complex – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Muralismo (complex, engaging chamber pop)

“Wild Eyed Friend” is the mysterious out-of-towner you see across the room at a party of familiar faces and invent intriguing stories about. When you finally meet him, he turns out to be less quirky and cryptic than anticipated, but also deeper and more sincere.

“Wild Eyed Friend” – Muralismo

More a multi-faceted adventure than a simple song, “Wild Eyed Friend” is the mysterious out-of-towner you see across the room at a party of familiar faces and invent intriguing stories about. When you finally meet him, he turns out to be less quirky and cryptic than anticipated, but also deeper and more sincere. You are glad he exists, even if you will never see him again.

The good thing, of course, is that you can go and listen to “Wild Eyed Friend” as often as you’d like. And I do recommend a number of repeats; there’s a lot to take in here—the slow, slowly developing pre-introduction, with its gentle, semi-dissonant air of an awakening meadow; the subtly wonderful blend of guitar and orchestral elements in the brisker “true” introduction (1:12); the engaging, concise verse (1:38), with its drum-driven appeal and no-nonsense segue into the non-chorus-y chorus (2:05), which grabs the ear with abrupt ease. It helps that front man Mark David Ashworth has a welcoming, semi-theatrical tone, his high-ranging baritone slightly roughened and rounded by something husky and knowing. It helps too that the ensemble doesn’t throw its orchestrality (a word?) in your face; I like how the winds and flutes and strings and such kind of just weave and evanesce through the landscape here without making a big deal of their presence; best of all, they let the most interesting instrument in the room be the drums—not typical of most things that have been labeled “chamber pop” to date. Drummer Shaun Lowecki (last seen around these parts in the band The Lawlands, in January) has an up-front way of staying in the background, of guiding the music through interesting places often because of his own patterns, without ever doing things that say “Hey, look at me! I’m the drummer!” Good stuff, repeatedly.

Muralismo is based in San Francisco. Ashworth has released a few solo albums previously; Muralismo coalesced as a group project in the 2007 to 2010 time frame, as players came on board, often synchronistically, and aligned themselves into the quintet they are today. “Wild Eyed Friend” is the lead track from the group’s self-titled, eight-song debut album, which the band self-released in LP, CD, and digital formats last month. The above Dropbox MP3 link comes directly from the band. You can listen to the whole album and buy it via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Björk (for those who overlooked Biophilia)

A slightly unruly swell of female voices provides the ether in which this song expands, while the lyrics offer an endearing sequence of creation stories, the Big Bang merely one among them.

“Cosmogony” – Björk

I’ll admit, I overlooked Biophilia too, when initially released. I didn’t have an iPad at the time (2011), and have always been so wary of “mix it yourself” scenarios (I pay to hear the artist’s work, not my own) that I let myself forget that underneath this grand interactive/multimedia project was still a new Björk album. Finally, I went and listened to it late last year, and, well…wow. Not easy listening, but incredible listening—although as a full album experience, probably not for everyone (example: three of the songs are in 17/8 time). To my ears, she has bridged the worlds of “composition” and “pop” with singular mastery, unifying the worlds of the electronic and the organic in the process. So unique, creative, and determined an artist is Björk she even oversaw the invention of new instruments for the album.

While hardly a standard pop song, “Cosmogony” is one of the lovelier, more immediately welcoming pieces on the album. A slightly unruly swell of female voices provides the ether in which this song expands, while the lyrics offer an endearing sequence of creation stories, the Big Bang merely one among them. Through some alchemical combination of music and voice and lyric and sound, Björk manages to draw a large enough circle of life with this song to contain even the apparent polarities of science and magic, giving simultaneous context both to the limits of our knowledge and to the beauty of our spirits. The song moves me so deeply I feel unequipped to tease it apart, but for three tiny instructions/clarifications. First, what she’s saying at the beginning of each verse (and there is no chorus) is: “Heaven, heaven’s bodies/Whirl around me/Make me wonder.” When listening, I could not discern the word “bodies” in there; I finally looked up the lyrics. Second, listen to how she pronounces the word “egg” at 1:46. Lastly, I love her voice so much I even love how she breathes (see 1:05, after “cunning mate”). When Björk is on her game, as here, her song/compositions are so ripe with vitality that they burst with pleasure both vertically (listening to how, at any given moment, the layers interact and communicate to us) and horizontally—listening to how any one of these layers is itself a rich experience (as, for instance, are the aforementioned backing vocals; likewise the evocative, nearly miraculous bass playing).

“Cosmogony” is one of many viscerally artful and luminous songs on the underrated Biophilia. I eventually did get an iPad, and the Biophilia app, but nothing I could do while interacting with it introduced me to the glory of the music better than simply sitting and listening to it. Which, stupidly, I didn’t do for a long time. I mean to take nothing away from Björk’s impressive vision—the original Biophilia project encompassed not just the song/apps, but also a web site, a documentary, and a series of live performances, including educational workshops for kids. But I kind of recommend just listening to the thing. I’m not exactly sure when this “Cosmogony” free and legal MP3 went online at Epitonic, but I only recently discovered it there, and so, better late than never, here you are.

Free and legal MP3: Aidan Knight (unconventional & affecting)

The joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” – Aidan Knight

From its opening sounds—warm, mysterious, unresolved—“A Mirror” lets you know how good it is going to be, and how unusual. This is not a conventional pop song; not only is there no catchy chorus, there doesn’t even appear to be any recognizable verse. What we get instead is a series of motifs—some with lyrics, some instrumental—which do recur, if you’re paying attention, but which need to be listened to a number of times before they begin to coalesce into a meaningful whole.

I suggest giving this song that kind of time. A singer/songwriter from Victoria, BC, himself the son of a singer/songwriter, Knight has the natural touch of a born musician. In lieu of any one instantaneous moment of short-attention-span gratification, “A Mirror” employs its entire almost-five minutes to deliver its ineffable goods. The more I listen, the more individual pieces I grow to love (an early favorite: “I’m alive/I’m alive/I’m right here,” beginning at 0:51), while at the same time acquiring a gradual understanding of the song’s larger arc. I have no idea how a composition like this gets conceived and written, as it’s operating on a much different level than most songs I encounter. And yet also, thankfully, it comes without any avant-garde baggage or contemporary-classical pretenses. Its general musical language is familiar enough, but the joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” is the second of 10 songs on the album Small Reveal, Knight’s second full-length release, coming out later this month on Outside Music. Knight was previously featured on Fingertips at the time of his first album, in 2010. MP3 via Outside Music.

Free and legal MP3: Dirty Three (chunky, inscrutable instrumental)

Not necessarily an easy ride, but there’s something endearing about this chunky, intermittently unsteady instrumental. The Australian trio Dirty Three return after seven years.

“Rising Below” – Dirty Three

Let’s be honest: no one really knows what to do with rock’n’roll instrumentals. Yes, I realize that in rock’n’roll’s first decade, instrumentals were, well, instrumental in establishing the popularity of the nascent genre. There’s “Sleep Walk,” “Apache,” “Walk Don’t Run,” yada yada yada. But those tended to be short and melodic, typically featuring an atmospheric and memorable lead guitar line. And but for a last gasp by organ-oriented Booker T. and the MGs in the latter half of the ’60s, instrumentals became novelties at best, before, a half decade later, in the hands of the prog-rock colossi, mutating into patience-testing exercises in baroque noodling.

“Rising Below” is neither novelty nor incisive burst of melody nor bombast. It’s a chunky, initially unsteady piece that sneaks in through the side door: guitar and violin motifs enunciate themselves as afterthoughts while drummer Jim White slowly ponders the variations open to him for pounding out the first three beats of each four-beated measure. Listen to what happens after the minute and a half mark—it’s as if he’s now taking the pause in which he leaves out the fourth beat to plan his next rendering; you can almost hear the new idea arrive at the end of each successive measure. And when he gets a really-new versus a subtly-new idea, the instruments follow his lead and change their own courses. The most prominent change happens as the song churns past the three-minute mark. First, White incorporates a couple of snappy rolls into his playing and then, yikes, all hell breaks loose at the drum kit (3:13), prompting the violin and guitar to follow with their own disciplined eruptions of dissonance and noise (especially the violin). Then, around 4:10, the drumming reverts to the simple pounding pattern he had been using at the beginning, the one-two-threefour rhythm that gives us four hits but leaves out the actual fourth beat. It’s like he’s saying, “Okay, calm down now.” And they do. Only it’s a fake-out, since White breaks rank at 4:45 and we get a final 45 seconds of ordered craziness before there is, apparently, nothing left to say. This is not necessarily an easy ride but there’s something endearing about it.

Dirty Three have been doing their inscrutable thing since 1992. “Rising Below” is a song from Toward The Low Sun, the Melborne trio’s ninth album, which was released this week on Drag City Records. It’s been seven years since the last Dirty Three album, and sure enough, they were here then too.

photo credit: Annabel Mehran

Free and legal MP3: The Zolas (a melodic adventure of a song)

Rather than offering up verses and a chorus, The Zolas here present a complex series of different, seamlessly integrated segments.

“Cultured Man” – The Zolas

As album releases slow down in late December and early January, I am at the beginning of each year given a bit of an opportunity to go back and make sure I didn’t miss anything worthwhile in the general hubbub of the holiday season.

So here’s one that’s been hanging around a while and finally nudged its way into my heart. More an adventure than a song, “Cultured Man” is melodic and easy to listen to but is at the same time an intriguingly complicated composition. Rather than offering up verses and a chorus, the song presents a complex series of different, seamlessly integrated segments. One section does appear to function, musically, as a chorus (first heard at 0:58, with the lyrics “Just to impress you”), but even that one arrives with different words the next time around. In addition to the melodically distinct segments, the song takes us through changes in tempo and dynamics, as well as three different instrumental breaks. All in just under five minutes.

What holds it all together, for me, is singer/guitarist Zachary Gray’s distinctive baritone. He sounds refreshingly like a grown-up, up front and without pretense, shedding inadvertent light on the muddy or whiny or grandiose voices that slightly overpopulate the 21st-century rock’n’roll scene.

“Cultured Man” first surfaced back in October, as half of a 7-inch split single recorded with the Liptonians. Gray and keyboardist Tom Dobrzanski are the core of the band, although additional players support them on stage. To date the Zolas have released one album—2009’s Tic Toc Tic, on Light Organ Records, which generally employed a more piano-focused sound than you’ll hear here. A new record is being wrapped up this month and could be released by March. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Braids (engaging complexity, from Montreal)

From the opening violin salvo, you know you’re in for a different ride here. Nothing about this song is straightforward or commonplace, and yet it is nevertheless entirely engaging. If the Dirty Projectors were less self-consciously prickly, they might sound something like this.

“Plath Heart” – Braids

Take a listen to the future of a certain kind of pop music. Not pop as in Billboard pop, which seems more than usually mired in robotic, sound-alike simplism here in 2011—I’m talking about pop as in electric-based music with vocals, organized into three- or four-minute songs, aimed at a contemporary audience. As a matter of fact, the more the current age drives robotic, sound-alike simplism through the mainstream, the more today’s rebels may want to study, practice, and begin making songs of engaging complexity and humanity. No point in punks doing the Auto-Tuned, three-chord thing if that’s what’s on the charts.

From the opening violin salvo, you know you’re in for a different ride here. Nothing about this song is straightforward or commonplace, and yet it is consistently engaging. (If the Dirty Projectors were less self-consciously prickly, they might sound something like this.) Electronics are used to create cascading, watery sounds over a jittery rhythm; guitars fill in sometimes like pinpricks, sometimes in a shivery flow of liquid. Singer Raphaelle Standelle-Preston has a theatrical voice that can both soar and particularize—listen for instance to how she ejects this incisive couplet about disconnected lovers, sung seemingly from the male point of view: “I poke and turn/You smoke and yearn.” Meanwhile, you will rarely hear a more precise, restrained drummer in a rock song than Austin Tufts, who plays here like another intertwining instrumentalist rather than a time-keeping basher.

And of course Braids are from Canada. They are in fact four youngsters (all in their early 20s) from Calgary, who met in junior high school, became a band in high school, and were so intent on developing musically that they delayed going to college to practice together for a year. Then, in 2008, they moved to Montreal. And the rest isn’t history yet but it might yet be. Keep an eye on these guys. “Plath Heart” is from the quartet’s debut, Native Speaker, which will be released later this month on Kanine Records. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Villagers (indirect, well-crafted keeper)

“Becoming a Jackal” – Villagers

“Becoming a Jackal” is not necessarily an immediate smash hit; it insinuates rather than sweeps away. Never is it uninteresting, however, and I mean that quite literally, in a moment to moment way. Great hooks are awesome, don’t get me wrong, but songs can sometimes coast a bit too much in between the hooks, not to mention that sometimes it’s a fine line between hook-y and facile, never mind hook-y and annoying. (You’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever gotten a song stuck in your head that you don’t even like.) So there’s definitely a place in my pop universe for songs like this that use well-crafted indirectness, unexpected twists, and tension-building restraint to gain your trust and devotion.

Sink into the song’s small moments, let them float by and gain strength, notice the subtle shifts in accompaniment, and eventually a few become their own, quirky sorts of non-hooky hooks. The recurring phrase “I was a dreamer” at the beginning of the not-very-chorus-like chorus may be the first that sticks but a number of other melodic motifs grow in stature as the song unfolds. I like the one that first comes, at 0:26, with the lyrics “in the scene between the window frames”; when we hear it (I think for the third time) at 2:21, with the lyrics “you should wonder what I’m taking from you,” it sounds like a climactic moment, but only because of how artfully we’ve arrived there.

Villagers is the name Dubliner Conor J. O’Brien has given to his musical project, which is kind of a band but kind of not a band. “Become a Jackal” is the title track to the debut album, to be released next month on Domino Records. MP3 via Domino.

Free and legal MP3: The National (brisk, deliberate burner)

“Afraid of Everyone” – The National

“Afraid of Everyone” starts spooky, slowly and surreptitiously picks up a pulse, then a driving beat, but even as it does remains tight and restrained. This juxtaposition of brisk and deliberate adds layers to the eeriness, just as the fear expressed lyrically broadens from interpersonal to existential: what begins with a reference to today’s poisonous political environment ends with Matt Berninger singing, semi-imperceptibly, “Your voice has stolen my soul.” Notice (this strikes me as important) that the song itself does not change tempo; what happens is that the band finally–first around 1:10 and then more fully at 1:25–picks up on the song’s implicit beat, and literally drives home the frightened and frightening message. Repeated listens give this one a palpably deeper and deeper burn.

Originally from Cincinnati, now in Brooklyn, the National has been steadily building a critical and popular following, as expansively discussed in a recent article in the New York Times. Personally, I’ve been reserved about them in the past, in part because I didn’t give Berninger’s portentous but limited (and mumbly) baritone enough time to let the intrigue of the music penetrate. Not sure if I’m in the process of full conversion, but I very much look forward to listening to the new album, High Violet, in its entirety (which you can do this week on NPR.) The album comes out officially next week on 4AD. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: Jen Olive (undulating acoustic guitar, layered vocals)

A swirly, heady stew of loop-addled acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–BjÃ¶rk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her soundâ€“I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result.

“Wire Wire” – Jen Olive

A swirly, heady stew of ~~loop-addled~~ acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–BjÃ¶rk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her sound–I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result. Olive writes outside the box of the beat, floating the melodic line in the verse like elusive tinsel that decorates the tree without touching the branches. The warm sturdiness of the short chorus becomes all the more delectable, almost mysteriously so; she sings, “I could get/Lost in it/No regret,” to a straightforward melody that out of context might not strike your ear and yet here hooks and nourishes in a wonderful, almost uncanny way.

I have no idea how someone could conceive of writing this sort of song and it may well be because no one person did; it turns out that Warm Robot, Olive’s new album, is the product of a unique collaboration between the singer/songwriter and Andy Partridge, who personally signed her to his Ape House Records label. (The XTC front man has called Olive “this astounding allegro algorithm from Albuquerque.”) She recorded the basic tracks–guitar and voice and some idiosyncratic percussion sketches made on found objects like kids’ blocks and wine bottles–and Partridge arranged and enhanced to create the final songs. The two didn’t meet face to face until the album was already finished.

The Ape House blog by the way has a two-part podcast online featuring the entire album with track-by-track commentary by Olive, worth checking out if you have time.

And I stand corrected on the loop business. Which makes this song all the more original, says me.

Free and legal MP3: Annuals(exuberant, complex, compelling)

“Loxtep” – Annuals

Fingertips veterans from Raleigh, Annuals have been featured three previous times over the past four years and somehow are still only in their early 20s. I promise at some point to stop pointing out how young they are. But geez, just listen to the conviction with which they render their exuberant, unusually structured, complex yet relentlessly attractive 21st-century rock’n’roll. I need to keep noting their relative youth because otherwise you’d never know.

“Loxtep” is another shot of Annuals adrenaline, and if it again features a characteristic shift in dynamics, note how this pliable sextet continues to explore different ways to affect that shift. This time, it’s not a straightforward matter of going from soft to loud, or slow to fast; instead, when the band crosses the dynamic borderline, at 1:08 (and can’t you sense it coming, as it gets closer?), the tempo does not increase, and while the volume does to an extent, the song isn’t as much louder after the change as deeper, and more intense. Basically, the rhythm section has kicked in, both drum and bass adding bottom to the mix that wasn’t there before (the most significant percussion we heard in the first minute was, charmingly enough, castanets). But at the same time, strange stuff is happening, such as that funky-sounding synth joining in (1:21) apparently for the fun of it.

I won’t begin to try to untangle further “Loxtep”‘s structure–which features among other things a series of musical reconfigurations of previously heard motifs–except to point out how, at around 3:05, the song manages to turn something that wasn’t the chorus (namely, the lyrical phrase beginning with “lying around”) into a sort of second, de facto chorus. Here’s a band that is truly reimagining what a pop song can be even as you can still sing and dance along. “Loxtep” is from Sweet Sister, a five-song EP the band will release next month on Banter Records. MP3 via Banter.