guitars – Page 6 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Terminal Gods (dark yet uplifting guitar rock)

Hook-iness nestled in a gnarled shelter of blazing guitars.

“The Wheels of Love” – Terminal Gods

A pounding ferocity that makes me want to talk in clipped sentences. Hook-iness nestled in a gnarled shelter of blazing guitars. Almost poignant in its refusal of poignancy. Black leather hiding a tender heart. Those gruff, baritone lead vocals that almost aren’t even like singing.

But then there’s the discipline of the guitar lines themselves that give rise to a need for articulate description. I hear unexpected echoes of Big Country’s bagpipey sound lurking in the fervent fingerwork, and something of that band’s earnest hopefulness too, despite Terminal Gods’ best efforts to cloak themselves in a goth-ier growl. The song is simply too well built to be a downer, the interplay between vocalist Robert Cowlin and guitarist Robert Maisey too vivid to do anything but uplift.

Cowlin and Maisey were formerly in a band called The Mumbles from 2005 to 2011; Terminal Gods was formed shortly thereafter. “Wheels of Love” is from the band’s debut release, a six-song EP entitled Machine Beat Messiah, released in late November. You can listen and/or buy via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Lo Fine

Friendly if uneasy midtempo rocker

“All We Need is Hell” – Lo Fine

Friendly and uneasy at the same time, “All We Need is Hell” is a guitar-filled midtempo number overflowing with smooth riffs, honeyed melodies, and weary-to-acerbic observations. What’s not to like?

Despite the seemingly laid-back pace, the song accrues a crafty urgency through the course of its concise three minutes. I attribute this in part to the appealing, multifaceted guitar work, as a crunchy undercurrent builds in the second half that was unapparent in the first. And the song structure itself is partly behind the cumulative power. To begin with, note how the verse and the chorus feel and sound similar musically, even as they are not actually the same. This gives the song, over time, an extra vigor, since in this case, the chorus feels less like a change of direction and more like a continued, purposeful movement down the existing path. And then there’s the matter of how the titular phrase is employed—not as an established part of the chorus but as one-time utterance in the center of the song, before the second time we hear the chorus. This strikes me as an unusual and stimulating songwriting device.

Lyrically, the song draws me in with its combination of understandable phrases and less comprehensible longer sentiments. But the lyrical linchpin is surely the line that opens the first iteration of the chorus (0:40): “Getting rid of all the demons/To get down to just the devil”—a disconcertingly profound idea, sung with front man Kevin O’Rourke’s slightly unsettling blend of sweetness and forewarning.

Lo Fine is the longstanding, ongoing musical project helmed by singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist O’Rourke. Founded in 1998 in Northampton, Massachusetts, Lo Fine has released three full-length albums and three EPs over the course of its meandering existence. “All We Need is Hell” is from the third album, Want is a Great Need, which was recorded largely in O’Rourke’s adopted home of Truro, near the tip of Cape Cod, and came out in November. A more recently released second single, “More Better,” is also available for download now, via SoundCloud. Thanks again to Magnet Magazine for the MP3.

photo credit: Petar Dopchev

Free and legal MP3: Sundara Karma (young British band w/ expansive sound)

This swaggering, open-hearted song is not something I’m expecting from four teenagers in the year 2013.

“Freshbloom” – Sundara Karma

So the four guys in this band are 17 years old. Combine that with how expansive and assured and un-gimmicky a song this is and there is hardly anything more to say. It is a strange and beautiful world.

Or, in any case, this swaggering, open-hearted song is not something I’m expecting from four teenagers in the year 2013. I like how confidently “Freshbloom” bases itself in one chord, as the entire introduction and then nearly the entire verse unfolds without a chord change. This is easy to do in a bad song but difficult to do in a good song; melodic fortitude is required. When the chord change finally happens, at 0:50, we then get an extra lyrical line that is either an addendum to the verse or a precursor to the chorus but is in any case a cool thing—an unusual songwriting twist that manages to catch the ear and yet not draw undue attention to itself at the same time. Delivering everything to us in fine fettle is singer Oscar Pollock (alternatively listed online as Oscar Lulu), and while I really didn’t want to dwell on how not-17 he sounds, I can’t help myself—in tone, in phrasing, in sheer presence, the guy is a pro, already. And his bandmates are right with him—I am especially enjoying guitarist Ally Baty’s ringing tones, which straddle a nifty line between majestic and matter-of-fact. Bonus points for the dreamy instrumental break during which the song first comes to an almost complete stop at 2:17 before gathering around a lean and powerful new guitar riff, adding some compelling wordless vocals, and generally succeeding in impressing the hell out of me.

“Freshbloom” is the first song released into the world by Sundara Karma. I hope it is not the last. Originally available to download via SoundCloud, now you’ve got to get it here or nowhere.

Free and legal MP3: Fantasmas (noisy guitars, put to good purpose)

While the guitars are given a lot of opportunity to go at it—there’s even a guitar break in the middle of the chorus somehow—the song still manages to give us a larger feeling of space than noisy guitars alone usually convey.

“No Soul” – Fantasmas

A blurry, spiky surge of noisy guitars powers this three-minute keeper from a young Brooklyn band calling themselves Fantasmas. Amidst the punk-ish ambiance I sense a great deal of poise. I like that particular juxtaposition, so here you are.

Note the long introduction (unusual for this kind of music), and note that it starts off the tonic—meaning, away from the key in which the the song is written. (Whatever that pulsating, semi-dissonant chord-like thing the guitars are slashing away at for 45 seconds is, it’s not the home chord.) This is a sneaky yet time-honored way to keep you listening, because our ears, bless their simple needs, just want to be brought home. At 0:45 (phew), we are shifted into the tonic, get 12 more seconds of slashing guitars, and only then we get to see what the song is really about. Which is pretty much more slashing guitars, but now they are sculpted around minimalist lyrics—eight pithy blurts per verse—delivered with indelible New York City-style blasé-ness by a vocalist identified only as Kam. (I especially like his nearly-spoken lines at 1:56.) While the guitars are given a lot of opportunity to go at it—there’s even a guitar break in the middle of the chorus somehow—the song still manages to give us a larger feeling of space than noisy guitars alone usually convey. Some of this probably has to do with how the guitars are dialed back during the sung parts of the chorus; we get much more tension than noise here, a seemingly small detail with a large impact on our listening experience.

Fantasmas are a relatively new quartet from Brooklyn. The name is Spanish for ghosts, and this new band is not to be confused with Fantasma (a cumbia band from Argentina) or Los Fantasmas, an obscure quintet from the Isle of Wight. “No Soul” is the second half of their debut two-sided seven-inch single, the first imprint served up by Low Life Inc., a Brooklyn-based music promotion firm that recently started a label. You can download the song as usual via the link on the title above, or via the record company’s SoundCloud page. The single came out in December, but I only recently came across it, thanks to The Mad Mackeral.

Free and legal MP3: Yo La Tengo (in all their blurry/fuzzy glory)

There’s no particular point in trying to parse this song; better to let it wash over you, repeatedly.

“Stupid Things” – Yo La Tengo

Now then, everything I just said about elusive songwriting? Um, maybe never mind. Yo La Tengo is back in town and they are long-reigning masters of elusive pop songs. They may have partially invented the genre. The blurry singing, the fuzzy background, the vehement guitars, the incomprehensible lyrics? It’s all here. And damn if it isn’t pretty lovable somehow.

There’s no particular point in trying to parse this song; better to let it wash over you, on repeat, the way the droning guitar washes over the noodling guitar in the introduction. It’s jarring at first but it works. Over time you may register how the fleeting dissonances and the modest melodious moments congeal into one hypnotic whole. Ira Kaplan whispers his way around a tune that does its best to hide its moment of gratifying resolution. While the guitars seem often to be playing in another song altogether, it’s their long, lyric-free interlude—beginning around 3:18—that to me anchors the song, and renders its mysteries mysteriously meaningful. This episode starts as two plicky, plunking guitars soloing against each other, but at around 3:34 the lower of the two begins an anvil-like repetition of one chord, with one dissonant hiccup at 3:49. The solo guitar, at once meandering and forceful, all but stumbles into a truly satisfying resolution (4:05) and after that, the song just makes sense. The chorus melody had itself given us a taste of resolution back when first heard (1:54) but note how much richer it seems the second time (4:37), reinforced by the synthesizers that join the song for the home stretch.

“Stupid Things” is from the new Yo La Tengo album, Fade, which was released this month on Matador Records. This is their 13th studio album. MP3 via Epitonic. For those keeping score at home, Yo La Tengo has been featured on Fingertips four previous times, most recently in July ’09.

Free and legal MP3: Wild Moccasins

Glistening, purposeful neo-’90s guitar rock

“Gag Reflections” – Wild Moccasins

With its glistening union of purposeful guitar rock and a mellifluous soprano, “Gag Reflections” gives off a welcome aroma of ’90s alternative rock (Belly, anybody? Tanya Donelly?), and okay, here’s something that the Retromania crowd refuses to understand: how brilliant it is that today’s bands have such wide-ranging, decades-spanning musical language by which to be inspired. Sure, it was cool when rock’n’roll was younger and new forms were emerging, but it is also cool now with nearly 60 years of rock’n’roll behind us for bands to comb through it all and decide what works as a platform for their own musical expression. For laughs, browse the blogosphere and note how often writers disparage a band for “not breaking any ground.” By which they mean that a given piece of music doesn’t seem to sound “new.” And yet to judge “newness” based entirely on whether it’s a new form is not only short-sighted (there’s way more to music than form, and always has been) but entirely misses the point of rock’n’roll in 2012. End of rant.

Both solidly built and subtly quirky, “Gag Reflections” begins with an odd but incisive prelude—first we hear a double-time riff, with an air of Morse-code urgency about it, then Zahira Gutierrez enters singing only the song’s title, the riff continuing, building tension, and releasing, now, into a proper intro. And quite an intro it is, with a satisfying, all but anthemic guitar line (0:22), the kind of guitar line, indeed, that rock’n’roll songs were made to be built around. And yet here, this superb guitar line feels a bit hidden—less central than slightly left-of-central, and soon overshadowed by Gutierrez’s fetching, elastic voice, which is simultaneously inviting and mysterious. She is one of those singers who can appear to sing clearly while still concealing most of the words she’s saying. And so you lean closer in. The payoff arrives at the end of the chorus, when she abandons words entirely for that angelic “oo-oo-oo” we first hear at 1:12. I love that the song’s most powerful hook is a fleeting moment, almost an afterthought, after the lyrics have ended. I also love the even higher “oo-oo-oo” Gutierrez unleashes later on (2:44), and, then, the brief but compelling guitar noise the band puts out shortly thereafter.

Wild Moccasins are a Houston-based quintet founded in 2007. Their debut album, Skin Collision Past, was self-released in 2010, and then re-released nationally in 2011 on New West Records. “Gag Reflections” is a single released in mid-July on New West.

Free and legal MP3: Orquesta de Perros (pining melody, lots of guitars)

An edgy crooner with a stuttery heart, a guitar-driven soul, and the capacity to make an unexpected amount of noise.

“Los Polacos” – Orquesta de Perros

“Los Polacos” is an idiosyncratic winner—an edgy crooner with a stuttery heart, a guitar-driven soul, and the capacity to make an unexpected amount of noise. There is no doubt a bass player in here too, and obviously a drummer, but everything I hear works in support of the guitars and the singing, and centers around the pining drive of the cycling melody.

Similarly to “Rivers” (see previous post) but in an entirely different-feeling song, the melody here offers a long hesitant journey through an unresolved chord progression. When we finally end up on solid ground, we don’t really get to rest there—listen, for example, at 0:40, to how the melody resolves but then instantly resets itself back to the beginning. Or, in another case, we arrive at resolution only to have our minds are scrubbed clean by a wall of guitars (1:17). And if the ongoing lack of resolution leads the ear on, the earnest playing is what engages the soul. No doubt there are cultural influences at work that go beyond my understanding, but I get such a strong sense of a group of actual musicians interacting in real space, with their instruments and their voices, in a way that feels ancient and true, transcending the rock’n’roll setting entirely. Musicians making music, as they always have and always will, long past the time anyone remembers what a laptop was.

Orquesta de Perros (“Dog Orchestra”) is a five-piece band from Buenos Aires. “Los Polacos” is the lead track from Roles y Oficios, the band’s first full-length album, released this month on Buenos Aires-based Uf Caruf! Records. MP3 via the band. The entire album, worth a listen, is available for free, from Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Lux

Fuzzy-buzzy guitars, w/ pop know-how

“Coroner’s Office” – Lux

A fuzzy-buzzy mix of guitars and electronics, “Coroner’s Office” succeeds where a lot of this kind of lo-fi fuzz-buzz (to my ears) fails, and this is because David Chandler and Leah Rosen may love the DIY thing but they also love the pop song thing. This is a real, complete song; even if partially electronic and programmed, it feels actually crafted by actual human hands. Developing over a sturdy, repeating four-chord progression, the same one for both the verse and the chorus, “Coroner’s Office” is generously sprinkled with delightful songwriting moments. Such as: the back-door, idiosyncratic hook we get here at the end of the verse with the repeating lyric “This is really real” (first heard at 0:39). And check out how the melody, which feels simple note to note, has the winsome tendency to leap up and down.

Note too how well Chandler’s blasé, wavering voice serves this kind of melody, and how well his phrasing serves the lyrics. Such as (0:57): “But you don’t know what she’s capable of/In the back of an old Chevrolet,” and listen to how he phrases that exactly as he might speak it, running the “know what she’s” part together whereas most singers would be tempted to accent the “know,” which makes sense singing but not talking. I appreciate too how his voice may be somewhat muffled but is still entirely present, the lyrics intelligible rather than turbid.

And then there are the tangential sounds, like the bright bell-like synth we get at 1:14 in the chorus, and then that wind-like synth that sweeps in at 1:50, and, further, that even more bell-like sound that chimes in at 1:58. This is what adds texture and heft.

The Seattle-based duo came together via Craigslist, each looking for a bandmate. Their mutual love of pioneering alternative rock bands (Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, New Order, Pavement, Jesus & Mary Chain, et al) spawned Lux in early 2010. A first EP emerged five months later. Their self-released debut album, We Are Not The Same, is coming in early April.

photo credit: The Ripper

Free and legal MP3: Tribes (big brash well-produced guitar rock)

A smartly-crafted song with lots of melody and guitars may sound like a relic or—maybe?—it could be a clarion call for a change of musical/cultural course.

“We Were Children” – Tribes

As DIY- and/or electronics-focused as rock’n’roll has become in the 21st century, sometimes it does an ear good (my ear, anyway) to hear a band that aims for a big, brash, well-produced sound. Yes, “We Were Children” brings to mind music from a bygone era—either the ’70s or the ’90s, depending on your frame of reference—but this is only because of how thin and/or muddy and/or manipulated is the characteristic sound of the here and now. A smartly-crafted song with lots of melody and guitars may sound like a relic or—maybe?—it could be a clarion call for a change of musical/cultural course. This is a young band; as the lyrics clearly state, “We were children in the mid-’90s.” If it also brings to mind Mott the Hoople covering early Radiohead, well, let’s see, we can either take it as a sign that pop culture has run out of steam or is yet again reinventing itself via the past.

The title phrase by the way is nearly all that’s clear about the lyrics, which employ ordinary nouns like magazine and suitcase and clothes in the opening verse to spin a quickly mysterious story in bashy, quasi-glam-rock-y style. The chorus withdraws into an introspective, semi-whispered refrain full of simple, one-syllable words. We are both attracted and bewildered. Who is the “stranger”? “These things happen”—what things? The words acquire an anthemic cadence, even as the music holds back. Meanwhile, guitars are everywhere, lead and rhythm and solo, with effective bits of squonk and drone. Front man Johnny Lloyd emotes with a natural swagger, his voice operating at both high and low volume without losing character or presence. By the time (2:27) we hear the chorus sung in all-out mode, with elusive sing-along backing vocals, it’s as if that’s what we’d been hearing all along. Nicely done.

Founded in Camden in 2009, Tribes released its debut full-length album, Baby, in the UK in January, after releasing two EPs in 2011. The album is getting a US release on Universal Republic next week.

photo credit: Martin Zähringer

Free and legal MP3: School of Seven Bells

Airy atmospherics, guitar-heavy core

School of Seven Bells

“The Night” – School of Seven Bells

Born as a trio, featuring identical-twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Dehaza, the Brooklyn-based School of Seven Bells found duo-hood forced upon then when Claudia announced in October of last year that she was leaving. While Alejandra was the songwriter of the two—she and guitarist Benjamin Curtis compose the band’s music—there was concern (by me, anyway) that the twosome version of SVIIB would suffer in comparison. The twin-sister harmonies were central to the band’s presentation; Curtis, in fact, told NPR in 2008 that the sisters’ precise, heavenly vocal synthesis was “the most important part of School of Seven Bells,” adding: “Everything else is accompaniment, you know, in my opinion.”

But life goes on: as it turns out, the instantly seductive tone of the Dehaza voice, at once sweet and searing, remains intact, and Alejandra does a splendid job now harmonizing with herself. How this will work in performance remains a question, but the duo version of the band, recorded, sounds pretty much the same as the trio—which is a fine thing for a band with such a distinctive sound to begin with. While the label-fixated blogosphere tosses SVIIB quickly into the dream pop or shoegaze box, this is a band that from the start has been blessed with a truly individual sound: a whirly, driven amalgam that floats airy atmospherics over a guitar-heavy core, while featuring a harmonic language that does not always feel Western and lyrics that veer towards a mystical kind of incomprehensibility.

“The Night” has an itchy vibe; launching from a sparse, uncentered interplay between two opposing guitar sounds, the song takes off at a running clip and yet also fosters an ineffable tension. Listen carefully and you’ll see how few chords are employed here. If I’m not mistaken, we may not have a chord change until 1:20. Note the lyrical clue at 0:50, when, still on the opening chord, Dehaza sings, “You’ve frozen my thoughts/You’ve frozen me out/I’m in the same place you left me baby.” We go from there into the chorus and still the music, almost claustrophobically, refuses to offer a chord progression for yet another 20 seconds. We have been set a purposeful, musical trap, and the song ultimately delivers, but for reasons which defy explicit description. Chalk it up to the same alchemy that allows SVIIB to craft its unique sound from the same ingredients theoretically available to everyone else.

“The Night” is the first track the duo has made available from their upcoming album, Ghostory, which is due in late in February as a joint release by Vagrant Records and Ghostly International. ~~MP3 via Pitchfork.~~ School of Seven Bells were featured previously on Fingertips in 2008.