Fingertips

THIS WEEK'S FINDS
week of Mar. 7-13

"Wouldn't Believe It" - the Get Up Kids
Without a killer chorus, "Wouldn't Believe It" might be an energetic but wispy bit of pop; on the strength of a few well-placed notes between verses, the song achieves true magnificence. While the harmonica-driven intro and Matt Pryor's boyish vocals favorably recall the Housemartins (a great British band from the mid-'80s), the simple, clipped phrases of the first verse lack impact. But wait: as the verse ends but before the chorus begins, an unexpected sort of miniature bridge builds the harmonic tension, particularly as the keyboard starts an insistent background pounding that all but shouts "Warning: killer chorus ahead." And it starts, Pryor singing "Did it occur to you too?" in a classic, descending fourth; then he sings "What was the worst it could do?" beginning an octave below where the chorus started, and for the word "worst" he jumps up a sixth, and there, music theory aside, that's the hook, and it's all happening so quickly and energetically that it leaves me breathless, as a killer chorus must, and casts a reverberant sheen on the entire song. And yikes it's much more plodding to write about than to listen to, so check it out. The Get Up Kids are from Kansas City; "Wouldn't Believe It" can be found on Guilt Show, their fourth CD, released last week on Vagrant Records.

"Wounded World" - Mission of Burma
Do I fear getting too soft around the edges here on Fingertips? Well, this'll solve that, and who better to stage the aural onslaught than the obscure-but-legendary Mission of Burma, a Boston-based art-punk band from the early '80s that finds itself together again in the 21st century. This song comes from the album ONoffON, slated to be released in May on Matador Records, and it shows the boys in fine, agitated form; from the opening lyrical sneer--"I'm a puppet, you're a puppet too"--the song blazes out of the gate, effortlessly recalling the heady musical scene which gave birth to this particular brand of intellectual noise. And yet for all its recapitulative fury, "Wounded World" seems very present at the same time; while the brash electric texture produced by the band's guitars and tape manipulations may be less of a crazy buzz than it was 20 years ago, there's still exhilaration to be had in the band's able juxtapositioning of noise and melody. The metallic bray of guitars halfway through the song is at once pure catharsis and outlandish fun.

"Impatience" - Emma McGlynn
An immediate sense of presence and personality shines through this song, which is quite a feat these days for anyone with an acoustic guitar, particularly anyone with quite so much of an Ani DiFranco fixation as Emma McGlynn. Like DiFranco, this U.K.-based singer/songwriter releases her own music on her own label, sings in a freewheeling and emotive style, and shows a lot of technical flair on her instrument. Similarities aside, McGlynn comes off as very much her own person; she's got a spiritually softer vibe, somehow, than DiFranco--something less prickly and self-absorbed comes through, even as McGlynn has clearly borrowed more than a few tricks from DiFranco's impressive bag of resources. "Impatience" is from an EP called 5th November that McGlynn released in 2001; a subsequent full-length CD, Kamikaze Birdie, came out last year. To download the song, right-click on the picture next to the song, then use the typical "save target as" approach to capturing the file.