Tag: singer/songwriter

Free and legal MP3: Kim Taylor (strong, nuanced singer/songwriter fare)

Kim Taylor doesn’t appear at first glance to be doing anything that thousands (millions?) of other people also do: play guitar, sing songs, release albums.

Kim Taylor

“Little Miracle” – Kim Taylor

Kim Taylor doesn’t appear at first glance to be doing anything that thousands (millions?) of other people also do: play guitar, sing songs, release albums. I have no doubt that the so-called “freak folk” movement—of which she is most definitely not a member—was begun at least in part as a way for a guitar-toting singer/songwriter to stand out in the pack. I mean, there are only so many chords, only so many ways to say that love goes bad over time. Sounding bizarre and off-kilter at least spices things up, and it’s (let’s face it) a lot easier than figuring out how to stand out the way that Taylor does: by writing arresting songs and singing them with spirit and nuance.

“Little Miracle” grabs attention from its first strummed chord, which carries a bit of dissonance with it, beginning the song slightly off its own home key (always an effective move). The dusky urgency in her voice demands even more attention—as, it must be said, does the opening line. Just about the surest way to have a listener’s eyes glaze over (well, this listener, anyway) is to start immediately singing about yourself. Because at that point, out here I’m like, “Well, who are you, and why do I care?” Taylor hits the ground singing about something else: “This is not the end, is not the end,” and of course we don’t know what isn’t the end of what, but that doesn’t really matter. And now we can see the value of the musically uncertain landscape we’ve been thrust into, as it mirrors and enhances the lyrical uncertainty. She’s making what sounds like a firm assertion but she has to say it twice, which undermines her conviction. Likewise she plays with the melody, offering subtle variations of the primary phrase that both give the impression of spontaneity and augment the song’s lingering irresoluteness. The lyrics, meanwhile, end up offering only the barest sketch of narrative; far more drama is happening between the lines than in the words. (I happen to like when songwriters use very simple words and yet still don’t reveal exactly what’s happening.) And don’t by the way miss the smart, unexpected organ break (1:25), which likewise adds layers of impact to this brisk, appealing song.

Kim Taylor, previously featured here in December 2005, lives in Cincinnati and actually runs a coffee house there (The Pleasant Perk, in the Pleasant Ridge neighborhood) when she is not writing, recording, or touring. “Little Miracle” is the title track to her new album, her third full-length disc, which is slated for a September physical release. (The MP3 version has been available since December.) Thanks to Kim’s management for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Chris Hickey (acoustic, stripped bare)

And this is probably the biggest high-wire act of all in popular music—having enough faith and guts and (let’s not forget) talent to hide behind absolutely nothing. It’s just your voice and just your fingers.

Chris Hickey

“Beautiful Struggle” – Chris Hickey

And here we have Chris Hickey, who strips himself even further down than Kim Taylor, previously, recording in his South Pasadena home with just an acoustic guitar and a handheld digital voice recorder (an Edirol R-09, if there are any gearheads out there). And this is probably the biggest high-wire act of all in popular music—having enough faith and guts and (let’s not forget) talent to hide behind absolutely nothing. It’s just your voice and just your fingers.

I first heard Hickey’s music when he sent word out last year about his album Razzmatazz, which was his first solo bedroom recording, a sort of re-emergence for a musician with a long, workman-like history but no breakthrough moments, commercially. He had had a go at new wave era punk-pop in the late ’70s, with his L.A.-based band the Spoilers, and also at mainstream neo-folk music in the mid-’80s, when he put out two CDs under his own name, before moving into other folk-like band projects and doing studio work with the likes of Michael Penn and the Indigo Girls. What Hickey has that is immediately apparent, and relatively rare on the present-day indie scene, is gravitas. Not tree-trunk heavy, mothball-laden severity, but a deep, engaged presence; Hickey’s voice in fact has something of the warn, trembly huskiness of the late Warren Zevon. It’s a voice one pays heed to, particularly when used in the service of such a delicate tune, such a piercing message.

“Beautiful Struggle” was written by Mark Addison of the briefly together, semi-legendary band the Borrowers, and appeared originally on their one and only CD, in 1996. MP3 via Hickey.

Free and legal MP3: Sarah Jaffe (crisp & insistent, w/ cello)

“Clementine” – Sarah Jaffe

“Clementine” creates an appealing sense of urgency without a lot of volume or density or high drama. I’m thinking it’s the cello. The cello has a deep tone, but not as deep as a bass; it registers more as melody than rhythm, but also colludes with an acoustic guitar in an elusive way. It’s there but it’s not there. It adds depth.

Jaffe’s voice doesn’t hurt either. She’s got a slightly roughed-up, Lucinda-like edge to her singer/songwriter delivery, and it’s particularly well-suited to a melody that gains traction from the purposeful repetition both of lyrics and of small musical intervals–few if any of the notes are more than two whole-steps apart. This might be almost claustrophobic if the song weren’t so fleet and insistent. And then, at 1:52, we get that new and different stringed sound–a clipped and itchy motif that sounds maybe like some pizzicato, maybe also on the cello–that helps drive the song even more insistently forward.

Jaffe is based in Denton, Texas, also home to Midlake, with whom she has toured. “Clementine” is a song from her debut album, Suburban Nature, which was released last week on Kirtland Records. The album came out digitally last month. MP3 via Jaffe’s web site. Thanks to Some Velvet Blog for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Phosphorescent (slow burner w/ great guitar)

“The Mermaid Parade” – Phosphorescent

At once laid-back and expansive, “The Mermaid Parade” brings a slow-burning quality to its sauntering vibe. Singing this affecting if slightly mystical (or maybe just surreal) tale of love gone wrong, front man Matthew Houck has the knocked-around tone of a man who’s been hurt a little too much; his voice has a built-in crack to it without ever really cracking, and he sings with the relaxed cadence of someone slowly draining the beer from a long-necked bottle.

And the thing, to me, that really gives “The Mermaid Parade” its piercing quality is the electric guitar that plays like a backbone through the skeletally told story. Neither fancy nor newfangled, the guitar brings a classic-rock majesty to the singer/songwritery proceedings. The climactic lyric is plainspoken and startlingly moving: “But yeah I found a new friend too/And yeah she’s pretty and small/But goddamn it Amanda/Oh, goddamn it all.”

“The Mermaid Parade” is four tracks in on Here’s To Taking It Easy, the fifth full-length release from Phosphorescent, a band which is basically the Brooklyn-based Houck and anyone else he can get to play with him at the time. The album is out this week on Dead Oceans, sister label to Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar. MP3 via Dead Oceans.

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: Josh Rouse (sprightly faux Latin pop w/ P. Simon feel)

“I Will Live On Islands” – Josh Rouse

I’ve had this song in the listening pile for a few weeks and maybe it’s the (finally) receding snow that has allowed me to open my ears and enjoy this merry, warm-weather-inflected bit of lovingly crafted faux Latin pop. Perhaps I didn’t quite realize how aggravating the song was previously making me, its breezy narrator imagining his imminent escape to island living. No matter the narrator is literally in prison; the metaphor hit home (Seriously: “I want to see some green/Get me out of this place”).

But spring appears to be springing, however slowly. It’ll be May before all the parking lot piles melt around here but grass is at long last visible and this week I’m charmed by Rouse’s bright, Paul Simonesque romp. And I at long last listened closely enough to understand that the point is the guy’s infectious optimism, not his present confines. Should’ve featured the tune weeks ago. Anyway, musically, yes, the echoes of Simon are clear and, even, are emphasized by the singing voice Rouse adopts. (Listen to the way he sings the word “convicted” at 0:35–that’s an homage, no way it’s not.) But let’s of course remember that Paul Simon himself was borrowing existing styles and rhythms, and Rouse, a transplanted American who has lived in Spain for five years, knows the original sources very well by now himself. If you want to see just how well, check out the Spanish-sung “Valencia,” which has been quietly available as a free and legal download via Vanity Fair since the fall.

Both songs are from the album El Turista, which is set for release next week on Yep Roc Records. The “I Will Live On Islands” MP3 is via Spinner.

Free and legal MP3: Aidan Knight(able country-tinged sing-along)

“Jasper” – Aidan Knight

When a song comes along as effortlessly gladdening as “Jasper” I actually get a little suspicious. “That’s it?” I think. “It’s that easy to write a really good song? A sing-along even? Anybody could do that!”

But of course as it turns out anybody can’t. Otherwise we’d have a lot more of this around, which we clearly do not. There’s something ramrod solid about this song, even as it glides so easily through its three and a half minutes. Perched squarely on the shoulders of Aidan Knight’s comfortable, boy-next-door baritone, “Jasper,” for all its laid-back, singer/songwriter-y vibe, shines with the melodic assurance of an old Elton John song. (This is, to be clear, a compliment, and anyone who doesn’t realize that would do well to go revisit some of the songs Sir Reg recorded between 1970 and 1974.) The song sounds channeled more than written, and everything about its presentation–from the delightfully restrained steel-guitar licks to the climactic group-sung chorus–rings true and right, as if no one had to decide any of this, as if it sprung to life of its will alone.

Knight is from the lovely city of Victoria, B.C.; “Jasper” is from Versicolour, his first album, which is due out early next month. It is also the first release for the record label Adventure Boys Club, a label started by Knight along with Tyler Bancroft, of the Vancouver band Said the Whale.

Free and legal MP3: Lay Low (twangy Icelandic toe-tapper)

“By and By” – Lay Low

Doing musical business as Lay Low, Icelandic singer/songwriter Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir combines a genuine feel for–of all things–classic country and western with the ability, consistently shared by musicians in her home country, to tap into something marvelous and otherworldly.

On the surface, yes, the song is an upbeat, twangy little thing, but me, I am for some reason paying extra attention to how Lovísa meanders away from the regimen of the sprightly beat that appears at first to define the song. In the verses, only the first two words of each line are firmly on the beat; by the end of the verse, she willfully ignores the momentum of the song, her voice all but purring with an unusual blend of intimacy and puckishness. The chorus, meanwhile, sounds like a return to alignment (0:59) but for the life of me even when the melody appears to be in lockstep with the beat I swear she sounds like she’s laying off ever so slightly. And then soon enough (1:04) she lets it go entirely. Listen to how she manages the transition between the words “before” and “I”; I cannot describe it. And behind her it’s all just perky country playing, as if nothing is awry, as if it’s maybe just a big guy in a cowboy hat who’s on stage and we’re group-imagining this (marvelous, otherworldly) Nordic visitation.

“By and By” will be found on Lay Low’s second album, Farewell Good Night’s Sleep, due out in March on Lovísa’s own Loo label.

Free and legal MP3: Amy Cook (exquisite song from Austin-based singer/songwriter)

“Hotel Lights” – Amy Cook

And here’s a real new year’s treat—a song as good as anything you’re likely to hear over the coming 12 months. On the one hand, it’s a quiet bit of singer/songwriter fare; on the other hand, oh my, what an exquisite tune. Cook plays an electric guitar here—the old-fashioned kind, with f-holes—not an acoustic one, and its rich, rounded tones lend an immediate depth to the song, and nicely complements her ever-so-slightly-dusky voice.

But it’s sheer songwriting prowess that makes this one shine. Cook, based in Austin, works wonders in particular with asymmetricality. Listen, first of all, to the melody line at the beginning of the verse (0:12), and how those three words (“All the girls”) are set apart, separated by a measure and a half from the rest of the line, which then streams out without a break through the lyric’s end. There’s great power in that quiet lack of regularity, and Cook uses it again, in a different way, at the opposite end of the structure. After the first two lines of the chorus, in which her words emerge in two-syllable clusters at the beginning of each measure, she proceeds to extend the second line four extra measures, partially mirroring the two-syllable clustering but now filling in the empty spaces with an uneven but luscious melody. Much more delightful to listen to than to read about.

“Hotel Lights” is from Cook’s album Let The Light In, produced by Alejandro Escovedo and slated for an early March release. This appears to be her third album but details are sketchy. Thanks to Bruce at Some Velvet Blog for the head’s up.

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.