singer/songwriter – Page 8

Free and legal MP3: Aly Tadros and Ben Balmer (sweet, effective singer/songwriter duet)

A singer/songwriter duet that’s as sturdy, genuine, and endearing a song as can be.

“Whim” – Aly Tadros and Ben Balmer

An easy-going singer/songwriter duet, “Whim” has all the makings of the kind of thing they will play too often on your local adult-alternative station (if you happen to have a local adult-alternative station), and therefore, alas, all the makings of a song I will not like very much: the acoustic guitars, the male-female vocals, the folk-based melody. Not that I have anything against any of those things per se, at all; I’ve just been negatively trained in recent years to expect only the most tiresome and ersatz material of this ilk based on what tends to get pushed for concentrated radio play. And yet “Whim” turns out to be as sturdy, genuine, and endearing a song as can be. Go figure.

The voices are good, to begin with. Not showy, but with impressive character. Balmer, an Austin-based musician, opens the piece, and right away I am charmed by his plainspoken tone. I often enjoy singers who sing with such clarity and ease that it sounds almost as if they are still talking; it’s a characteristic I find more often with women singers than men so here it’s especially engaging. Tadros, on the other hand, sings with unaffected richness; her first solo words here are “I was singing my song/When a man came along/Said he liked the sound of my voice,” and because as a listener I was coming to that same conclusion just as she sang it, the effect is powerful. I am won over. The stories each singer sings—simplified, but with well-chosen words—are parallel but dissimilar tales of asymmetrical relationships: in his case, the woman was in for a brief kick, then left; in her case, the man keeps her as a trophy, with no heart connection. Both of them take turns singing the same chorus: “I’m a whim, I’m a whim/Just a passing thought/In the mind of the girl (man) I love.” Note when Tadros takes the lead, the chorus’s melody slips into the space between their harmonies, a move perhaps too subtle for heavy-rotation radio play. The chorus ends with a lyric both unassuming and brilliant: “I ain’t much/When push comes to shove”—spot-on both as character self-commentary and as lyrics that scan with impeccable grace.

Tadros is an American singer/songwriter with an unusual interest in international music, prompted in part by her father’s Egyptian heritage. She was born in Laredo, got started as a musician in Austin, and now lives in Brooklyn. She released her second album, The Fits, in January. Balmer was born in Michigan and lives in Austin; his debut album, Dug In, came out in October 2012. They wrote the song together in a couple of sessions while at music festivals they were each playing.

Free and legal MP3: Eleanor Friedberger (singular voice, brisk & word-centric song)

Friedberger’s sound is hurried and wordy, even when the music slows down.

“Stare at the Sun” – Eleanor Friedberger

Eleanor Friedberger has a sneaky sort of uniqueness to her sound. Listen casually and you might miss it—nothing sounds obviously revolutionary, she doesn’t whoop or yelp, she doesn’t deconstruct or make sound collages or mold digital files out of rhythm and electronics. She writes and sings relatively normal-sounding songs. And yet damned if she hasn’t arrived at something truly her own, even as she refuses to dumbfound us with quirkiness (which is, alas, just about the only way to get the blogosphere’s undivided attention).

And it’s actually kind of odd that her music isn’t stranger, given the pre-eminent idiosyncrasy of many of the songs she recorded as part of The Fiery Furnaces. But as a solo artist, Friedberger has slipped off the Furnaces’ strangeness like a worn-out layer of skin. Her voice hasn’t really changed, but the setting displays it in newly attractive ways, her edgy mezzo showing off a dusky, Carly Simon-esque roundness one might not have sensed back in Blueberry Boat days. “Stare at the Sun” is a brisk lyric-centric affair—Friedberger’s sound is hurried and wordy, even when the music slows down—propelled by a crisply-strummed guitar and a three-part chorus that gradually takes the song over from its verses. To my ears, the song’s central moment comes in the middle chorus section, on the line “I’ve been in exile so long,” and what makes the moment is how Friedberger shifts the momentum to emphasize the word “so,” breaking the song’s unrelenting forward motion, and giving us something inexplicably memorable in the process.

Friedberger recorded with her brother Matthew as The Fiery Furnaces from 2003 through 2009; the band is currently on hiatus. She released her first solo album in 2011; Fingertips featured the excellent “My Mistakes” from that album, as some may recall. “Stare at the Sun” is from her forthcoming album, Personal Record, due out in June on Merge Records. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Kacey Johansing (mellow surface masks complex composition)

The song is rooted in the silky-deep tone of the guitar but nothing is really as easy-breezy as the mellow sound implies.

“Enemy” – Kacey Johansing

Fluent and assured, “Enemy” casts a compelling spell with minimal fuss—a deftly picked electric guitar, a smoky soprano (perhaps mezzo?), and artfully arranged backing vocals are just about all we get. The song is rooted in the silky-deep tone of the guitar but nothing is really as easy-breezy as the mellow sound implies. Listen to how the opening riff starts away from the tonic—a subtle jar to the ear—and then to that tiny rhythmic hiccup it offers at 0:06.

The whole song is like that, its mellifluous surface masking twists and misdirections. The central melody—languid, descending, black-note-dominated—recycles equivocally through a song that doesn’t seem to have either verses or a chorus. Lyrical lines are typically repeated, and long stretches of wordless vocals are employed, enhanced by silvery choral layers. And then, approaching the song’s midpoint, a new lyric starts, without repeats this time, which has the effect of making the lines stand out more rather than less. It feels like we’ve arrived at the song’s unexpectedly powerful nucleus (“You don’t trust/You won’t love/Nothing will ever be good enough”), the backing vocals now emerging in the worded section too, and before the mind can quite absorb this development, Johansing glides back into a repeating line (“You can find a balance, achieve a balance”), the echoey but disciplined backing vocals now get to sing their first actual word (“balance!”), and the effect is almost startling. Soon after, the opening riff returns but with the guitar’s tone rubbed raw and harsh (2:11). There is more going on in this song than a casual listen will uncloak.

Johansing is a San Francisco-based singer/songwriter who has been involved in a number of Bay Area projects, including the bands Geographer and Honeycomb; she is currently, also, half of the experimental folk duo Yesway. “Enemy” is from Johansing’s second solo album Grand Ghosts, which was self-released at the end of February. You can stream the whole thing, and purchase it, via Bandcamp. Meanwhile, over on her SoundCloud page, two other songs from the album are available for free and legal download. Thanks to the artist for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Harper Simon (strong, graceful rocker w/ E. Smith air)

With an air of Elliott Smith about it, “Bonnie Brae” feels delicate even when rocking hard.

“Bonnie Brae” – Harper Simon

Okay, it’s a first-world problem, but to be the son or daughter of a famous musician seems a no-win situation. Both nature and nurture are on your side, and yet if you dare seek a musical life of your own it’s hard to catch a break from the hive mind. When your mother or father is a landmark figure (Bob Dylan, say; or John Lennon; or, as here, Paul Simon), the kneejerk judgments will always find you lacking in comparison. (But who, pray tell, isn’t lacking in comparison?) So it’s natural for the grown child to want to create some distance from the parent. Especially as they age into full adulthood themselves (the younger Simon is himself 40). And it’s natural for sympathetic and/or hip music writers to want to try to be nonchalant and not even mention the connection (I’ve seen blurbs on Simon that do not mention his father, for instance). This second generation does deserve to be heard on their own, absolutely. And yet: shouldn’t offspring of beloved talents be all the more embraced because of who their parents are—shouldn’t their genetic gifts predispose us to welcoming their musical efforts? It’s a conundrum.

Sometimes, to be sure, the nature part of it is kind of spooky—Dhani Harrison went through a phase maybe 10 years ago when he looked like he just walked off the set of A Hard Day’s Night; and there was that almost too-successfully Lennonesque “Valotte,” by Julian, back in the day. With Harper Simon here, the bond to his dad is un-obvious; given his serious but feathery voice you might instead be inclined to think his father was Elliott Smith. That link is at least semi-purposeful; Division Street, the album on which you’ll find “Bonnie Brae,” was produced by Tom Rothrock, who co-produced Smith breakthrough albums, Either/Or and XO. “Bonnie Brae,” like some of Smith’s work, feels delicate even when rocking hard; better yet, it moves with strength and grace through its entire four-plus minutes—there are melodies and sub-melodies, there are sharp instrumental motifs, splendid guitar work, and there is a brilliant chorus that manages to be subtle and conspicuous at the same time.

Division Street marks a sharp new direction for Simon. His recording debut came in 2008, in a collaboration with step-mom Edie Brickell; they called themselves The Heavy Circles and if it played pretty much like an Edie Brickell solo record, there was nothing necessarily wrong with that (note: they were featured here in January of that year). His solo debut came in ’09, in a self-titled singer-songwriter-y album that was recorded in Nashville and had a bit of an alt-country feel. This one does not. His stated aim was to make a rock’n’roll album that he could enjoy listening to, and towards that end enlisted some significant friends, including Pete Thomas on the drums (from Elvis Costello and the Attractions and/or the Imposters), Nikolai Fraiture on bass (the Strokes), and Mikael Jorgensen on keyboards (Wilco). The album is due out in March on Play It Again Sam Records. MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Katie Von Schleicher

Mid-tempo rocker, recorded analog & live

“When The Rain Comes” – Katie Von Schleicher

There is something deep and mysterious at work here in this simple-sounding mid-tempo rocker, and the depth and mystery is rooted in the by now strange and wonderful fact that “When the Rain Comes” was recorded live, on analog equipment, in one take. There is nothing whatever wrong with all the technology being employed in the 21st century to make music but someone has to make it clear that what can be done with our digital tools are many different and potentially enjoyable things but one thing they cannot do, can never do, is what Katie Von Schleicher and friends do here. She and her band of living, breathing, flesh and blood human beings are singing and playing in a room together. Nothing replaces the fire of that. Even when a song unfolds in a kind of a lazy way, even when a song’s coolest hook are a bunch of “la-la-la”s, there is fire here, a fire lit by the inexplicable things that happen when human bodies and souls and voices share time and space together, and when the tools are in the service of capturing the shared effort, not manipulating it.

“When the Rain Comes” is the lead track from Silent Days, a seven-song mini-album recorded at the Soul Shop, an all-analog studio in Medford, Mass. built in 2007 into a 160-year-old barn that had previously housed a piano restoration shop. According to the studio’s web site, “We strive for a clean, open, live sound that truly captures the experience of musicians moving air within a room.” Exactly so. Listen to the vocals—both Von Schleicher’s offhanded lead and the unexpected grandeur of the harmonies in the long-delayed chorus (3:12)—and feel the concrete sense of depth and breadth (and breath) that saturates the recording. And then, best of all, the guitars: both Will Graefe and Gabriel Birnbaum, members of the band Wilder Maker along with Von Schleicher herself, are listed as guitarists here so I don’t know who’s who but I love the kind of guitar sound you hear squirting briefly to the forefront at, say, 0:49 or 0:58—a sound both muted and ringing, a melodious sound that carries within it the flavor of dissonance. A deft, off-kilter solo emerges at 1:50 (Graefe in this case), with the air of notes being decided upon moment to moment, which may almost be true—in addition to the songs being recorded live and in one take, the entire album was recorded in just a few days, without any demos, any pre-written arrangements, any rehearsals. This is hardly a formula that guarantees success but in this case, the gods were smiling. Fine stuff.

Von Schleicher is a singer/songwriter based both in Boston and Brooklyn. Before Wilder Maker she was in the band Sleepy Very Sleepy. I thank her directly for the MP3. You can hear the whole album as well as purchase it via Bandcamp.

photo credit: Dianne Lowry de Ortega

Free and legal MP3: Joshua James (cryptic folk rocker w/ edgy vibe)

Joshua James is a young man with an old man’s voice. The words he sings are both cryptic and intense, which is a disconcerting combination.

“Queen of the City” – Joshua James

Joshua James is a young man with an old man’s voice. The words he sings are both cryptic and intense, which is a disconcerting combination. Written out they look merely weird; this, for instance—

I heard a lady singing,
“We’re all bound together!”
I joined her side by saying,
“To dance beneath the heavens!”

—is not the only point in the song where you just go what the what? Or, here’s the chorus’s recurring assertion: “But my dog ain’t nothin’, he ain’t nothin’ like my lover/Ain’t nothin’ like my lover at all.” This dude is operating from foreign coordinates, and I don’t mean merely the fact that he splits his time between Nebraska and Utah.

But songs aren’t poetry; lyrics are not intended to stand alone on a page or a screen. Some kind of alchemy is at work in the way these words are sung by this voice to these melodies and this steady, drum-driven arrangement. There are no flamboyant hooks or striking sounds, but there’s an edginess in here somewhere, and a catchiness too, although both are difficult to pinpoint. The key, to me, is the internal rhyme he uses in the second line of the verse. He grabs you with it in the opening moments—“I am a liar, a dirty wire”—but mutes the effect in the second verse with an inexact rhyme (“baby” and “lady”). What he’s done, consciously or not, is set us up for the third verse—the ear was waiting for the return of a true rhyme (“I’ll be she’s pretty, queen of the city”) and even though that’s the only time we hear the title’s phrase, the song now seems effortlessly to have delivered us to this phrase, at just the right moment. Just don’t expect to understand what he’s talking about. One other thing he has mysteriously set up is the twist in the third iteration of the chorus, when the dog is abruptly replaced: “But my lord, you ain’t nothin’, you ain’t nothin’ like my lover/You ain’t nothin’ like my lover at all.” I’m not sure I will ever decipher all this but it feels righteous and deep. Impressive stuff.

“Queen of the City” is a track from James’ third full-length album, From the Top of Willamette Mountain, which was released last month on Intelligent Noise Records. The produced by Richard Swift, who has worked with the Mynabirds and Laetitia Sadier and is also now a member of the Shins.

Free and legal MP3: Elin Ruth (assured, retro-y soulful pop)

The big world out there goes nuts for the flamboyant belters but in the small world of Fingertips, I love best the singers who might cut loose but don’t. The artistry is in the restraint.

“Bang” – Elin Ruth

So even as I have, for the sake of a pithy heading, described “Bang” as “assured, retro-y soulful pop,” let me quickly note that this is not as easy to do as it probably sounds. First you need a good song (difficult to come by!); then you also need all the right touches. I hear an impressive supply of them here: the background “oo-oohs,” the horn charts, the prickly guitar strum, that little wooden-sounding percussion flourish (first heard at 0:24), and best of all those three extra beats in the first measure of the chorus. I love songs that know how to do that kind of thing.

And—let us not forget—you need an able singer. Elin Ruth starts out kind of speak-y and casual. She is holding back. Compare the end of the first lyrical line (“until we’re dead,” at 0:19) to the end of the second (“around your wing,” 0:34). She holds her note maybe a half second longer, but it’s a delicious little half second. Here is a singer with a big voice, but it’s not “X Factor” showy. It actually has an unexpected grit to it (listen to how she sings “There’s nothing I can do about it” at 0:50), but even that she refuses to flaunt. The big world out there goes nuts for the flamboyant belters but in the small world of Fingertips, I love best the singers who might cut loose but don’t. The artistry is in the restraint.

Elin Ruth began recording, in 2003, as Elin Ruth Sigvardsson. She just released her fifth album in her native Sweden, but in 2010 fell in love with a New Yorker and last year they were married. She now lives in Queens, and is readying her first album to be released in the United States, which will be called simply Elin Ruth. It’s slated for release in January on her own label, Divers Avenue Music. In the meantime, she has put together a four-song EP for the U.S., featuring “Bang” as the title track. She is now offering it as a free download via her Facebook page. All songs on the EP were originally featured on her previous Swedish albums, “Bang” coming from her 2009 album Cookatoo Friends.

Free and legal MP3: Nels Andrews (wistful, nicely textured, w/ backbone)

A wistful 3/4-time shuffle with mysterious narrative force.

“Barroom Bards” – Nels Andrews

A wistful 3/4-time shuffle with mysterious narrative force, effortless melody, and a cumulative intensity. Bearing an attractive vocal and stylistic resemblance to Michael Penn, Andrews sings with the kind of offhand command not as common as it ideally should be—durable, concrete words flow from his mouth on top of crisply arranged textures via a strong descending melody; he’s afraid of neither putting his voice front and center nor of giving us many other agreeable sounds to listen to. I especially like the interplay between the mandolin and the electric guitar, which are not ordinarily instruments that seem to nod too specifically in the direction of one another. Here they both add thoughtfully to the underlying acoustic guitar strum; this feels less like mere accompaniment than orchestrated composition.

And this is another one of those songs that does not reveal itself to me in terms of narrative, no matter how many times I listen. I either can’t figure out who Poor Sweet William is and what he’s done or maybe I just don’t want to; there’s a part of me that craves the spellbinding versus the manifest. Andrews’ clear baritone and his often arresting word choice (I love: “I grew long then cut off my hair”) are all that I need.

“Barroom Bards” is a song from the album Scrimshaw, Andrews’ third, due out this month in the US. The Santa Cruz-based Andrews has for some reason had much more success in Europe than the US to date; the album has been out there since this past spring, and garnered fine notices. Scrimshaw was produced by Todd Sickafoose, who has worked previously with Andrew Bird, Ani DiFranco, and Anaïs Mitchell, among others. Thanks to Largehearted Boy for the head’s up.

Free and legal MP3: Elise Vatsvaag (sparse and elegiac, w/ strings)

After the real-life storm that affected so many people in the Eastern U.S. last week, we can all use a bit of restraint and sweetness.

“After the Storm” – Elise Vatsvaag

This song was nearly featured last week, but it didn’t fit in the mix quite right so I put it aside for a week and now look.

Sparse and elegiac, “After the Storm” uses what sounds like a full-fledged string quartet to generate volume and intensity in a song that otherwise secures its power from restraint and sweetness. After the real-life storm that affected so many people in the Eastern U.S. last week, we can all use a bit of restraint and sweetness.

Nothing has ever been this clear before
After the storm I have no fear at all
No fear at all

Vatsvaag is Norwegian and while her lyrics occasionally betray a non-native-speaker’s tentative syntax, the overall effect, almost counter-intuitively, is one of poignant authenticity. She sings with a clear tone but also without much sustain (i.e., she doesn’t hold her sung notes for long), which lends a soft-spoken intimacy to her delivery. The song has a traditional structure—verse, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, repeat with bridge—but her tender, affecting melodies expand gently beyond the typical eight measures in the pre-chorus and again in the chorus, which then melts into the instrumental tumult provided by the strings. This shows yet again that a song cannot be reduced merely to its words, and that it’s almost always the subtle musical effects rather than simply a turn of phrase that sends the impact of a song from the head to the heart.

Vatsvaag has been releasing a series of free to download songs throughout 2012. The first four were then gathered, earlier this year, into an EP called This Is Not My Music #1; after the second four have been released (song number 8 arrives later this month), This Is Not My Music #2 will be released. “After the Storm” was the seventh song, released in October.

photo credit: Erik Sæter Jørgensen

Free and legal MP3: Aidan Knight (unconventional & affecting)

The joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” – Aidan Knight

From its opening sounds—warm, mysterious, unresolved—“A Mirror” lets you know how good it is going to be, and how unusual. This is not a conventional pop song; not only is there no catchy chorus, there doesn’t even appear to be any recognizable verse. What we get instead is a series of motifs—some with lyrics, some instrumental—which do recur, if you’re paying attention, but which need to be listened to a number of times before they begin to coalesce into a meaningful whole.

I suggest giving this song that kind of time. A singer/songwriter from Victoria, BC, himself the son of a singer/songwriter, Knight has the natural touch of a born musician. In lieu of any one instantaneous moment of short-attention-span gratification, “A Mirror” employs its entire almost-five minutes to deliver its ineffable goods. The more I listen, the more individual pieces I grow to love (an early favorite: “I’m alive/I’m alive/I’m right here,” beginning at 0:51), while at the same time acquiring a gradual understanding of the song’s larger arc. I have no idea how a composition like this gets conceived and written, as it’s operating on a much different level than most songs I encounter. And yet also, thankfully, it comes without any avant-garde baggage or contemporary-classical pretenses. Its general musical language is familiar enough, but the joy and the pleasure here come from Knight’s willingness to think beyond the stark restraints of the pop song, and willingness to trust that there may be some listeners willing to take that ride with him.

“A Mirror” is the second of 10 songs on the album Small Reveal, Knight’s second full-length release, coming out later this month on Outside Music. Knight was previously featured on Fingertips at the time of his first album, in 2010. MP3 via Outside Music.