed. The rest of the song stretches out in a cloud of falsetto, programming, and traffic whistles, with the strategic, if limited, use of guitars. Just when I think I may begin to be exasperated by the song’s clubbiness, I pick up another endearing little detail in the mix (I did not see that incisive acoustic guitar line at 3:57 coming), and then the repeat button brings the melody back and I am some odd kind of putty in its hands.

Born in the Bay Area in 2005 and based in Brooklyn since 2008, Lemonade has two full-length albums to its name, the most recent, Diver, coming in 2012. The band was featured here in March of that year for the song “Neptune.” “Skyballer” is a single released in August, as yet unconnected to a longer release. MP3 via the good folks at Magnet Magazine.