[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: June 7 (Monophona, Glenn Jones, AM & Shawn Lee)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sun, 9 Jun 2013 12:29:50 -0400

*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*June 7*
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*These songs went up on the web site
<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>Friday night. Email just going out
Sunday afternoon. Apologies for the
delay, but consider this a reminder that the web site does get serviced
first, and has some extra stuff on it worth checking out. End of
promotional announcement.*
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[image:
Monophona]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/monophona.jpg>
“GIVE UP” –
MONOPHONA<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2013/Monophona-Give_Up.mp3>

With an acoustic heart and a blippy-trippy soul, “Give Up” moves with a
purposeful stammer, creating dynamic momentum out of some intimate,
creative percussion and an evasive, uneven melody. I am enchanted for
reasons which remain unclear.

Things begin in a gentle swing, with singer Claudine Muno emerging out of
muffled distortion. At 0:38, the track slides into place, but remains
noncommittal, blurry in intent however crisp and engaging the sound. Muno
sings with persuasive sweetness, providing a strong handhold for the song’s
inconstant melody lines, which are abetted by her overlapping vocals. The
layered percussion pounds and twitters as she purrs and mumbles, coming
occasionally to the forefront with a trenchant phrase—when she sings, now
in harmony and unison, “Stop pulling at yourself” (1:21), the song locks in
with unexpected force, one of those moments you long to hear again,
suspecting however that it’s not coming back (it doesn’t).

Monophona is a Portishead-ish trio from Luxembourg featuring Muno,
DJ/producer Phillippe Shirrer (who goes by Chook), and drummer Jorsch Kass.
Muno previously fronted a folk-pop band called Claudine Muno & the Luna
Boots, which released five albums between 2004 and 2011. Muno is also an
author (she has published seven books to date, in four different languages)
and a teacher. Schirrer has previously released one album, called The Cocoon,
in 2010; a subsequent single called “You Are All You
Have<https://soundcloud.com/chook/you-are-all-you-have-feat-claudine-muno>,”
released two years ago, featured Muno on vocals—if you listen you can sense
what Muno brought to the table for the collaboration on Monophona. Kass was
previously in a Luxembourg band called Zap Zoo. “Give Up” is from Monophona
debut album, The Spy, which was released in Europe in November. You can
download the song as usual by right-clicking the title above, or by going
to the SoundCloud page <https://soundcloud.com/monophona/give-up>. And
while you’re at it, you can listen to the whole album, and buy it, via
Bandcamp <http://monophona.bandcamp.com/album/the-spy>.

[image: Glenn
Jones]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/glennjones.jpg>
“BERGEN COUNTY FAREWELL” – GLENN
JONES<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2013/Glenn_Jones-Bergen_County_Farewell.mp3>

I’ve never been too excited by the inarguably impressive work done by the
late, legendary guitarist John Fahey, for any number of not very good
reasons, most prominent among them my aversion to twanginess. Some of the
twanginess I hear in Fahey’s guitar-playing—which can seem brittle and
unforgiving to my ears—is simply part and parcel of his so-called “American
Primitive” style, but some of it has also to do with older recording
limitations. This may explain why I feel more attached to the
Fahey-inspired work of Leo Kottke—his recordings, especially beginning in
the later ’80s, are suffused with a warmth (not to mention humor) that I
haven’t discerned in Fahey.

Which brings us to Glenn Jones, whose “Bergen County Farewell” is as rich
and warm as a finger-picked Fahey-esque song is ever likely to be. Brisk
without feeling rushed, dynamic without any ostentation, “Bergen County
Farewell” covers its bittersweet core with a jolly-ish skin—melodies skirt
up through the bright and kindly higher strings but always fall downward
towards the buttery lower strings. Jones’s impeccable preciseness is
tempered by a lovely touch with what I think are called “rolls”—when the
fingers are playing a chord, but in a slightly staggered fashion (simple
examples at 0:22, 0:31, 0:34, et al; more complicated instances at 1:43,
1:54, and 2:37 among others). The song alternates two basic tunes, each of
which offers up one musical twist (tune one: 0:14; tune two: 0:52), and
each of which leads into the same resolution (first heard at 0:21). This
“resolution” section feels much less like a chorus than a closing out of a
musical thought, and is a lovely thing an instrumental can do that a song
with lyrics maybe can’t.

“Bergen County Farewell” is a song from Jones’s new album, *My Garden State*,
which was written under somewhat unusual circumstances. Jones’s aging
mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and he and his older sister began
taking turns caring for her for a few months at a time, in the house the
family had moved into in Bergen County, New Jersey back in 1966. Jones
wrote the songs that became *My Garden State* while taking his caretaker
turn. He has said that he sees the album as “a corrective to Bruce
Springsteen’s Jersey”—a musical vision of beauty and serenity which does
not at all resemble the image many people have of the Garden State. The
album is Jones’s fifth solo release, following seven studio albums released
with the instrumental band Cul de Sac (one of which, 1997′s *The Epiphany
of Glenn Jones*, was recorded with John Fahey himself).

*My Garden State* was released last month on Thrill Jockey Records. Thanks
to
Largehearted Boy <http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/> for the head’s up.

[image: AM & Shawn
Lee]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/amshawnlee.jpg>
“ALL THE LOVE” – AM & SHAWN
LEE<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2013/AM_and_Shawn_Lee-All_the_Love.mp3>

Too early to nominate the Song of the Summer? Probably. But this one should
stay in consideration, not only for its slinky, slidy beat, which patrols
the razor’s edge between funk and disco, but for its honest, dare I say
organic soundscape. These guys may construct songs while thousands of miles
apart—AM is a singer/songwriter in Los Angeles, Shawn Lee a London-based
multi-instrumentalist and producer—but they’re building from genuine
components; as their press material puts it: “The instruments are played,
the vocals are sung, and the songs are written.” It’s a tough job but
someone’s got to do it.

The physical nature of the construction gives “All the Love” a resplendence
difficult to generate digitally. Unlike our ubiquitous 21st-century beats,
this is first and foremost a bass-and-guitar-driven groove. And listen to
how spare and disciplined the guitar riffs are! Lesson number one: when the
song is *written*, the players don’t have to show off, they just have to
show up. Listen too to the instrumental break beginning at 2:15: you can
hear the space between the bass and the drums and how the retro, space-agey
synthesizer squiggles vertically down through it. And let’s not overlook
what is almost always overlooked in any kind of funked-up setting: the
melodies, which here are wonderfully concise and well-conceived—the verse
with its carefully considered intervals, the chorus with its chugging,
uphill, double-time hook.

“All the Love” is from the album *La Musique Numérique*, released in
May on Park
The Van Records <http://parkthevan.com/>. This one follows the duo’s 2011
debut *Celestial Electric*. Download above or via
SoundCloud<https://soundcloud.com/amsounds/am-shawn-lee-all-the-love>,
which allows you to comment directly to the band, and spares me a bit of
bandwidth in the process.

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[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: June 7 (Monophona, Glenn Jones, AM & Shawn Lee)

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