[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: January 6 (Sara Radle, Johnny Marr, Bowerbirds)
- From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 15:55:38 -0500
*THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/>
January 6*
*I just managed to notice that I never ended up sending out the second part
of the favorite free & legal MP3s of 2011 list via email. Oops. Those who
have yet to see it and would like to can find it
here<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=9818>.
Apologies for the oversight. And while I'm at it, apologies too for the
latest of the reviews this week. Always a bit tricky to crank back into
action after the winter holidays. So much so that, as you'll see, you're
still getting a Christmas song from me this week. Either a little late, or
very very early.*
[image: Sara
Radle]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/sararadle.jpg>
“THE PINS” – SARA
RADLE<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/sararadle_thepins.mp3>
When Sara Radle sings, here, repeatedly, “I’ll do this without you,” she
means it. She plays all the instruments on all the songs on her new
album, *Same
Sun Shines*, and she likewise engineered and mixed the record herself. She
says she did it basically as an incentive to learn Pro Tools, the powerful
but challenging digital recording software program. Apparently she picked
it up just fine.
And of course software skills may be necessary in 2012 but they are not
sufficient. You need a good song, and “The Pins,” both winsome and
involving, is very good indeed. Listen to how much Radle keeps things
moving here, with a deft series of melodic twists, chord changes, tempo
shifts, and, for the heck of it, wacky guitar effects (see the instrumental
break, 2:42 onward). A sense of humor remains an underrated tool in the
songwriter’s arsenal.
One particular way Radle surreptitiously generates movement is through a
sort of “sub-sectioning” of the song—there’s not just a verse and a chorus,
but both the verse and the chorus have two distinct melodic sections. Each
interrelated segment is never much more than 15 seconds long throughout the
first half of the song. (The second half of the chorus expands to 30
seconds the last two times we hear it.) This really grabs the ear and gives
the sense of continual development. The melodies have a clean
Brill-Building-y esprit, and the entire thing feels so effortless that one
would never suspect the very real effort that Radle exerted—mastering the
software, playing all the parts, mixing it all together; the breeziness of
the end result is indeed a noteworthy aural illusion. And can I open the
year with another mini-rant about those people who must always complain
about nothing being “new” in music any more? What a constricted idea of
“new” such folks have. “The Pins” is surely something new, something that
could not have existed 10 years ago.
It is one of 10 tracks forthcoming on *Same Sun Shines*, which will be
self-released next month. The Texas-born Radle has been based in Los
Angeles since 2005, when she joined Matt Sharp’s band The Rentals for a few
years. This is her fifth solo album.
[image: Johnny Marr & The
Healers]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/johnnymarrhealers.jpg>
“FREE CHRISTMAS” – JOHNNY MARR & THE
HEALERS<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/MarrJohnny-Free-Christmas.mp3>
This one came in too late to post prior to year’s end, but it’s also too
good to let slip by. Download, tuck it away, and be pleasantly surprised to
find it when you go looking for under-played holiday songs next time
Christmas rolls around.
A newly-minted instrumental with an old-school air, “Free Christmas” offers
a stately, lower-register electric guitar melody over a lilting acoustic
guitar setting. Without any words beyond Marr’s whispered introduction, and
without either blatant lifts from well-known tunes or sonic cliches, the
music, almost magically, feels like Christmas. You can just about hear the
sleigh bells, even as there aren’t any in the mix. I think what does the
Noël-ish trick here is how the melody culminates in that five-note,
choir-tinged descent (first heard at 0:58). Coming down the scale like that
evokes Christmas music in the gentlest way, even as the song otherwise
seems to operate with its own vibe. While there’s nothing here to directly
recall Vince Guaraldi’s famous “Charlie Brown Christmas” music, what “Free
Christmas” has in common with Guaraldi’s marvelous compositions is a
willingness to be its own aural world first and foremost. It’s less “I’m
writing Christmas music” and more “I’m writing music and I’m inviting
Christmas into it.”
In any case, I’d definitely invite this one into your 2012 Christmas mix.
You’ve got plenty of advance notice. As for Marr, this free and legal MP3
appears to be a sign that his reunion with the Healers, a band he fronted
in the early ’00s, will remain a going concern. He had reassembled the
group, with personnel changes, this past fall, for two shows in the UK and
one in NYC. (Smiths songs were played, it should be noted.) Here’s hoping
for some more Marr this year, as he seems to have left the other bands he
was part of and perhaps aims, at last, for a bit of front man glory.
Thanks to Largehearted Boy <http://blog.largeheartedboy.com/> for the
head’s up on this.
[image:
Bowerbirds]<http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/bowerbirds.jpg>
“TUCK THE DARKNESS IN” –
BOWERBIRDS<http://www.scjag.com/mp3/do/tuckthedarknessin.mp3>
Lovely and deliberate, “Tuck the Darkness In” turns cathartic before its
five minutes are done. The key to the transformation is the song’s
determined pace, which does not change from beginning to end. As minimal
and serene as the arrangement feels at the outset, this is a toe-tapper
from the get-go—the music truly seems to enter the body as soon as the drum
and guitar begin their joint, muted cadence five seconds in. Close your
eyes and bob your head and torso to the rhythm here. You’ll see.
And then we get this interruption, this tension and suspension that glides
into the song at around the two-minute mark, which becomes a bridge (a
suspension bridge?) rife with the sense of something about to happen but
not yet happening. Each lyrical line here begins with the preposition
“before” (“Before the hours took over,” et al), which reinforces a sense of
incompleteness and mystery; we’re never given the countervailing thought
directly (what? what happened before the hours took over?) but the weight
and intent of the whole song gives it to us indirectly. The song is a
striking and poetic meditation on mortality. Live and pay attention, now,
is the message. It’s all we ever have.
The bridge seamlessly re-engages the heart of the song at around 2:50, the
drumbeat now insistent, backing harmonies added. The sound expands, with
electricity and ghostliness; the melody, anthemic all along, brings us
home. This is thoughtful, powerful stuff.
Bowerbirds is a Raleigh-based duo that has had (and maybe will yet have)
more members at other times. The band was previously featured on Fingertips
in 2007 <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com/?p=228>. “Tuck the Darkness In” is
the first song available from the forthcoming album *The Clearing*, which
will be here in March on the Dead Oceans <http://www.deadoceans.com/> label.
MP3 via the record company.
* * * * * * *
"We are living in the future
I'll tell you how I know
I read it in the paper
FIfteen years ago....."
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