*FINGERTIPS*
*February 12 <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*This is not a mistake: four songs this time, because they all needed to be
here. Please don't miss number four.*
[image: Chris Storrow]
<http://fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/cstorrow.jpg>
“RAISED THE BAR” – CHRIS STORROW
<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2016/Chris_Storrow-Raised_the_Bar.mp3>
With its anthemic horn charts, melodic bass line, and a retro-y,
bittersweet bashiness, “Raised the Bar” is as we speak blaring out of
Top-40 radios everywhere in some alternative world in which politicians
compromise and people still use taxi cabs.
Let’s start with a hat tip to the introduction, which not only gives us
those groovy horns right out of the gate but seems to accomplish a whole
lot in a short time. After just 10 seconds not only does the song take off
but it feels we are already smack in the middle of things, thanks to the
ear-catching sixth interval on which the verse melody quickly hinges (it’s
there in the second and third notes we hear). That’s one good way to write
a song, for those who need more than rhythm to get the spirit fluttering.
Another good way is to employ most of the notes of the scale in your
melody, which “Raised the Bar” does in the chorus, skipping just one note
out of eight (counting the home note in both its lower and upper
registers). (End of music theory lecture.)
The bygone feeling in the air here is, according to press material, no
accident—Storrow set out on this new album to write straightforward songs
in the tradition of the hits one might have heard on AM radio in the 1960s.
Based in Montreal, Storrow worked on these new songs with a number of
notable Canadians, including musicians from the Fingertips-featured bands
Stars, the New Pornographers, the Dears, and Young Galaxy, in addition to
the multi-faceted singer/songwriter Patrick Watson (himself featured here back
in 2006 <http://fingertipsmusic.com/?p=173>).
“Raised the Bar” is the second track on Storrow’s new album, *The Ocean’s
Door*, released earlier this month. You can listen to the whole thing and
buy it via Bandcamp
<https://chrisstorrow.bandcamp.com/album/the-oceans-door>.
[image: Swaying Wires]
<http://fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/swayingwires.jpg>
“NOWHERE” – SWAYING WIRES
<http://insomniaradio.net/audio/dailydose/irdd-swayingwires-nowhere.mp3>
Melancholy yet upbeat folk rock, “Nowhere” is buoyed by graceful melodies
and an even more graceful vocalist, in front woman Tina Karkinen. It is in
fact the combination of the rough-edged electric guitar work and Karkinen’s
easeful vocal tone that gives me such a good feeling as this song unfolds,
and accentuates the impression that there is not any one thing that makes
“Nowhere” stand out but rather its nuanced elements working together.
And while there is something of the archetypal lonely West in the air,
there’s also something unsettled about this song, something that doesn’t
want to be entirely constrained within the strummy conventions of so-called
Americana. Swaying Wires is from Finland, for one thing, so their take on
this kind of music is legitimately unconventional. If you listen closely
you’ll see that the song builds mutably—there are wordless breaks between
verses and then the verses themselves change musically with each iteration.
One of the song’s most intriguing vagaries happens in the chorus, which on
the one hand is rooted in a melody that circles with a gratifying momentum,
but on the other hand goes harmonically off the rails in two different
places—first in a subtle way (at 2:04; listen to the underlying chord
around “made to last”) and then more unsettlingly (at 2:20, in and around
the phrase “in a silent movie”). The juxtaposition of Karkinen’s cozy voice
and these moments of quiet but willful dissonance is mysterious and
persuasive, underscored by that hammering electric guitar. The song compels
(and rewards) repeated listens.
Swaying Wires is a quartet from Turku, on the southwest coast, Finland’s
oldest city and former capital. You’ll find “Nowhere” on *I Left a House
Burning*, the band’s second album, which was released in January on the
Brighton, UK-based indie label Battle Worldwide. MP3 via Insomnia Radio
<http://insomniaradio.net/>.
[image: Shiv Hurrah]
<http://fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/shivhurrah16.jpg>
“GIRL IN THE SNOW” – SHIV HURRAH
<https://s3.amazonaws.com/fingertips-free-legal-mp3s/2016/Shiv_Hurrah-Girl_in_the_Snow.mp3>
So this one is gentle in a grounded way that most quiet lo-fi songs don’t
tend to be; too often gentle in lo-fi land tends towards the inordinately
twee. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I am super
impressed with the poise and sense of purpose on display here. And most of
all with the melodic wallop. Shiv Hurrah mastermind David Bechle has a hint
of songwriting genius about him, as far as I can tell. (His song “Oh Oh
Oh,” featured here in 2010 <http://fingertipsmusic.com/?p=2599>, was a
brilliant diamond in the rough, offering up one of the best melodies I’ve
yet encountered here on Fingertips.)
“Girl in the Snow”'s simple, palpable power is reinforced by the odd but
decisive choice to bring a clarinet into the mix. Even more oddly, it’s an
instrument that Bechle himself had never played but in this case borrowed
an instrument, learned the part, and played it himself anyway. I am far
more in awe of that than I will ever be by a beat someone makes, but that’s
just me being old-school again.
When last we left the Rochester, NY-based Shiv Hurrah in 2010 they were
kind-of/sort-of a band, but in the years since the project has become
Bechle’s baby, even as two of his former band mates remain good friends and
are intermittently available for ideas and input. The new Shiv Hurrah album
is Bechle’s second; it’s called *Antiquarios* and is available to listen to
and purchase via Bandcamp <http://shivhurrah.bandcamp.com/album/antiquarios>.
And, if you must know, because I needed to, the project name is a play on
the renowned Bollywood songwriting tandem of Shivkumar Sharma and
Hariprasad Chaurasia, who are known as Shiv-Hari.
[image: Cotton Mather]
<http://fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/cmather.jpg>
“THE BOOK OF TOO LATE CHANGES” – COTTON MATHER
<http://www.magnetmagazine.com/audio/TheBookOfTooLateChanges.mp3>
As regular readers of Fingertips know, I have an eternal musical soft spot
for the elusive genre of power pop. My devotion is rooted in the genre’s
unabashed melodicism, drive, and, for lack of a better word,
song-iness—which is to say power pop doesn’t strain against the conventions
of songwriting, it embraces them. As such, power pop has long offered me a
safe space from which to observe forces at work on our musical culture that
are far beyond any one person’s control. As I see it, music’s long-term
destiny as a mass medium has involved a concurrent movement towards
compositional simplification on the one hand (think Brahms to Beatles to
Bieber) and movement away from beauty on the other (think of classical
music’s embrace of atonality, and rock’n’roll’s evolution into beat-driven
performance—which can of course be wonderful and compelling but does not
usually care about or aim for the value of loveliness). Power pop, of all
genres, seems to me to say: “This may not be complicated but it’s still
gorgeous.” Oh and you can often dance to it.
But now here’s Cotton Mather’s front man Robert Harrison asking the musical
question: is it still power pop when the hooks are this subtle and/or
convoluted? Normally power pop is a brisk swatch of ear candy, buoyed by an
ineffable sense of depth and yearning. “The Book of Too Late Changes”
appears at first to be all angles and incompletions; follow the drumming
alone and your head may spin a bit. You will in any case be hard-pressed to
sing along. But, I say power pop nonetheless. In fact, I believe “The Book
of Too Late Changes” represents an attentive reinvigoration of the genre,
with as much punch and drive and melody as your grandfather’s power pop,
and yet now with all sorts of tangential twists and turns, with glorious
moments and motifs replacing sing-along choruses, all the while embracing
the general jangly vibe the genre almost always celebrates. See if you hear
what I hear.
Cotton Mather is a Texas band with a semi-legendary history; their 1997
album *Kontiki* was called “the best album the Beatles never recorded” by *The
Guardian*, in the UK. But the band called it quits without fuss in 2003
(and were featured here on Fingertips <http://fingertipsmusic.com/?p=21> that
same year). Harrison re-emerged in 2007 at the head of a project called
Future Clouds and Radar (likewise featured on Fingertips, in 2008
<http://fingertipsmusic.com/?p=341>). Prompted by a Kickstarter-funded
deluxe re-issue of *Kontiki* in 2011, Cotton Mather re-formed and played
some live gigs, first to support the album then just because. Eventually,
Harrison was struck with the improbable idea of recording a 64-song cycle
based on the *I Ching*. “The Book of Too Late Changes” is the first song to
emerge from what is envisioned as a multi-record vinyl recording. For the
time being, the songs will be released individually as they are recorded.
MP3 via Magnet Magazine <http://www.magnetmagazine.com/>.
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