Brooklyn – Page 5 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Jennifer O’Connor (melodic, unadorned guitar rock)

Anyone who misses the gruff, melodic, unadorned guitar rock that Liz Phair used to make before she (let us say) found other things to do might want to give Jennifer O’Connor a few listens.

Jennifer O'Connor

“Already Gone” – Jennifer O’Connor

Anyone who misses the gruff, melodic, unadorned guitar rock that Liz Phair used to make before she (let us say) found other things to do might want to give Jennifer O’Connor a few listens. And lord knows O’Connor is probably tired of the Liz Phair comparisons already, and truth be told, as O’Connor by now has a longer history of sounding like this than Phair herself does, we’ve probably got it backwards. But Phair surely laid the groundwork, and to date made a bigger name for herself (let’s not count Jennifer out yet, however!), so I guess she’s stuck with it at least a while longer.

In “Already Gone,” the classic-rock chug is produced merely by a droning electric guitar, a relentless, double-time bass line, and a drum kit so simplified it sounds like little more than a snare (and okay there seems to be a tambourine in the intro, briefly). In a song this minimally formulated, small gestures loom large. Take, for instance, the way the bass punctuates the end of the verse by momentarily abandoning its persistent staccato foundation to play a quick, descending melody (first heard around 0:40). Consider it the aural equivalent of the way a well-chosen spice can add depth to a simple recipe. The harmony ~~O’Connor sings with herself~~ Amy Bezunartea adds along the way is another artful touch that exists almost below the level of conscious attention. Even O’Connor’s purposeful guitar solo, which begins at 1:45, is a delightful albeit subtle articulation (and, okay, sorry for one more Phair reference, and an obscure one at that, but the solo here recalls rather wonderfully Phair’s discerning solo in “Love Is Nothing,” from the overlooked Whitechocolatespaceegg).

“Already Gone” is from O’Connor’s fifth album, I Want What You Want, which was released this week on Kiam Records, a label that she founded and runs—an honest-to-goodness label, not just a name attached to self-releases. Some quick, relevant background: O’Connor’s two previous albums had been for indie powerhouse Matador Records, but she and they separated in 2009. O’Connor was at that point exhausted and broke and unsure of her musical future, working at a grab bag of odd jobs during much of 2009 and 2010. But eventually her music called her back and she’s got the new album, released on her birthday, to show for it. MP3 via Rolling Stone.

Free and legal MP3: Plates of Cake (fuzzy & jangly, w/ rhythmic hiccups)

The swift and confident “As If The Choice Were Mine” is at once fuzzy and jangly, teasing us with whiffs of the ’60s and hints of rhythmic trickery.

Plates of Cake

“As If The Choice Were Mine” – Plates of Cake

The swift and confident “As If The Choice Were Mine” is at once fuzzy and jangly, teasing us with whiffs of the ’60s and hints of rhythmic trickery. Front man Jonathan Byerly has some of Matt Berninger’s portentous grumble, but cleared of any pontifical mannerism by the song’s underlying vim, as well as the three-part harmony he sings as part of from start to finish. The song is chorus-free, with one eight-measure melody repeated three times, around instrumental breaks. This is part of what gives the tune its light-footed momentum, this not having to reorient itself for something sing-along-ier.

But it’s also the nature of the melody itself that gives the song its appeal. Listen to how it begins, unusually, on a heavily accented first beat, which both grabs the ear and kind of knocks it off kilter. It is an eight-measure melody, mostly but not completely in 4/4 time, expanding nonchalantly into 6/4 time in measures five and six (from 0:26 to 0:32). For no reason I can discern except further slyness, the introduction, which recurs as the first instrumental break, comes with 6/4 time in measure seven as well, while the second instrumental break, a different thing entirely, is but seven measures long, all in 4/4 but the seventh, which is in 6/4. And yes I’m kind of fascinated by time signature tricks and changes, so there you go.

Meanwhile, what about that title? It’s a hall-of-fame song title, with bonus points for proper use of the conditional tense, and packing so much meaning and subtext into its six words that it hardly requires any further embellishment. And in truth we don’t get much—beyond the repeated opening gambit “As if the choice were mine/And not some fated thing,” the lyrics are both sparse and elusive; after many listens, I still can’t quite make out what the “hollow angels” are doing.

Plates of Cake are a Brooklyn-based foursome with one full-length album to their name, released in 2010 on the All Hands Electric label. “As If The Choice Were Mine” is a digital single, to be officially released later this month. Go to the band’s page on its label’s web site and you can download a couple of free and legal MP3s from the debut album.

Free and legal MP3: Class Actress (distinctive electropop from NYC)

Class Actress is here to show you that not all electropop is created equal, even though it often sounds that way.

Elizabeth Harper

“Keep You” – Class Actress

Class Actress is here to show you that not all electropop is created equal, even though it often sounds that way. And it could be that this Brooklyn trio makes distinctive electropop in part because the songs come to life in a distinctive way—front woman Elizabeth Harper writes them non-electronically, on a piano or a guitar. When she’s done, she gives the song to band mate Mark Richardson, who does all sorts of magical laptop-y things to it. But Harper aims to be writing songs, not beats or (god forbid) jams. (Can we stop calling songs “jams” now by the way? Pretty please?) She has been quoted as saying that if a song can pass “the campfire test”—i.e., can be played on an acoustic guitar, anywhere—then it’s a good song. I for one wouldn’t argue with her.

So right away you can listen here to how the beat is not the song’s centerpiece. This is a refreshing turn of events. The introduction is succinct and asymmetrical; at 0:11 the singing starts, and we still haven’t sunk into the song’s groove, which, when it kicks in, kicks in with space and syncopation rather than a wash of lock-step rhythm. Note how Harper isn’t singing against a monochromatic electronic field but alternately purrs and emotes against a disciplined blend of sounds. The one I really like is the synth we hear during the instrumental break beginning at 1:49—a witty, multi-dimensional electronic tone playing a stuttery melody for maybe 10 seconds and that’s it, on we go. It’s unusual and enticing.

As a singer, Harper is both sultry and elastic; to my ears, it’s her vocal leap in the chorus that provides the cementing hook, her voice in its upper range becoming more instrument than narrator. “I want to keep you in my”—what, exactly? Lyric sites say “heart,” but the word is so indistinct it offers the hint of “arms” as well. The lyrical tag, “Ooh, I want it, I want it,” also emerges more as a moan than a clear statement, and I like that there, I like how it anchors the song in an effectually wordless melody right in the center of things.

“Keep You” has been floating around the internet since early summer, but it is in fact the lead track from Class Actress’s debut full-length album, Rapprocher, which will arrive next month on Carpark Records. Rapprocher is a French verb meaning “to come close to.” Class Actress was featured previously on Fingertips in November 2009. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Hospitality (quirky, minimalist NYC pop)

Spunky and ineffably nostalgic, “Friends of Friends” is a New York song with a New York sound, firmly in the later ’70s.

Hospitality

“Friends of Friends” – Hospitality

Spunky and ineffably nostalgic, “Friends of Friends” is a New York song with a New York sound, and one that to my ears is rooted firmly in the later ’70s—music that blends an edgy Television/Talking Heads 77-ish bounce with a more playful David Johansen/Syl Sylvain-y groove and throws in a saxophone that surely has arrived through a time machine.

And yet “Friends of Friends” struts with its own, minimalist center of gravity and personality-driven sensibility. Check out the bass playing at the beginning for a conspicuous example of the band’s unembellished aesthetic, as well as the spaces, generally, that are left around the beat. As for personality, Hospitality has Amber Papini, a Kansas City-born kindergarten teacher who apparently learned to sing by copying Richard Butler on the Psychedelic Furs’ Talk Talk Talk album. (Well and who didn’t?) Here, she takes a herky-jerky melody and really works it. Neither the blurty verse nor the clipped, seemingly under-developed chorus is easy to make sense of as a singer; she pulls them off through sheer force of tone and presence.

Hospitality formed as a trio in 2007. They are now a quartet, and they have recently been signed to the consistently wonderful indie label Merge. The full-length Hospitality debut album is due in March 2012.

Free and legal MP3: Gross Relations (muddy & melodic, w/ a strong riff)

The opening riff, featuring that dirty/fuzzy/distorted guitar, with the organ noodling behind it, is so strong, to my ears, that I almost don’t need anything else.

Gross Relations

“When You Go Down” – Gross Relations

Okay, you want rock band instruments? You’ve got ’em here, without hesitation: guitar, bass, drum, and an old-time classic-rock organ. The opening riff, featuring that dirty/fuzzy/distorted guitar, with the organ noodling behind it, is so strong, to my ears, that I almost don’t need anything else. And then—bonus!—the first riff transitions into a secondary riff (0:22), on a janglier guitar, and now I really don’t need anything else.

But as luck would have it, there is yet more. I like how the song manages to be simultaneously bludgeony and melodic—not an easy accomplishment, but Gross Relations’ singer Joey Weber is a big Ramones fan so I guess he knows how to do it. And the cool thing is he may dig the Ramones but aside from the loud, thick sound and the strong melody this doesn’t really sound anything like the Ramones. Big Star via Guided By Voices, maybe. And, no, you can’t hear Weber distinctly, but this is one of those lucky instances in which the singer’s overall incomprehensibility adds to the charm of the piece. I’d say the muddiness is less a production technique than a distinct strategy, embodied not just in the singing and the instrumental sounds (there are distortion pedals at work here, even on the organ) but in the song’s very structure, which disguises what is a normally constructed song (verse/chorus/verse/chorus/instrumental/bridge/chorus) by blurring the verse and chorus and building the bridge as a kind of chorus extension. Cool stuff, and wrapped up in 2:39.

Gross Relations is a relatively new Brooklyn-based foursome. “When You Go Down” is from their six-song Come Clean EP, the band’s first non-single release, and, as it happens, the first release for Raven Sings the Blues Records, an offshoot of the blog of the same name. MP3 via the label.

Free and legal MP3: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (succinct & jittery, w/ a power pop heart)

This time around, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah exhibits a Cars-like capacity for wrapping an edgy, synthesizer-led, contemporary vibe around old-school rock’n’roll melodicism.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

“Maniac” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Succinct and jittery, “Maniac” does its best to disguise its power pop roots with multifaceted synthesizers and vocal effects (and affects) but the thing about power pop is in the end there’s no hiding it. The chorus gives it away pretty much by definition. So there it is, at 1:09, the power-pop heart of this otherwise anxious-seeming song.

And yes I realize that it’s anxious-seeming in good part because Alex Ounsworth, with his strangled, nasally tenor, makes David Byrne sound almost relaxed. CYHSY have in fact drawn a lot of Talking Heads comparisons in the past, for clear enough reasons, but this time around I find some unexpected linkage to a different band that arose in late-’70s New England—the Cars. “Maniac” doesn’t sound like the Cars as much as it behaves like them, for its successful wrapping of an edgy, synthesizer-led, contemporary vibe around old-school rock’n’roll melodicism. Though, on second thought, this may likewise sound more like the Cars than it might initially seem. Segue “Maniac” into “Gimme Some Slack” (Spotify users: give it a try) and you will find some wonderful resonance—not an exact fit by any means, but the echoes are there. I direct your ears in particular to the deep guitar line at 2:07, which introduces what works as a kind of an alternate chorus here, and is both very Cars-like and a beautiful power pop device. That’s really where everything comes together in this one.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a five-man band from Brooklyn with a bit of internet history that you either know already or don’t need to know. Seriously. Forget about it. Let’s just listen to the music, sports fans. “Maniac” is a track from their upcoming album, Hysterical, which the band will self-release next month. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Caveman (sweet & driven, w/ accoutrements)

The song moves along in 4/4 time, at a brisk clip, and then in the chorus, the drive remains but something’s awry, extra beats sneak in and then out in a way that creates a kind of hiccup in the rhythm.

Caveman

“Old Friend” – Caveman

Sweet and dreamy, but with a sense of drive and purpose, not to mention a playful sense of time, “Old Friend” starts in the middle of the story (“And I sat down on the wall…”). I like that. I also like the haunted-house organ and those ghostly harmonies and those scary synthesizer washes and how Matthew Iwanusa offers up his sugary tenor as if he doesn’t hear any of that. He’s not scared, not him.

Most of all I like the time-signature-based hook in the chorus. The song moves along in 4/4 time, at a brisk clip, and then in the chorus, the drive remains but something’s awry, extra beats sneak in and then out in a way that creates a kind of hiccup in the rhythm. Two things seem to be happening. First, the melody line has been skewed even further away from the beginning of the measure than it already had been in the verse; in the chorus, each new line starts two beats before the next measure starts, rather than a beat and a half in front. Okay, doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, it’s different. Second, the chorus begins with two measures of 6/4 before proceeding as previously in 4/4. The 6/4 measures start at 0:47, around the word “around,” and then bump back into the 4/4 stream at the lyrical seam between the words “right on time” and “it was just an old friend.” As usual with this kind of stuff, it sounds clunky and hard to follow as I describe it, but what you’ll hear is delightful and engaging.

Caveman is a five-piece from Brooklyn that formed in January 2010. (Yes, we are getting there, folks: listening to bands that did not exist even in the ’00s. Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.) “Old Friend” will be found on band’s debut album, CoCo Beware, coming out next month.

Free and legal MP3: Alina Simone (sparse but powerful)

Alina Simone

“Beautiful Machine” – Alina Simone

Prickly and haunting, “Beautiful Machine” depends for its potency, first, upon Simone’s unadorned, almost homely electric guitar, alternately picked and strummed, with a slightly fuzzy tone but without the slightest bit of fuss or drama. I realize as I listen how inherently histrionic so much rock’n’roll guitar playing is. This moodier, more shadowy sound is deep and enticing.

And then there’s Simone’s singing voice, the other clear source of the song’s power. She blends a breathy intimacy with an assertive upper range in a way that recalls Sinead O’Connor; like O’Connor, Simone has something of the force of nature about her. And yet still the operative word remains restraint. While there is a second guitar and a bass in the mix, they are in service of the primary guitar and the drums, in a setting that’s full enough to feel textured yet sparse enough to let us hear each instrument distinctly. Nothing feels automatic, not even the drumbeat, which rumbles and stutters, all tom and bass, no snare or cymbal. A cello arrives as if through the back door, finding its mournful place. The song feels at once primitive and elegant.

Simone is a Ukraine-born, Boston-bred musician now ensconced in Brooklyn. Her parents were political refugees, but Simone went back in 2004 to live in Siberia for six months. Her second full-length album, released in 2008, was in Russian, covering the songs of the underground punk-poet Yanka Dyagileva. “Beautiful Machine” is the lead track to her self-released third album, Make Your Own Danger, which came out at the end of May. Simone is now a published writer as well—her book of essays, You Must Go and Win, came out in June on Faber & Faber, and is in part about the travails of the indie musician in the 21st century. MP3 via Simone’s site.

Free and legal MP3: Gabriel Kahane

Challenging, fulfilling art pop

Gabriel Kahane

“Last Dance” – Gabriel Kahane

This is one of the more challenging songs I’m likely to post here on Fingertips, where the emphasis is typically on easy-to-love immediacy. This time, I’m asking you to sit through a minute and a half of prickly, unsettled music—first a meandering melody, voice and electric guitar in a kind of convoluted fugue, next (0:48) a glitchy, horn-backed section with an equally uncentered melody, marked by brisk, blurty vocal runs. The lyrics are somewhat difficult to follow but appear to be about a woman whose husband has died and now finds herself back on the dating scene; the agitated music—far more resembling composer music than singer/songwriter music—exists, I’m guessing, to reflect her state of mind.

But then the character excuses herself from her date, locks herself in a bathroom stall, and starts singing. The music (1:35) breathes itself into different place, into something that seems like a chorus, and a deeply satisfying one at that. You the listener can relax now; the song is accessible from this point onward. This chorus-like element repeats five times through the remainder of the piece, and while still a tad complex—I, for one, can’t quite discern the time signatures in play here—this is seriously wonderful stuff, a sign of just what can become of pop music when someone equally schooled in classical music gets his or her hands on it. The hook—and there is one, in my mind—happens with the alternate melody line delivered at the end of each chorus repetition, when Kahane jumps from “All I want is your face” to “All I want is a last dance.” His is a warm, pliable voice—“untrained,” in classical parlance—and the repeated falsetto leaps happen easily and expressively, but with repetition gain an edge of desperation, suggesting the imagined but unreceived (because impossible) release the song’s lead character seeks.

Kahane writes stuff like this because he is not your everyday rock’n’roller. Son of acclaimed concert pianist and conductor Jeffrey Kahane, Kahane the younger has taking his classical training in a variety of post-postmodern directions, trafficking in art songs, musical theater, jazz, and something partially but not entirely resembling indie singer/songwriter fare, among other things. He was previously featured on Fingertips in August 2008, when his first, self-titled album of (perhaps a better label) singer/composer songs was about to be released. “Last Dance” is from his second such effort, entitled Where Are The Arms, which is arriving in September on 2nd Story Sound Records.

Free and legal MP3: Laura Stevenson & the Cans (engaging songwriting, genuine performance)

“Master of Art” is no internet sensation, no technology-friendly song-as-trinket to engage those attracted, like crows, only to shiny things they can dive for and tweet about. Above and beyond the solid songwriting (and of course you do need really good songs), there’s something genuine going on here, something homemade and unprocessed that’s incredibly heartwarming.

Laura Stevenson and the Cans

“Master of Art” – Laura Stevenson & the Cans

I don’t tend to be very album-oriented here, as regular Fingertips visitors are well aware. I’m just looking for good (free and legal) songs week to week. I don’t seek albums; if nothing else, I just don’t have much time to listen to them.

Every now and then, however, I manage to let my guard down. An album slips through. I listen, get drawn in, and, sometimes, at least temporarily, am returned to those ancient days when that was how we processed music—album by album. Not even sure how I happened to decide to sit and listen to the entire Laura Stevenson and the Cans album, Sit Resist, but I’m really glad I did. Stevenson’s isn’t the kind of musical personality—and, to my discredit, I’ve almost forgotten such people existed—that is fully contained within the context of any one particular song. With her kittenish voice—happy with songs that swing, whisper, or stomp—and her tendency to call upon noise or gentleness from her band at a moment’s notice, she really comes to life in the context of an album’s worth of songs.

That said, “Master of Art” is itself a terrific effort, and a good introduction to what she’s up to, showing off both her pensive and her ardent sides in one four-minute package. The intro’s Phil Spector beat surely got my attention (I’m a sucker for the Phil Spector beat), but the song doesn’t wallow in it, using it as a springboard rather than a crutch. I’m still absorbing the lyrics but I think it was when I heard her sing, “You should know/That I am often difficult” (1:11) that I knew she had me. The depth of character in her voice there is unteachable.