[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: July 21 (Tallest Trees, The Innocence Mission, Like Bells)

From: Jeremy Schlosberg <fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxx>
To: fingertipsmusic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:34:42 -0400
THIS WEEK'S FINDS <http://www.fingertipsmusic.com>
July 21

 “Alouette!” – Tallest
Trees**<http://www.humantrees.com/tallesttrees/music/tallest_trees_alouette.mp3>

With a skewed pop sensibility, pastichey zing, and a toy piano, “Alouette!”
wrings more good humor out of its electronics-oriented language than one
might have thought possible, given the general humorlessness of most
electronics-based music. Glad that Thomas Samuel and Dabney Morris ignored
the memo on that one. “Alouette!” skips with glitch and glee.

Good humor is an underrated quality in music. And I don’t mean songs that
are funny per se; I mean songs in which the music itself makes you smile.
“Alouette!” does this repeatedly, in an ongoing variety of ways. There’s the
toy piano, sure, but there are also the sounds coaxed from
synthesizers—rubbery, reverberant, yippy, squeaky—that make me wonder, as I
have in the past, why electronic music isn’t in fact more smile-inducing
more often. Beyond that, the arrangement itself is great fun, adhering
sounds in a clattery, rhythmic gallop from start to finish. Even the vocals
are part of the merry-making, from the twinkly spirit of Morris’s
high-pitched tenor to the purposeful use of offbeat harmonies— check out the
way the phrase “I am no hero” is sung, at: 1:18, or how the harmony vocal
lags behind the melody, starting at the beginning of the second verse
(0:58).

“Alouette!” was first heard late last year one the Nashville duo’s
self-released EP , *Hey There Little Nebula*. It will get a wider release
next month when the Portland, Ore.-based label Other Electricities presents
the band’s full-length debut, *The Ostrich or the Lark* (title phrase found
within this song; and “alouette,” so you know, means lark in French). MP3
via the band’s site <http://www.humantrees.com/>.


“God is Love” – The Innocence
Mission**<http://loudfeed.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/21103/03_God_Is_Love.mp3>

Karen Peris, long-time front woman for the Innocence Mission, has an
idiosyncratic purr of a voice, part velvet part parchment; it alternately
soothes and cracks, sometimes doing both at once. She has an unplaceable
accent and likes to sing of simple things out there from her Lancaster
County abode, comfy in the 20-plus-years’ presence of her bandmate husband
Don and his bandmate childhood friend Mike Bitts. The trio’s new album, *My
Room in the Trees*, their ninth, is full of the outdoors, of weather and
leaves and water and quiet neighborhoods. It is lovely, and this is one of
the lovely songs on it, but with more of a toe-tapping beat than most of the
others, with jazz-flecked acoustic guitar chords, gentle percussion, and
what sounds like a hushed horn or woodwind but is actually a combination of
pump organ, chromatic harmonica, and melodica, all played by Karen.

And given our fractious age, with tolerance and intolerance locked in misery
on the cultural dance floor, I feel a need to comment briefly on the subject
matter. Despite the title’s centrality to the lyrics, this is not an overtly
religious song; its spiritual message in fact is so deeply ecumenical as to
unify all but the most strident fundamentalists fuming away on the two
extreme sides of the God-existence argument. I’ve seen one online review
take the song to task for its lyrical simplicity, a criticism that never
fails to amuse me. Ninety percent of all songs have simple lyrics. That’s
why they’re songs. They rise or fall on the depth of the music, which can
also appear simple in many cases. This song’s simplicity is part of its
allure; purity has a place in our ears and hearts. Not a lot of indie music
explores this place; I give these guys a lot of credit for making it look,
and sound, as easy and comfortable as a conversation with old friends.

Which these guys, recording together since 1989, surely are. * My Room in
the Trees* was released last week on Badman Recording Co.


“Sea Salt” – Like Bells**<http://www.exitstencil.org/MP3/LikeBells/SeaSalt.mp3>

And this one, not so simple. But still pure, in its own way. “Sea Salt”
begins with such an extended introduction that first time through you are
excused if you think it’s an instrumental. This long opening section unfolds
via a series of eight-measure riffs that, together, slowly develop and shift
the feel and texture of the music. We begin with a nimble bass line plucking
out a handsome, ambling groove over tapping cymbals. After eight measures of
that, a rhythm guitar joins, lightly played, and off the beat. Pay
particular attention to the goings-on in the third eight-measure set,
beginning at 0:35, featuring the introduction of the violin, as it plays a
melody that becomes important much later. Then the lead guitar steps in for
an eight-measure answer.

The next two minutes explores the musical ground established by the first
minute, with the violin and guitar each having a chance to to lead the way,
each in turn moving steadily into louder and more involved playing. This
ends up being quite a bit of fun, since the trio (guitar-drums-violin; bass
player is a guest, by the way) met while students at the Oberlin
Conservatory. Which means they are actual musicians. Which is a nice bonus
in the indie rock world. I like that the instrumental section maintains a
nice clip—it seems too easy here in 21st-century rock’n'roll-land for
instrumentals to bog down in overly dramatic slowness—and I like the
relatively unexpected but musically satisfying entrance of actual vocals
three and a half minutes into the proceedings. Violinist Garrett Openshaw
does the singing, and he hinted as much back at 0:35 when the first thing he
played on his instrument was the melody he would eventually sing.

Like Bells’ self-titled 2009 debut was pretty much all instrumental, with
just a hint of vocalizing from Openshaw. *Palma*, their 35-minute,
seven-song new album, features more singing, but as you can see from “Sea
Salt,” the singing does not necessarily dominate. The album was released
digitally in April and is now out on vinyl as well, on Exit Stencil
Recordings <http://www.exitstencil.org/>. MP3 via Exit Stencil.



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Continually they blow apart..."



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[fingertipsmusic] This Week's Finds: July 21 (Tallest Trees, The Innocence Mission, Like Bells)

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