Free and legal MP3:
John Murry
(moody, churning, redemptive)

May 13, 2013

John Murry

“Southern Sky” – John Murry

Existing in a murky net of sound, “Southern Sky” wraps you into its spacious yet slightly menacing world with an enticing mix of buzz and chime. The song launches with a purposeful, two-chord alternation, which gives the piece both propulsion and tension. We wait for release, it doesn’t come. The verse hews to the two chords, and Murry’s blanketty voice, rich and weary, sings a melody marked by rests and delays.

At 1:10 a new chord arrives, and something like redemption: the churning, moody verse gives way to a darkly gorgeous chorus. Murry is joined by a female backup singer, that elusive marimba-like sound comes slightly more forward into our awareness, and while the melody once more occupies the back end of the measure, it now feels suffused with grace and power. Without doing any one remarkable thing, this chorus is nevertheless remarkable, and it gives “Southern Sky” the sturdy feel of something timeless and necessary.

With addiction and loss in his back story, Murry is not play-acting here; the song’s partially-contained anguish is probably all too real. Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, Murry has landed as a musician in the Bay Area. His debut album, The Graceless Age, was released last year in the UK, and then in the US in April via the Oakland-based Evangeline Recording Co. You can listen to the whole album, and buy it if you like, via Bandcamp. Thanks to WXPN for the head’s up. You can download the song via the link above or via SoundCloud, where you can comment directly to Murry if you are so moved.

0 Comments

Free and legal MP3:
Marie Lalá
(polished, perky pop w/ big chorus)

May 13, 2013

Marie Lala

“Without You” – Marie Lalá

Polished and perky, “Without You” is also sneaky memorable. Right away, I like the extra beats that complicate the verse, and the staccato, neo-new wave ambiance. But everything, I soon discover, is a set-up for the chorus, which is bright and bangly and familiar-seeming in a good way. And yet it’s not even the sing-along part that nails it for me as much as what happens at 0:45, when the momentum slows, on the words “I don’t seem to get the point.” I feel restored here to an unknown moment in the distant past, either because the melody is reminding me of a song I can’t quite remember or maybe it’s just the classic power of returning to the major after a sidestep to the minor (“the minor fall, the major lift”). But that’s where I fall in love with this song and, just about, the singer too.

And what’s not to love about the mysterious Marie Lalá? When I first featured her here, last February, I openly questioned the veracity of the Swedish singer/songwriter’s quirky, unforthcoming biography, which talked of her background as an aerialist in the circus and her current job climbing ropes on an offshore oil rig. One must be wary in this hoax-friendly day and age, mustn’t one? As her debut album, Surrender My Soul, is released this week, a bit more background has been revealed, and the story is, I now believe, the actual truth. She no longer works on the oil rig, however, as she used the job to finance her album. “Without You” is the first available track.

Note that Lalá’s given last name is Nilsson; note too that she appears to have taken her stage name from the aerialist immortalized by Edward Degas in the painting “Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando,” a reference I missed last time around. You can download the MP3 via the song title above, or visit SoundCloud for a higher-quality .wav file.

0 Comments

Free and legal MP3:
Tideup
(lo-fi electronica w/ lovely vocals)

May 13, 2013

Tideup

“Walk” – Tideup

Despite the volume of lifeless electronica and/or electro-pop that has flooded the internet over the last 10 or so years, let us not ever give up on the basic sound, which in the proper hands can still deliver fresh and delightful music. File “Walk” under fresh and delightful, thanks in large part to the clear sweetness of front woman Noelle Indovino’s voice. Draped in a bit of reverb, she still sounds present and crisp, a tone rarely heard in the overcrowded world of DIY electronic duos. And apparently this is no accident. Tideup mastermind/producer/multi-instrumentalist Ben Guzman spent two years searching, via Craigslist, for the right female vocalist to buoy his electronics-oriented landscapes, inspired by music he admired from the Dirty Projectors. Indovino answered his ad in December 2011, as well as his musical prayers. Her voice lends a seductive humanity to Guzman’s adept textures, floating with airy grace above the swells and clatters of the electronic backbeat.

But Tideup isn’t just about a pretty voice. “Walk” is a sturdy song, with lovely, rubbery melodies and thoughtful touches like that vivid three-note melisma in the chorus at 1:53 (melisma: one syllable held through a succession of notes), the thoughtfully sparse instrumental break at 2:20, and what sounds like the ongoing addition of organic drumming on top of the electronic beat. Listen closely and you might also notice how the verse melody is different the second time through, always a sign of a thoughtful composition. And one of the most appealing extras in “Walk” stems again from Indovino’s singing—that lovely wordless vocal she offers us ahead of the verse, which is an unusual and enticing moment. Let this one wash over you a few times and you might start glowing.

“Walk” is a song from Tideup’s debut EP, In Curses You Came, which was released digitally at the beginning of the year. You can listen to the whole thing, and buy it, via Bandcamp. Guzman and Indovino are based in Orlando, Florida.

0 Comments

Free and legal MP3:
Time Travelers
(clean, invigorating rock, w/ time tricks)

May 1, 2013

Time Travelers

“Stormalong” – Time Travelers

A minor hobby of mine as a listener is deciphering unorthodox time signatures. Of course, the more unorthodox they are, the less I can usually figure them out. “Stormalong” is one of those songs that seemed to resist precise mapping; outside of my suspecting that the rhythmic engagement of the introduction is based on alternating 6/4 and 7/4 measures, this one eluded me.

Turns out it was a trick of the ear. Vocalist Edward Sturtevant assures me that outside of the introduction, the rest of the song actually is in 4/4 time after all. What they did was place a lot of the accents on the off-beats—”to keep things interesting,” he says. It sounds so unassuming that way, but it’s worth noting that obscuring a song’s time signature has become an all but dying art in an age of digitized beats and laptop composition. “Keeping things interesting” is a modest way of acknowledging that one has enough craft and mastery to conceive of fiddling with rhythmic structure in the first place, never mind the talent to write and perform the end result. In little more than three minutes, “Stormalong” propels us through a clean, invigorating piece of accessible but complex pop. In addition to the rhythmic uncertainty, the song offers an eccentric two-part verse, a chorus that is unusually succinct and melodic (typically a chorus may be one or the other, or neither), and then an extended bridge section that is the only part that presents itself clearly in 4/4 time. Often either difficult to discern or difficult to interpret, the lyrics glide by without etching a firm picture in the mind’s eye, but the chorus’s central, allusive observation about the fine line between hope and despair is, combined with the musical bounty, strong enough to keep me eager to tease more meaning from the rest of the words as I continue to listen.

Time Travelers are a four-man band based in Brooklyn. As reported last time they were here, in August 2012, they got together in 2008 as sophomores at Bates College in Maine. “Stormalong” is the title track from the band’s soon-to-be-released EP, which will be their third to date.

0 Comments

Free and legal MP3:
Night Panther
(synth pop confection, and yet w/ substance)

May 1, 2013

Night Panther

“All For Love” – Night Panther

One of music’s many great mysteries is how, sometimes, under the right (mysterious) circumstances, a seemingly light-as-air pop confection can acquire the weight and power of something more significant, simply by doing what it does. And while I know that not everyone listening will hear it the same way, one of my founding principles hat Fingertips is that quality is not necessarily as subjective as is commonly assumed; continual effort has been made here, against all apparent odds, to explore how this might be.

So where exactly within this giddy, glittery synth-pop trifle am I sensing a deeper purpose and conviction? Let’s start with the introduction, which aligns with any number of classic grooves by shrewdly adding elements as it develops; I especially like the wooden-block-like sound that joins in at 0:16 and the psychedelic-organ-like tone that blossoms at 0:24. And then, the song’s backbone: a 15-note descending run that starts for the first time at 0:48. Listen with half an ear and it’s a standard-seeming downward melody; pay closer attention and it traces a marvelous, run-on, deviant scale. Likewise front man Farzad Houshiarnejad can be heard as an airy tenor belting out a bubble-gummy tune or, upon closer inspection, a canny and creative singer. And then maybe best of all, check out the metamorphosis that begins at 2:56, when the vocals fade into a stuttering, minimalist-style loop, which leads to a bass-and-drum interchange around 3:10, which (anyone see this coming?) opens into a kick-ass, old-fashioned guitar solo. As the vocals rejoin, it feels as if genre and time-frame have evaporated, and maybe that’s it, maybe it’s how this innocent-seeming song morphs from the particular to the nearly universal that allows it to pack its unexpected punch. I like it, in any case.

Night Panther is a trio based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. “All For Love” is single the band released a bit earlier this month via SoundCloud. You can download it the usual way, via the song’s title above, or at the SoundCloud page, where you can also talk directly to the band, if you are so moved. This appears to be the band’s fourth single; no longer releases have yet been issued.



photo credit: Kelly Kurteson

1 Comment

Earlier Posts »»