[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: March 14 (Low, Liam Singer, The Veils)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:22:01 -0400

*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*March 14*

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*Next week, Fingertips will be away for spring break. You probably have
enough music to listen to without me around for week, never mind enough
email in your inbox. Whatever it is I'm doing here will start up again at
the end of the week of the 25th.*

[image: Low] <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/low2013.jpg>
“JUST MAKE IT STOP” – LOW<http://assets2.subpop.com/assets/audio/12937.mp3>

Built on a creamy, low-end, guitar-driven groove, “Just Make It Stop”
immediately contradicts itself with music that sounds like it could pretty
much keep going forever. With a prominent, recycling major-to-minor key
modulation adding to the momentum, the song does not even stop to acquire a
separated chorus—one melody services both chorus and verse (“I could tell
the whole world/To get out of the way” indeed.)

There is something seductive here in this rich, brisk song that revels in
its lower-register grace. Not only does Mimi Parker’s dusty alto dominate,
but the entire piece seems to rest down below where most rock songs want to
live. Rock’n'roll catharsis stereotypically happens at the shrieky end of
things: guitar solos so far up the neck the fingers are really on the body;
singers throwing their heads back to emit glass-shattering howls. Since its
beginnings as an inadvertent “slowcore” pioneer, Low has never been about
such flagrant drama, preferring to find a different kind of thrill in
spaciousness of various kinds—slow tempos, thoughtful structures, uncrowded
arrangements. Even as they’ve broadened their sound over the years, there
remains an alluring awareness of space in the band’s music, even when the
tempo in this case has us tapping our toes rather than closing our eyes.
Not too many other bands would think of, never mind get away with, the
skeletal instrumental break we get here after the song’s opening chorus
(1:00), in which the instrumentalists play as if each waits for someone
else to take the lead. The second time we get to this break (2:17), there’s
what we waited for: a piano pounding out a gut-satisfying left-hand melody,
grounding the song down in that deep place it’s been in the whole time.
(They don’t call themselves Low for nothing.)

“Just Make It Stop” is from the album *The Invisible Way*, coming out next
week on Sub Pop Records <http://www.subpop.com/>. Produced by Jeff Tweedy
and recorded in Wilco’s Chicago studio, it is the band’s tenth album; the
Duluth trio is now in their 20th year together. Longtime Low fans note that
Mimi sings lead on five of 11 songs this time around—welcome news for most,
as she’s usually up front for just one or two per album. MP3 via Sub Pop.
If you go to Low’s page on the record label
site<http://www.subpop.com/artists/low>,
you’ll find eight other free and legal MP3s to download, including two that
were previously featured here (in April
2011<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=6649> and
in February 2005 <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=86>).

[image: Liam
Singer]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/liamsinger.jpg>
“STRANGER I KNOW” – LIAM
SINGER<http://hiddenshoal.com/promo/Liam_Singer-Stranger_I_Know.mp3>

Gifted and accessible, Liam Singer is the kind of musician for whom
Fingertips exists. We are assaulted by endless sound, we are inundated by
generic, laptop-fueled creations, we have abandoned meaning for virality
and melody for sensation, and yet even here, in this crazed inferno, exist
some (hat tip to old friend Italo
Calvino<http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/53773-the-inferno-of-the-living-is-not-something-that-will>)
who are not inferno. I try to find these folks every week or so, to give
them space and help them endure, and Liam Singer pretty much epitomizes the
mission.

Here’s a guy who can begin with a keyboard refrain all but Bachian in its
playful convolution (in what appears to be 6/4 time no less), find a melody
to sing on top of the refrain, add a chorus too severely syncopated ever to
sing along with, float woodwinds and angelic backing vocals through the
artfully conceived soundscape, use a cello without showing off, and wrap
the whole enterprise up in less than three minutes. And it’s seriously
beautiful. As the lyrics glide in and out of comprehension, there’s an air
of something out of time here. The title refers not to a “stranger I know”
but is the beginning of a sentence addressing this stranger, and as such
conveys the flavor of some centuries-old ballad (an impression reinforced
by the apparent use of the pronoun “thy”). At the same time there’s
something not only modern but brand-new seeming in the song’s sprightly
lift and distinctive construction. A winner start to finish.

“Stranger I Know” is the first track made available from the album *Arc Iris
*, which is scheduled for release in July by Hidden Shoals
Recordings<http://music.hiddenshoal.com/>.
Singer was born in Oregon and is based in Queens, NY; this will be his
fourth album. He was previously featured on Fingertips in September
2010<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=3902>.
MP3 via Hidden Shoals.

[image: The Veils]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/veils.jpg>
“THROUGH THE DEEP, DARK WOOD” – THE
VEILS<http://www.magnetmagazine.com/audio/ThroughTheDeepDarkWood.mp3>

“Through the Deep, Dark Wood” is one of those terrific, unusual songs in
which the principal hook arrives, like an unannounced special guest, after
you thought you’d heard everything the song has to offer. Given the way pop
songs tend to be underwritten, combined with the song title’s implication,
my ear was initially convinced, as the song unfolded, that the chorus would
be nothing more than the phrase “Through the deep, dark wood,” repeated a
couple of times, ending with that vigorous, ascending moment at 0:52. Such
things pass for choruses all the time, and this one seemed properly
dramatic, if minimal. I could all but hear the instrumental bit that would
follow to bring the song back to the next verse.

How satisfying to find that this was just the prelude to the song’s true
center, which turns out to be the actual chorus that launches from the last
repetition of “deep, dark wood,” with its churning, classic-rock chord
progression and ear-catching melodic turning point on the repeating phrase
“I can’t go back.” And, see, if they had called the song “I Can’t Go
Back”—which is the most-often heard phrase, as song titles typically are—I
would first of all have been less surprised by the chorus, and maybe even
less delighted? Music is a mysterious thing; mysteries, even unelaborate
ones, always enhance the experience.

“Through the Deep, Dark Wood” is a song from the album *Time Stays, We Go*,
set for release in April on the band’s own Pitch Beast Records label. The
Veils formed in 2001 and recorded their first album in 2004. With Finn
Andrews at the helm, band mates have come and gone; in its latest
incarnation, The Veils are a quintet. MP3 via Magnet
Magazine<http://www.magnetmagazine.com/>.
You can read more about the band in previous entries here on February
2007<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=183>
and April 2009 <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=416>.

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[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: March 14 (Low, Liam Singer, The Veils)

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