Free and legal MP3 from the Black Hollies (groovy neo-garage rock)

"Gloomy Monday Morning" - the Black Hollies
     A deeply groovy shot of neo-garage rock, "Gloomy Monday Morning" is both steeped in nostalgia and alive with freshly-minted energy. Sure, there's a big-time Animals/Zombies/'60s-Kinks vibe at work here, but it's almost like this New Jersey quartet is using the bygone sound as an instrument they're playing rather than as a straitjacket limiting their buoyancy, if that makes any sense.
     The song consistently works at two different, typically contradictory levels. For instance, while blatantly backbeat driven and cymbal heavy, "Gloomy Monday Morning" also employs subtle keyboard accents and a frisky bass line to catch the ear nearly below the level of conscious awareness. Even the backbeat isn't as straightforward as it seems, working with a kind of stutter that both accentuates and deflects the two and four beat accent. Listen, also, to how a simple maneuver--that upward turn of melody that we first hear at 0:49 in the chorus, and then also in the third line of the second verse (1:08)--serves to break the song open. And what's with that cymbal sound? It's so persistent during the chorus and the bridge that it sounds less like an organically played cymbal than a sample played from a keyboard, and is used as a sort of wall-of-sound whitewash at that point more than percussion--a tactic that is, characteristically, somehow, at once heavy-handed and enigmatic. Even the title seemingly contradicts the song's groove.
     "Gloomy Monday Morning" is from the band's third full-length album, Softly Towards the Light, which was released this week by the Brooklyn-based Ernest Jenning Record Co. MP3 via EJRC.