UK – Page 4 – Fingertips

Free and legal MP3: The Fireworks (melodic three-chord headbanger)

A blistering, buzzy shot of punk-ish pop (or, perhaps, pop-ish punk).

“Runaround” – The Fireworks

A blistering, buzzy shot of punk-ish pop (or, perhaps, pop-ish punk), “Runaround” is a brazen reminder that digitalia only gets you so far in a world that still exists in three dimensions (so far). There’s a chunky permanence to the guitar-bass-drum attack of The Fireworks that renders the knob twiddling that dominates 21st-century pop music sound like a kind of quaint sideline. Music that does not depend upon physical vibrations of physical objects in the physical world is still music, of course, but that’s my ongoing point: there are different kinds of music, and engaging instances of all these different kinds can and must each be encouraged and celebrated, rather than one kind being dismissed as somehow “un-hip” while another kind experiences a bubble of over-production. Coming to a classic, melodic, three-chord headbanger from the vantage point of the year 2015, to my ears, automatically makes this new and different from whatever past bands you’d like to cite as progenitors of this style. (Me I hear a kind of Elastica-meets-Ramones vibe; what could be bad?)

The song’s simple, crowning achievement is the relentless downturn at the end of each verse line. Classic pop would often give us a downturn at the end of the first line, balanced by an upturn at the end of the second line. Here, the downturn at the end of the second line not only fools us by going down at all but goes down to kind of an off note (first heard at 0:18), surely not the note our ears were expecting. “Runaround” takes us three seven straight downturns (alternating four of the first kind and three of the second) before the last line of the verse becomes the beginning of the chorus, with the long-awaited upturn at the end of the word “Runaround.” Through it all, lead singer Emma Hall finds an effective middle ground between blasé and excited, letting the hugeness of the guitar sound swell her forward without giving her much pause. I always liked best the punks who weren’t too in love with their toughness; they were the ones to count on for melody. And still apparently are.

The Fireworks are a quartet from London. “Runaround” is the second track off the band’s debut album, Switch Me On, which was released last month on Shelflife Records. You can listen to it as well as buy it via Bandcamp.

MP3 via Magnet Magazine.

Free and legal MP3: Shannon Wardrop (ambling, vaguely psychedelic, & impressive)

The young London-area singer/songwriter has a rich and elastic tone, and employs it with ravishing restraint.

“I Wanna Be Your Lady” – Shannon Wardrop

With its distorted guitars and spongy bass line, “I Wanna Be Your Lady” has an ambling, vaguely psychedelic feel that seems suddenly like the very thing we need to be listening to, collectively, right now. The song suggests weathered trees and cracked sidewalks, roasty cups of afternoon coffee, heart-breaking daylight, and things made of rugged glass; it reminds us that there may be evil in the world, and stupidity, but that right now you’re probably okay, and that’s worth something too.

A young singer/songwriter from the London area, Wardrop has a rich and elastic tone, and employs it with ravishing restraint, letting her big voice rip only in the final moments. But me I prefer the shimmering implications in her phrasing of “Wanna to be the one you call,” starting at 0:23, particularly the understated oomph she gives to the word “one.” Lots of small moments like that here add up to major delight—another one: the way the droning guitar riff gets a clipped punctuation at 0:44 that kind of sounds like a vocal and kind of doesn’t—and help to turn a song of head-bobbing simplicity into something deep and lasting.

And how great is it that there are young singer/songwriters in the world in 2015 who sound like this? The rejection of digital hubris begins here, with a generation for whom classic rock has warm parental associations, and who seek to move forward musically via simple humanity, sly good humor, and well-informed musicianship. “I Wanna Be Your Lady” is one of three songs on Wardrop’s Cloud 9 EP, her second, released last month. You can listen via Bandcamp. Her previous EP, Medicine, was released in 2013.

Free and legal MP3: Record/Start (crunchy, melodic, smartly-crafted)

“Rock From Afar” manages to funnel nostalgia through a contemporary filter, conjuring the past without wallowing in it.

“Rock From Afar” – Start/Record

Crunchy, melodic, smartly-crafted rock’n’roll, “Rock From Afar” is one of those rare one-man-band home recordings that sounds spacious and outgoing. (In that way it brings to mind the work of Devin Davis, for those with long Fingertips memories.) And while full of elusive homages to great moments in rock history, this song is likewise a rare bird for managing to funnel nostalgia through a contemporary filter: conjuring the past without wallowing in it, without losing the recognition that we live in the here and now and that that’s okay too.

So—stay with me on this one—I’m thinking now that what sounds like a catchy, well-paced song is actually much more than that. With “Rock From Afar,” Simon Cowan, doing business as Record/Start, offers us a much-needed (not to mention delightful) way out of the dead-end technophilia of the early 21st century. Enough with having to pretend there is nothing of value to be had from the past, enough with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists so smug and myopic that they can’t credit or recognize anything they didn’t invent or fund. Life existed before us and life (if we don’t go all Interstellar on ourselves) will go on after us and the smartest and most valuable (not to mention most fun) people are those who partake of the whole buffet. Use the past to inform the present and aim towards the future.

That’s what “Rock From Afar” does and it’s a breath of fresh air in a musical age suffocating from the addictive beats and compressed mightiness required to keep the kids dancing and the fingers clicking. Cowan finds a brisk pace and rich texture far removed from the stifling dictates of today’s pop, with guitars that bleed into a kind of 2015 Wall of Sound, and melodies that sweep you pretty close to power pop heaven. One of my favorite moments is the abrupt break for a “woo-oo-oo” vocal that happens at 2:41, because of how precisely this moment embodies the seamless melding of past and present: this kind of “woo-oo-oo” is pure Beach Boys, but Cowan augments it with an ear-popping 21st-century affect that Brian Wilson probably wishes he could have invented 50 years ago but most certainly did not.

Cowan fronted the Manchester band Carlis Star during the latter ’00s. Record/Start, a solo project, came into being in 2014. “Rock From Afar” has been bumping around the internet for a few weeks, in advance of its official double-sided single (on cassette) release next month, via Post/Pop Records. Thanks to Insomnia Radio for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3 Daisy Victoria (glistening, inspiring)

“Nobody Dies” – Daisy Victoria

And here we have, at the tail end of 2014, a song that somehow shocks me into here-and-now Okayness. Nearly (but not quite) as glistening as the kind of brain-free indie pop that makes my teeth grind, “Nobody Dies” is instead a song shot through with humanity and depth that leaves me laughing and winded, like emerging, twirling, from the salty, numbing North Atlantic on a warm summer day. Partly it’s the sweet subtle resonance of Daisy Victoria’s voice, and partly it’s the heroic melody, and the way it continually brings that voice upward in gratifying, unforeseen ways, but mostly it’s just how big and sweeping and genuine this feels, in an almost Kate Bushian way (minus, it should be noted, Kate’s all-out strangeness).

Hints that this is no mere dance-beat trifle come quickly (a beat-free intro juxtaposing water drips and echoey guitars) and often (even as the beat sets in, the mix is full of nuance and texture, devoid of ear-squashing processing). Some (most?) of the aural effects sound refreshingly guitar-based, in fact, while the drumming is sticks and skins as far as I can tell. And please understand that I am not now and never have been against electronics and beats and anything else that can be employed to make great music. But great music only and always originates in the human heart and soul. Something isn’t genuine just because it’s acoustic any more than something is automatically soulless just because it’s electronic. My particular glee regarding “Nobody Dies” has to do with how Victoria here has managed, in a sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing kind of switcheroo, to take an aural language too often employed to create soulless product and find within it the glow of life. I love this in uncountable and unaccountable ways.

Daisy Victoria is a singer/songwriter based in Norwich (UK). “Nobody Dies” is the title track to her second EP, released last month. You can listen via her SoundCloud page, and also there download this song in higher-quality .wav format, if that makes you happy.

Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC Radio 6 for the head’s up, and thanks to Daisy for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Ralfe Band

Jaunty, off-kilter piano tale

“Cold Chicago Morning” – Ralfe Band

Does the inexorable sound shift that’s been made right before our eyes and ears on the pop music front in the 2010s render music that feels more organic, hand-made, and melodically inclined entirely obsolete by this oh-so-futuristic year of 2014? On the one hand, rock’n’roll does seem really most sincerely dead in many different quarters here in the mid-’10s, replaced in the hearts and minds of today’s mainstream by sounds far more polished and formulaic and beat-driven. On the other hand, against all odds, plenty of organic, hand-made, and melodically inclined music is in fact still being created and recorded and not just by the oldsters of my generation but by good-hearted folks in their 20s and 30s as well.

A marvelous case in point is the off-kilter, Randy-Newman-meets-Tom-Waits jaunt of “Cold Chicago Morning,” from the British singer/songwriter/artist/filmmaker Oly Ralfe, who performs as Ralfe Band. The opposite of glossy and beat-driven, “Cold Chicago Morning” is launched by a clever, extended piano melody that mixes time signatures and advances unexpected chords even as it keeps your head bobbing nicely along. Ralfe sings with a smoother croon than his older progenitors, while still conveying a scuffed-up sensibility. Stick around (why wouldn’t you?) and see how the piano returns (first at 1:27) to deliver the song’s singular musical moment: an ear-catching line that ascends up a non-traditional scale only to tumble back, as if down a staircase. Calling upon neither gimmickry nor condescension, the music, while not necessarily Beatle-esque, is positively Beatle-like in its straightforward inventiveness.

“Cold Chicago Morning,” from the 2013 album Son Be Wise (Highline Records), was recently released as a single; my attention was drawn to it via the ever-excellent Lauren Laverne over on BBC Radio 6.

Free and legal MP3: The Van Doos (new rock’n’roll inspired by the old)

Combining melodies that gaze back towards the ’50s with the structural intricacies of 21st-century indie rock and the crowd-pleasing sing-along-iness of timeless pop.

“Airborne” – The Van Doos

Long-time readers may be familiar with my affection for new rock’n’roll that tips its hat to the old while still standing with its feet planted in the here and now. This is my sweet spot, unabashedly so. The Van Doos pretty much knock the ball out of the park in this regard, combining melodies that gaze back towards the ’50s with the structural intricacies of 21st-century indie rock and the crowd-pleasing sing-along-iness of timeless pop. Instrumentation is rooted in classic rock, but listen closely and enjoy the disciplined crunch of the guitars, the delightfully elastic bass line, and the strategic use of castanets, among other things. I do love the strategic use of castanets.

(Now then, some might claim that any band using merely traditional rock’n’roll instruments, as opposed to laptops and digital manipulations and such, is by definition not standing with its feet planted in the here and now. I scoff at such short-sightedness and ask time to referee this battle. Come back in 30 years and we’ll see how things stand.)

Another wonderful aspect of “Airborne” is how much of a journey the song takes us on, in under four minutes, while still feeling easy to absorb rather than obtuse. The band employs an array of subtle flourishes to add depth while remaining approachable, from the sparse arrangement of the opening verse to the unexpected, simultaneous rhythm and key change at 1:00 to the offbeat structure of a song that seems not to have a chorus but a really enticing secondary verse, heard once (beginning at 1:05), immediately repeated, and then abandoned for the accumulating momentum of the rest of the song. Cool stuff, truly.

The Van Doos are a relatively new quartet from North Yorkshire, in the U.K. “Airborne” is a song from their forthcoming debut album, perspicaciously entitled Fingertips.

Free and legal MP3: Rae Morris (moody, w/ simmering momentum)

Morris—21 and British—emerges here as a young Kate Bush for the Lorde generation, with an elastic tone that ranges from sweet to muscular.

“Skin” – Rae Morris

“Skin” launches off an ear-grabbing tick-tock rhythm, glides into a precisely calibrated duskiness, and builds unerring drama and interest from the knowing interplay between an itchy drumbeat and melancholy, softly-voiced piano chords. Morris—21 and British—emerges here as a young Kate Bush for the Lorde generation, with an elastic tone that ranges from sweet to muscular, and an elusive speech idiosyncrasy (listen to her “r”s) that seems only to add character to her already formidable presence.

I am not sure whether to thank Morris or her producer (Ariel Reichtshaid, who has worked with everyone from Cass McCombs and Vampire Weekend to Skye Ferreira and Kylie Minogue), but I love how adeptly “Skin” transcends “girl-at-piano”-type rock music. Part of this has to do with how obliquely the piano is employed; it never goes away, but it is very much an ensemble player here, creating the sense that every chord that does come forward is there for a purpose, not just because the singer plays piano. And then there is the song itself, and its subtly indelible chorus, which would not be as effective as it is without its unusual setting. First, there’s a pre-chorus (first heard at 0:51), followed by a chorus involving two asymmetrical iterations of its central motif. The second time (1:12), the “We break the rules” melody is repeated, after which new lyrics blossom without warning into the song’s pivotal moment: “We break our hearts and pretty much everything.”

From the seaside city of Blackpool, in North West England, Morris was signed to Atlantic Records when just 19. “Skin” was released in January, available as a free download via SoundCloud, and will apparently end up on her debut album, scheduled for release this summer. Morris has been releasing a series of EPs since late 2013; the latest is due out next month. A new single from the forthcoming EP, “Do You Even Know,” is available to stream via via SoundCloud.

Free and legal MP3: Paul Armfield (disarming acoustic contemplation)

Sleek and homespun at the same time, “Speed of Clouds” may initially hit the ear as an oddity, but settle in with it and let its idiosyncrasies coalesce into the enjoyable and rather moving composition that it reveals itself, over four minutes, to be.

“Speed of Clouds” – Paul Armfield

And now for something completely different. A delicately plucked, out-of-time intro, employing a variety of under-utilized string sounds, launches us into an alternative musical world in which acoustic instruments band together orchestrally to accompany a deep-voiced troubadour musing on the profundity of aging. Sleek and homespun at the same time, “Speed of Clouds” may initially hit the ear as an oddity, but settle in and let its idiosyncrasies coalesce into the pleasurable and rather moving composition that it reveals itself, over four minutes, to be.

At the center of it is the voice and sensibility of Paul Armfield, an Isle of Wight-based singer/songwriter with a distinctive delivery, best described as a cross between Cat Stevens and mid-career Leonard Cohen, with a bit of sorcerer thrown in. His is such a different-sounding voice than we are used to hearing that at first it may seem almost primitively mannered, and yet very quickly, as you sink into the song, you may notice how soon like an old friend he sounds, not to mention how beautifully he does in fact sing, his voice projecting a three-dimensional presence that feels especially satisfying in this age of vocal processing and gimmickry.

“Speed of Clouds” is from Armfield’s fifth studio album Up Here, which was released last month. You can listen to the whole album via SoundCloud. Thanks to Paul for the MP3.

Free and legal MP3: Younghusband (deft re-intepretation of lost classic)

Unearthing forgotten Christmas classics is a holiday tradition that never grows old to me, especially when the new interpretation is this deft and the forgotten song this worth remembering.

“I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You” – Younghusband

Unearthing forgotten Christmas classics is a holiday tradition that never grows old to me, especially when the new interpretation is this deft and the forgotten song this worthy. “I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You” is an overlooked nugget from the overlooked ’60s singer/songwriter Margo Guryan, which surfaced on a fan club recording by St. Etienne in 1998 but has otherwise been waiting for a wider audience. In a just world, this is the version that does it, starting right now with this post. (Side note: the world may not be entirely just.)

What I particularly love here is how the British band Younghusband has managed to disclose the otherwise unapparent Ramones-y heart of Guryan’s rather more Bacharach-y original. The song’s chunky, fitful melody was never as light and breezy as the songwriter professed in her own version; the band here exploits its truer nature by giving it a bottom-heavy feel and converting a light-as-air riff filled with la-la-las into a decisive, lower-register instrumental melody. There is something inescapably Phil Spector-ish in the air here too, as the bashy, reverbed, elusively constructed background sound feels like a tasty homage to a master who himself of course is associated memorably with Christmas music.

Meanwhile—Margo Guryan? I had never heard of her before, and yet wow, there she is, a singer/songwriter who wrote and performed in that wispy, sunshine-y style perhaps more widely associated with the likes of Claudine Longet or even, from South America, Astrud Gilberto—a style that has had an unanticipated second life here in the 21st century. Guryan began her musical career in jazz in the late ’50s, and did not start paying attention to pop music until a friend of hers forced her to listen to “God Only Knows.” She eventually recorded one album, 1968’s Take a Picture, a light-sounding but deceptively complex collection of songs which was well-received critically but found no audience. (Guryan did not want to tour, so her record label didn’t promote the release.) She thereafter abandoned her recording career, and spent most of the ensuing decades as a music teacher. She is still alive, and is active on Twitter.

Younghusband, meanwhile, is a quartet from London that released its debut album, Dromes, in September, in the UK only. Their “I Don’t Intend to Spend Christmas Without You” cover was made available via their record label, Sonic Cathedral . Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC6 for the head’s up.

For the excessively curious, the original Margo Guryan version can be heard on Spotify, here (available only to Spotify subscribers):

Free and legal MP3: Stornoway (attentive, gentle, artfully arranged)

“Tumbling Bay” is one of those songs so exquisitely constructed and artfully arranged that you can isolate any slice and find all sorts of goodness to relish.

“Tumbling Bay” – Stornoway

Attentive, gentle rock’n’roll that tells a tender story with an absorbing series of musical and lyrical details. “Tumbling Bay” is one of those songs so artfully arranged that you can isolate any slice and find all sorts of goodness to relish. At any moment, there are wonderful things going on with the guitar work, the percussion, and the vocals, never mind how these separate elements are continually weaving in and around each other, and working to create a whole that transcends its parts.

The song is named for a swimming area that used to exist in the Thames River in Oxford, the quartet’s hometown, and is a tale of unrequited love, told, unusually, from the perspective of the unwitting object rather than the tortured subject. Singer Brian Briggs has a distinctively innocent-sounding tenor, and he serves up the halting, affecting melodies with conviction; but don’t miss as well the background vocal efforts of his bandmates, as Stornoway is not averse to letting the whole band sing at the same time. (Indeed, the simple vocal coda we get at 3:36 is both haunting and oddly cathartic, not to be missed.)

“Tumbling Bay” is one of six songs to be found on the group’s newly-released “mini-album,” You Don’t Know Anything, which is a follow-up to its full-length Tales From Terra Firma, released earlier this year. Thanks to Lauren Laverne at BBC6 for the head’s up, and thanks to Rolling Stone for the MP3. Stornoway was last seen here in July 2010, for the fabulous song “Zorbing,” which ended up among my top 10 favorite free and legal MP3s of the year that year.