NYC – Page 2 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: Caged Animals (bass-driven blend of old & new)

Front man Vincent Cacchione manages to blend a knowing, 21st-century approach to beats and lyrics with a grander vision of popular music, evoking ’50s doo-wop groups as surely as he does anything current.

Caged Animals

“Teflon Heart” – Caged Animals

Okay, so after that, perhaps you’d like to balance things out with a superbly constructed song and a highly disciplined production? No problem. “Teflon Heart” is slinky and deliberate, written with care and performed with controlled New York City cool. I love the way front man Vincent Cacchione manages to blend a knowing, 21st-century approach to beats and lyrics with a grander vision of popular music, evoking ’50s doo-wop groups as surely as he does anything current. His words have hip-hop flair, but the mood is more reflective, the rhythm leisurely, the beat dominated by actual bass playing, the singing hinting at inner ache more than outer bravado:

I know you know I’m not bourgeois
You act like I’m a replica
A ghost inside your retina
That only you can see

Another highlight is Cacchione’s prickly guitar work, offering up almost-but-not-quite dissonant solos in between verses, deconstructing both melody and rhythm as the beat, literally, goes on. And do not overlook the effectiveness of the central metaphor, which might seem too slick for its own good but for the subtext conveyed by the singer’s plaintive conclusion “I want one too,” regarding the teflon heart in question.

Caged Animals began as a solo project for the Brooklyn-based Cacchione but has blossomed into a foursome. “Teflon Heart” is from the album Eat Their Own, released in late September on Lucky Number Music. ~~MP3 via Lucky Number.~~ Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

NOTE: Far sooner than usual, this MP3 has been taken down by the record company, and is no longer available.

Free and legal MP3: The Beets (21st century garage rock)

Simple and garage-y, but with a nerdy, sing-songy sort of poignancy to it as well. Kind of like the Ramones crossed with They Might Be Giants.

The Beets

“Doing As I Do” – The Beets

Simple and garage-y, but with a nerdy, sing-songy sort of poignancy to it as well. Kind of like the Ramones crossed with They Might Be Giants. And surely this begins with one of rock’n’roll’s more memorable opening lyrical salvos: “Don’t be afraid, you will not die/And if you die/Whatever.” Who says rock music is over and done? Despite its musical homage to Nuggets bands of the ’60s, this is not a song that could have been written before the 2010s, I don’t think.

I like how “Doing As I Do” puts out this bashy, proto-punk vibe with hardly any audible electric guitar. An acoustic rhythm guitar, not necessarily entirely tuned, drives the song’s fuzzy, lo-fi ambiance. Listen to how thin and squashed the drum sound is, totally lacking both three-dimensionality and tone, and as such all but perfect in this setting. Frontman Juan Wauters likewise is recorded in such a way as to emphasize his voice’s thinness, one might even say its whininess, except that that implies that it’s a bad thing, which it’s not. Like the acoustic guitar, he’s not precisely on tune at all times either, and this is also how it must be. Supporting everything is the song’s uncomplicated descending melody, which in my mind creates the image of those cube-shaped children’s blocks with letters on them. Foundational, playful, nostalgic.

The Beets are a quartet even though there tend to be three people in the group pictures. “Doing As I Do” is a song from the album Letting the Poison Out, the band’s third, and the first for Hardly Art Records. Some may find it interesting to know that Hardly Art is the smaller, nimbler sister label to indie powerhouse Sub Pop, founded in 2007 by Sub Pop founder Jonathan Poneman. Others may enjoy knowing that the album was recorded by Gary Olsen of The Ladybug Transistor, themselves featured here back in March. The fact that the band loves Howard Stern and MAD Magazine and Keds sneakers, well, everybody likes knowing that, right?

MP3 via Hardly Art.

Free and legal MP3: Hospitality (quirky, minimalist NYC pop)

Spunky and ineffably nostalgic, “Friends of Friends” is a New York song with a New York sound, firmly in the later ’70s.

Hospitality

“Friends of Friends” – Hospitality

Spunky and ineffably nostalgic, “Friends of Friends” is a New York song with a New York sound, and one that to my ears is rooted firmly in the later ’70s—music that blends an edgy Television/Talking Heads 77-ish bounce with a more playful David Johansen/Syl Sylvain-y groove and throws in a saxophone that surely has arrived through a time machine.

And yet “Friends of Friends” struts with its own, minimalist center of gravity and personality-driven sensibility. Check out the bass playing at the beginning for a conspicuous example of the band’s unembellished aesthetic, as well as the spaces, generally, that are left around the beat. As for personality, Hospitality has Amber Papini, a Kansas City-born kindergarten teacher who apparently learned to sing by copying Richard Butler on the Psychedelic Furs’ Talk Talk Talk album. (Well and who didn’t?) Here, she takes a herky-jerky melody and really works it. Neither the blurty verse nor the clipped, seemingly under-developed chorus is easy to make sense of as a singer; she pulls them off through sheer force of tone and presence.

Hospitality formed as a trio in 2007. They are now a quartet, and they have recently been signed to the consistently wonderful indie label Merge. The full-length Hospitality debut album is due in March 2012.

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.”

“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: Cold Cave (dense, powerful, memorable)

Cold Cave

“The Great Pan Is Dead” – Cold Cave

Combining dense, pummeling energy and palpable ache, “The Great Pan Is Dead” is four minutes of stunning 21st-century rock’n’roll. Wowee. I hardly knew at first how to unpack what I was hearing—the buzzing-guitar wall of sound, the orchestral synth lines, the relentless sonic drive, the sense of furious poignancy suffusing this whirl of sheer electrical power. In the center of it we get the full-throated emoting of front man Wes Eisold. Eisold has a history as a screamer in hard-core bands, and you can hear it at the edge of his singing, even as the singing is genuinely sensitive, even moving.

So I let it cycle on repeat for a long time and I finally began to hear, maybe, what was happening. In the tradition of modern classical minimalists more than any pop song I’ve heard, “The Great Pan Is Dead” spends long periods of time anchored in one chord—the music moves energetically and rhythmically while staying unusually rooted harmonically. We do not, for instance, hear a chord change in the song until 51 seconds in. That is not normally done. This lack of harmonic motion adds immeasurably to the pent-up fury of the aural landscape. Eisold, in the middle of this, sounds like someone throwing his battered body against a bolted door. “I know people without substance,” he sings; you can hear the thud of exclamation points in his phrasing.

And then, later in the song (2:33), we arrive at an opposite place: Eisold singing a largely one-note melody against a shifting series of chords—another kind of subtle, claustrophobic tension to contend with. This is one crazy cool song, and my first shoe-in for a place on the 2011 favorite song list.

Cold Cave is a trio based in NYC. “The Great Pan Is Dead” is from the band’s second album, Cherish the Light Years, due in April on good old Matador Records. MP3 via Matador.

Free and legal MP3: Matt Longo

Sweet, melancholy, concise

“The Night” – Matt Longo

Sweet, melancholy, and concise, “The Night” is half ballad, half lullaby, with a lovely, organic melody that links the verse and chorus so seamlessly that it sounds like one long outpouring of thought, breath, desire, regret. Longo’s light, expressive tenor works equally well with the simple guitar accompaniment that begins the piece and the string- and drum-enhanced arrangement in the middle.

The song sounds like something you might stumble upon at a late-night party, where a guy with a guitar breaks into an easy, heartfelt tune, is joined by a couple of other friends with instruments, while a quiet roomful of people nod their heads in musical sympathy. There’s nothing complicated about it except its power to move you without being complicated. To kind of go meta on you for a moment.

“The Night” is one of seven songs on Longo’s debut album, Alexandria, which was released in November and available for free via Bandcamp.

Free and legal MP3: Asobi Seksu (lovely, satisfying noise pop)

Try as he might to scrape down the walls with a siren-y electric roar, guitarist James Hanna always leaves room for singer Yuki Chikudate to settle the ear with a bit of sweetness.

“Trails” – Asobi Seksu

Try as he might to scrape down the walls with a siren-y electric roar, guitarist James Hanna always leaves room for singer Yuki Chikudate to settle the ear with a bit of sweetness. “Trails” is a particularly intriguing version of this NYC duo’s distinctive blending of melody and noise, as Hanna launches his attack underneath a mid-tempo ballad; he so distracted me, in fact, with his initial onslaught (say, 0:07 and what follows)—including some ear-bending dissonance (e.g. 0:30)—that the cool pop assurance of the chorus caught me by delighted surprise.

And then: check out how the guitar ferocity lets up around 2:30—we get a quieter lead line, more jangly than jarring, and a softer but now more audible snare beat. When the noise starts up again, it’s muted, and grander, almost symphonic, with choruses of echoey reverb which may or may not be voices framing the soundscape. Note too how Chikudate, who can do the breathy soprano thing with the best of them, likewise shows us a full-bodied belt in this closing section that is vivid and savory. All in all a thoroughly satisfying four minutes.

“Trails” is from the band’s forthcoming album, Fluorescence, scheduled for a February release on Polyvinyl Records. MP3 via Spinner. It’s the band’s fourth album, and second as a duo (they began life as a quartet). No strangers around these parts, Asobi Seksu was featured on Fingertips both in 2004 (for the sublime “I’m Happy But You Don’t Like Me,” no longer free and legal but always great) and 2006 (“Thursday,” still available).

Free and legal MP3: Alexa Wilding (NYC singer/songwriter w/ compelling ambiance)

Talk about engaging the ear, what do you make of the weird chord Alexa Wilding plunks into the middle of her guitar-picking intro? It’s so odd it makes everything after it sound out of tune for a moment, until your mind adjusts, kind of, to the unexpected intrusion.

“Black Diamond Day” – Alexa Wilding

Wilding’s voice is also part of the slightly jarring but compelling ambiance. A forthright soprano with a piercing quality to the upper register, it’s a voice I’ve seen described elsewhere as “witchy,” and I guess that’ll do. (Voices are so hard to describe. It’s worse than wine.) In the end I think what makes the song work so well for me is the melodic line that we hear, first, beginning at 0:37 (“I’ll obey whatever you say”)—it begins with an extra two beats, setting the lyrics off the regular 4/4 rhythm of the opening lines, and it finishes with spiffy chord progression that takes the resolution to the left, somehow, of what you may have been anticipating. Structurally, this line is B in a verse where the melody goes AABC (i.e. first two lines the same, musically; the second two each different). This “B” line is the most striking of the four but we hear it just that once each time through. It tantalizes, draws you in, then leaves you hanging—until the fourth verse, when the musical line finally repeats (so it’s AABB) through a second lyrical line (“Why do you think I come here today?”) and it’s so satisfying now to hear it twice, and she knows it, and gives it to us two more times as the melody to the delayed, minimal chorus. The song is an impressionistic tale of the complexities of fulfilled passion, and the music does a nice job of mirroring both the doubts and the delights.

Alexa Wilding is a New York City born and bred singer/songwriter who has just released her debut eight-song EP, self-titled. That’s where you’ll find “Black Diamond Day.” No apparent relationship to the old Dylan story-song gem “Black Diamond Bay.” MP3 via Wilding’s site.

Free and legal MP3: Justin Townes Earle (jaunty suicide note, w/ subtext)

“Harlem River Blues” – Justin Townes Earle

A nice, chugging bit of country-like indie rock, and right away one of the fun things is that we’re talking about New York City here. The juxtaposition is purposeful, and while Earle’s dad Steve has done a bit of this, the senior Earle has been less inclined to make out-and-out country music since moving to Manhattan in the mid ’00s. The son however is clearly on a mission to give listeners a good helping of cognitive dissonance as he deals, on his new album, with rivers and trains and other country-music-like subjects in the context of a gritty, crowded urban landscape.

Another point of dissonance: this chipper-sounding toe-tapper tale is a tale of someone apparently planning his suicide, jumping into the aforementioned Harlem River. Earle, with an agreeable, textured voice, gives himself a huge choir to back up his declaration and, not to make light of it, but if you’ve gotta go, that’s the way to go. Maybe the narrator is so beaten down by life he’s charged up by the idea of ending it, or maybe he’s finding a renewed interest in living via his specific ideas about where he wants to die, but he’s got style either way. Another layer at work here is that Townes Van Zandt, the revered but troubled songwriter after whom the younger Earle is named, had a long flirtation with suicide himself. Yet more subtext: Earle, still just 28, has a previous history of drug addiction, like his father.

“Harlem River Blues” is the title track to Earle’s fourth album, released this month on Bloodshot Records. MP3 via Bloodshot; thanks to Largehearted Boy once more for the lead.

Free and legal MP3: Erik Friedlander (movie-ish jazz instrumental from NYC cellist)

“Aching Sarah”

Apparently it’s cello week here. Or experimental music week. Not that this is experimental sounding per se—it’s quite a lovely, graspable instrumental with a jazz-like construction but with enough melody and offbeat aural flourishes (check out the percussion) to engage the ear of the non-jazz-aficionado (i.e. me). While cellist/composer Friedlander has made a name for himself in New York City’s downtown music scene (oh; it’s NYC week too), this doesn’t sound like you think that would sound like.

To begin, we get a trumpet and piano trading off on a gentle but insistent motif that is played enough to stick in your head but then gets unraveled in atmospheric development. With the cello content to play quiet descending lines in the background, we seem at first to be heading into jazz combo territory, the trumpet and piano and bass and percussion noodling around the now-unstated theme. But even here I’m appreciating the melodic focus that remains, not to mention the almost literally cinematic vibe, as the particular combination of Friedlander’s long bowing and trumpeter Michael Leonhart’s ’60s-cinema flair washes this with the wistful ambiance of a bittersweet European romantic comedy. Until, that is, Friedlander emerges from the background, at 2:47, for a droning minor-key improvisation/solo that is half spiritual plea, half cubist deconstruction of the original motif. It’s an interruption that feels both unexpected and welcome, an aural change of scene that renders the motif’s straightforward restatement as the solo gives way all the more affecting.

The movie-like feeling is apparently no accident. Released as a digital single earlier this month, “Aching Sarah” is supposed to be part of what Friedlander calls his “Cutting-Room Floor Series,” in which, he writes, “movie characters are cut from a film, and with their lives only half-realized, walk in a kind of limbo, aimless and confused, with no way to live out the arc of their scripted lives.” That not only informs the distinctive but unresolved central motif but also the concluding section, when the music seems almost literally to smash against its own limits, only to fade out. The MP3 available for free from his web site, but also for purchase via Amazon, eMusic, and iTunes.