Los Angeles – Page 3

Free and legal MP3: Monster Rally (found-sound assemblage, w/ a tropical groove)

Unlike almost any other electronic creation I have heard to date, “Orchids” sounds like something that might have been conceived in three dimensions and played in real time and real space.

“Orchids” – Monster Rally

An instrumental of pure invention and relentless groove, “Orchids” is an unusually cogent example of 21st-century song-as-assemblage. Monster Rally master mind Ted Fleighan mines sounds from old records, re-imagining them into sonic environments with their own logic, momentum, and—this is the strange part—organic vitality.

Listen here to the two main interacting motifs—a jazz-guitar-y lead riff, with its syncopated flair (heard first at 0:31 and repeated throughout), answered by a downward melody (0:34 et al.) described by the jittery strumming of some exotic stringed instrument or another (I’m afraid I’m not entirely schooled in exotic stringed instruments). Theirs is a simple but intriguing conversation, accompanied by the easygoing percussive sounds of a tropical lounge combo; add the recurring “conclusion” of sorts (0:47 et al.) from the jazz guitar, subtly undergirded by strings, and this is our whole song. A fan neither of mash-ups nor claustrophobic laptop rock, I find myself unaccountably charmed by the alternative acoustic reality created by Feighan’s unfathomable fabrications. Unlike almost any other electronic creation I have heard to date, “Orchids” sounds like something that might have been conceived in three dimensions and played in real time and real space, and while some might consider it a failure of imagination on my part to admire this condition, I consider it a failure of humanity to overlook it. We remain flesh and blood, despite the wires and wavelengths that connect us.

Feighan is from Ohio but is now based in Los Angeles. “Orchids” is the first available track from Return to Paradise, the third Monster Rally full-length release, due at the end of October on Gold Robot Records. You can download via the link above, as usual, or via SoundCloud.

Free and legal MP3: Graham MacRae (ambling ballad w/ bygone air)

The atmosphere of the song implies pronouncement, but the words themselves offer mostly bewilderment.

“Wait” – Graham MacRae

An ambling ballad, seemingly from another era, with something simultaneously assertive and vulnerable about it. The Los Angeles-based MacRae has a resonant if trembly baritone; singing about a breakdown of communication, his lyrics sound more like things that are spoken than are sung, an impression amplified by the erratic way the lines sometimes scan with the melody. The accompaniment is simple, almost homely, but forceful—a strummed acoustic guitar, a bottom-heavy drum kit, a finger-picked electric guitar. The message here is: I am a plainspoken man, singing a plainspoken song.

Well, if only. Listen carefully and see how the words unfold with the faulty momentum of a heat-of-the-moment exchange. The atmosphere of the song implies pronouncement, but the words themselves offer mostly bewilderment. First, it’s: “Wait/I’m coming this way/With one thing left to say to you”; soon, it’s: “Wait/You can’t leave on that note/Why must you speak in constant code?”; in conclusion it’s “Hey/I don’t know/These are age-old questions.” Those three lines together are so much the crux of the song that rest of the words are basically false trails, communicating foundering without focus. Any spurned lover impelled to use the word “egregious” in a sentence—never mind a song!—has his head spun around too much to be convincing.

Dundrearies is MacRae’s second full-length album, following up his 2008 self-titled debut. The word dundrearies, you might not know, refers to a style of long, bushy sideburns or muttonchop whiskers and is taken from the character Lord Dundreary in a 19th-century play called Our American Cousin, best known to history as the play Abraham Lincoln was watching when assassinated in 1865.

Free and legal MP3: Young Hunting (moody & dramatic, w/ potent drumming)

Minor-key gravitas and powerfully succinct drumming drive us all the way home.

“Baby’s First Steps” – Young Hunting

Pretty great introduction to this one, yes? Some songs just wrap you up in them right away. Bonus points here for brevity: we get the tightly coordinated, rhythmic interplay between lower-register, minor-key guitar arpeggios and a pulse-like tom tom for all of about 10 seconds; then come the vocals. All too many songs hang onto notably less interesting instrumental motifs for a lot longer before deciding to get started.

“Baby’s First Steps” is a nicely dramatic song in general, with its minor-key gravitas and apparently chorus-free structure—we get a wordless vocal section in between each verse until, after the third verse, we are finally delivered the chorus. (Delayed gratification is an under-utilized pop music tool.) But what lies at the heart of the song’s drama is the drumming, which is minimal, atmospheric, and potent. Launched on the juxtaposition of a steady yet stuttering rhythm, the song somehow seems to move faster than its own beat, if that makes any sense (it might not). This central sonic paradox feeds a number of related contradictions: the song feels at once smooth and itchy, calm and ominous, moody and defiant. The drumming is incredibly succinct; most of the drum kit remains unused for most of the song—we get one cymbal bash at 1:02, another at 1:13, but then we’re back to the tom, now with a purposeful shaker of some sort anchoring the relentless beat. Cymbals don’t enter regularly until the two-minute mark, when the drummer finally opens up a bit, but we still don’t get anything that feels like “normal” rock’n’roll drumming until two-thirds of the way through the song. This is also when the guitars move at last towards the front of the mix, but we have to wait even longer, until the last 30 seconds, for the (very effective) guitar solo. That’s discipline, baby.

Young Hunting is a five-piece band from Los Angeles. “Baby’s First Steps” is a song from the band’s debut full-length album, Hazel, slated for a June release on Oakland-based Gold Robot Records. The band previously put out a seven-inch single in 2010. Thanks to Gold Robot for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: The Blank Tapes (impeccable song, classic sound)

Lo-fi recording master Matt Adams takes his Blank Tapes project into a full-fledged recording studio for the first time. Goodness ensues.

“Coast to Coast” – The Blank Tapes

Previously known for his home-recorded-onto-cassette output (and quite a lot of output it was), Matt Adams has taken his shape- (and location-)shifting lo-fi project The Blank Tapes into an actual recording studio, solidified it into a permanent band, and given us an impeccable helping of rock’n’roll goodness in the process.

Adams has always had a knack for songwriting; to my ears, it’s a pleasure to hear a song of his given the width and depth that lo-fi recording really can’t deliver. But it’s not like he’s turned into Beyoncé or anything—a fuzzy sense of the homemade and hand-crafted very much remains, and completely serves a song that pays homage to the garage-y side of classic ’60s rock while avoiding the feel of a hollow knock-off. Hints of the Zombies, the Kinks, CCR, and/or the Guess Who are sprinkled in and around “Coast to Coast,” which is additionally full of splendid touches of its own, both small and large—the minor-key wordless vocal introduction to the major-key song; the fleeting Spector beat in front of the chorus; and (my favorite) the extended bridge that offers not only an aural change of pace but unfolds into a very satisfying coda section (2:48). When the ear is taken on that effective of a side trip, hearts are usually won over.

Adams has spent musical time in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. The latest incarnation of the Blank Tapes is an L.A.-based trio featuring D.A. Humphrey on bass and Pearl Charles on drums. “Coast to Coast” is the first available song from the album Vacation, which is due out in May on Antenna Farm Recordings. You can download the song via the link above or from SoundCloud. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Goldenboy

Smart and familiar

“Starlight Town” – Goldenboy

So everything’s kinda sorta interrelated this week. The piano connects “Starlight Town” to “And So On” (upbeat now rather than downcast) and Goldenboy front man Shon Sullivan used to play with Elliott Smith, bringing us back to Harper Simon. As for the unexpectedly potent Billy Joel melody echo at 0:48, while that doesn’t directly couple with the week’s other songs, it does relate to an overarching theme on Fingertips, as true this week as most: that music doesn’t have to “break new ground” to be both good and, still, in its own way, new. Sullivan himself is big into this idea; indeed, he has coined a term for it: “The New Familiar,” which, according to the band’s Facebook page, is “a genre of music of which the melodies, rhythms, & arrangements of pop rock songs are reminiscent to those of the past but blended in such a way & paired with a brand new sound & attitude.”

While his coinage may not catch on, and the syntax can use some work, the underlying credo is a sturdy one. Cultural critics can wring their hands about music somehow not being “new” enough anymore, but in the end such an attitude is closet nihilism, and nihilism is a dead end. We’re alive now and there is absolutely no reason to assume that we have collectively lost the ability to create worthwhile music, and no reason to assume that to be worthwhile, music can’t sound, well, familiar. “Starlight Town” is a smart, crisply-crafted tune, with a central piano lick, some hard-working violins, and an elusive air of the late ’60s or early ’70s about it. I’m finding something about the mix to be delightful, maybe in the way it manages to seem at once blurry and sharp, and how that circular piano line functions somehow as both the song’s teaser and its cornerstone.

Goldenboy is based in Diamond Bar, California, an enclave in the greater Los Angeles area. You’ll find “Starlight Town” on an album called (you got it) The New Familiar, which came out in November on Los Angeles-based Eenie Meenie Records. And, as the last knot in tying the week’s selections together, this one too is available via the good folks at Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: The Reflections (brisk, well-crafted, minor-key)

Brisk and engaging; keep this on repeat for a while and it just about hypnotizes you.

“Disconnected” – The Reflections

Sometimes the wisdom and splendor of a song can be hidden and/or encapsulated in the smallest gesture. Case in point: the second line in the opening verse of “Disconnected,” which begins at 0:41. And it’s not even the line itself but the rhythm of the delivery that I’m talking about. Front man Darian Zahedi sings, “Lost your grip on what you’ve been holding,” and the words skip out with casual, percussive cogency—“what you’ve been” is colloquialized to “wha’cha been,” and it’s the hurrying of the “what” and the in-between-beat swallowing of the “you” that makes the line inexplicably delightful. We had been delivered, following a ghostly pre-introduction, into a driving, minor-key rock song of uncertain lineage—there’s something early-’80s about it and also something early-’00s—but it’s this skippy little delivery that told me that this band was making its own, smartly-executed contribution to whatever you want to call the genre in which this brisk, engaging song is housed. I vote for “rock’n’roll.”

A similarly effective small-but-large gesture follows when the song leaves a lyrical blank at 0:53, after “disconnected and mishandled,” and fills it with a brief, plaintive piano chord. All the better that that same phrase emerges one line later to be employed in (and as) the chorus. It all seems so nonchalant and yet fully engineered. Another little detail to notice: in the second verse, the second line is sung minus the “skip” we heard in the first verse, but with the same kind of conversational phrasing (so easy to aim for and difficult to affect), and now (a bonus) with an ear-catching internal rhyme (1:28): “From a voice so near you almost hear it in your mind.” There are of course some larger good things going on too, here—the repeating ghostly “voice” (synthesized?) that propels and unifies the song, the centrality of an unadorned piano, the feeling of discrete aural space in an age in which mixes too often turn to DIY mush. Most of all I love how unfussy everything seems; the song proceeds in a “just so” kind of way; even the guitar solo (2:56) seems to float in with a fetching combination of diffidence and authority. Keep this on repeat for a while and it just about hypnotizes you.

The Reflections are a duo based in Los Angeles. Their debut full-length album is to be called Limerence and is scheduled some time in the first few months of 2013.

photo credit: Adam Goldberg

Free and legal MP3: Everest (mellow facade hides sharply constructed song)

Can a song be immediately engaging and sustainably appealing with neither a hook nor a discernible story? Apparently, yes.

“Raking Me Over the Coals” – Everest

Can a song be immediately engaging and sustainably appealing with neither a hook nor a discernible story? Apparently, yes.

With the lazy-brisk gait of a soft-rock classic, “Raking Me Over the Coals” has a winsome, timeless feeling. Russell Pollard’s easy-going tenor adds to the bygone vibe. And yet there’s a crispness in the air as well; beneath the mellow facade is a sharply constructed song, with persistent melody lines, an elusive chorus, and one well-placed, off-kilter chord change. That change—first heard at 0:43—leads both into and out of the expansive, unusual chorus section, which is comprised of two verse-like segments and finishes with a minor turn on the stand-alone title phrase. The chorus has a protracted, narrative-like feeling, so even as it does come up twice in the three-minute song, it’s hard to get a sense of repetition. This is no sing-along. A typical pop song gains its title from the most repeated word or phrase in the song, and that’s true here, but obliquely: we hear it first, idiosyncratically, at the end of the first section of the first verse (I kind of liked that, for some reason), and then the two more times in the chorus. Just three times in the whole song.

I said “narrative-like,” and I meant it: while the song has the ambling feel of a tale being told, I can decipher no through-line or event descriptions. Truth be told, the smooth and effortless-seeming music belies the title’s implication, and that’s part of the charm here too. Whomever or whatever is raking the narrator over the proverbial coals, he sounds pretty philosophical about it.

Pollard is a L.A.-based musician who has played with a number of notable indie bands over the years, including Sebadoh and Earlimart. “Raking Me Over the Coals” is a song from the band’s third album, Ownerless, which was released in June on ATO Records.

photo credit: Zoran Orlic

Free and legal MP3: Noah and the MegaFauna (Django-inspired indie pop)

World-music rhythms, elegant gypsy flourishes, and the beauty of thoughtfully composed melody lines sung with pleasure and command

“On and On” – Noah and the MegaFauna

A happy combination of style and substance. Front man Noah Lit makes no bones about his admiration for the so-called “gypsy jazz” of Django Reinhardt, but he has funneled his devotion through a filter of rock’n’roll songcraft, as he is likewise an attentive student of the Beatles, the Kinks, Wilco, Radiohead, and other masters of the form past and present. The end result is something at once exotic and immediate. We get world-music rhythms, elegant gypsy flourishes, and the beauty of thoughtfully composed melody lines sung with pleasure and command.

We’ve heard similar sounds coming out of the indie rock world over the last decade; Beirut in particular comes to mind. Properly done, I don’t think we can get too much of this stuff. When you combine thoughtful songwriting with musical flair and instrumental virtuosity, there’s not much to complain about, as far as I’m concerned. Lit helps himself a lot with his agile singing. even as I have no idea what he’s singing about. This is one of those songs in which the words exist more for their sonic qualities than their meaning. In and around the evocative soundscape, they weave a spell. By the time the gypsy instruments move center stage (2:42), there is nothing to do but surrender.

Lit is based in Los Angeles and was previously in a band called Oliver Future. “On and On” is a track from the album Anthems for a Stateless Nation, which was actually released back in October on Silence Breaks Records, but appears to have fallen into something of a black hole since then. Well worth seeking out. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Mirror Lady (luminous lo-fi)

This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening.

“Hands Are Tied” – Mirror Lady

Careful readers will know that lo-fi music makes an occasional appearance here, but it’s more accident than statement. I am not a fan of lo-fi for the sake of its lo-fi-ness; I am a fan of good songs, and when they happen to be constructed in a lo-fi environment, hooray for that, because it’s another worthy three or four minutes of music unleashed in the world.

“Hands Are Tied” is a particular marvel, a song both superbly crafted and distinctly attuned to its lo-fi setting—so attuned in fact that you almost don’t notice how lo-fi it is. That, to me, is a brilliant accomplishment. The key is the warmth of the sound. Bathed in reverb, the song still feels lucid and distinct. The keyboard, guitar, and the bass all but melt together, sketching lazy joint melodies over a drum beat at once urgent and welcoming. This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening. I particularly like the woodwind-y synth melody that chimes in after the phrase “always the same,” first heard at 1:45. I am charmed as well by the very end of the song, how you can hear the bass turn off, which in that one sound/gesture embodies the song’s lo-fi warmth.

Now based in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the three men calling themselves Mirror Lady first started playing together while students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Hands Are Tied” is from the band’s debut recording, an EP entitled Roman Candles, which was self-released last month and is available via Bandcamp on a “name your price” basis.

Free and legal MP3: Sara Radle

Winsome & involving, w/ Brill Building esprit

“The Pins” – Sara Radle

When Sara Radle sings, here, repeatedly, “I’ll do this without you,” she means it. She plays all the instruments on all the songs on her new album, Same Sun Shines, and she likewise engineered and mixed the record herself. She says she did it basically as an incentive to learn Pro Tools, the powerful but challenging digital recording software program. Apparently she picked it up just fine.

And of course software skills may be necessary in 2012 but they are not sufficient. You need a good song, and “The Pins,” both winsome and involving, is very good indeed. Listen to how much Radle keeps things moving here, with a deft series of melodic twists, chord changes, tempo shifts, and, for the heck of it, wacky guitar effects (see the instrumental break, 2:42 onward). A sense of humor remains an underrated tool in the songwriter’s arsenal.

One particular way Radle surreptitiously generates movement is through a sort of “sub-sectioning” of the song—there’s not just a verse and a chorus, but both the verse and the chorus have two distinct melodic sections. Each interrelated segment is never much more than 15 seconds long throughout the first half of the song. (The second half of the chorus expands to 30 seconds the last two times we hear it.) This really grabs the ear and gives the sense of continual development. The melodies have a clean Brill-Building-y esprit, and the entire thing feels so effortless that one would never suspect the very real effort that Radle exerted—mastering the software, playing all the parts, mixing it all together; the breeziness of the end result is indeed a noteworthy aural illusion. And can I open the year with another mini-rant about those people who must always complain about nothing being “new” in music any more? What a constricted idea of “new” such folks have. “The Pins” is surely something new, something that could not have existed 10 years ago.

It is one of 10 tracks forthcoming on Same Sun Shines, which will be self-released next month. The Texas-born Radle has been based in Los Angeles since 2005, when she joined Matt Sharp’s band The Rentals for a few years. This is her fifth solo album.

(photo credit: Benjamin Hoste)