[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: March 6 (Kacey Johansing, Meg Mac, Lapland)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2013 16:25:19 -0500

*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*March 6*

[image: Kacey
Johansing]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/johansing.jpg>
“ENEMY” – KACEY
JOHANSING<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2013/Kacey_Johansing-Enemy.mp3>

Fluent and assured, “Enemy” casts a compelling spell with minimal fuss—a
deftly picked electric guitar, a smoky soprano (perhaps mezzo?), and
artfully arranged backing vocals are just about all we get. The song is
rooted in the silky-deep tone of the guitar but nothing is really as
easy-breezy as the mellow sound implies. Listen to how the opening riff
starts away from the tonic—a subtle jar to the ear—and then to that tiny
rhythmic hiccup it offers at 0:06.

The whole song is like that, its mellifluous surface masking twists and
misdirections. The central melody—languid, descending,
black-note-dominated—recycles equivocally through a song that doesn’t seem
to have either verses or a chorus. Lyrical lines are typically repeated,
and long stretches of wordless vocals are employed, enhanced by silvery
choral layers. And then, approaching the song’s midpoint, a new lyric
starts, without repeats this time, which has the effect of making the lines
stand out more rather than less. It feels like we’ve arrived at the song’s
unexpectedly powerful nucleus (“You don’t trust/You won’t love/Nothing will
ever be good enough”), the backing vocals now emerging in the worded
section too, and before the mind can quite absorb this development,
Johansing glides back into a repeating line (“You can find a balance,
achieve a balance”), the echoey but disciplined backing vocals now get to
sing their first actual word (“balance!”), and the effect is almost
startling. Soon after, the opening riff returns but with the guitar’s tone
rubbed raw and harsh (2:11). There is more going on in this song than a
casual listen will uncloak.

Johansing is a San Francisco-based singer/songwriter who has been involved
in a number of Bay Area projects, including the bands Geographer and
Honeycomb; she is currently, also, half of the experimental folk duo
Yesway. “Enemy” is from Johansing’s second solo album *Grand Ghosts*, which
was self-released at the end of February. You can stream the whole thing,
and purchase it,via Bandcamp <http://kaceyjohansing.bandcamp.com/>.
Meanwhile, over on her SoundCloud
page<https://soundcloud.com/kacey-johansing/sets/grand-ghosts>,
two other songs from the album are available for free and legal download.
Thanks to the artist for the MP3.

[image: Meg Mac]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/megmac.jpg>
“KNOWN BETTER” – MEG
MAC<http://www.triplejunearthed.com/GetFile/1054832/MEG%20MAC_KNOWN%20BETTER.mp3>

Just too damn charming to quibble about anything that might, here, be so
quibbled. Is Meg Mac aiming to split the difference between Adele and Amy
Winehouse? Could be. And why not? There’s a real musical sweet spot to be
found there, and here, in this knowing piece of first-rate retro-soul. What
lights this on fire to me is the song’s stompy, asymmetrically-placed piano
riff, which plunks itself down between beats, creating a powerful stutter,
both tripping the song up and launching it further at the same time. Songs
that can make you clap and move while fiddling with time signatures are
generally songs to be admired.

From its old-school intro—not instrumental vamping, but a slow, otherwise
unused vocal melody—”Known Better” oozes both ardor and aptitude. There are
knowing chord changes (not just the dramatic one at 0:39 but the subtler
set-up, after the words “back someday” at 0:34), there are skillful
production effects, such as the shot of processed vocals at 0:50, and most
of all there are the songwriting chops that put this all together so
spiffily, with that piano riff ever at the center of things. For a short
piece of pop, the song is not satisfied standing still. The second
iteration of the verse uses a somewhat different melody, and there seem to
be not one but two different bridges, including that one in the middle with
the hand-claps and an ear-catching switch to 6/4 time. The use of a refrain
line instead of a full-fledged chorus helps keep things moving, and never
underestimate the effectiveness of expertly placed “ah-ah-ah”s.

All through, Mac (neé Megan McInerney) sings with panache, perhaps a bit
thinly, but I hear someone who is still finding her voice. She’s 22, from
Melbourne, and this appears to be her first release of any kind. MP3 via
TripleJ <http://www.triplejunearthed.com/MEGMAC>, the Australian music site.

[image: Lapland]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/lapland.jpg>
“UNWISE” – LAPLAND <http://www.magnetmagazine.com/audio/Unwise.mp3>

Warm and blippy, “Unwise” floats in a gently pulsating womb of sound.
There’s a ghostly wash in the background, a quivery layer of synthesizers
in the middle, and a simple, gorgeous melody holding the piece together
from the top. My ear at first was particularly drawn to the marimba-like
synth that ambles its way into a recurring instrumental melody through the
course of the introduction. In trying to follow its logic, I bumped into
two aural peculiarities. First, there’s an actual guitar in here. Could be
wrong about that, but there sure seems to be something scratchy-strummy
going in in the middle of the mix. (After listening many different times I
finally realized it’s most apparent right in the song’s opening seconds.
Somehow I had missed that.) Second, for all the song’s rhythmic allure,
there is little if any percussion. This is where electronic sounds can get
so fascinatingly nebulous—that fine line between “beat” and “note” that
we’ve been living with for the better part of 20 years. Somewhere in this
song’s subtle pulse, sounds are rippling with percussive intent, but the
amount of what might directly be called percussion is minimal.

Vocally, Josh Mease, the master mind behind Lapland, has borrowed from the
Bon Iver school of whispery beauty, minus the claustrophobic edge of the
excessively falsettoed. There is in fact a falsetto vocal line here but
listen to how it dissolves into the upper end of the mix—as soon as you
seek to nail it down, it seems almost to disappear in the woolly ambiance.
The lyrics as well are mixed to dissolve upon reaching the ear; after the
opening couplet—”I’ve been unwise/Fooled by your disguise”—the songwriter’s
words seem subtly to float off into a kind of dream state. And note that
this is the third song this week without a real chorus; here, we are hooked
by the sturdy interaction of the two basic melody lines that alone support
the entire enterprise. (The transition point, first heard at 1:00, is
perhaps the song’s most prominent “moment.”)

Mease is a Houston-born, Brooklyn-based musician who put out a solo album
in 2009 under his given name but here in 2013 reinvents himself as Lapland.
The self-titled “debut” album arrives later this month on the artist-run
Brooklyn label Hundred Pockets Records<http://www.hundredpocketsrecords.com/>
.

** * * * * * **

***

*
"You remember why it is dark
and why it gets light again....."

*
*

* * * * * * *

'Like' Fingertips <http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fingertips/38130844046> on
Facebook
Follow Fingertips on Twitter <https://twitter.com/#%21/fingertipsmusic>

Donate to Fingertips via
PayPal<https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=5733482>

* * * * * * *

To unsubscribe from this mailing list at any time, simply send an email
with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line to
fingertipsmusic-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. You may then have to reply to the
automated confirmation you receive to complete the process.
*

[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: March 6 (Kacey Johansing, Meg Mac, Lapland)

Other related posts: