[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: April 20 (Slowdim, The Spring Standards, David Ramos)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 10:24:04 -0400
*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>*
*April 20*



[image: Slowdim]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/Slowdim.jpg>
 “MONEY” – 
SLOWDIM<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/Slowdim-Money.mp3>

A winner from beginning to end, “Money” is shrewdly constructed but
gloriously unfussy, its pure (power) pop heart hearkening back to decades
of rock radio hits without any air of contrivance or over-retro-ism. Songs
this well-built rarely sound so free.

It begins with a “two-level” intro—10 seconds of restrained warm-up, the
guitars swirling and jangling but as if from maybe the next room; then, the
real thing, with a full-bodied, sing-along lead guitar riff that first
grabs attention and then gets out of the way so the song can start. Less
obvious than the great guitar line here is the note with which the bass
launches said guitar line (listen carefully at 0:11), a nifty music-theory
maneuver that adds subliminal texture and alerts the ear, however
unconsciously, that what follows is worth listening to. I like too how the
two-part intro is a subtle mirror of the heart of the song, with its
two-part chorus. Speaking of which, listen to how what you might call the
pre-chorus (first heard at 0:45) is itself a great hook and yet feels
incomplete without the arrival of the true chorus. Note that the song’s
title derives from the pre-chorus—another subtle songwriting trick,
simultaneously adding substance to the pre-chorus while creating, via the
pre-chorus’s unresolved melodies, an emotional demand for the second part,
which delivers a spirited release with its layered harmonies and
gratifying, descending melody.

Not to be confused with the British shoegaze band Slowdive, Slowdim is a
four-piece band from Boston that has been together for about a year,
although various combinations of its members have known each other for a
good deal longer. “Money” is the band’s first single. They are currently
recording their debut album. MP3 via the
band<http://slowdim.bandcamp.com/releases>
.



[image: The Spring
Standards]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/springstandards.jpg>
 “ONLY SKIN” – THE SPRING
STANDARDS<http://girlieaction.com/music/the_spring_standards/downloads/Only_Skin.mp3>

There’s something tender and unfinished about “Only Skin.” Fading in at the
beginning, the musical setting (piano and percussion, and a bit of guitar
later on) is a tentative one, the instruments sketching rather than fully
painting the scene. The feeling is not minimalist—there is a full-fledged
sense of musical warmth here—but the restraint feels introductory, as if we
are waiting for something larger to happen.

It turns out that what is larger that happens is Heather Robb’s voice, a
wise and honeyed instrument itself. The arrangement leaves her so exposed
you can hear her breathing. She sings about leaving, and the lyrics evoke
bygone folk music, both for the way the verses begin and end with the same
lines (hey, M. Ward did this last
week<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=11077> too)
and for some of the lyrical conceits, notably the way the song’s narrator
urges the lover she is leaving behind to “Remember me with yellow hair and
freckles on my nose.” And then the song takes an abrupt and delicious turn
into the 21st century: “Remember me in purple shoes and turquoise
pantyhose.” The lover who is leaving is determined to the point of
harshness; the titular phrase arrives in the guise of one of the greatest
lyrical kiss-offs I’ve yet heard: “Your name is just a noise now/Your face
is only skin.” (Ouch.) And yet it comes wrapped in that careful melody, and
embellished by those aching, wordless harmonies. Does the narrator mean it,
or is she trying simply to convince herself? One can’t be sure, but the
bittersweet gentleness of the nearly nursery-rhyme-like music suggests
heartbreak under the bravado.

The Spring Standards are three musicians who have been playing various
instruments together since their teenage days growing up along the
Pennsylvania/Delaware border. They are now located in New York City. “Only
Skin” is a track from their double-EP release *yellow//gold*, which is
coming out in May on Parachute Shooter Records.



[image: David 
Ramos]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/dramos.jpg>
 “DIGITAL MEMORY” – DAVID
RAMOS<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/38730955/mp3/davidramos_digitalmemory_9_2.mp3>

With some very computer-like beeps and boops, “Digital Memory” lurches into
a jagged, hip-hop-inflected verse, the syllables piling up at the end of
each line, and each succeeding line adding more syllables to the pile-up.
You rarely hear rapping and singing blended so effectively, as Ramos really
does seem to be doing both at the same time. You also rarely hear this kind
of rapid-fire outpouring of words so fully framed by the underlying music
rather than merely grounded in the confluence of beat and rhyme. It’s cool
in fact to hear how Ramos isn’t really rhyming that much here, which to me
gives the rapping an unexpected allure. (A confession: my ear has never
been attuned to the kinds of conspicuous rhyming hip-hop fans appear to
treasure.)

The chorus—concise and mysterious—is sung, the rhythmic hiccup of the verse
slightly smoothed out but still intact. It is not clear what Ramos is
singing about specifically but the overall vibe is at once troubling and
peppy, the sound of a man coming to grips with life’s vicissitudes, or
trying to.

Ramos (first name pronounced the Spanish way: dah-VEED) is a drummer by
trade; he was in fact named one of the top 10 progressive drummers by
Modern Drummer magazine while still a student at Wesleyan University. He
played for years in the loose-knit ensemble Anonymous Inc., along with his
brother Ceschi. “Digital Memory” is from Ramos’s third solo album, *Sento
La Tua Mancanza* (“I miss you”), which was written in the aftermath of the
death of his grandmother, who had been a kind of parent to him (his father
was an addict, and not there for him). Ramos had gone to Wesleyan largely
because it was not too far from her, and upon graduating he started the
label Fake Four right in New Haven, where she lived. With his grandmother’s
health declining, Ramos moved in with her and did not leave the state for
three years. She died in 2010.






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Healed the hole that ripped in living...."
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[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: April 20 (Slowdim, The Spring Standards, David Ramos)

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