Tag: duo

“Solar Babes” – Storm Recorder

Brisk, poignant guitar rock

“Solar Babes” – Storm Recorder

Driven by brisk, clangy guitar chords, “Solar Babes” has an unmistakable poignancy about it, even as I can’t quite put my finger on what’s driving that impression. Some of this seems built into Jesse LeGallais’ voice, with its fetching, slightly nasal timbre. Some of it may be generated by the verse’s insistent, two-chord melody, the sing-song-y quality of which creates an underlying innocence to the proceedings.

The chorus, comprising little more than the word “fight,” creates a passing sense of movement even as it’s still built on the same two-chord foundation. The breakthrough happens around 1:15, after one more round of verses: we find ourselves in an extended bridge or bridge-like section that offers the ear the sorts of chord progressions the song has previously withheld from us, and which sound all but heroic in context. Equally heroic is how the opening chords are re-cast at the end in a brief, quasi-Springsteen-esque conclusion (2:07). Wrapping up in under three minutes, the song invites and rewards multiple listens.

Storm Recorder is the Nova Scotia-based duo of LeGallais and Palmer Jamieson. LeGallais was based in Montreal for 15 years, playing in an assortment of bands, before moving to Halifax; Jamieson is a Halifax-based producer who runs his own studio. LeGallais initially intended to record a solo project with Jamieson. Their level of affinity ended up turning the record into a new, joint project called Storm Recorder. “Solar Babes” is the opening track on the album Always Coming Home, which they position as an homage to the Ursula LeGuin novel of the same name. A particular inspiration for the duo comes from a LeGuin quotation the band has posted on its Bandcamp page: “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable–but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.” These are words that feel especially welcome right about now. Thanks to LeGallais for the MP3.

“Cut Stitch Scar” – CocoRosie

Expansive, idiosyncratic art rock

“Cut Stitch Scar” – CocoRosie

As adventurous and idiosyncratic as ever, the Casady sisters are back with their singular brand of expansive, inscrutable art rock. Alternately heavy and restrained, changing rhythms and tones at will, “Cut Stitch Scar” traffics in one of CocoRosie’s superpowers, which is the capacity to be experimental and accessible at the same time. Even as it takes a while to get one’s arms around this one as a whole experience, the song’s initial urgency brings the listener in without hesitation. Bianca Casady sings with that child-like warble of hers, but rather than hesitancy it conveys authority. The lyrics urge us to “Take a leap of faith,” and that’s just what listening to CocoRosie demands. You’re not going to know what they’re singing about, you’re not going to anticipate or necessarily vibe with all of their musical choices, but it’s so clear that they know what they’re doing that I see no reason not to jump in with them.

That said, this song maybe needs a few listens. It starts blippy and glitchy, quickly acquires a satisfying percussive groove, and starts, lyrically, in the middle of some sort of dramatic, dimly understood circumstance, perhaps a dream. The tempo, and much of the instrumentation, disappears at the tail end of the verse and into the chorus. Electronics mix with heavenly backing vocals. The lyrics, as ever with the Casadys, may often baffle but they always always scan. The groove returns, vanishes, returns. Rubbery synths are heard. Vocals get distorted. But we never get too far away from satisfying chords. That may be one of the things that keeps the song legible to the ear, however weird it gets: those satisfying chords.

Bianca and Sierra–who identify as part Native American–had an unorthodox, peripatetic childhood, moving regularly, living in a variety of different states, and being exposed to a variety of bizarre, New Age-y experiences, some more disconcerting than others. Their history together as musicians is by now too long and involved to summarize, but you can read a little more about them via the three previous times they’ve been featured on Fingertips: in 2007, 2010, and 2017.

“Cut Stitch Scar” is a song from the forthcoming album Little Death Wishes, arriving at the end of March on Joyful Noise Records. It’s the duo’s eighth album, dating back to their 2004 debut.

photo credit: Kate Russell

“True Religion” – Couch Prints

Fuzzy and buzzy

“True Religion” – Couch Prints

“True Religion” is a coherent tornado of fuzz and buzz, its swirling noise counterbalanced by unexpectedly sweet lead vocals and a concise structure. So, a question: are we starting to experience ’00s nostalgia? Between the terror attack and the economy bottoming out it wasn’t that much fun to live through but hell compared to watching democracy teetering on the edge of fascism, an ideology-crazed Supreme Court eager to treat more than half the population like second-class citizens, and social media continuing to fray our political and social fabric, the ’00s have an oddly innocent glow about them in retrospect. “True Religion” in any case gives me a 2000s feel, with its fizzing amalgam of droning electronics, bagpipe-y guitars, and disembodied vocal samples, guided from above by the feathery soprano of Jayanna Roberts.

I find it interesting to follow the percussion on this one. For the first half or so you might not think so–I’m no expert but the drumming sounds pretty programmed up to that point. All percussion clears out at 1:35 for the first iteration of the chorus, featuring just voice (Roberts in her lower register), guitar, and bass. At 1:49 we get the chorus repeated, an octave higher, with the drums kicking back in. And–again, I’m no expert–but I’ll be darned if the drumming doesn’t sound live now versus programmed. A big hint happens at 2:03, when the drum skitters through a few beats in an agreeably unexpected and (what sounds like a) three-dimensional sort of way. The drumming from this point onward hits the ear as somehow more grounded (listen in particular to the cymbal sounds), so either it’s a human drummer or the program was altered. In any case, all percussion exits abruptly at 2:36 in favor of a brief coda of noise and more of those disembodied speaking voices. Everything wraps up in just under three minutes, which is frequently a sign of a job well done.

Couch Prints is the NYC duo of Roberts and Brandon Tong. “True Religion” is the first single available from their forthcoming debut album Waterfall: Rebirth, which is due out this fall.

“Showgirls” – Man on Man

Noisy and welcoming

“Showgirls” – Man on Man

For all its fuzzy noise and punk-ish simplicity, “Showgirls” moves with a light touch and a welcoming vibe. The vocals, although filtered, feel personable, while the parade of two-part, closely contained melodies gives the ear an easy hand-hold into the squawky soundscape’s controlled hubbub. A sense of things simultaneously coming together and falling apart is underscored by a set of lyrics that are concise but pretty much unintelligible, a series of sometimes suggestive phrases (“You gotta use spit/If you wanna get used to it”) without any sense of narrative or setting. Whatever is specifically going on, it appears to be a good time, and we seem to be invited along.

Guitars make their presence known quickly and noisily, providing a wash of background buzz from the start, but it’s the instrumental break starting at 1:51 where they really break out, with a squalling six-second opening moment that deserves an extra pat on the back.

Man on Man is the duo of Roddy Bottum, best known as keyboardist for the band Faith No More, and his partner Joey Holman. What started as a pandemic-based lark has solidified into an ongoing endeavor. “Showgirls” is a track from their second album, Provincetown, which comes out next month on Polyvinyl Records. It’s one of a number of songs from the album that were written in and/or inspired by its namesake locale, at the tip of Cape Cod, with its longstanding history of LGBTQ+ respect. As the band’s name implies, Man on Man is not only open about their sexual orientation but they appear ongoingly delighted to celebrate it. We would do well to be delighted on their behalf, as it takes an insecure and/or bigoted pinhead to believe that diversity of all kinds is anything but a planetary blessing.

MP3 via KEXP.

photo credit: A.F. Cortés

“Anything You Want” – Vinyl Floor

Crafty touches

“Anything You Want” – Vinyl Floor

There’s something warm and reassuring about the sound the Danish band Vinyl Floor offers up in “Anything You Want”–the steady beat, the engaging melody, the vintage vocal tone, the horn (or horn-like) flourishes: it all evokes something timeless and balm-like in a day and age dominated by the distracting and the distractable.

Listen to how the song sounds both super casual and super well-crafted at the same time, a vibe that is not easy to achieve–I don’t think there’s a blueprint to get there, it’s just something a band can do or not do. I know I’m in good hands near the outset when the verse launches away from the home key (referring here to the chord shift at 0:13, when the singing starts), which is a crafty touch that you don’t hear every day. I like too the metric hiccups in the verse (via some sneaky 7/8 time signatures) and the left-turn chord progression that leads into the sing-along chorus and its emphatic series of “I know”s, which sound too heartfelt to resist.

And yes it’s somehow a second Danish band this week; consider it a coincidence unless you’re inclined as I am not to believe in coincidences, not fully. In any case: Vinyl Floor is the Danish duo of brothers Daniel Pedersen and Thomas Charlie Pedersen, who share lead vocal duties. “Anything You Want” is the lead track on their new album, Funhouse Mirror, the title of which accounts for the photo above, which appears to show a quartet if you don’t look carefully. The band has been around since 2007; Funhouse Mirror is their fifth full-length release. MP3 via the band. And while I can’t seem to find a place where you can actually buy the album, it is available to stream via Apple Music and Spotify.

“Everything is Simple” – Widowspeak

Brooklyn duo shows no sign of letting up

“Everything is Simple” – Widowspeak

Molly Hamilton’s languorous, whisper-like vocals–an ongoing centerpiece of the Widowspeak sound–feel especially front and center on the chunky yet dreamy “Everything is Simple.” After the hesitating, rubbery bass line establishes the song’s deliberate pace, there she is, purring lazily in your ear, ever-so-slightly behind the beat. It’s hard to resist.

And yet it’s the background instrumentation that really sells this one, for me: the central bass line, marching up and falling back; the prickly guitar licks, adding intermittently insistent metallic abrasion; and the steadying keyboard presence, fingering evocative chords and vamps at just the right time. (Listen for the first instance at 0:24; for me, this recurring moment more or less makes the whole song.) “Everything is Simple” has a circular persistence to it that works against type to transform Hamilton’s laid-back breathiness into something tenacious. “I’m still around but it’s a curse,” she happens to sing.

Widowspeak is the duo of Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas. Formed in Brooklyn in 2010 just before the borough’s indie rock mania began to recede, the band has outlasted that bygone scene with no sign of letting up. They released their sixth album, The Jacket, last month; that’s where you’ll find “Everything is Simple.” MP3 once again via KEXP.

“The Funhouse” – Francis of Delirium

Edgy ’90s guitar rock via a 2022 filter

“The Funhouse” – Francis of Delirium

What kind of name is this–Francis of Delirium? Distinctive, while bordering on the absurd? Offering a religious undertone with a feverish overtone? In any case the name seems somehow to hint at the aural palette on display, which meshes tightly articulated guitar work with a sense of structural abandon, as if you’re never sure what is about to happen next.

And what kind of band is this anyway? The front woman and guitarist is Jana Bahrich, who is 20. The drummer is Chris Hewett, who is 50. They met because Hewett’s daughters were in school with Bahrich. This was in Luxembourg (Luxembourg!?), although neither are from there. (Bahrich was born in Vancouver and later moved to Belgium and Switzerland; Hewitt is from the Seattle area.) They intially bonded over their love of Pearl Jam. Jana started the band when she was 17.

It’s a story that didn’t have to go this way but somehow they’ve turned into an internationally touring band with a compelling sound, which includes some of the best guitar playing I’ve heard in a long while–not for its intricacy or wizardry but for the confident, rhythmic melodicism anchoring its movement. The song, as Bahrich has explained, is about being unfazed by the mayhem around you, and if you can’t make it out too specifically from the lyrics, you can feel it from the music. And yet, these lyrics!: check them out because to my ears they achieve something akin to poetry for their evocative blending of the concrete and the allusive. This is worthy stuff from beginning to end.

“The Funhouse” is Francis of Delirium’s sixth offering, which includes two EPs and four singles, the latter of which sometimes have extra songs attached as well. You can check everything out on Bandcamp. MP3, one more time, via KEXP.

(Oh, and the name? It derives from a woman who lived in Jana’s grandparents’ elder care facility, who used to shout swear words at them when she visited as a child. The memory lingered.)

Free and legal MP3: Bachelor

Exhilarating ’90s rock update

“Stay in the Car” – Bachelor

A concise, exhilarating update of Breeders-like ’90s rock, “Stay in the Car” revs up with no intro; two chunky guitar strokes and we’re right in it. At which point three compelling things happen simultaneously: idiosyncratic lyrics about a fascinating woman watched from afar; irresistible same-note-harmony vocals from Bachelor’s two bandmates, Ellen Kempner and Melina Duterte; and a sinuous, descending verse melody that feels at once inevitable and surprising.

While the first verse rocks with a spare thumpiness, unleashed guitars provide a drony wall of sound for the chorus, and then continue to make their clamorous presence known in the second verse (but only, it should be noted, after a 12-second bass solo). I especially love the atonal stabs we hear at, say, 1:00 and 1:16. And yet: the third verse gets an acoustic guitar accompaniment, and it too sounds exactly right.

Most of all this song shows how a smart and effective song can be built on the foundation of not very much. In real life one day, Kempner saw an eye-catching woman, dressed in red, with wild hair, emerging from a car in a parking lot, yelling back to the man behind the wheel to find out what he wanted in the store: this became the song. And then, via rock’n’roll’s mysterious alchemy, a potentially mundane and impersonal encounter turns deep and indelible. “She said, ‘Stay in the car and I’ll grab what you want”: the lyric becomes the chorus–becomes, repeated, with that protracted “Ohhhh,” slyly majestic, a thing you can imagine transforming into some sort of cultural touchstone. And not that it will, but that it feels in the moment of listening exactly that powerful. In any case, “Stay in the Car” seems to get better and better the more I listen to it.

Kempner and Duterte were each previously known as separate artists with their own projects, Kempner at the front of the band Palehound, Duterte performing as Jay Som. You’ll find “Stay in the Car” on Bachelor’s debut album, Doomin’ Sun, which was released at the end of May on Polyvinyl Records. Listen to it over on Bandcamp, where you can also buy it as a vinyl record, a CD, a cassette, or the digital album. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: Allen LeRoy Hug

Charming, distinctive acoustic duo

“Saturnine Boy” – Allen LeRoy Hug

Sturdy and delicate at the same time, “Saturnine Boy” is a brief, distinctive song from the one-year-old LA-based duo of Tennessee Kamanski and Sarah De La Isla, doing musical business as Allen LeRoy Hug. They self-identify as a mixture of “Big Star, The Everly Brothers, Cocteau Twins, Fionn Regan and Kate Bush,” and I don’t know about you but that grabs my attention forthwith.

And I am in fact delighted by this song while being mysteriously unable to delineate any concrete reason. The duo’s voices vibrate charmingly together; acoustic guitars gambol lightly along an idiosyncratic path; the chorus is a particular enigma, comprised of one laconic lyric (“Saturnine boy things haven’t gone right”) set to an upwardly unfolding melody marked by idiosyncratic intervals. The song is sung by a narrator who appears to have fallen for someone who may not be all that outwardly lovable (“saturnine” = “gloomy and sluggish”) but has still captured her heart. I say “appears” because the lyrics are elusive and/or allusive, in quite a pleasurable way; I mean, what else can you do with a line like “Your eyes heavy luggage I carry” but love it to pieces, especially for Kamanski’s appealing phrasing (listen to how she manages nearly to rhyme “carry” with “heavy” in a most winsome way).

Allen LeRoy Hug have released just two singles to date. You can listen to both of them, and purchase them, over there at good old Bandcamp. This is apparently just the beginning: Kamanski tells me that she and De La Isla wrote and recorded “a ton of songs” throughout the lockdown, which they will be releasing as singles over the coming months. Thanks to the band for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: The Antlers

Lovely bittersweet chamber pop

“Solstice” – The Antlers

Here’s another indie-rock darling reemerging after a hiatus. In this case, the Antlers were a group that had truly hit the big-time–glowing reviews, two appearances on The Tonight Show, etc.–and yet decided to put the enterprise on ice for quite a while.

While operating generally within their familiar soundscape–a reverby, unhurried package of tender vocals, acoustic orchestrations, and electric atmospherics–the Antlers are here in 2021 with perhaps a less angst-driven sound. “I think this is the first album I’ve made that has no eeriness in it,” front man Peter Silberman has said, of the new record, Green to Gold. No eeriness, and maybe a gentler tone overall, but there remains an underlying aura of bittersweet tension that seems all but inherent to Silberman’s wavering tenor. Even a song as pure and lovely as “Solstice” doesn’t deliver an unalloyed feeling of contentment as much as the sense of a slightly apprehensive respite and/or a determination to keep the spirits up in the face of life’s inevitable travails.

But pure and lovely this surely is: Silberman delivers a deeply gratifying verse melody, that fragile voice of his navigating strong upward and downward intervals, the melody in the process exploring the breadth of the octave–an often effective songwriting maneuver. The accompaniment here is provided by deftly arranged stringed instruments and bolstered by a digital wash blurring backing vocals into white noise. The song is little more than the bewitching verse melody and a chorus comprised of wordless vocals and the two-word lyric “Keeping bright bright bright.” And yet even this super simple chorus feels rich with craft and intention, with strings providing both rhythm and texture. A beautiful effort from beginning to end.

“Solstice” is the third track of 10 on Green to Gold, which was released in March on Anti- Records. This is the first Antlers album since 2014’s Familiars. The Antlers were previously featured on Fingertips in 2009, when the Silberman solo project first became a genuine band. MP3 via KEXP.