[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: May 4 (Balthrop, Alabama; Sophie Barker; Mirror Lady)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 4 May 2012 16:01:36 -0400
*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*May 4*



Sorry, gang, this is coming a little late this week. Next week I'll try to
crank this back to Thursday again.



[image: Balthrop,
Alabama]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/balthropalabama.jpg>
 “ELECTRICITY” – BALTHROP,
ALABAMA<http://www.magnetmagazine.com/audio/Electricity.mp3>

“Electricity” offers us a refreshing break from 21st-century indie-rock’s
inclination towards obscurantism. And you can dance to it.

I’ve got nothing against a certain amount of lyrical mystery, mind you, but
I think today’s exceedingly well-educated rockers often overdo it in the
“what are they talking about?” category. There’s something to be said for
narrative clarity and matter-of-fact insight, and “Electricity,” the dryly
related story of a small town and its first long-ago Saturday night with
electricity, has both. The storytelling is musical as much as lyrical here.
You’ll obviously notice the noodly, sci-fi synth that is immediate aural
code for “ooh! electricity!” But note too the perfect electric guitar
sound, right there in the intro—that buzzy but vibrant tone, which,
combined with a fuzzed-out drumbeat, feels shot through with current. When
the opening riff returns in an instrumental break at 2:47, the guitar
sounds even more thematically aligned; I can’t describe it but it feels to
my ears like the sound an electrified fence would make if you could play it
like an instrument.

As for the story itself, I like how it extends beyond the Saturday night
into Sunday morning, when no one could get up because they had all been up
so late. This, we are being told indirectly, is really how “things will
never be the same in this city.” It’s an incisive twist.

Brooklyn-based Balthrop, Alabama was founded by Alabama-born siblings
Pascal and Lauren Balthrop, who have named the band as they did for their
idea that the band itself, with 11 members, is a kind of small town.
“Electricity” is the semi-title-track from the ensemble’s new album, *We
Have Electricity*, released last month on the not-for-profit End Up
Records<http://endup.org/>,
also located in Brooklyn. After a double-album debut in 2007 and four
subsequent EPs, this is the band’s first regular-length album. MP3 via Magnet
Magazine <http://www.magnetmagazine.com/>.



[image: Sophie 
Barker]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/sophiebarker.jpg>
 “SAY GOODBYE” – SOPHIE BARKER<http://www.xopublicity.com/say%20goodbye.mp3>

Sophie Barker is not a name you’re likely to recognize but you may well
recognize her voice—she sang a number of songs fronting the musical outfit
Zero 7, which helped popularize the so-called downtempo (or chillout, or
downbeat) genre early in the millennium. (She co-wrote and sang, for one,
the widely-heard song “In The Waiting Line.”) Personally, I never warmed to
Zero 7, and I think it was because of my irrational prejudice against
“producer music.” Zero 7 was/is the brainchild of two British
producer/remixer types, and to me that eliminates the main thing I get out
of music, which is a sense of personal connection to a musician who is
playing an instrument and/or singing a song. This is just me, I will note.
You are entitled and even encouraged to feel otherwise.

Anyway, so if Sophie Barker now comes along with a similarly chilled-out
sound but is singing and performing her own material, rather than as a
hired hand on a musical “project,” I find my heart much more open to it
than I was to her Zero 7 performances. “Say Goodbye” weaves a knowing
spell, breaking no new territory but doing what it does with great
bittersweet panache. (New territory, as I’ve said many times, is way
overrated.) Barker has a lovely voice, at once plainspoken and rich, with a
thrilling upper register that she unleashes largely in the chorus (although
don’t miss how she sometimes flits into it briefly, as for instance when
she sings the words “Will you” in the line “Will you be standing by me?” at
0:45). With its offhand melodies and melancholy bursts of harmony, “Say
Goodbye” shimmers with feeling, and truly, to me, shows the potential power
of this kind of composition when sung truly from the heart.

“Say Goodbye” is from the album *Seagull*, Barker’s third solo album,
released last year in the UK. She is currently playing in the US. No word
yet on whether the album is slated for a US release, but the promotional
MP3 suggests something might be in the works. Thanks to Largehearted
Boy<http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/>for
the lead.



[image: Mirror 
Lady]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/mirrorlady.jpg>
 “HANDS ARE TIED” – MIRROR
LADY<http://www.bantermm.com/tracks/MirrorLady-HandsAreTied.mp3>

Careful readers will know that lo-fi music makes an occasional appearance
here, but it’s more accident than statement. I am not a fan of lo-fi for
the sake of its lo-fi-ness; I am a fan of good songs, and when they happen
to be constructed in a lo-fi environment, hooray for that, because it’s
another worthy three or four minutes of music unleashed in the world.

“Hands Are Tied” is a particular marvel, a song both superbly crafted and
distinctly attuned to its lo-fi setting—so attuned in fact that you almost
don’t notice how lo-fi it is. That, to me, is a brilliant accomplishment.
The key is the warmth of the sound. Bathed in reverb, the song still feels
lucid and distinct. The keyboard, guitar, and the bass all but melt
together, sketching lazy joint melodies over a drum beat at once urgent and
welcoming. This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at any
point and find all sorts of interesting and wonderful things happening. I
particularly like the woodwind-y synth melody that chimes in after the
phrase “always the same,” first heard at 1:45. I am charmed as well by the
very end of the song, how you can hear the bass turn off, which in that one
sound/gesture embodies the song’s lo-fi warmth.

Now based in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, the three men
calling themselves Mirror Lady first started playing together while
students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Hands Are Tied” is
from the band’s debut recording, an EP entitled *Roman Candles*, which was
self-released last month and is available via
Bandcamp<http://mirrorlady.bandcamp.com/> on
a “name your price” basis.




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[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: May 4 (Balthrop, Alabama; Sophie Barker; Mirror Lady)

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