Brooklyn – Page 6 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: TV on the Radio (half stompy, half mellow)

Alternating between a stompy, fuzz-tinged verse and a silky groove of a chorus, “Caffeinated Consciousness” may well be aiming to reproduce the very feel of being juiced on caffeine: there’s the oh-wow-hey-pay-attention part and then there’s the I’m-just-gliding-along-as-smooth-as-can-be part. And they kind of fit together and kind of don’t.

TV on the Radio

“Caffeinated Consciousness” – TV on the Radio

In any case, it’s a curiously addictive vibe. As soon as the ear gets tired of the harsh, riff-heavy, sample-fueled first part, we slip with relief into the groovy second part, with its happy blend of mellow-funky guitars and pipe-organ-y synthesizers. When that gets maybe too easy-going (I’m wired, man, I need to bust up something), squonk we go, back into the noise. But it’s kind of a happy noise in its own way—“I’m optimistic!” sing/shouts Tunde Adebimpe, over a delightfully rubbery bass and (wait for it; it’s in the second half of the verse, not the first) a stuttery, metallic, low-register guitar melody that (okay, maybe I’m hearing things) wouldn’t sound out of place on a Grateful Dead record.

TV on the Radio has been doing musical business out of Brooklyn since way back in 2001. They were one of the earlier bands featured here on Fingertips, in 2003, for a song off their first EP called “Staring at the Sun,” back when they were still a duo. (And hey, it’s still available!) They are five men strong these days. “Caffeinated Consciousness” is a track off the album Nine Types of Light, the band’s fourth full-length, due out in April on Interscope. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: The Ladybug Transistor (fleet & melancholy, nostalglic & timeless)

Always with a vaguely nostalgic sound, The Ladybug Transistor by now operates kind of meta-nostalgically, since the band itself dates back to an entirely different musical age—born out of the Elephant Six Collective in 1995: pre-Napster, pre-MP3, very nearly pre-WWW.

The Ladybug Transistor

>”Clutching Stems” – The Ladybug Transistor

Always with a vaguely nostalgic sound, The Ladybug Transistor by now operates kind of meta-nostalgically, since the band itself dates back to an completely different musical age—born out of the Elephant Six Collective in 1995: pre-Napster, pre-MP3, very nearly pre-WWW. They disappear for such long stretches at a time that I’d pretty much forgotten what an appealing sound they have, all sad-sprightly and ’60s-pop-influenced. Belle & Sebastian comes to mind also; although different bands in many ways, there’s a common vibe, both atmospherically and melodically, between this Brooklyn ensemble and Stuart Murdoch’s Scottish gang. Both bands offer up a powerful kind of nostalgia that remains somehow, also, both of-the-moment and timeless.

What has me in love with this song in general is the juxtaposition of the rapid pace and the melancholy air, which is not a natural combination. The song’s fleetness also disguises its unusual construction: it seems to be built around a meandering, two-tiered chorus, without any otherwise repeating element in the song. I don’t hear a verse. What has me in love with this song in particular is the aforementioned chorus, which stretches beyond something simple and immediately singable, accumulating a quiet sort of grandeur as we are led to a truly wonderful melodic moment: front man Gary Olson singing, “And now that I’m not/It’s all coming apart” (first heard at 1:07). This is worth the price of admission. More goodness: the striking titular image, which implies an entire story in those two concrete words.

Always something of a free-floating outfit, the Ladybug Transistor has experienced any number of lineup changes over the years. One of them was tragic, as drummer San Fadyl, on board since 1997, died of an asthma attack in April 2007. The band has not recorded since then, until now. (Their last album, released in June 2007, had been recorded with Fadyl.) Three new members have joined three LT veterans; the end result is Clutching Stems, due out on Merge Records in June. The band was previously been featured in 2003 and 2007. ~~MP3 via Merge.~~

Free and legal MP3: Acrylics (dream pop plus, from Brooklyn)

“Sparrow Song” quickly establishes itself in dream pop land, with layers of glistening keyboards and synthesizers, reverbed female vocals, and a stately 4/4 beat.

Acrylics

“Sparrow Song” – Acrylics

As with the Joan As Police Woman song above, here is another composition in which the guitar makes a late entrance, but with an entirely different vibe and effect.

“Sparrow Song” quickly establishes itself in dream pop land, with layers of glistening keyboards and synthesizers, reverbed female vocals, and a stately 4/4 beat that supports both the faster-paced melody of the verse and the slower, more expansive and harmonically-layered chorus. And yet there, in the midst of this shimmering soundscape, what’s that we hear at 2:20 but…a guitar. And not just any guitar, and certainly not the kind of processed, Cocteau Twins-like guitar sound that typically propels this dreamy kind of music. Nope, what we have here is a mellow electric guitar that sounds unassuming and organic as it plays the chorus melody in an easy-going lower register. Note how it then finds itself placing notes in an around a swirling vocal-like sound that might be a voice or might be synthetic. And how this type of ’70s-like guitar seems to have no business here—and yet it entirely does. “Sparrow Song” is deeper and richer for its presence.

Acrylics (as with Eurythmics, no “the”) is the duo of Molly Shea and Jason Klauber. They have been playing music together in one form or another since meeting at Oberlin College in the mid-’00s. Acrylics was started in Brooklyn in 2008. “Sparrow Song,” which features Caroline Polachek, from the group Chairlift, on backing vocals, is a track from the album Lives and Treasures, released this week on Friendly Fire Recordings, in conjunction with Hot Sand Records. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead. MP3 via Stereogum; it won’t show up in the media player here but click on the song title and you’ll get the download.

Free and legal MP3: Papertwin (brisk, alluring electro-pop)

The combination of brisk, dance-club movement with precisely conceived instrumental lines is alluring, and the understated chorus—with a half-time melody that floats behind the beat—is both gorgeous and elusive.

Papertwin

“Coma” – Papertwin

Electro-pop, by its programmable nature, too often breezes into the world in a digitized rush of symmetrical beats and swooping synth lines. How much happier the ear is, however, when it hears a song that begins like “Coma” does, with its well-constructed intro, full of purpose and asymmetrical motifs. There are three basic sections—the opening, bass synthesizer section, a shorter section with a guitar, and then the last, longest section, with the deeper-sounding guitar that brings New Order clearly to mind. None of these sections is the same length. And within each one, the melody lines are strong but irregular—they hook your ear but without telegraphing where they are going, each, also, lasting different lengths of time.

This is a long-winded way of saying they had me at hello. When vocalist Max Decker opens his mouth and that haunted, slightly roughed-up, slightly reverbed tenor comes out, there’s no stopping this song. New Order, yes, is a big influence, but Papertwin emerges with its own take on that formidable sound. The combination of brisk, dance-club movement with precisely conceived instrumental lines is alluring, and the understated chorus—with a half-time melody that floats behind the beat—is both gorgeous and elusive. So elusive, in fact, that the band fiddles with it the second time through, so we only really hear it twice in the four-minute song. Another example of this song’s hidden good work is the new synth melody introduced in the song’s coda (3:05). Most songs are coasting by then. It’s a subtle touch that makes the subsequent return of melody lines from the introduction all the more satisfying.

“Coma” is one of two songs on Papertwin’s debut digital single, released last month, and both available as free downloads on the band’s Bandcamp page. Thanks to the band for letting me host the MP3 here.

Free and legal MP3: Blair (wonderful combination of voice & craft)

Instantly engaging (no intro!), with its rumbly, rubbery bass line and off-handed but sure-handed melody; the hook here is in the verse, not the chorus. Blair (no last name!) has one of those breathy voices that still seems not-breathy—we get both air and earth in her tone. How she sings is as much a part of the song’s charm as the song itself.

Blair

“Wolfboy” – Blair

And yet there are indeed a number of further delightful enhancements on display: the xylophone, for one; the way the song clears out and slows down after the chorus, for another (so few songs stop to breathe like that; it often speaks to the quiet confidence of the songwriter). And then there’s the xylophone-led instrumental break at 0:51, with its almost cinematic sense of anticipation, which lo and behold links us back to the unusually satisfying verse. As it unfolds, in fact, this song delivers a bigger, more spacious, and well-crafted sound than one might initially expect from a quirky, one-named Brooklyn singer/songwriter. Then again, she was born in New Orleans. Don’t underestimate the way music seeps into your veins down there.

“Wolfboy” is from Blair’s debut album, Die Young, which was actually released a year ago, on Autumn Tone Records. I missed it at the time—buzzed right through my inbox. But then again, this song wasn’t available at that point. Blair is heading out on tour this month and is going to end up at SXSW, which is why a new free and legal MP3 has abruptly surfaced (note there are two more free and legal MP3s from the album up on the Autumn Tone site). Thanks again to David at Largehearted Boy (now based in Brooklyn himself) for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Big Eyes (power-poppy-punky)

Big Eyes

“Why Can’t I” – Big Eyes

You hear that thing in the introduction, that instrument that establishes both the ambiance and the melody with its crunchy electric drive? That’s a guitar. And you know what you do with a guitar? You either play it (if you’re in the band) or you listen to it (if you’re not in the band). This guitar you’re hearing doesn’t need you to remix it or loop it or make an app out of it. It’s just a terrific power-poppy-punky guitar part, with a strong lineage (hear “Starry Eyes” in it, a little? not to mention any number of Cheap Trick songs?) and a good heart. Listen and love it and don’t forget that listening—really listening—is as interactive an activity as there is.

Front woman Kate Eldridge, formerly in a band called Cheeky, has a really effective DIY-ish voice—forceful, maybe even a little bratty, unschooled, but not (praise the lord) out of tune, and not so muddied up in the mix that you can’t sense the personality behind the voice. This is a little kid’s plea, after all—“Why can’t I…?”—and yet there’s more happening here than may first meet the ear. Yes, Eldridge’s slightly snotty tone creates the surface impression that she is, little-kid-ishly, asking after something she feels entitled to but isn’t getting. But check out the pivotal lyric: “Sometimes you make me so mad/All I want to do is treat you bad/Baby now why can’t I just love you all the time?” She’s really wondering about that deeper thing that drives people who love each other into opposing camps. She sees her own limitations; her “why can’t I” isn’t railing against her external circumstances as much as her internal ones. This laces her brashness with a vulnerability that informs all three minutes and twenty-three seconds of this spiffy piece of good old rock’n’roll.

Big Eyes are a trio from Brooklyn. They have released a tape (yes, a tape), and a 7-inch single prior to this, their latest 7-inch single, issued earlier this month by Don Giovanni Records. The band’s debut LP is due out in May.

Free and legal MP3: La Sera (reverbed, DIY, girl-groupy goodness)

Reverb-drenched, girl-groupy goodness from a woman previously known, in her role as bassist for the Vivian Girls, as Kickball Katy.

“Never Come Around” – La Sera

Reverb-drenched, girl-groupy goodness from a woman previously known, in her role as bassist for the trio Vivian Girls, as Kickball Katy. But while the Vivian Girls play a muddy kind of DIY pop that doesn’t sound exactly like my thing, “Never Come Around”—equally DIY—pushes my happy buttons with its retro melody and dreamy, layered harmonies.

And that’s it, there’s not much more to this little song than its retro melody and layered harmonies. And Katy Goodman, doing musical business as La Sera, knows it too, which is why she has the unusually good sense to end the song in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it two minutes flat. There’s not even a chorus—just a fun little wordless vocal run in between a couple of the breezy verses, although she does manage to make time for a quick instrumental go-round of the foundational melody. It’s good-spirited, nicely put together fun—which is more than I, personally, can say about visually dissonant video, in which Katy G. sings her lovely ditty while graphically eviscerating some guy in the kitchen, with a kitchen knife. It continues from there. For the one or two of you out there who don’t find graphic violence entertaining, consider this a good reminder that music is for listening. (Everyone else: enjoy!)

“Never Come Around” is the lead track on a 7-inch to be released later this month on Seattle-based Hardly Art Records, in advance of a full-length expected early in 2011. MP3 from Pitchfork; thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves (sprightly hodgepodge from Brooklyn trio)

A sprightly musical hodgepodge, “A Charming Man” evokes a coterie of semi-incompatible forebears, from the Beach Boys to the Decemberists via the Smiths and, geez, maybe Todd Rundgren?

“A Charming Man” – We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves

A sprightly musical hodgepodge, “A Charming Man” evokes a coterie of semi-incompatible forebears, from the Beach Boys to the Decemberists via the Smiths and, geez, maybe Todd Rundgren? Something/anything indeed; the end result, in any case, is as listenable as it is indescribable, weaving an Phil Spector-ish thump in and out of a old-fashioned rock’n’roll backbeat, everything rendered slightly odd and edgy by singer/guitarist Giovanni Saldarriaga’s earnest, nasally tenor. It’s the sound of a man singing with his heart on his sleeve but keeping his sleeve inside his jacket. And maybe it’s not even his jacket.

The lyrics start out discernibly, then proceed to be ever-so-slightly buried in the mix, which is a shame on the one hand, because what we can make out at the beginning sounds like good narrative fun (“I’m just a rebel from the south/I tuck in the corners of my mouth”). On the other hand, I interpret the lyrical muddiness symbolically—this is a character who the more you know him the less he wants really wants to tell you. Anyone who has to sing “Please know I meant you no harm” quite so often is clearly protesting too much. In the meantime a line like “Take a look at my hands/They’re made for vows and not for one-night stands” is nicely suggestive, in a Colin Meloy-ish kind of way. And beyond that, the words are largely hidden below the chugging, endearing music, complete with its eventually wacky harmonies and its swingingly satisfying resolution of the Spector-beat and the backbeat.

The name We Can’t Enjoy Ourselves apparently derives both from Annie Hall (a movie originally entitled Anhedonia, which is the medical term for the inability to experience joy) and from some dialogue in Rebel Without a Cause. The band has a seven-song EP entitled One Belongs Here More Than You available as a free download on Bandcamp, and that’s where you’ll find this song.

Free and legal MP3: Amy Bezunartea (strong, swaying, poignant)

“Doubles” – Amy Bezunartea

Even now, in 2010, there are untold gazillions of singer/songwriters out there singing acoustic-guitar-based songs. The robots haven’t won yet. Then again, most of these songs are earnest and forgettable, so maybe those robots are wilier than we already think. But the glimmer of hope, every year, is that there are four or five or six that turn out to be almost mysteriously wondrous—not just songs that are pleasant enough to hear once or twice (there are plenty of those), but songs that strike deep within the soul, songs that become part of your life. Here is one of 2010’s best.

With a swaying, mournful melody, “Doubles” hits home hard for its offhand lyricism. The narrator sings of the harsh, unexceptional struggles of daily urban life in America in the 21st century with the deft touch of a short story writer (“Taking orders in her sleep/All those hours on her feet”). And I have to say, I more than ever appreciate the singer/songwriter—someone who takes her troubles and finds poignancy and humanity in them (“Some girls they like to win/But instead they’ll serve you lunch”) rather than fear and suspicion, someone whose intelligence naturally seeks connection rather than someone whose ignorance flails them towards divisiveness. Maybe you see what I’m getting at.

Anyway. Bezunartea’s voice is the marvel here that seals this song’s fate. She sings with the unadorned, reverbed loneliness of a standard-issue DIYer with one big difference: she can really sing. I mean really. It’s almost a revelation to hear someone with a plain-spoken voice like this with this level of tone and control. I can appreciate a good off-key indie moment as much as the next guy but it’s a subtle relief to the brain not to be continually if unconsciously waiting for that next moment when the note the singer hits doesn’t quite match the melody.

“Doubles” is from Bezunartea’s debut CD Restaurants and Bars, coming out in November on Kiam Records (a label run by singer/songwriter Jennifer O’Connor). The album was produced by John Agnello, who is known for his work with Dinosaur, Jr. and Sonic Youth, among many others. MP3 via Kiam; thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Liam Singer (elegiac, piano-based, canon-like)

“Winter Weeds” – Liam Singer

Solemn, piano-based composition with a whiff of the Renaissance about it. Liam Singer has a plaintive, Elliott Smith-like tenor, and pairs himself vocally here with Wendy Allen, of Boxharp, who sings an intricate counter-melody with the airy, earnest bearing of a traditional folk singer. The song they create together is both deliberate and hypnotic, with a canon-like melody that climbs and descends and circles and fits back together with itself without any apparent starting or end point, and no sense of chorus or verse.

The overall feel is elegiac; the lyrics are inscrutable but there is a strong sense of lament here, accentuated by the centuries-old sensibility working its way through this contemporary recording. The ear is not necessarily surprised, then, when a harpsichord joins in at 1:54. But my ear, in any case, is delighted by the wondrous series of slightly cockeyed ascending lines the instrument plays. The dusty, tinkly sound Baroque composers demanded of the instrument is summarily dismissed, and the world breathes a sigh of relief.

Born in Portland, Oregon and now living in Brooklyn, Singer studied musical composition at Kenyon College; his primary instrument was, yes, the harpsichord. He plays in a band called Devil Be Gone with Rob Hampton (formerly of Band of Horses) and also tours on keyboards with the Brooklyn-based Slow Six. “Winter Weeds” is from Singer’s third album, Dislocatia, to be released next month on Hidden Shoal Recordings, based in Perth, Australia. MP3 via Hidden Shoal.