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Fingertips
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What are we coming to?
Nov 14, 2024Tap to summarizeHonest, I started this playlist last month, intending to upload it in October. But plans changed, and now the post-Election-Day timing renders the opening song all the more haunting. The tracks that follow may or may not relate; you decide. And I will otherwise spare the hand-wringing; there’s enough of that going around, and I for one aim to keep the deranged manbaby from invading my headspace over the coming weeks, months, (sigh) years. I will just note this: the election of a convicted felon, cheater, and predator who had previously attempted to overthrow an election indicates that there is something terribly wrong with our basic, collective ability to inform, organize, and govern ourselves. And that something has everything to do with unregulated capitalism and its various discontents, most specifically the widespread inclination to prefer revenue to virtue. Things fall apart precisely from there. Anyway, the music: 1. “When the Devil’s Loose” – A.A. Bondy (When the Devil’s Loose, 2009) 2. “Pinned” – Unknown Venus (single, 2024) 3. “That’s the Way” – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin III, 1970) 4. “You Gotta Be” – Des’ree (I Ain’t Movin’, 1995) 5. “Cry Baby” – The Motels (Careful, 1980) 6. “Lorlir” – Kaki King (Modern Yesterdays, 2020) 7. “Play With Fire” – The Rolling Stones (b-side, 1965) 8. “Salt Eyes” – Middle Kids (New Songs For Old Problems EP, 2019) 9. “Black Star” – Gillian Welch (single, 2005) 10. “The Card Cheat” – The Clash (London Calling, 1979) 11. “Australia” – Manic Street Preachers (Everything Must Go, 1996) 12. “The Witch” – Kaia Kater, featuring Aiofe O’Donovan (Strange Medicine, 2024) 13. “Helplessness Blues” – Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues, 2011) 14. “Bring Back the Love” – The Monitors (Greetings!…We’re the Monitors, 1968) 15. “Half Asleep” – School of Seven Bells (Alpinisms, 2008) 16. “Cornerstone” – Richard X. Heyman (Cornerstone, 1998) 17. “In Between Days” – The Cure (The Head on the Door, 1985) 18. “Afraid of Everyone” – The National (High Violet, 2010) 19. “Swampland” – Alex Winston (Bingo!, 2024) 20. “I’m Going to Tear Your Playhouse Down” – Ann Peebles (single, 1973; I Can’t Stand the Rain, 1974) Random notes: * This is very likely the least classic-rock-y playlist on the internet that nevertheless manages to include songs from both Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones. * Gillian Welch’s incandescent cover of Radiohead’s “Black Star” is a classic, presenting the song in a totally different setting while retaining and enhancing its poignant essence. I’ve poked around a bit and still can’t determine how she came to record this and why it exists as a standalone single but she did and it does and it moves me every time I hear it. I don’t think I’ve previously featured a live recording on an EPS mix but this only exists in a live version and it’s pretty much perfect as is. * I am not inherently a fan of instrumental tracks but I can’t help being ongoingly fascinated by what the experimentally-minded guitar virtuoso Kaki King has released over the course of her iconoclastic career. Her 2020 album Modern Yesterdays was recorded just as COVID-19 was identified and lockdowns beginning; everyone who worked on the album came down with it (and recovered, thankfully). The album itself arose as a side effect of a planned live project called Data Not Found, which got scrapped due to the lockdown. While Modern Yesterdays finds King finger-picking in the Fahey/Kottke lineage, the album also expands into evocative electronic soundscapes, incorporating alternative guitar sounds and spacious synthesizer beds created by sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson. “Lorlir” offers King’s brisk finger work on top of electronics so gentle that they seem, somehow, part of the guitar itself. While the song’s title is a mystery–I can find nothing that explains it–other titles on the album bring the listener straight back to that disastrous time (e.g., “Can’t Touch This or That or You or My Face,” “Sanitized, Alone”)–a time which, I might add, seems to have been forgotten by the misled half of the US population who voted to bring back the cruel and inept leader who tragically bungled the country’s response (and pretty much everything else). In this context an instrumental seems about right, as words become inadequate. * There exists an all but endless trove of R&B tracks from the 1960s that were not hits but one wonders why the heck not. “Bring Back the Love” has the melodic drama, confident vocals, and sure groove of a classic Four Tops tune–perhaps not a complete coincidence, as one of the four songwriters credited here is Brian Holland, the music-oriented Holland of the famed songwriting trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland (his brother Eddie did the lyrics). Those three were responsible for some of the finest songs recorded by the Four Tops–not to mention the Supremes, and Marvin Gaye, and a number of other first-tier Motown acts. This one sounds like a winner, even if it wasn’t. * Not a lot of information is available online about the singer/songwriter calling herself Unknown Venus, which is probably (given the moniker) how she wants it in this day and age of intrusive, overzealous fandom. (Perhaps there’s a new generation of musicians arising who intend to forge a road back to some semblance of reasonable privacy.) In any case, what she has revealed online: her name is Annie Lancaster, she is based in Los Angeles, plays the harp, and has released five singles to date, most recently “Pinned.” The song is at once dreamy and straightforward, complete with an actual instrumental hook by way of the distorted guitar line that we first hear in the introduction. Who does this anymore? Not enough people, that’s who. Not enough people make this sort of well-constructed, effortlessly melodic music either, but they’re out there and I always aim to find them. Hat tip to the Luna Collective’s weekly, off-the-beaten-path playlist for this one. * There are a half-dozen or more well-known, widely-regarded songs from the Clash’s seminal London Calling, and then there’s “The Card Cheat.” A loping, keyboard-driven song, launching off a decisive Hal Blaine drumbeat, “The Card Cheat” is pleasingly enigmatic in a Dylanesque sort of way–vague characters speak, specific locations are cited, you sense something important is going on but you can’t put your finger on it. A little burst of horn adds to the mystique along the way, and Joe Strummer’s urgent/friendly voice holds it all together. Perhaps part of my attraction to the song has to do with the fact that it isn’t as well-known as the album’s other highlights, but for one reason or another it remains a big favorite after all these years. * Richard X. Heyman made an appearance here last year when I pulled the Doughboys’ oddly endearing “Rhoda Mandelbaum” out of obscurity for EPS 10.8. Heyman, the band’s drummer, was a teenager during the Doughboys’ late-’60s, garage rock heyday, but re-emerged as a power pop-oriented singer/songwriter in ...
Transcribe →“Candles” – Sunset Rubdown
Oct 24, 2024Tap to summarize“Candles” – Sunset Rubdown A dash of compositional complexity in an otherwise catchy song is my kind of good time. The Montreal band Sunset Rubdown, fronted by Wolf Parade’s Spencer Krug, emerges from a long hiatus to offer this syncopated bit of what sounds like prog pop, which is apparently a (minor) thing. It’s intricate, engaging, and does its business in just over three minutes. Prog pop! The first thing to notice is the stop-start-y keyboard lines, which both introduce and underpin the song. A heavy bass tone adds deep ground while the flowing, descending melody of the verse, working on top of and against the ascending keyboard figures, gives the song its signature feeling of compelling intricacy. Another feature that pits one characteristic against an oppositional counterpart are the backing vocals provided by keyboardist Camilla Wynne, which add warmth to Krug’s edgier tone. Just as you’re getting the hang of it, and perhaps noticing that there’s no guitar involved, the edifice pretty much breaks down halfway through (1:29) via a short, muddy bridge that makes a veiled reference to the pandemic. Order returns when the keyboard lines re-establish themselves (2:02) and accompany us to the end, with a cheeky few plinks on the piano seeing us out. Spencer Krug first made his mark on the indie rock scene at the head of the band Wolf Parade, which launched back in 2003, and has been active as recently as 2022. He debuted Sunset Rubdown in 2005, initially as a solo project but soon enough as a band, only to put it to bed by 2009, despite critical acclaim for the three full-band albums. “Candles” was originally recorded in 2020 as a solo effort by Krug, but when the band found themselves reunited–minus a guitarist–they decided to give the song another go and this is what happened. “Candles” is the third track of nine on the band’s new album, Always Happy to Explode, which was released last month. You can listen to it, and buy it, on Bandcamp.
Transcribe →“Condensation” – Sports Team
Oct 24, 2024Tap to summarize“Condensation” – Sports Team So here we’re back to a standard backbeat (see previous review for context)–although maybe not quite. The emphasis is on the two and the four, the very definition of a backbeat, but at the same time the beat also manages, somehow, to swing. I think this has to do with the way lead vocalist Alex Rice toys with the melody, regularly hitting his marks ever so slightly ahead of the actual beat. (Don’t try this at home; it’s harder to do than it seems.) Consider it part of the song’s sloppy-tight vibe–just like the lyrics themselves, in the verse, which spill out in something of a stream and yet, if you pay attention, scan perfectly with the energetic melody. Somewhat unusually, Sports Team is a six-person band, and everyone is surely doing something here, in service of the crowd-friendly ambiance, although it’s difficult to know who’s doing what when. There are melodic leaps, horn charts, gang-style backing vocals, keyboard glissandos, you name it. (There’s even a reference to “fingertips,” which I can’t help hearing.) Enough is happening such that we only get the verse melody twice, as the song’s busy construction provides us with what sounds like not only a pre-chorus and a chorus but, potentially, either a two-part post-chorus (is that even a thing?) or a post-chorus and a bridge. We can leave the structural analysis to more exacting minds than mine; I’ll take the welcoming beat and agile melodicism and be quite happy. Based in London, Sports Team was founded in 2016, when five of the six bandmates were studying at Cambridge University. “Condensation” is a track from their forthcoming third album, Boys These Days, slated to arrive in February.
Transcribe →“Broken Ceilings” – Morgan Swihart
Oct 24, 2024Tap to summarize“Broken Ceilings” – Morgan Swihart Smoky and deliberate, “Broken Ceilings” simmers with intention, unfolding on top of a wide-ranging if elusive instrumental palette. The drums are front and center, the electric guitar occasionally steps forward, a piano vamps a bit and disappears; strings, too–or synthesized strings?–provide texture and drama; an athletic bass line lends subtle movement. Are there horns, actual or digital, in here too? No matter. It turns out to be far less about individual lines and more about how the amalgam produces a swelling, wall-of-sound feeling, of a sort you might get from putting a rock band into a blender with a small orchestra. (Don’t try that at home either.) The song launches, minus introduction, straight into the verse’s melody, with its languorous ascent, Swihart’s resonant voice extending her notes out there on the borderline between shy and coy. You can sense from the start that the song is aiming in the direction of Big, and cumulatively, we get there, even as Swihart seems surely to be holding something back, in a good way. I’m an ongoing fan of restraint, and, counterintuitively, that’s what is ultimately on display here, despite the buildup, the eventual volume, the unbridled bashing of drums. You can hear it in the way the melody ongoingly steps down to resolve, in the spaces Swihart leaves from line to line, and, a closing touch, at the very end, in the way she modestly slides away. Morgan Swihart is a singer/songwriter based in Brooklyn. “Broken Ceilings” is a song from her short, appealing album of the same name, released in June. You can check it out on Spotify. A previous album, The Grave, was released last year.
Transcribe →It was so clear to me
Sep 29, 2024Tap to summarizeSummer may be over, but tell me if there isn’t a dark-ish, summer’s-over feeling coursing through the Santo & Johnny version of the Gershwin classic “Summertime.” The famed sibling instrumental duo, from Brooklyn, turned a song that typically evokes languid sunshine into something introspective, spooky, intermittently discordant, and, somehow, maybe, autumnal. In any case, I didn’t manage to get a playlist up in August so here it is one way or another. There are two other evocative covers in among the mix this month, and one fake cover: the Concretes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” is not the Motown nugget but its own incisive thing. The real covers are discussed below, along with many other things, so I’ll keep the intro short this time. For those who don’t like surprises, here’s what’s on tap in 11.07: 1. “Becoming All Alone” – Regina Spektor (Home, Before and After, 2022) 2. “Revolutionary Kind” – Gomez (Liquid Skin, 1999) 3. “The Riddle” – Nik Kershaw (The Riddle, 1984) 4. “Cathedrals” – Cry Cry Cry (single, 2018) 5. “La Bambola” – Patty Pravo (Patty Pravo, 1968) 6. “Big Tears” – Elvis Costello & the Attractions (b-side, 1978) 7. “You Can’t Hurry Love” – The Concretes (The Concretes, 2003) 8. “Coast” – Kim Deal (single, 2024; Nobody Loves You More coming 11/24) 9. “Every Shining Time You Arrive” – Sunny Day Real Estate (How It Feels To Be Something On, 1998) 10. “Everybody Plays the Fool” – The Main Ingredient (Bitter Sweet, 1972) 11. “Any Way You Want It” – Clem Snide (Clem Snide’s Journey EP, 2011) 12. “Annie” – Kirsty MacColl (Real, 1983; released 2023) 13. “Get Yourself Together” – Small Faces (Small Faces, 1967) 14. “Not a Job” – Elbow (Cast of Thousands, 2003) 15. “What Now” – Brittany Howard (What Now, 2024) 16. “Life is Sweet” – Natalie Merchant (Ophelia, 1998) 17. “Amor Fati” – Washed Out (Within and Without, 2011) 18. “You Never Come Closer” – Doris (Did You Give the World Some Love Today Baby, 1970) 19. “Summertime” – Santo & Johnny (Santo & Johnny, 1960) 20. “Middle Cyclone” – Neko Case (Middle Cyclone, 2009) Random notes: * Clem Snide front man Eef Barzeley has proven over the years to be a master of rock’n’roll covers. Nowhere was the skill in more evidence than in his specially-released 2011 EP, Clem Snide’s Journey. A tour de force of transformational interpretation, the all-Journey EP was inspired by his version of the song “Faithfully,” covered as part of the intermittently wonderful AV Club Undercover series. I featured this song at the time, and stand by my characterization of the man as some sort of mad genius. These days the EP is available to his Bandcamp subscribers only, with no playback options. However, three of the six songs are available to listen to on Spotify, including “Any Way You Want It.” * The Swedish pop singer Doris Svensson was a curious case. Billed by her first name only, she released one solo album in 1970 and pretty much retreated from performing after that. The album initially was a commercial flop, but a re-release in 1996 captured the attention of hipsters, and hip-hop artists, and brought the album back into the cultural flow. The album is an idiosyncratic mix of pop, soul, funk, psychedelia, and jazz, with a Dusty Springfield-esque vibe–well worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s not only available on the streaming services, the whole thing can be downloaded for free via the Internet Archive. Svensson died last year at the age of 75. Thanks to the blog James Writes Stuff for the head’s up on this one, which I otherwise hadn’t heard of. And yes it’s very ’00s of me, offering a hat tip to another blog, but James like me has a very ’00s thing going over there, with his observant, personal, well-written album reviews; his blog is a relatively rare example of an algorithm- and commercial-free web site just doing its thing here in the corrupted, over-stimulated world of internet 2024. * The brilliant Kirsty MacColl was taken from us, tragically, some 24 years ago. But it was only last year that we saw the long-awaited release of an album she had recorded in 1983 that was shelved by Polydor, her then record company; they felt it wasn’t commercial enough. It would have been her second album. She and Polydor parted ways after that. She had a UK hit single in 1985, with a dazzling version of Billy Bragg’s “A New England,” recorded for Stiff Records, but soon it got complicated: Stiff went bankrupt, there were contractual complications and personal complications, leading to a lot of session work–including her indelible star turn on 1987’s “Fairytale of New York”–but no record deal. The song “Annie,” from Real, was one of three songs from the ill-fated LP that Polydor saw fit, in 1985, to tack onto a re-released version of her debut album. A handful of other songs from Real surfaced years later on a posthumous 2005 compilation album. I’m not sure what took quite so long for Real to emerge as its own thing, but I’m glad we finally have it–it’s not a classic but a treasure for Kirsty fans nonetheless. The album is available on its own digitally; for the devoted fan, all the album’s tracks are on CD as part of the lavish, eight-disc, 161-song box set called See That Girl 1979-2000, released by Universal Music in a limited edition last year. But good luck finding it: I don’t see any for sale in any of the usual places at this point. * “Cathedrals” was something of a radio hit for the North Carolina band Jump, Little Children back in 1998. The dormant singer/songwriter trio Cry Cry Cry ended a long hiatus in 2018 with a cover of the song, and they did three helpful things in the process. First, they removed the strings, which had added a bit too much saccharin to a song teetering already on the edge of schmaltz (if I may mix my food metaphors). Second, Dar Williams sings lead, transforming the somewhat overwrought original into something more pensive and substantial. Lastly, the stellar harmonies provided by band mates Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell lend warmth and depth that the original’s vocal performance lacked. Oh and as a bonus, the Cry Cry Cry version is 20 seconds shorter, almost always a good thing. * I’ve put Elvis Costello songs on a playlist more or less once a year here, but I’ve been leaning in the direction of his 21st-century output. I’ve done that consciously, because I feel his later-career stuff is relatively overlooked–wide-ranging musically, his 21st-century albums are maybe harder to pin down than the “angry young man” material of the late ’70s and early ’80s, and so over the years they’ve kind of piled up into a corner that his loyal fans have pretty much to themselves. So I like to give the newer songs some sunlight here. That said,...
Transcribe →“Rob Me Blind” – Sweet Unrest
Sep 17, 2024Tap to summarize“Rob Me Blind” – Sweet Unrest “Rob Me Blind” is a brisk, charming bit of neo-Britpop, with ukulele. Owing something to the Strokes and/or early Cure, the London-based Sweet Unrest smash a lot of melody and guitar into three minutes, including a closing section that all but flies off the rails before getting tidily swept back up into the song’s stalwart instrumental hook and sweet “ooh-oohs,” and leaving me with a smile on my face, even as I’m not at all sure what all they’re singing about or why I’m smiling. The same sweet “ooh-oohs” are in fact the first thing we hear, and the aforementioned ukulele. Normal enough instrumentation–guitar, bass, drums–then lead us into the song’s head-bopping rhythm and clipped, sing-song-y melody, delivered by a very British Jack River. But something feels a little off kilter here, in a good way. I like the ear-catching “hiccups” in the melody (e.g. 0:49-0:59); the dreamy background vocals heard shortly thereafter are at once lovely and kind of wacky. And what these vocals are accompanying is the song’s most incisive element: the ringing lead guitar line (first heard at 1:02). Hearing it prompted the realization that this sort of guitar line, which functions as a full-fledged hook, has all but disappeared as the 21st century has aged; it’s concise, melodic, up front, and emerges unexpectedly but organically in the song’s middle section. As for River’s semi-unhinged vocals in the song’s final third, they align with the band’s embrace of a certain amount of commotion, and for me the payoff is the falsetto note Rivers hits in the middle of the carrying-on (2:18), a pitch-perfect melodic enhancement at a surprising moment. Self-proclaimed fans of classic poetry, Sweet Unrest derived its name from the Keats poem “Bright Star.” Following their self-titled debut EP in 2023, the band has released four singles in 2024, of which “Rob Me Blind” is the most recent.
Transcribe →“Tamarindo Sunsets” – Sam Weber
Sep 17, 2024Tap to summarize“Tamarindo Sunsets” – Sam Weber With its feathery piano playing, gently emotive vocals, and lovely melodies, “Tamarindo Sunsets” feels like slow, melancholy solace in a moment overwhelmed here in the U.S. by rapid-fire digital idiocy. The lyrics are precise but evade direct comprehension. The singer sings from a place of hurt; the titular phrase are the first words we hear but they don’t recur. Tamarindo is a beach town in Costa Rica, and (maybe?) stands in for something more enticing in the imagination than it turns out to be. In addition to the soft, evocative piano, I’d draw your attention to the muted bass notes, so velvety they all but melt into the song’s tender ambiance. The repeated lyric that sticks most obviously out is the singer’s claim to be “going offline ’til the end of time,” which I’ll admit sounds more and more like a lovely idea. I can’t be sure of singer/songwriter Sam Weber’s intent here but it feels like an example of failed will in the face of life’s disappointments. Who after all can go offline ’til the end of time? Especially as the song’s narrator still wants to know what’s going on (“When there’s something new/Can you text it to me?”) “Tamarindo Sunsets” is the lead track on Clear + Plain, Weber’s fourth album, released last month. He also has an EP and a couple of singles. You can check everything out on Bandcamp.
Transcribe →“July 4” – Mondo Cozmo
Sep 17, 2024Tap to summarize“July 4” – Mondo Cozmo I’ll admit I’m a sucker for the Hal Blaine drum beat (think “Be My Baby”), but that’s not the only thing going for the moody, purposeful “July 4,” from the new Mondo Cozmo album. There is a clear whiff of Springsteen in the air here as well–in an encouraging, homage-y way rather than a retread-y way. The title is part of it (July 4 might be seen as referencing two different Bruce tunes) but there’s also Cozmo’s world-weary, determined vocals, which build from a Nebraska-esque mumble/whisper to the higher register urgings of the chorus. One might also consider the song’s narrative a bit on the Boss-y side–an elusive story that appears to involve ne’er-do-wells in over their heads. And oh yeah there’s a river in here too. While the song simmers with its persistent beat and offers partial build-ups, note that we never get any Bruce-style, full-throated deliverance. Instead, the chorus keeps to the same steady thump while the verse melody is inverted but retains the disciplined, in-between moments, now augmented with some sonorous synth flairs in the background. Keep an ear on those synth sounds moving forward–beginning around 1:57 they have this lovely way of sustaining notes before and through the verse that are not part of the underlying chord, providing a background hint of atonality that, somehow, grounds the music all the more resolutely. And then, as the song approaches a would-be climax, the sound peels back at 3:18 with some distant asynchronous arpeggios, leading us, unexpectedly, into something that sounds like a children’s chorus, delivering a poignant series of wordless “ahs.” We get one more taste of the chorus to wrap things up, and while I’m not sure much has changed it sounds all the more heroic this last time through. Mondo Cozmo–birth name Josh Ostrander–is a singer-songwriter/producer based in Philadelphia. He began recording as Mondo Cozmo in 2016; “July 4” is a track from It’s PRINCIPLE!, the fourth Mondo album, released at the end of August on Last Gang Records. MP3 via Last Gang. Ostrander was previously featured on Fingertips in 2007, when he fronted the band Eastern Conference Champions, who played together from 2005 to 2015.
Transcribe →Shouldn’t I be doing something?
Jul 30, 2024Tap to summarizeWhat a difference a month makes. The mood is (cautiously) lighter. I remain stupefied that a convicted criminal who orchestrated an attempted coup can be considered a viable candidate for president of this country. Can be popular despite his track record of various despicabilities. Is continuing to be treated by mainstream media as pretty much normal. This is not just frightening but also goddamned puzzling. How did we get here? But wait a minute: I said the mood is lighter, and it certainly is. The dreaded rematch has been short-circuited. I’m with her. Now then, I can’t claim that this month’s playlist has anything to do with this. Or does it? “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”; “The Next Time Around”; “Don’t Change On Me”; “Don’t Come Running to Me”; “Then Came You”: a suggestive batch if looked at a certain way. But seriously unplanned. Consider it the zeitgeist at work. In any case, here’s where we’re going together this month: 1. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” – Sugar (Copper Blue, 1992) 2. “Patterns” – Laura Marling (single, 2024; Patterns in Repeat, coming 10/24) 3. “The Next Time Around” – Little Joy (Little Joy, 2008) 4. “Gag Reflections” – Wild Moccasins (single, 2012) 5. “Don’t Change On Me” – Ray Charles (Love Country Style, 1970) 6. “Don’t I Know” – Sinéad Lohan (No Mermaid, 1998) 7. “Nowhere” – Swaying Wires (I Left a House Burning, 2016) 8. “A Little Respect” – Erasure (The Innocents, 1988) 9. “Don’t Come Running to Me” – Madeline Bell (Bell’s A Poppin’, 1967; bonus track on the 2004 re-issue) 10. “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” – Klaatu (3:47 EST, 1976) 11. “Shenandoah” – Anaïs Mitchell (The Brightness, 2007) 12. “Hot Sun” – Wilco (Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP, 2024) 13. “Zoeira” – Joyce (Hard Bossa, 1999) 14. “You Can’t Take Love For Granted” – Graham Parker (The Real Macaw, 1983) 15. “Then Came You” – Dionne Warwick and the Spinners (single, 1974) 16. “Like I Say (I runaway)” – Nilüfer Yanya (single, 2024) 17. “Red Rubber Ball” – The Cyrkle (Red Rubber Ball, 1966) 18. “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” – Spoon (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007) 19. “Afternoon in Kanda” – Jesse Harris (Sub Rosa, 2012) 20. “Find My Love” – Fairground Attraction (The First of a Million Kisses, 1988) Random notes: * The Houston indie outfit the Wild Moccasins had a bit of an internet moment earlier this century. Fronted by Zahira Gutierrez, the band started up in 2007, released three albums between 2010 and 2018 on the reasonably high-profile New West label, got some love from NPR among other places, but quietly disappeared after their last release. Gutierrez has recently reemerged as a solo artist, with more of a pop orientation, using only her first name. “Gag Reflections” was a single released in between their well-regarded first and second albums. * Sinéad Lohan recorded two albums in the mid- to late-’90s, the first of which was released only in Ireland, the second of which got full distribution on a major label and earned her a good amount of attention and airplay back in the day. And that was pretty much that: she got married, had two children, and at one point sooner than later decided that she had zero interest in continuing on as a professional musician. Wikipedia reports that she did work on a third album in the 2004 to 2007 range but it never saw the light of day. Her one widely-released album, 1998’s No Mermaid, remains a quiet classic of sorts, full of songs of depth and quality. “Don’t I Know” is the third song from the album that I’ve featured in an EPS mix over the years. * Well known by now as the composer, playwright, and brain child behind the hit Broadway show Hadestown, which won eight Tony Awards in 2019, Anaïs Mitchell began her career as a singer/songwriter in the early ’00s. Hadestown started as a concept album in 2010; it was Mitchell’s fourth release at the time. Then came a long and winding road to the Broadway stage, which occupied a lot of Mitchell’s time and creative energy along the way; she’s only released two albums of original material since then, in 2012 and 2022. “Shenandoah” is a song I’ve always loved, from 2007’s The Brightness. I’m a bit of a sucker for songs with asymmetrical melodies–and here I mean the way the first line of the verse stops, melodically, at 0:30 but when the melody repeats in the next line it extends itself (0:40). There’s something timeless in that, with the vibe of an old folk song. Mitchell has a confident, distinctive singing voice, which sounds at once innocent and full of wisdom. A longtime visitor or two might remember seeing the beautiful “Flowers (Eurydice’s Song)” featured here back when it first appeared, on the 2010 Hadestown concept album. * The new single from Laura Marling is gorgeous. What a songwriter she is. And she can sing, too. * Madeline Bell was born in New Jersey and began singing gospel as a teenager; her professional career, however, took her in another direction. On tour with a gospel act in Europe in 1962, Bell ended up being introduced to a number of notable British performers, including Dusty Springfield, who not only went on to employ Bell as a backing vocalist but by some accounts began to model her singing style after Bell’s. Bell stayed in the UK, recorded a few more albums, and later became known as vocalist for the pop group Blue Mink, which had a half-dozen hit singles in England in the early to mid-’70s. You’ll definitely hear something Dusty-ish in “Don’t Come Running to Me,” a track included on the 2004 re-issue of Bell’s 1967 solo debut Bell’s A Poppin’. While Bell moved into more of a smooth pop-soul direction later on, this debut album is much more of a Bacharachian pop recording, very much an artifact of a particular (and particularly wonderful) moment. For those with a soft spot for the so-called “Swinging London” era, check out this performance of the song from British TV in 1967“. * The background story of many a long-ago rock band can be more interesting than anticipated. Take the Cyrkle, a one-hit wonder ensemble from Easton, Pennsylvania. Originally called The Rhondells, they ended up being managed by none other than Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who changed their name to the Cyrkle–exotic spelling suggested by John Lennon himself. They even opened 14 times for the Beatles on their 1966 tour, including the Fab Four’s final-ever concert performance, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. “Red Rubber Ball,” meanwhile, was a song co-written by Paul Simon and Seekers’ guitarist Bruce Woodley, offered to the Cyrkle when the band was opening at one point for Simon and Garfunkel. Cyrkle singer and bassist Tom Dawes had a subsequent career writing commercial jingles, including Alka-Seltzer’s omnipresent “plop plop fizz fizz” refrain. According to an over-long, un-sourced write-up on Wikipedia, the band managed to reunite in 2016 and were still performing live as recently as 2022. Over on Spotify, there are four new singles posted since...
Transcribe →“Evening Dream” – Mo Kenney
Jul 25, 2024Tap to summarize“Evening Dream” – Mo Kenney Everything about “Evening Dream,” in all its toe-tapping melancholy, speaks to attentive craft and artful detail; this is one structurally sound, melodically incisive, smartly produced song. Look how easily the listener is swept in, first with the crisp acoustic strums and then a quickly introduced verse that barely allows the singer a breath, employing an unbroken stream of trochaic rhythm to accentuate a sense of movement. (A trochee is the opposite of an iamb: ONE-two, ONE-two versus one-TWO one-TWO.) Note if you will how the single place at which the opening verse allows for a breath follows the phrase “evening dreams”–and that this, in turn, is the only time the title presents itself in the song. Most pop songs, conversely, pretty much pound their titles into your head–or, in any case, utilize as a title the most often repeated phrase in the song. While doing it as Kenney does here may not guarantee the quality of a song, I’ll suggest that songwriters who know and care enough to use this device are a self-selected group of thoughtful artists, likely to be creating thoughtful, worthwhile art. So the chorus doesn’t give birth to the title. What it does do, smartly, is offer up a metrical contrast to the verse: as opposed to the run-on vibe created by the relentless trochees, the chorus consists of two lines of clipped, two-syllable chunks (these appear to be called spondees, but I definitely had to look that up). The chorus ends with one more metrical shift as Kenney sings “I can take/I can take care of myself.” That this ultimately becomes the most repeated phrase in the song but is not the title suggests, however subtly, that the song’s narrator is actually not quite so sure about taking care of themself. Later, the second time through, the chorus leads us into some elegant bass lines and a wistful bridge–because of course this well-constructed song has a bridge. Don’t get me started on the vanishing art of the bridge. Kenney is a singer/songwriter based in Nova Scotia. “Evening Dream” is the first track made available from their fifth album, From Nowhere, which is slated for a September release. You can check out the Kenney discography on Bandcamp. photo credit: Matt Horseman
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