Tag: melodic

Free and legal MP3: They Might Be Giants (classic melodic TMBG, w/ straight-ish lyrics)

I would be remiss not to draw attention, further, to what may be one of the most absurd internal rhymes in the history of song: “I’m not a monument to justice/Plus which I don’t forget a face.”

They Might Be Giants

“Can’t Keep Johnny Down” – They Might Be Giants

At first this may not seem like much more than a breezy TMBG ditty, with a sort of catchy chorus but maybe not in the really marvelous category of some of their older classics, because the hook maybe isn’t as instantly ear-catching as their songs have sometimes been.

Keep listening. It is a breezy TMBG ditty and it’s also really marvelous: an all-out love letter to the group’s classic sound, spotlighting melody devotee John Linnell’s delight in wide-ranging melodic lines which flow effortlessly from the top to the bottom of the scale. What it may lack in pure giddiness it makes up for with oomph and know-how. Plus, this change: rather than sporting the absurdist puzzle-lyrics the duo usually favors, “Can’t Keep Johnny Down” resembles one of their anomaly songs, “Your Racist Friend,” in both manner (straightforward-ish rather than head-scratching) and target (harmful ignorance). Their traditional goofiness (don’t worry!) remains intact, but maybe they have realized that in 2011 the world can use their intelligence and humanity more directly stated than “My name is blue canary/One note spelled ‘l-i-t-e'”; and so forth. Randy Newman-ishly, they sing here from the limited narrator’s point of view—in this case, a guy who, among other things, is annoyed because a tellingly described astronaut on the moon “thinks he’s better than me.” I like right after that how Linnell breaks the fourth wall (do songs have fourth walls? maybe not) when he sings: “I’m pointing a finger at my own face/They can’t know what’s in here.” The guy realizes we can’t see him so he tells us what he’s doing. Note he points at his “face,” which is the surface of his head, which of course has nothing “in here.”

I would be remiss not to draw attention, further, to what may be one of the most absurd internal rhymes in the history of song: “I’m not a monument to justice/Plus which I don’t forget a face.” Told you they’re still goofy.

“Can’t Keep Johnny Down” is a song from the band’s forthcoming album, Join Us, their first not-for-kids album since 2007’s The Else. It will be released digitally later this month, and available in physical form in July on Idlewild/Rounder Records. And hooray: this is They Might Be Giants’ long-awaited Fingertips debut. The site owes its name to the band; I’m glad to be able to feature them after all these years.

Free and legal MP3: Elsinore (well-crafted & melodic, w/ strings)

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, the melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places.

Elsinore

“Lines” – Elsinore

In a photography class I took some years ago, I learned that a satisfying black-and-white photograph is very likely to include the full range of the black-to-white spectrum, from the blackest black to the whitest white but also including many different in-between grays. I suspect, lacking of course any empirical evidence, that something similar is involved with music. For me, anyway, melodies that manage to hit the top and the bottom of the octave, while also employing most of the in-between notes, feel richer and often more meaningful to me than stingy tunes that stay within a more constrained range of notes.

“Lines” offers a sense of the richness about to unfold before, even, its full-spectrum melody begins, in a flowing introduction that features a leisurely but nimble progression of eight chords. This song is clearly going places. Ryan Groff has a crooner’s timbre and engages that ambling, string-festooned melody with a dreamy, charming nonchalance. (For the record, I’m hearing seven of the eight notes in the scale, many used more than once.) There’s that nifty chord shift in the middle of the verse (first heard at 0:15) that each time snaps the ear to attention even as nothing in particular announces it; it is not attached to either melody or lyric; and Groff lets it slide right under him, every time, most casually. The strings grow insistent, the guitars take the song back at 2:28, and the harmonies, suddenly all Brian Wilson-like, sing us up to the pensive coda. This is not some song someone dashed off on the back of a napkin in a bar.

Elsinore is a quartet from Champaign, up and running since 2004. The connection to Denmark and/or Hamlet is unaddressed by any promo material I could find. “Lines” is from Yes Yes Yes, the band’s third full-length album, released last week on Parasol Records.

Free and legal MP3: Stornoway (buoyant w/ melody & innocence)

Stornoway

“Zorbing” – Stornoway

As invigorating as a bright blue puffy-clouded day, “Zorbing” bursts with melody and innocence, but gets there on its own terms. For the first 35 seconds, we hear only the light, idiosyncratic voice of Brian Briggs and a one-note bass line. Maybe you’ll notice it’s a wonderful melody he’s singing, or maybe you’ll be a bit distracted by the minimalist presentation. Just wait.

His band mates join in vocally at 0:36 and wow that can’t be what anyone was expecting—an almost barbershop quartet-like burst of harmony, baritone and bass voices with little precedent in rock’n’roll after the doo-wop era ended. The bass guitar player at the same time frees himself from his one-note prison and I am completely engaged now. A simple drumbeat and a faintly-played acoustic guitar come on board at 0:54, but with the emancipation of the bass the song now feels both fleshed out and buoyant; when the vocal harmonies return in this setting (1:19), they sound even more striking. Later on we get trumpets and a freewheeling keyboard—so freewheeling, in fact, it not only shifts the feel of the song’s chords but sometimes sounds like it’s floated in from a different song. This is perhaps an unintended consequence of the recording, which was done by the band in non-studio locations like dorm rooms and garages. But it furthers the song’s fancy-free vibe, as does the knowledge of what “zorbing” actually is: “the recreation of rolling downhill in an orb, generally made of transparent plastic” (thanks, Wikipedia!).

Stornoway is a quartet from Oxford, named after a small island town in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. “Zorbing” was originally self-released as a single last summer. The band was signed to 4AD this spring, and the label released Beachcomber’s Windowsill in May in the UK. The band had planned to release their debut themselves, and the label liked it enough to put it out pretty much in its original, demo-like form. A US release is set for August. MP3 via 4AD One Track Mind, with a thank you to Frank at Chromewaves for the tip.

Free and legal MP3: Shiv Hurrah

Wilco-ish and melodic

Shiv Hurrah

“Oh Oh Oh” – Shiv Hurrah

This is a brand new band but they don’t sound like it. Because in a way they’re not—four of the five guys in Shiv Hurrah grew up together in Rochester, New York, and played in a band there in the early ’00s. Ten years, two cities, and one additional band member later, they regrouped in Brooklyn early this year, and early this month released the first results of their renewed labors—a five-song self-titled digital album, available for free, that includes this unknown beauty of a song.

Or call it, more accurately, a diamond in the rough. The production is a problem, and I don’t just mean the mixed-down vocals (which some of course do on purpose). I don’t mind a bit of DIY but the oddly recorded drums are surely more accident than strategy; I suggest not turning the volume too high so that tom that reverberates weirdly every now and then is less distracting. And yet I keep coming back to it, charmed by the relaxed ease of the Wilco-ish groove and, truly, slayed by the strength of the songwriting. What a great great melody, and how quickly it arrives! Most songs need a lot more set-up time, but this one gives us a brilliant, back-door resolution right at the end of the first line of the verse (first heard from 0:44 to 0:46). It’s the kind of resistance-melting melody that enhances the lyrics so that they zing and pierce—get a hold of how it supports the line (1:04) “But I’m the one who taught you how to tie that knot.” Brilliant. Another strong sign is the fact that this homely song from an unknown band offers a great new rock’n’roll lyric, near the end, too: “I never get homesick/I just get sick of my home.” Production challenges and all, front man David Bechle sometimes sounds like a million bucks, and shows me that his new (old) band is well worth keeping an eye on.

“Oh Oh Oh” is the fifth and final song from the band’s debut EP, a digital-only release that is available for free via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Beach House (Baltimore duo w/ nimble, melodic glider)

“Zebra” – Beach House

The appealing sense of gliding momentum that propels “Zebra”? It’s due entirely to a rhythm based on three beats rather than four, but one which has nothing to do with either the waltzing rhythm yielded by a 3/4 beat or the bluesy shuffle of a 12/8 beat. I’m guessing we’re dealing with 6/4, but in any case the movement here is hypnotic; rooted in three beats but without any swing–it’s all one-two-three-one-two-three, no ONE-two-three-ONE-two-three–there’s a continual feeling of being carried along in anticipation, like a wave that rolls and rolls but never breaks.

Even the chorus, with its delightful opening hook (the inching-up-three-half-steps melody of “Anywhere you run”) and nifty chord changes, is musically satisfying but doesn’t really give us any deep resolution, being too nimbly constructed, not to mention too busy tricking our ear into hearing syncopation that doesn’t really exist. All in all the song is like a lovely little dream–shepherded by Victoria Legrand’s commanding and all but gender-free alto, built with brisk but evasive dynamics, leaving an impression of having happened but without a clear sense of how or why.

“Zebra” originally appeared on Teen Dream, the Baltimore-based duo’s third album, which came out in January on Sub Pop. This is a slightly different version, the so-called “UK Radio Edit,” which can be found on the Zebra EP released by for Record Store Day in April. MP3 via Sub Pop. And somehow the P.S. 22 Chorus in NYC got a hold of this song; you can watch their version in the video below.


Free and legal MP3: Jen Olive (undulating acoustic guitar, layered vocals)

A swirly, heady stew of loop-addled acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–Björk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her sound–I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result.

“Wire Wire” – Jen Olive

A swirly, heady stew of loop-addled acoustic guitar and shimmering layers of vocals, “Wire Wire” feels rich and complex while still offering the simple pleasure of a good melody, smartly delivered. While comparisons are at once inevitable and instructive–Björk meets Jane Siberry meets Juana Molina is one way to conceive of her sound–I am enchanted by the head-turning newness of the end result. Olive writes outside the box of the beat, floating the melodic line in the verse like elusive tinsel that decorates the tree without touching the branches. The warm sturdiness of the short chorus becomes all the more delectable, almost mysteriously so; she sings, “I could get/Lost in it/No regret,” to a straightforward melody that out of context might not strike your ear and yet here hooks and nourishes in a wonderful, almost uncanny way.

I have no idea how someone could conceive of writing this sort of song and it may well be because no one person did; it turns out that Warm Robot, Olive’s new album, is the product of a unique collaboration between the singer/songwriter and Andy Partridge, who personally signed her to his Ape House Records label. (The XTC front man has called Olive “this astounding allegro algorithm from Albuquerque.”) She recorded the basic tracks–guitar and voice and some idiosyncratic percussion sketches made on found objects like kids’ blocks and wine bottles–and Partridge arranged and enhanced to create the final songs. The two didn’t meet face to face until the album was already finished.

The Ape House blog by the way has a two-part podcast online featuring the entire album with track-by-track commentary by Olive, worth checking out if you have time.

And I stand corrected on the loop business. Which makes this song all the more original, says me.

Free and legal MP3: Matt Pond PA (stellar effort from indie-pop stalwart)

“Starting” – Matt Pond PA

All these years and personnel changes later and Matt Pond PA, founded in 1998, still holds it own on the strength of its front man’s voices–both his singing voice and his writing voice, that is, each of which is indelible.

Vocally, Pond trades on a pensive graininess of tone and an elusive range that gives him the sound of neither–or both–a baritone and a tenor. Once you’ve heard his singing voice it is thereafter unmistakable, which is a splendid, if probably random, characteristic. And yet his true strength is the means by which he gives himself something to sing: the staunch, well-crafted songs that he writes, full of concrete words to draw us in (dead bolts, gasoline, hips, knees), parallel structures (i.e. lyrical lines that share a certain construction) to display offhand authority, inaudible lyrics to make us listen harder next time, and bright turns of melody that in fact make us want to listen any number of other times. I especially like how, in a largely inscrutable song, he manages to slip in a conclusion as pithy and suasive as: “Make no mistake/There’s no love/When the words are gone.”

Matt Pond PA was one of the first bands whose sound and depth impressed me as Fingertips was first getting going back in the ’03-’04 time frame, and indeed became one of the first 21st-century indie bands to hit some semblance of the big time via exposure on broadcast TV soundtracks. But the ’00s showed us that there is indeed a fine line between up-and-coming and down-and-going. I feel sorry for quality bands stuck navigating their careers through a fickle and fragmented culture that hews to a shallow and imaginary view of good and bad, but I am happy that Matt Pond and company persevere. “Starting” will appear on the album The Dark Leaves, the band’s eighth full-length, slated for an April release on Altitude Records. MP3 via Paste Magazine. Note that this is not a direct link; click on the song title here and you will be taken to a page from which you can then download the song.

Free and legal MP3: Sangre Degrado (sleeper w/ something of an early ’70s vibe)

“Pearl and Oyster” – Sangre Degrado

“Pearl and Oyster” has the casual aplomb of some forgotten nugget of early ’70s rock goodness. And it’s not so much that this California trio sounds precisely like this or that long-ago band as much as that they don’t especially sound like anything I’m hearing out of my trusty desktop speakers these days. Lead singer and guitarist Dan Chejoka has a chesty baritone with an elastic range, not to mention an engaging falsetto; behind him, his twin brother Nart, on drums, and their good friend Greg Johnson, on everything else, romp with determination and spirit through this sleeper of a song that has gotten about zero attention to date from the fickle and trend-obsessed blogosphere.

And pretty much everything you need to know about this one you can hear even before Chejoka opens his mouth, in the brisk and yearning introduction with its rubbery, soaring guitar line. That’s the sound of people not just looking to fill up space before the lyrics start, it’s the sound of a band with a story to tell that transcends words (which is what good music, even if it has words, should ideally do). The easy way the song unfolds from there–the elaborate melodies in both chorus and verse and the effective instrumental building blocks in between–is both delightful and matter of fact. Listen in particular to how the dramatic, falsetto-charged chorus builds to an emotional–but, interestingly, not a musical–resolution. I don’t think that’s easy to do.

“Pearl and Oyster” is from a debut album with a great title, The Nerve of That Ending, which the band self-released in October. MP3 via the band’s site, where the entire album is in fact available for free.

Free and legal MP3: Emily Neveu(lo-fi, reverb-drenched, lovely vocals)

Not many lo-fi, reverb-drenched songs sneak through the Fingertips filter (certainly not as many as are out there) but this one struck my ears as a keeper, for at least a couple of reasons.

“My Cosmonaut” – Emily Neveu

Not many lo-fi, reverb-drenched songs sneak through the Fingertips filter (certainly not as many as are out there) but this one struck my ears as a keeper, for at least a couple of reasons. To begin with, there’s that appealing acoustic guitar riff in the introduction–appealing because it moves musically (many lesser songs will use an acoustic guitar as a kind of place-keeper, via monotonous strums) and because the chords themselves are refreshing (i.e. not just basic chords, but inversions, which are played higher up the neck). Second, there’s Neveu’s cloud-like voice and the layered way she’s recorded it; such soft tones she sings with, but that doesn’t keep her from experimenting with some intriguing harmonic intervals. Third and maybe best of all, this is one sturdy melody, from the ancient undertones of the folk-like verse to the distilled beauty of a chorus that hinges, poignantly, on a suspended chord.

The 26-year-old, Berkeley-based Neveu has played in the bands Calico Horse, Clock Work Army, and Indian Moon. She is currently preparing a solo album, on which “My Cosmonaut” is slated to appear. She offers a nice assortment of free and legal MP3s–both her unreleased solo stuff and band songs–on her web site. And Radiohead fans may also want to check out her charming, front-porch cover of “Idioteque,” via Lefse Records. When it emerges, the solo album will be out on Lefse.

Free and legal MP3: Laura Veirs

Evocative, idiosyncratic singer/songwriter

“Wide-Eyed, Legless” – Laura Veirs

Long-time Fingertips favorite Laura Veirs has a plainspoken presence, a gift for evocative lyrics, and the capacity to weave magical melodies into unassuming songs. “Wide-Eyed, Legless”–and that’s quite a title, eh?–begins with a plucky, fairy-tale sort of ambiance, its sing-song-y verse rooted in an ancient, semi-pentatonic refrain (mostly but not all black notes) and set against gull-like synthesizer lines.

And that would just about be cool enough, but then comes the chorus and one of those brilliant little melodies of hers. “Will you ever more tie up my hair with velvet bows?” she sings (0:50), delivering, in the midst of that bouncy, spiky tune a moment of poignant melodic resolution. Complete with that old-fashioned wording, it’s quite lovely, but she doesn’t dwell on it; even as the melody repeats for a second line in the chorus it changes a bit, and ends without the resolution, plunking us back into the “hornet rain” both lyrically and musically. Something, certainly, is going on here, having something to do with ships and storms and lost love, perhaps, but I can’t really be sure, and that mystery is part of the song’s quirky allure.

“Wide-Eyed, Legless” will be found on the album July Flame, Veirs’ seventh, scheduled for release in January on her Raven Marching Band label. MP3 via her site.