melodic – Page 6 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Virals (three-chord headbanger, at once dense & sleek)

I call this a must-listen for any Elastica fans who linger out there, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, I ask you why not?

“Gloria” – Virals

Straight-ahead summertime rock’n’roll with a definite cool streak—a three-chord headbanger channeled through a soundscape at once dense and sleek. (I’m tempted to call it “fudgy,” for some reason). Bonus points for the unflappable vocals which sound like boy-girl but are front man Shaun Hencher singing in various registers with himself. I call this a must-listen for any Elastica fans who linger out there, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you, I ask you why not? Like that late, great British band, Virals offers up an irresistible blend of punk-ish power and effortless self-possession.

“Gloria” features either three simple but insistent hooks or three variations of one simple but insistent hook; it’s difficult to say. There are heavy-duty power chords and incisive lead lines. There’s unrelenting cymbal. And the most defining element, to my ears, is how each melodic line ends with a veer towards a place that isn’t unresolved as much as, somehow, ironic. This has a lot to do with the harmonies Hencher selects, in all cases a beguiling blend of his upper and lower register, the melody elusively flowing from one to the other.

Virals is a new project for Hencher, previously known (perhaps) as front man for the band Lovvers. It began as a studio-only, one-man-band kind of thing but Hencher has since formed a live band to take Virals on the road. “Gloria” is from the debut EP Coming Up With the Sun, released in May, on London-based Tough Love Records. MP3 via Austin Town Hall.

Free and legal MP3: Eux Autres (sneakily well-crafted garage pop)

Sneaky-accomplished garage pop from the endearing Bay Area trio Eux Autres.

“Home Tonight” – Eux Autres

Well they tell me there’s a hundred ways to fight
But I’ll only need a few of them tonight

Every now and then an unassuming band delivers up a classic rock song opening line. The Bay Area trio Eux Autres does that here, and then ups the ante by altering the first line when the verse is repeated later in the song so that we now get this:

Well they tell me there’s a hundred ways to fight
And I’m hoping not to use them all tonight

Such attention to detail, and humor, is just one sign that this lo-fi-ish song is sneaky-accomplished. It’s a simple song, with two verses and a chorus and a bridge, but the way things interlock creates a subtle sense of satisfaction in the unsuspecting ear. First, there’s the repeating verse with the altered line; next, we get an augmented chorus the second time through (1:37), with new words delivered to the original melody before the existing chorus is then, also, heard; lastly, the bridge (2:05) arrives using the phrase “‘Cause there’s no way to prove,” which was first heard in the first verse.

None of this would matter that much if the thing weren’t so relentlessly melodic. Note, first, the lack of introduction. Let’s just get right to business. Note, second, the 16-measure melody in the verse. Not a common thing in general, and especially not in this kind of garage pop. Note, third, how both the verse and the chorus have instant appeal, which is another unusual thing—often this kind of quick, catchy pop tune skimps on the verse to offer up the killer chorus. No skimping here.

“Home Tonight” is from the new Eux Autres EP, Sun Is Sunk, which was released last week on the band’s own imprint, Bon Mots Records. (Pronounce the name “ooz oh-tra,” with the “oo” as in “good.) While founded as the brother/sister duo of Heather and Nicholas Larimer, the group added drummer Yoshi Nakamoto in 2008. They have been previously featured here both in September 2010 and way back in May 2005. Ridiculously faithful Fingertips followers may remember, too, that the band was part of the Fingertips: Unwebbed CD compilation, released in 2005.

Free and legal MP3: The Zolas (a melodic adventure of a song)

Rather than offering up verses and a chorus, The Zolas here present a complex series of different, seamlessly integrated segments.

“Cultured Man” – The Zolas

As album releases slow down in late December and early January, I am at the beginning of each year given a bit of an opportunity to go back and make sure I didn’t miss anything worthwhile in the general hubbub of the holiday season.

So here’s one that’s been hanging around a while and finally nudged its way into my heart. More an adventure than a song, “Cultured Man” is melodic and easy to listen to but is at the same time an intriguingly complicated composition. Rather than offering up verses and a chorus, the song presents a complex series of different, seamlessly integrated segments. One section does appear to function, musically, as a chorus (first heard at 0:58, with the lyrics “Just to impress you”), but even that one arrives with different words the next time around. In addition to the melodically distinct segments, the song takes us through changes in tempo and dynamics, as well as three different instrumental breaks. All in just under five minutes.

What holds it all together, for me, is singer/guitarist Zachary Gray’s distinctive baritone. He sounds refreshingly like a grown-up, up front and without pretense, shedding inadvertent light on the muddy or whiny or grandiose voices that slightly overpopulate the 21st-century rock’n’roll scene.

“Cultured Man” first surfaced back in October, as half of a 7-inch split single recorded with the Liptonians. Gray and keyboardist Tom Dobrzanski are the core of the band, although additional players support them on stage. To date the Zolas have released one album—2009’s Tic Toc Tic, on Light Organ Records, which generally employed a more piano-focused sound than you’ll hear here. A new record is being wrapped up this month and could be released by March. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

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)

Free and legal MP3: Cass McCombs (potent, determined, minimally arranged)

There is over the long haul an emerging sense of Cass McCombs-iness about what the man does—a spectral mix of melody and atmosphere, eloquence and elusiveness.

Cass McCombs

“The Same Thing” – Cass McCombs

Cass McCombs is one mysterious dude. He grew up in Northern California but since then hasn’t managed to live in any one place in particular. He doesn’t do interviews. His web site uses a font that’s a 1/2-inch tall; you can only see about eight lines on the screen at a time. Maybe strangest of all, he has now released two albums this year.

The music he makes doesn’t sound entirely the same from album to album. (He has been featured here twice previously, in 2005 and 2007.) And yet there is over the longer haul an emerging sense of Cass McCombs-iness about what he does—a spectral mix of melody and atmosphere, eloquence and elusiveness. His doggedly echoed voice, alternating between a buzzy whisper and an adenoidal croon, has been with us long enough to be its own thing by just about now, although it won’t sound entirely unfamiliar to fans of either Lloyd Cole or T Bone Burnett. And “The Same Thing,” surely, is a potent song, the determined gait of its minimally-arranged verse underscoring the repeating thematic observation about pain and love being indeed “the same thing.” McCombs draws you in with his words but also dodges your inquiries, as he commonly sings just below the level of aural comprehension, a fact aggravated by his tendency here to sing lyrical lines that don’t scan well with the music. Normally I’m not thrilled with that but when a real wordsmith does it I feel there must be some good reason involved and in this case I suspect further elusiveness.

As for the unexpected, keyboard-induced jauntiness of the song’s bridge-like chorus, I will simply note that those are some of the least happy-go-lucky “la-la-las” in rock’n’roll history. From the enigmatic Mr. McCombs, it seems a satisfying par for the course.

“The Same Thing” is from Humor Risk, the aforementioned second 2011 release for the 34-year-old singer/songwriter, which came out earlier this month; Wit’s End was delivered back in April. These are his fifth and sixth full-length albums, and both arrived via Domino Records. Thanks to Seattle’s mighty KEXP for the MP3, as part of the KEXP blog “Song of the Day” series.

Free and legal MP3: The District Attorneys (sturdy, affecting, succinct)

There’s something incredibly sturdy and affecting about this song, but the wonderfulness kind of sneaks up on you, and accumulates.

The District Attorneys

“Slowburner” – The District Attorneys

“Slowburner” begins with a suspended chord—a nice crunchy suspended chord at that. I’m a fan of well-placed suspended chords, and especially like the opening suspended chord gambit. Kind of perks your ear up right away, luring you in as you wait for resolution (suspended chords are inherently unresolved, as they offer us only two of any given chord’s proper three notes).

And “Slowburner” has plenty more going for it than merely a suspended chord. There’s something incredibly sturdy and affecting about this song, but the wonderfulness kind of sneaks up on you, and accumulates. The verse-verse-chorus-chorus structure rather naturally creates a sense of buildup, as does the way the second part of the melody, in both the verse and chorus, happens in roughly double time compared to the first half. That single-time/double-time shift also gives the song a kind of natural swing; it’s a rock’n’roll song that doesn’t actually sound like rock’n’roll. And listen to how melodically succinct this baby is: “Slowburner” consists solely of two strong refrains—the four-measure verse melody (with the second two measures repeating the second time through) and the four-measure chorus melody. They are linked by an insistent but chummy lead guitar that wails mostly on a high E note. This is a full-fledged song to be sure, but there’s no fat here at all. Makes you wonder why so many bands pad their songs with passages that just kind of tread water. If they’re not working, get rid of them. Write a great melody and be done with it. Isn’t that easy enough? Why doesn’t everyone do this? (These are rhetorical questions.)

The District Attorneys are a quintet from Athens, Georgia, founded in 2009. They were featured here in January for the song “Splitsville,” another disarmingly crafty piece of work. “Slowburner” is from Waiting on the Calm Down: The Basement Sessions, the band’s second EP. No full-lengths have been recorded yet, but this is a band worth keeping an ear out for.

Free and legal MP3: New God (melodic grandeur in rough-edged package)

Brian Wilson goes lo-fi; what is lacking here in polish is made up for with melodic grandeur.

New God

“Motorcar” – New God

“Motorcar” is brief, slightly undeveloped, and rough-edged—but convincing where it counts, with its luminous, 16-measure melody and those Beach Boys-go-to-(lo-fi-)heaven harmonies. Those of you with an aversion to electronic percussion may want to sit this one out, but me, I can overlook some sonic crudeness in service of melodic grandeur. The chords are the classic I-IV-V chords but something majestic is achieved through how they are manipulated. In the first eight measures, we alternate between the I and the V chords, no IV chord to be heard, with the melody beginning on the third note of the I chord; we do not in fact hear the root note of a chord until the last note in the melody’s first half (first example at 0:38). This creates a particularly satisfying pivot point and is what allows the melody to double in length. In the second half the elusive IV chord makes its necessary appearance (your ear required it, whether you realized it or not), and at last, as the melody closes out, we get the chords in the “right” order: I-IV-V.

As usual, the theory stuff sounds stilted and dull in written description but for whatever reason I find that knowing how songs work like this adds to my pleasure in listening. Your mileage, as they used to say, may vary. And all that said, “Motorcar” may still sound somewhat more like a demo than a song, and yeah it could maybe stand to offer us more than two chorus-free, bridge-free verses. But every time I go back to this to listen with any kind of “Wait, maybe I don’t like this after all” skepticism, it wins me over anew with its insistent lovableness, rough edges and all.

New God is a brand new band, with zero internet presence. There’s a guy named Kenny Tompkins, from “the foggy mountains of Western Maryland,” there’s a debut album to be released next month on his own label (RARC), and that’s about all there is to report. The band hasn’t played any live dates yet, so Tompkins hasn’t had to decide who’s officially in it at this point. The guy in the picture with him is his brother, Curt, who is either part of the band or who was hanging out with him when the photo was shot (by Lindsey S. Wilson, while we’re naming names). MP3, obviously, via Tompkins. And no worries about the “dropbox” URL, this one’s fully legal.

Free and legal MP3: Gross Relations (muddy & melodic, w/ a strong riff)

The opening riff, featuring that dirty/fuzzy/distorted guitar, with the organ noodling behind it, is so strong, to my ears, that I almost don’t need anything else.

Gross Relations

“When You Go Down” – Gross Relations

Okay, you want rock band instruments? You’ve got ’em here, without hesitation: guitar, bass, drum, and an old-time classic-rock organ. The opening riff, featuring that dirty/fuzzy/distorted guitar, with the organ noodling behind it, is so strong, to my ears, that I almost don’t need anything else. And then—bonus!—the first riff transitions into a secondary riff (0:22), on a janglier guitar, and now I really don’t need anything else.

But as luck would have it, there is yet more. I like how the song manages to be simultaneously bludgeony and melodic—not an easy accomplishment, but Gross Relations’ singer Joey Weber is a big Ramones fan so I guess he knows how to do it. And the cool thing is he may dig the Ramones but aside from the loud, thick sound and the strong melody this doesn’t really sound anything like the Ramones. Big Star via Guided By Voices, maybe. And, no, you can’t hear Weber distinctly, but this is one of those lucky instances in which the singer’s overall incomprehensibility adds to the charm of the piece. I’d say the muddiness is less a production technique than a distinct strategy, embodied not just in the singing and the instrumental sounds (there are distortion pedals at work here, even on the organ) but in the song’s very structure, which disguises what is a normally constructed song (verse/chorus/verse/chorus/instrumental/bridge/chorus) by blurring the verse and chorus and building the bridge as a kind of chorus extension. Cool stuff, and wrapped up in 2:39.

Gross Relations is a relatively new Brooklyn-based foursome. “When You Go Down” is from their six-song Come Clean EP, the band’s first non-single release, and, as it happens, the first release for Raven Sings the Blues Records, an offshoot of the blog of the same name. MP3 via the label.

Free and legal MP3: Gold Leaves (’60s pop meets indie pop, w/ Spectorian nod)

A fetching blend of melodramatic ’60s pop and muddy ’10s indie something-or-other, “The Ornament” matches a brisk bashy pace to an introspective melody and evocative if inscrutable lyrics.

Gold Leaves

“The Ornament” – Gold Leaves

A fetching blend of melodramatic ’60s pop and muddy ’10s indie something-or-other, “The Ornament” matches a brisk bashy pace to an introspective melody and evocative if inscrutable lyrics. There’s something Phil Spectory in the air—here an ambiguous echo of the classic Spector beat, there a reverb-enhanced ambiance that knowingly evokes the famous wall of sound. But Grant Olsen—Gold Leaves is his baby, pretty much a solo project—is not merely in retro mode. The song usurps Spectorian elements for its own idiosyncratic purposes. Listen for example to how “The Ornament” strips itself down to its drumbeat in and around the two-minute mark. Spector-produced songs are filled with dramatic drumbeats but nothing like this. The drums here, further, introduce an off-kilter section of the song that seems neither bridge nor verse and which culminates in a dramatic pause before rejoining our regularly scheduled programming.

And that’s another intriguing thing about this song. Even as it nods to a simpler sort of pop, it will not itself be pinned down to either a verse or a chorus that obviously sticks in the head. The verse seems to be divided into three sections, and the lovely turn of melody we hear in the opening lines (0:07-0:20) is never quite returned to—the next two times the song revisits that place, the main melody has been shifted up. I think what happens in a song like this is that you keep unconsciously waiting for that great early moment to return and when it never quite does you are instead led through a journey that seems at once familiar and unsettling. Olsen’s voice—a droopy tenor that’s one part Robin Pecknold, one part Ron Sexsmith—guides us through the song’s lyrical and melodic quirks most endearingly.

Olsen has previously been known to the indie world as half of the duo Arthur & Yu, which released its one album, to date, back in 2007. “The Ornament” is the title track to his debut as Gold Leaves, which will arrive on Hardly Art Records in August. MP3 via Hardly Art. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Haley Bonar

Delightful, succinct, Neko-ish

Haley Bonar

“Raggedy Man” – Haley Bonar

Many songs that are less than two and a half minutes are wonderful in their shortness but, at the same time, feel a bit over-short. Which is to say, it’s easy enough to wrap up a song in two minutes or so simply for the sake of punching out a short song; it’s another thing to give a short song some real oomph, to make a song that’s short in length but long in depth and feeling. With the delightful and succinct “Raggedy Man,” clocking in at 2:12, Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Haley Bonar, sounding not unlike Neko Case’s younger sister, gives us a deft lesson in how it’s done.

Her two primary tricks are melodic. First is the straightforward but underutilized technique of using a full complement of notes. In the first ten seconds of singing she covers six of the scale’s nine tones, counting the top and bottom of the octave as two separate notes, and she ranges across the entire octave. Melodies that incorporate a majority of the notes in the scale are inherently more expansive and interesting. A short song gains substance this way. The other melodic trick is her 16-measure melody line. Most pop songs involve melodies that are no longer than eight measures, and some are just four. A 16-measure melody feels complex and leisurely, and creates the aural illusion of more time passing—another great way to expand the feel of the song.

Bonar (rhymes with “honor”) further employs some subtler structural tricks that work to counter the song’s brevity, including her use of a series of unresolved chords (beginning at 0:57) right where the ear is expecting a chorus, and her stripped-down take on the main melody when it returns at 1:29. Short songs don’t usually have the time or inclination for this kind of presentational variety. Bonar even finds the wherewithal at the end for the introduction of a new wordless melody in the last 15 seconds, providing a coda for which short songs also don’t usually have time.

“Raggedy Man” is a track from Bonar’s album Golder, which was self-released in April, and funded through a successful Kickstarter campaign. Bonar was previously featured on Fingertips in 2008. Thanks to the artist for the MP3, which Fingertips is hosting.