The latest Fingertips Q&A is now online, featuring Eric Atria of the Gainesville, Fla.-based band Morningbell. Morningbell has been twice featured on Fingertips to date, most recently at the end of September for the song "Marching Off to War."
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Sorry to bug everyone else but this message goes only to the three people who won the Top 10 contest from October 10. Thanks to a bit of prodding by one of the winners, I just realized I gave the wrong email address out, so anyone who's emailed me at that address, well, I never got it. I'm sensitive about putting my email address into a post here on the blog for fear of spamming--this is no dou...
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"Hearts of Palm" - Ravens & Chimes Cheerful songs are usually vigorous things. Songs that seem hesitant, wavery, or otherwise introverted, on the other hand, tend to be at best wistful if not downright mournful. "Hearts of Palm" subverts the formula, and is all the more effective for it--a sprightly, hopeful-sounding song edged by an equivocal, somewhat trembling vibe. Some of this is d...
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"Unpredictable" - Tahiti 80 Carefree English-speaking French pop from a band doing it before it was a genre. There's something not only charming but truly satisfying about a song that works quite so well both for people who are barely paying attention and for people paying close attention. This is no small feat. For the first group, a jaunty, smoothly sung tune is all that's required. Great...
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"Illuminated" - Múm The fact that Múm wrote the music to its most recent album in the middle of Iceland's economic meltdown and political upheaval adds poignancy to the already melancholy beauty of "Illuminated." Against a bed of mystical tinkling and mysterious vocal arpeggios, "Illuminated" doesn't so much start as float into being. The extended chord progression described by the angelic .
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"Floating Vibes" - Surfer Blood "Floating Vibes" has that deep guitar thing going right away, which I always find gratifying. And which always makes me wonder why rock'n'roll has so consistently (and, to my ears, stupidly) glorified the sound of a wailing guitar played so high up on the neck that there's no room left for the guitarist's fingers. I'll take the robust, thoughtful tremor of th...
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"The River" - Audra Mae With clear roots in country and folk, two very structured genres, "The River" hooks the ear with a series of surprising melodic and harmonic shifts. We hear this first at 0:15, when Mae follows the opening two traditional-sounding lines with a third ("The river's gonna wash my sins away") that runs unexpectedly up through a diminished chord. How did we get here? Sudd...
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"Lovesick Teenagers" - Bear in Heaven Can a song be spacey and determined at the same time? "Lovesick Teenagers" seems to manage this unusual effect. Determination is heard through the relentless pulse of the snare-free beat along with front man Jon Philpot's purposeful tenor, which sounds like someone with a wavery voice trying not to waver. And the melody itself seems also to possess an e...
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"The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion" - Holopaw Airily idiosyncratic, not to mention lyrically inscrutable, "The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion" required repeated listens for me to really hear it. Songs with vocal (rather than purely instrumental) introductions are a bit hard to get one's pop-oriented mind around, to begin with. And when Holopaw's John Orth is the one doing the voc...
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"Something More" - Slideshow Freak This song, on the other hand, had me at hello, pretty much. A simple arpeggio, some electro-tinkling, some smooth keyboard vamping, then, boom--"Something More" begins right in its sweet spot, with its full-out, neo-glam-rock chorus. Somehow that's really all it needs. Yes, there are verses in between and surely they kind of have to be there--a song can't ...
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"Little Bird Courage" - Old Canes It's unusual for a song that feels like some kind of folk rock to have this much percussive appeal, but "Little Bird Courage" is all about the drumming from the get-go--we pretty much don't even hear anything else until almost 20 seconds in. And this is in fact how Old Canes front man and master mind Chris Crisci envisions his songs--he records the drum tra...
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"Harlem Sunrise" - Rainbow Arabia This one morphs before your startled ears from a vaguely Middle Eastern sounding dance with an electro-beat and kitchen sink percussion into a vaguely Caribbean steel-drum-inflected shuffle with some African guitar thrown in for good measure. Too much pastiche for its own good? Or is "Harlem Sunrise," rather, an audacious 21st-century stylistic mash-up? I v...
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"Back in Town" - Wiretree Brisk, spangly power pop from an Austin-based quartet. Equal parts mid-career Wilco and early (or late; who can say?) Traveling Wilburys, "Back in Town" is a friendly, xylophone-flecked burst of tunefulness, anchored in singer Kevin Peroni's pliable, evocative voice. What he sounds like, in a nutshell, is the '70s--Harry Nilsson, George Harrison, and Jeff Lynne rol...
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The Fingertips Top 10 has turned almost entirely over since the last time I posted it, which was in August; just three songs remain from that list. Anyone interested in an impromptu contest, how about this: the first three people who can each identify one of the three songs that are still on the list from the last top 10 post on the blog can pick a CD for free from the Fingertips Prize Closet. ...
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"Madeline, Every Girl" - Cameron McGill & What Army A truly wonderful song from beginning to end. But a funny thing: every time the tempo falters, because of how the song is constructed, I find myself almost annoyed because of how much I was digging the forward-moving energy that's now interrupted. And it happens in the chorus, just when I might be expecting more rather than less motion. Bu...
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"Gloomy Monday Morning" - the Black Hollies A deeply groovy shot of neo-garage rock, "Gloomy Monday Morning" is both steeped in nostalgia and alive with freshly-minted energy. Sure, there's a big-time Animals/Zombies/'60s-Kinks vibe at work here, but it's almost like this New Jersey quartet is using the bygone sound as an instrument they're playing rather than as a straitjacket limiting the...
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"Marching Off To War" - Morningbell Equal parts character and commitment, "Marching Off To War" props itself on top of some seriously good-natured drumming and never looks back. The verses--all two of them--involve some smiley, spoke-sung lyrics that serve as gatekeepers to the body-shaking rhythmic attack of the chorus, in which singer/guitarist Travis Atria wails the repeated line "Marchi...
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"Petal Song" - Spider This may not sound at first like a song that's going to kick out with a minute-long Pink Floydian guitar solo, but how often, actually, are things exactly what they seem? (cf. "Things are not as they seem. Nor are they otherwise," as per the Buddha.) "Petal Song" may well begin quietly but there's something simmering from the outset--most notably Jane Herships (aka...
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"Wicked Blood" - Sea Wolf A dreamy wash of tingly synthesizers leads us into an agile, subtly orchestrated tune with a mixed-down piano vamp (itself intriguing; mostly when someone is pounding a piano, it's just about all you can hear) and a hint of portentousness. When Alex Brown Church starts singing (and hm, we have two solo performers this week who record using an animal name), that sen...
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"Gold Rush" - Basia Bulat Eager youth and venerable tradition is a compelling combination, and a perpetual argument against sourpusses who rise with foolish predictability, in every generation, to proclaim that good music ended at some lamented moment in the receding past. Good music never stops arriving; good listening frequently grinds to a halt, however. "Gold Rush" is a particularly...
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