duo – Page 4 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Minor Alps (minor-key indie-rock drive)

Not only do are the musical instincts of Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws thoroughly interconnected, but their voices are so oddly similar that Hatfield has been quoted as saying that even she sometimes can’t distinguish between them on record.

“I Don’t Know What To Do With My Hands” – Minor Alps

Minor Alps is the duo of Juliana Hatfield and Matthew Caws—Caws the front man from the band Nada Surf, Hatfield the long-time indie-rock/alt-rock goddess—and this is a duo in the most intertwined sense of the word. Not only do their melodic, ’90s-based musical instincts seem thoroughly interconnected, but their voices are so oddly similar that Hatfield has been quoted as saying that even she sometimes can’t distinguish between them on record. On this song, the vocals are shared throughout, and the verses are sung without harmony, accentuating the indistinguishability. This becomes especially interesting given the subject matter, which is the awkwardness between two people spending the evening together, getting to know each other, but wondering how to instigate physical contact. Having both the male and female voice speaking the same thoughts underlines the poignancy of the insecurity. It is a small-subject song enlarged greatly by lyrical discipline and musical straightforwardness. The subtle but definitive opening is the shift in the last verse, which moves the problem from the local to the global, a songwriting technique that never fails to move me:

I can’t decide on the channel
I’m just flipping around, maybe you can choose
Maybe some kind of monster
Maybe I just don’t know how to reach out

I love the graceful blurring of meaning in the third line, as the narrator seems to slip from talking about what’s on television to what may be the state of his/her heart and mind and being. This is further insinuated by the last iteration of the chorus, as the song ends, when the lyrics finally leave out the words “with my hands,” and the relentless minor-key drive of the music arrives at both apotheosis and long-delayed resolution.

The debut Minor Alps album, Get There, came out on Barsuk Records back in October without causing as much fuss as it might have; critics liked it but it never rose to buzz level here in the only place that matters, the internet. (Please add dripping sarcasm to that last sentence, if you haven’t already.) Thanks to the ever-discerning Lauren Laverne at BBC 6 for the head’s up on the more recent availability of this song as a free and legal MP3. You can download it above, in the usual way; but note that this one plus six others are currently available as free and legal downloads via NoiseTrade, where leaving a “tip” for the artists is also encouraged. Note that four of the songs on NoiseTrade are not on the album. Alternatively, the fine song “Buried Plans” (on the album) is available as a free and legal download via Barsuk Records.

Free and legal MP3: The Honey Trees (lush, disciplined, gorgeous)

Lush, disciplined song with a drop-dead gorgeous chorus.

“Nightingale” – The Honey Trees

You don’t expect a song named “Nightingale” to begin with a drum solo. You do expect a song named “Nightingale” to be sung by a someone with a lovely voice. You don’t expect any song—named “Nightingale,” or not—to have a drop-dead, goose-bump gorgeous chorus, simply because there’s no sense in getting one’s expectations that high. Bonus points here for the musical elegance of the transition from verse to chorus (first heard at 0:52-0:55). Note too that even in the rarified world of crystal-pure voices, The Honey Trees’ singer Becky Filip deserves some special props. Hers is not simply pretty but full of subtle character, and impressively athletic (for example, the supple leap she takes at the end of the phrase “skin and bones,” at 0:40).

The song is lush, disciplined, unfalteringly interesting. The verse feels purposeful, as Filip floats her beguiling voice above a syncopated rhythm. I like the sudden clearing of the minimal bridge (2:26). But, seriously, this chorus. Like many acutely beautiful things, it is not perfect. It is less full-fledged chorus than indecipherable sentence, containing perhaps 10 words, and encompassing (by my count) at least six moments of ravishing harmonic delight along the way. It ends both unresolved and somewhat incomplete-seeming, the perhaps inevitable result of the breathtaking mini-journey it pulls us through. The first time you hear it, in fact, the power of its beauty may not quite to sink in before the song slides sideways into a liminal section of wordless vocals (1:10). The next two times, the chorus is repeated, creating what may well be the song’s finest moment: the drum-led threshold between the chorus’s irresolute end and its immediate repetition, which we hear both at 2:13 and at 3:14. And that second time—don’t miss it—the chorus gets an additional repeat, which this time is preceded by an unexpected upward melisma at 3:43 that in its own way introduces a delicate kind of anticipatory closure into a melody that otherwise resists completion.

The Honey Trees are a duo from central California (Filip’s band mate is Jacob Wick). “Nightingale” is a song from the band’s debut full-length album, Bright Fire. An earlier EP was released in 2009. The album was produced by Jeremy Larson in Springfield, Missouri, and will be released in April.

Free and legal MP3: Satchmode (buoyant, wistful electronic pop)

“Best Intentions” – Satchmode

Both giddily buoyant and touchingly wistful, “Best Intentions” is, indeed, electronic music offering up its best intentions, finding sweet humanity in and around the fabricated nature of the sound. I love when electronic music can locate this special place, where synthetics come full circle back to genuine spirit; it almost single-handedly gives me faith that even in this black-and-white age of zeros and ones we will yet learn to reside more often in the good knotty life to be found in all the gray that remains around us if we only look and listen.

And even if not, this is a fine fine song. Note the slow-building intro, and note I often do not have patience for slow-building intros, and note that I really like this one. It begins on a chord that I can only describe as heavenly, as in if there is a heaven, this is the kind of chord you will hear upon entry, an unearthly blend of peacefulness and edgy wonder. An old-fashioned radio voice cycles in and out as we eventually settle on the appealing if deceptively complex bounce that comprises the song’s bewitching groove. The airy yet commanding falsetto lead vocal is, in the verse, mixed knowingly on top of what sounds like a distorted bass synthesizer (listen way down below for it); there is something in the layering of those two sounds that really engages the ear. Or my ear, anyway, which also hears in this juxtaposition an aural metaphor for how the music’s delightful bop is counter-balanced by the plaintive story sketched by the skillful and concise lyrics.

And then the chorus, counterintuitively, peels back the sound rather than piles more on—we get little but the voice and that central, captivating bounce. I especially like the skippy upward flourish we get at 1:38 and 1:56. Actually, I especially like pretty much everything here. It’s only January but this is a shoo-in for a 2014 favorite come December.

Satchmode is the Los Angeles-based duo of Gabe Donnay and Adam Boukis. They formed in 2013. “Best Intentions” is the lead track on their debut EP, Collide, which was released last week. If you visit the band’s SoundCloud page, you can currently download the EP’s title track for free. Thanks to the band for the MP3, and thanks to Largehearted Boy for the initial lead.

Free and legal MP3: Blurry Lines (power pop from Charleston SC)

Not all power pop songs are good, by any means, but every good power pop song, to my ears, is almost inescapably great.

“The Hunted” – Blurry Lines

The persistence of power pop well into the 21st century is something of a musical mystery. Even in its relative heyday, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, power pop never captured any kind of mainstream attention for itself. Small wonder—the genre is too elusive and difficult to describe for mass acceptance; it seems perversely fitting that some of the genre’s most definitive songs pre-date its actual existence (yeah, it’s complicated), and equally perversely fitting that the biggest hits associated with it are songs that I, at least, don’t consider power pop at all (I’m looking at you, “My Sharona” and “What I Like About You”). And yet, 30-some-odd years later, there are still new bands pointing themselves in this star-crossed direction. I have my own theories about this, but I’ve digressed enough for now. The bottom line is I’m a melody guy and this is a melodic genre. Not all power pop songs are good, by any means, but every good power pop song, to my ears, is almost inescapably great.

“The Hunted” is very good indeed, so you do the math. We get the ringing guitar line and a pounding 4/4 drumbeat; we get the sweet-voiced lead singer; we get a couple of different, indelible melodies; and we get it all in three minutes and twenty-six seconds. What seals something as power pop to me is an abiding tunefulness that feels both majestic and pining; there’s almost always an ache buried in a good power pop song, and the fact that it comes in a candy wrapping is no doubt a big part of the allure. I hear this grand bittersweetness right in the opening salvo (0:17), as Randall Cox sings, “I took a shoebox full of poems written ABAB style” and even as the melody resolves we are denied the underlying resolving chords, which now makes me realize something new about power pop: that a lot of its vitality comes the pre-resolution moment. Here, for instance, the melody that gets us from “full of poems” through “written ABAB” is what pulls me in and has me falling hard for this song. Likewise in the chorus, the “ran through the woods” part (0:55) seems more the heart of the melody than the actual climax. And if you think I am overanalyzing, try this: I believe these guys are paying homage to the greatest proto-power-pop song of all time in the bridge (2:17) when Cox sings, twice, “We’re going all the way.” Coincidence? I think not. Even if they didn’t do it on purpose.

Based in Charleston, South Carolina, Blurry Lines is a duo featuring Cox on lead vocals and keys and Richard Hussey on guitar, bass, and backup vocals. “The Hunted” is from the debut Blurry Lines release, an EP entitled Minor Works in Major Keys, Vol. 1, released in September and produced by Josh Kaler, who plays drums on three of the tracks, including this one. A Volume 2 is due out before year’s end.

Free and legal MP3: Fé (graceful, melodic, brilliant)

Now this is the kind of graceful, melodic, idiosyncratic-yet-accessible music that hits me right in my sweet spot—the kind of song Fingertips pretty much exists for.

“She Came – Fé

Now this is the kind of graceful, melodic, idiosyncratic-yet-accessible music that hits me right in my sweet spot—the kind of song Fingertips pretty much exists for. I instantly love the sense of movement and the distant ringing guitars in the introduction. And then the lyrics!; in which we are treated to a new classic opening line:

West London women have no passion
Sadness to them is just another word

Surely there is something Smiths-like in “She Came”‘s fluid, minor-key lamentation, but this is no knock-off; it bursts with a rigorous core of its own device. The melody’s brilliant development, combined with the sly harmonic and rhythmic jiggles that give it continual life, actually bring Steely Dan to mind, and that’s kind of an odd thing because this doesn’t sound at all like Steely Dan. But maybe a few of you will hear what I’m hearing. And if the opening lyrical salvo isn’t enough, there’s the chorus’s closing lines to ponder, which not only nail some kind of beautiful, aphoristic ambiguity, but arrive with an offhanded musical resolution that sneaks in and knocks my socks off:

A weaker man may not have tried
A stronger man may have survived

Fé is the London-based duo of Ben Moorhouse and Leo Duncan, new enough to the scene that they still, apparently, ride the Underground and regale commuters with skiffle-like takes on early rock’n’roll songs. These guys may well be going places that you have to get out of the Tube to arrive at.

Free and legal MP3: Big Deal (simple, compelling rock’n’roll)

There’s something grand and achy in the big sound of the London duo Big Deal—even as it bursts with movement and purpose, I feel an undercurrent of delicious melancholy here.

“Swapping Spit” – Big Deal

There’s something grand and achy in the big sound of the London duo Big Deal—it bursts with movement and purpose on the one hand, serves up an undercurrent of delicious melancholy on the other. This may be rooted in something as simple and structural as the song-length use of octave male-female harmonies/lead vocals. My love for octave harmonies (i.e., the same note sung an octave apart) is long established; when they come in the guise of a lead vocal shared by a man and a woman, it’s a yummy treat times two (or three, or four; not sure math works here, actually). The fact that the harmonies culminate in the repeated line, each time the chorus comes around, “I will, I will” seals the deal: I can’t follow the song lyrically, but that “I will, I will” is an arresting aural paradox—hopeful on the surface, desperate below.

And give me a simple song, tightly conceived, over a sprawling complexity any day of the week. Or, at least, some days. “Swapping Spit” has so much happening within its apparent rock’n’roll simplicity that I listen to it over and over without tiring. The male-female octave harmonies turn out to be a perfect metaphor for the effectiveness of the entire song—it’s the same note being sung (simple) but an octave apart (complication) and by opposing genders (further complication). And so do we also in “Swapping Spit” get: a verse that has two different versions (a lower melody the first time [0:16], a higher melody the second time [1:19], and boy do I love the character of both voices in their combined upper ranges); a chorus that first of all has a pre-chorus and then, the second time around, has expanded versions of both the pre-chorus and the regular chorus; and then, slyly, a song that places its title into the extended part of the chorus. And as for that title, it too offers up compelling equivocation, as Alice Costelloe and Kacey Underwood sing words—“All the lovers swapping spit/I’ll get used to it”—that mess with our heads. Love (good thing? bad thing?) comes up as one more arresting paradox.

“Swapping Spit” is a new single upcoming from Big Deal’s second album, June Gloom, which was in fact released back in June, on Mute Records.

Free and legal MP3: Dungeonesse (gauzy integration of robotic & organic)

“Nightlight” combines a sweeping, Annie Lennox-like sheen with a compressed, laptop-rock sensibility, and lives to tell about it.

“Nightlight” – Dungeonesse

“Nightlight” combines a sweeping, Annie Lennox-like sheen with a compressed, laptop-rock sensibility, and lives to tell about it. An explicit verse-chorus structure is surrendered in favor of an interwoven A/B/sort-of-A structure and a succinct, recurring, cumulatively magnetic melodic hook: that five-interval leap we hear right near the beginning (0:06), and repeatedly throughout. Singer Jenn Wasner—well-known in indie circles as half of the Baltimore duo Wye Oak—sets free her inner blue-eyed-soul singer, giving voice in this side project to a fuller, deeper, more melismatic vocal style than employed in her home band, in which she has typically sounded duskier and reverb-ier.

I find the song’s integration of the robotic and the organic continually compelling. At the beginning, Wasner croons over a dry, snapping electronic beat. The percussion disappears in section two (0:45), which is driven instead by a double-time melody and reverberating, fairy-tale synths. Some programmed rat-a-tats transition us into a hazy third section (0:57) that is a close relative to section one but featuring wily keyboard runs that emerge so seamlessly from the electronics as almost to manifest unnoticed. The few measures of piano-like presence that follow seem both natural and dreamlike before melting back into electronics as the first section is reintroduced—although this time (1:19) minus the aforementioned snapping beat, which lends an elusive softness to this gauzy yet substantive composition. More clearly electronic percussion returns for a final iteration of the third section, the piano work now replaced by a rich interlacing of harmonies and wordless backing vocal lines. The song might have faded out here; instead, the double-time second section is brought back as a kind of coda, and when Wasner takes its final words up an octave, we arrive at a suddenly satisfying and unprogrammed conclusion.

Dungeonesse is a collaboration between Wasner and singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist/producer Jon Ehrens, who has been involved in a number of bands, including White Life and the Art Department. Wasner and Ehrens composed the songs for Dungeonesse remotely, with the originally Baltimore-based Ehrens relocated to L.A. and Wasner on tour with Wye Oak. The duo’s self-titled album was released in May on the Bloomington, Indiana-based label Secretly Canadian. MP3 via Secretly Canadian.

Free and legal MP3: Pure Bathing Culture (Portland duo making warm & graceful music)

Here is a crafty duo from Portland—Daniel Hindman on guitar, Sarah Versprille on keys and vocals—that appears to understand the power of restraint

“Pendulum” – Pure Bathing Culture

Immediately warm and welcoming, “Pendulum” punctuates its laid-back opening groove with a concise guitar riff—but only twice. It’s a sturdy, time-honored three-chord descent, the kind of riff with which a typical rock band might pound you into submission. Here, then, is a crafty duo from Portland—Daniel Hindman on guitar, Sarah Versprille on keys and vocals—that appears to understand the power of restraint; they use the riff only in the intro and in the chorus and each time we hear it repeated just the two times. Instead of walloping you with it, they caress you.

And then there’s the matter of singer Versprille, and the sweet vigor with which she sings. Even through a smeary blanket of reverb, her voice has a cloudless purity. It too feels like a kind of caress. Oh, and when we only heard the riff twice in the introduction, it was followed by an ancillary instrumental melody gliding gracefully down and partially back up a full octave. That turns out to be the climactic melody line in the chorus, and as in the intro, it follows those two iterations of the riff; but see here how the riff now weaves itself artfully below the emphatic melody line. The entire song, upon repeated listens, feels like one grand and artful weave, and Hindman’s guitar lines turn out to be just as much the cause of delight as his band mate’s vocals.

“Pendulum” is a song from the duo’s full-length debut, Moon Tides, due to arrive in August on Partisan Records. The pair previously released a four-song EP in 2012, and was featured here for the song “Ivory Coast” last May. Thanks to Lauren Laverne over at BBC Radio 6 Music for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: AM & Shawn Lee (sublime summertime groove)

“The instruments are played, the vocals are sung, and the songs are written.”

“All the Love” – AM & Shawn Lee

Too early to nominate the Song of the Summer? Probably. But this one should stay in consideration, not only for its slinky, slidy beat, which patrols the razor’s edge between funk and disco, but for its honest, dare I say organic soundscape. These guys may construct songs while thousands of miles apart—AM is a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles, Shawn Lee a London-based multi-instrumentalist and producer—but they’re building from genuine components; as their press material puts it: “The instruments are played, the vocals are sung, and the songs are written.” It’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it.

The physical nature of the construction gives “All the Love” a resplendence difficult to generate digitally. Unlike our ubiquitous 21st-century beats, this is first and foremost a bass-and-guitar-driven groove. And listen to how spare and disciplined the guitar riffs are! Lesson number one: when the song is written, the players don’t have to show off, they just have to show up. Listen too to the instrumental break beginning at 2:15: you can hear the space between the bass and the drums and how the retro, space-agey synthesizer squiggles vertically down through it. And let’s not overlook what is almost always overlooked in any kind of funked-up setting: the melodies, which here are wonderfully concise and well-conceived—the verse with its carefully considered intervals, the chorus with its chugging, uphill, double-time hook.

“All the Love” is from the album La Musique Numérique, released in May on Park The Van Records. This one follows the duo’s 2011 debut Celestial Electric. Download above or via SoundCloud, which allows you to comment directly to the band, and spares me a bit of bandwidth in the process.

Free and legal MP3: Standish/Carlyon (downtempo allure)

Throw Prince, Portishead, and Steely Dan in a blender and if you’re lucky you might get something like this.

“Gucci Mountain” – Standish/Carlyon

Throw Prince, Portishead, and Steely Dan in a blender and if you’re lucky you might get something like this. And while those are three not-too-similar artists the one thing they have in common is an exquisite attention to sonic detail. The Melbourne-based duo Standish/Carlyon are cut from the same cloth.

Here is one downtempo brooder that, to begin with, trusts in its own slowness. Listen to how even the bubbling synthesizer percolates slowly, and leaves a delicious amount of blank space in its wake. So quickly does it train us to anticipate restraint in fact that the one extra high note it hits at 0:36 gives the ear an unexpected frisson of excitement. The entire song is just that carefully and spaciously crafted. Important note: there are no hand-claps, synthesized or otherwise. (Pet peeve alert!: hand-claps in slow songs. They make no logical or aural sense. I could mention names but I won’t.) And while we are awash with reverb, the song still displays great clarity—a compelling combination. The bass, meanwhile, is played with painterly discretion, which may have something to do with the fact that vocalist Conrad Standish is also the bass player. In my listening experience, singing bassists approach their instruments differently. The best example of this song’s uncanny capacity to turn reticence into grandeur is how arresting the chorus is when it finally arrives, even as its melody is pretty much the same as the verse’s. The trick is that in the chorus, for the first time, we get the fulfillment of an uninterrupted musical line (suddenly, no blank space). Standish now flipping up into his falsetto doesn’t hurt. No idea what he’s singing about here (“I’m chewing bamboo off the coast of Casanova”?), and it’s still thrilling.

Standish and guitarist Tom Carlyon (who also handles the electronics) were previously in a trio called The Devastations, which released their last record in 2007. “Gucci Mountain” is a track from the duo’s forthcoming debut, entitled Deleted Scenes, arriving next month via Felte.