great chorus – Page 2

Free and legal MP3: Ariel Abshire (swift & sweet, w/ a knowing hook)

Ariel Abshire

“No Great Pretender” – Ariel Abshire

The swift and simple “No Great Pretender” is an object lesson in the power of a good hook, while also an object lesson in the mysteries of what comprises a hook in the first place. The hook in question is found in the interval leaping, first up then down, that launches the chorus, with the lyric “But you caught me red-handed.”

The first leap is made between the words “you” and “caught,” and it’s a sixth interval—a relatively large space between two notes in a melody, so you notice it, but by itself not really a hook. See what happens next, however: Abshire plunges back down, this time making it a two-part interval, splitting the word “red-handed” into two different notes. There’s music theory stuff going on here that I can’t quite get my arms around but the notable thing (pun intended) is that she lands, on “handed,” a whole note below where she started; from end to end here we’ve got a major seventh interval, which melodically has deep, intrinsic appeal. Not a lot of songs sketch this interval out. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” does, but gets there with a transition at the top of the interval. Here, Abshire gets us there at the bottom. The hook is at once subtle and powerful.

So here’s a young singer/songwriter with some serious songwriting chops. Check out when she returns to the chorus after the bridge, at 2:07, and what does she do but eliminate the hook this time entirely: first skipping the “red-handed” part and then altering the melody on the “never surrender” part. It’s a tease, and of course sets up one last return before the song wraps up, not even three minutes old.

All of this talk is to take nothing away from her voice, which is strong and sweet and true. I discussed this last time she was here, in April 2009. She was 17 at that point, with one record under her belt, but a number of years of experience already singing around Austin. “No Great Pretender” is a track from her second album, the appropriately titled Still So New, due out in August. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Matt Pond PA (absurdly catchy, FMac-ish indie pop)

Matt Pond PA

“Love To Get Used” – Matt Pond PA

Matt Pond PA isn’t going anywhere. Thankfully. Indie rock stalwarts who precede the MP3 age (just barely), the group has been through many iterations (Matt Pond himself is the only member remaining from the 1998 version), has recorded eight albums and, now, eight EPs. And I’m not sure they’ve ever sounded better than this. (Which is saying something; they had already been featured four times here, all for excellent songs.)

Launched off a stomping drumbeat and a wiggle of a guitar lick, “Love To Get Used” is all sinew and punch, its brisk, no-nonsense verse building knowingly into a chorus nearly addictive in its catchiness. Normally, I listen to these songs over and over as I’m getting to know them and beginning to write about them, but this one, yikes, someone’s gonna have to yank the plug on me. I think I’ve listened about 900 times by now; I’m such a sucker for melodies that repeat over a changing series of chords. The song has the churning, organic drive of something from a mid-’70s Fleetwood Mac album; 19-year-old Ariel Abshire even stops in to play Stevie Nicks to Pond’s Lindsey Buckingham. Not that Pond sounds anything like LB, mind you; he has in fact long had one of my favorite 21st-century rock’n’roll voices—at once warm and weathered, with an elusive range and a distinctive timbre. (I had more to say about this last time the band was featured, in January 2010.)

“Love To Get Used” is the lead track from the band’s just-released EP, Spring Fools, which you can buy either digitally or physically, via Altitude Records, which appears to be the band’s label although it doesn’t say so anywhere. MP3 via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: This Year’s Model (Swedish band w/ lean & worthy sound)

This Year’s Model is a Swedish band that does not sound like a Swedish band, even though there is no one way a Swedish band sounds.

This Year's Model

“No Miracles” – This Year’s Model

Brisk and anthemic, “No Miracles” launches into place via a Stax Records beat, all bass and drums (and yeah there’s a keyboard somewhere in there too). Within six seconds, front man Niklas Gustafsson joins in; he’s got that Martin Fry-like gravitas/melodrama thing going. His breathing is part of his singing. The melodies seem all tops and bottoms. “No Miracles” quickly and unassumingly establishes a presence, a central core of lean and worthy sound; we are paying attention; this is sneaky good stuff.

And then the chorus: pure pay dirt, with its descending-melody hooks, at once plaintive and powerful, and its mixture of blurred and concrete lyrics that both grab your ear and leave you guessing. This Year’s Model is a Swedish band that does not sound like a Swedish band, even though there is no one way a Swedish band sounds. The quintet seemingly takes its name from Elvis Costello but doesn’t imitate him in any apparent way; they make music, instead, that has learned from him—perhaps the truest tribute of all.

“No Miracles” is from the band’s second album, We Walk Like Ghosts, released in February on Marsh-Marigold Records. MP3 via the band’s site. Thanks to visitor Gustav for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Land of Talk (gorgeous & expansive, w/ FMac feel)

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency.

“Quarry Hymns” – Land of Talk

As gentle and brisk as a Fleetwood Mac hit from the ’70s, “Quarry Hymns” funnels Lizzie Powell’s dynamic energy into an unexpected container, and it works with almost goosebumpy potency. Powell’s slightly fuzzy voice serves her well in Christine McVie territory like this, and her guitar playing—often tough and slashy in the past—here becomes the picture of monumental restraint. Check out how she clears the way, at last, for a solo at 3:06 and then check out how few notes she plays, and how quietly, and with what graceful dissonance. I recommend listening to the guitar throughout, as Powell is relentlessly interesting, even with the volume turned way down.

While “Quarry Hymns” is on the long side—more than five and a half minutes, which can be dangerous for pop songs—the effect is expansive rather than lengthy. Give a lot of credit to the hook in the chorus, which is so strong and effortless that it carries the song along in a timeless, almost trance-like state.

The Montreal-based Land of Talk is an established Fingertips favorite, having been featured previously in ’07, ’08, and ’09. Each song is worth checking out. Powell is the singer, songwriter, and centerpiece; the band has shape-shifted around her, with each recording offering a different iteration. They appear currently to be a trio. “Quarry Hymns” is from the group’s second full-length album, Cloak and Cipher, due out next month on Saddle Creek. MP3 via Pitchfork.

Free and legal MP3: The Vaccines (catchy lo-fi goodness)

“If You Wanna” – The Vaccines

Joy Division meets—somehow—the Ramones. Don’t ask, just listen, it works. This is not a “composition”‘; this is not complex; it’s muddy and lo-fi (the band says it’s a demo, actually) but the spirit is shiny and polished and yikes is it catchy in the best possible way. And can I take a moment to rant about how badly the word “catchy” is misused in the age of internet music writing? Something isn’t “catchy” just because the singer repeats himself over and over, or just because the tune is like a nursery rhyme. Just because something gets stuck in your head doesn’t mean it’s catchy; it could be irritating and do that too. Something is catchy if the melody is smart, reasonably short, and somewhat familiar-sounding. Of course it’s a fine line between familiar-sounding and same-old, same-old. Catchy songs usually walk that razor’s edge with flair.

Oh and let’s underline the “smart” part. Others may disagree, but here in Fingertipsland, being dumb or badly-written disqualifies a song from being catchy. (And I mean dumb dumb, not smart dumb, like the Ramones were.) To me, catchy is a glowing word, the sign of a pure pop song; I don’t debase the word by using it on dumb shit. So, okay, “If You Wanna”: brilliantly gloriously catchy. With noisy guitars. The chorus sounds like an old friend but there’s a twist in the air here. Maybe it has to do with how the rhythm shifts from the Raveonettes-like drive of the verse, with its equally distributed beat, to the backbeat-heavy chorus, with such a strong emphasis of the two and four beats that you feel blown halfway back to a far more innocent time than ours (“It’s got a backbeat/You can’t lose it…”). Note how this shift coincides with the audible innocence of the song’s narrator, who seems certain that all be well should his lost lover, who obviously left of her own accord, suddenly decides she made a mistake. He sings hopefully; you the listener know there’s no hope.

The Vaccines are a brand new band from the U.K.; I can find no specific information about them anywhere—they just joined Facebook last week, for crying out loud. Thanks muchly to the fine fellows at Said the Gramophone for the head’s up on this one. MP3 via the band, at Soundcloud.

Free and legal MP3: Meridene (brisk, punchy power pop)

“Gone, Baby Gone” – Meridene

The beauties of power pop are many and varied but not the least of its charms is how adaptable it is to the complete range of human emotions. Feeling wonderful? Power pop’s a great medium for expression. Feeling ambivalent? Go with power pop. Feeling low? It’s somehow pretty good for that too. Case in point, “Gone, Baby Gone,” which as far as I can tell is dealing with a bummer of some kind (I’m guessing, mind you, but the entire thing does end with the words “It hurts like hell”). And yet it does so with the same package of spiky-crunchy guitar riffs, rumbly drums, and killer chorus, complete with a sub-chorus, that a more lyrically upbeat effort might put on display. It’s a great thing, that power pop.

The genre seems to go best with higher male voices, so Meridene does well with the vocal services of Trevor Ives, who also plays guitar. It’s Ives’ responsibility here, in fact, to sell us on the mood of the song, since the upbeat music misdirects us. He does this quite well, in part by channeling a bit of early-Police-era Sting, alternating in tone between forceful exhortation and a breathier sort of resignation. The song’s stomping succinctness also suggests something darker than lighter. Notice, after all, that we only hear the terrific chorus two times; happier songs tend to overstay their welcome a bit more readily. And notice too, as long as you’re noticing things, how the chorus is enhanced big-time by three subtle touches: 1) the lead-in from a so-called “sub-chorus”—a separate part of the song that is neither verse nor chorus; 2) some awesome but subtle chord changes underneath the anthemic melody; 3) some awesome but subtle harmonies underneath the same anthemic melody.

Meridene is a quartet from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. “Gone, Baby Gone” is a song—sixth track, actually; impressive—from the band’s second full-length album, Something Like Blood, due out on Eau Claire-based Amble Down Records in September. MP3 via Amble Down; thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Color of Clouds (lovely blend of acoustic and electronic)

With a hint of glitch seasoning its spry intimacy, “Brother” is the work of a band with a gift for uncomplicated complexity, if that phrase makes any sense. Great pleasures await here in straightforward juxtapositions. For one immediate example, listen to how the beat glides seamlessly from a chime-like electronic stutter into a cozy 4/4 with a wistful bounce, driven by the gentlest of drumbeats. And then, without fuss, enters singer Kelli Scarr, arriving as if she’d been here all along, starting the story just about in mid-sentence, in tones of bittersweet honey. She has us at hello.

“Brother” – Color of Clouds

And things only get better from here in a song blending the acoustic and electronic in a most gracious manner–the instrumental palette here is nothing short of delightful–and building towards a brilliant, light-footed chorus. I still can’t tell if that’s some sort of steel guitar in there or a nuanced synthesizer, but those are definitely stringed instruments that arrive for a first visit at 0:57, returning with the chorus to mesh almost heart-breakingly with that steel-guitar-ish sound and, most nimbly, that subtle persistent electronic glitch in the beat. And yes I’m afraid this is one of those songs that’s far more trouble to describe than to listen to. Rest your eyes and reward your ears with repeated listens.

All three band members were previously in the electronic band Moonraker, and Scarr has also been a frequent collaborator with Moby. “Brother” is a song from the debut Color of Clouds album, Satellite of Love, released digitally this week via Stuhr Records. MP3 via One Track Mind.

Free and legal MP3: Gold Motel(new Chicago band w/ ’60s flair)

“Don’t Send the Searchlights” – Gold Motel

With a clipped, fleet Motown beat, an expansive girl-group-style sing-along chorus, and an oh-so-classic length of two minutes fifty seconds, “Don’t Send the Searchlights” has one eye quite obviously on our musical past. But at the same time there’s something lovely and casual going on that allows the music to transcend its influences; Greta Morgan, the band’s singer, songwriter, and keyboard player, has the sound of someone just kind of happening upon this song rather than sweating the historical details, and “Don’t Send the Searchlights” jumps and swings accordingly.

I think a good part of the song’s flair arises from the melodic intervals Morgan builds into both the verse and the chorus. You can hear an example when she sings “before we hit the dawn” at 0:18–from the “we” she jumps down a fifth to “hit” and then back up a fifth to “dawn.” This larger-than-normal interval creates a sense of movement and freedom, and in so doing reflects the lyrics, which on the surface extol the benefits of breaking off a relationship so it won’t turn sour (“Always leave before tomorrow comes/All the greatest loves are the unfinished ones”). But don’t believe everything she says. There’s something wistful playing at the edges of the song’s breeziness, and once again a melodic interval comes into play: the leaps she takes while singing both “goodbye” and “good guy” turn on the half-step difference between the first and second “good,” which turns the chord from major to minor. She may not be as happy as she’d like to believe she is. And the chorus ends musically unresolved–not typically a sign that all is well.

Formerly of the Hush Sounds (2005-2008), Morgan assembled the five-piece Gold Motel in 2009. “Don’t Send the Searchlights” is one of five songs on the band’s self-released, self-titled debut EP, which came out in December. Expect a full length in June. MP3 via the band’s site.

Free and legal MP3: Slideshow Freak (glam-ish bedroom rock)

“Something More” – Slideshow Freak

This song, on the other hand, had me at hello, pretty much. A simple arpeggio, some electro-tinkling, some smooth keyboard vamping, then, boom–“Something More” begins right in its sweet spot, with its full-out, neo-glam-rock chorus. Somehow that’s really all it needs. Yes, there are verses in between and surely they kind of have to be there–a song can’t be all chorus, can it?–but you’ll be hard-pressed afterwards to remember exactly what they sounded like. I’m thinking you’ll be equally hard-pressed to dislodge the chorus from your head, not least for the way its swinging, backbeat-driven melody offers up pronouncements as big and dauntless as its sound: “It takes a better man than me/To save a broken heart”; “I spend my life on my back/But never see the stars”; et al.

Slideshow Freak is another one of those “not a band, just a guy” acts made possible by 21st-century technology, musical know-how, and a lot of time on one’s hands. The guy this time is one Jamie Wright, who was born and raised in the UK but appears to be living in Florida now. “Something More” is the lead track to the debut Slideshow Freak EP, We Should Swing, which was released in July on Filthy Little Angels Records. Thanks to the typically excellent Low Slung Podcast for the head’s up. MP3 via Filthy Little Angels. Note that you can download all six songs from the EP on the FLA site.

Free and legal MP3: Bad Veins (nuanced indie rock w/ huge chorus)

“Gold and Warm” – Bad Veins

Propulsive and canny, “Gold and Warm” sneaks a huge, sing-along chorus into a multifaceted piece that sounds very little like standard-issue indie-rock-duo music in an age in which the duo has become oddly commonplace.

The dreamy, retro-y orchestral intro is an immediate clue that the song may not unfold as expected. While “Gold and Warm” drives with a determined beat, it also opens itself at various points to more delicate touches, and although singer-songwriter-guitarist-keyboardist Benjamin Davis pushes his voice through something of a Strokes-like filter, he doesn’t use that as an excuse to sing monotonously, which is something this particular effect typically encourages. The rich-toned Davis shows me a thing or two about the emotional range that’s still possible for a filtered voice, while partner Sebastien Schultz gives the duo the gift of a human drummer, grounding the band’s sound in something nuanced and organic, often putting his cymbal work more forward than the drumming in the mix. And then listen to him work the drum kit in the instrumental break that accompanies the instrumental interlude three-quarters of the way into the song (2:46)–that’s just some good, old-fashioned drumming the likes of which you might have heard from Ringo way back when: patient, spacious, self-effacing, and effective precisely because it doesn’t try to be intricate or show-off-y.

“Gold and Warm” is the second track on the Cincinnati-based band’s self-titled debut, released last month on Dangerbird Records. MP3 via Spinner.