This Is Your Song For....April 17th, 2014: The Things We Said Today by The Gestures

Meet The...okay, not quite The Beatles....

Welcome back.   Today....Minnesota pop rock from the 60‘s from a band that really wants to be The Beatles.

And it’s very obvious that this song from 1964 is extremely influenced by early era Beatles.  An argument can be made that they’re more than influenced by the most famous Liverpudlians in the world; the melody line and Dale Menton’s vocals seems highly reminiscent of a certain composition of Lennon and McCarthy (listen to the song and decide for yourself).  But the freshness of the open composition--a composition that was most like written by one or two people and not the army that ends up writing most pop compositions these days--is pretty undeniable.  This is pop at its most stripped down, before Sgt. Pepper opened people up to what could be achieved in the studio.  This primitiveness has been away from mainstream music so long, it’s almost become modern again.  One can easily see this becoming a very minor hit, fitting comfortably alongside The Lumineers and Mumford and Sons of this age.

The other thing that fascinates me about this song, and the Gestures in general, is that they were purveyors of that long-forgotten tradition, the Local Heroes.  Now that music is so easily distributed worldwide through digital means and radio play is broadcast to several major cities simultaneously, the idea of a band that’s worshipped as Gods in their general area but is unknown outside of it is no longer commonplace.  Granted, there are still vestiges of that tradition--I shudder every Christmas when New York stations start playing the hideous ‘Dominic The Christmas Donkey’--but I almost miss having songs that are ours alone, songs that we we embrace as a collective nighborhood but everywhere else just doesn’t get.  These are the ugly stepchildren of pop music, unloved save for their parent location, and they are all beautiful in their own way.

The Gestures, not surprisingly, broke up decades ago.  But they were inducted into the Minnesota Rock N’ Roll Hall OF Fame in 2008, so there’s that much.

No video (why am I not surprised?), but the song is available on a number of compilations.

This Is Your Song For....June 15, 2013: Empires Ending (B Sides) by Koko And The Sweetmeats

I...I got nuttin'....literally.

This week, kinda dreamy garage pop from Seattle...if you can call it garage.

I don’t have a lot on Koko And The Sweetmeats--I got Sacrifice, the album this cut is from off of their Bandcamp page, where it was offered for a brief time for free, and is now available for a dollar--and it seems like these guys like to experiment. Sacrifice is composed of six songs that are interpreted twice, an A side and a B side version.  This is obviously the B side version.

They’re a four piece (although most of the publicity photos only feature two members, and the most I’ve ever seen in any photo is three), and they have enough of a following in their hometown to be named ‘Best Garage Band of 2011‘ by Seattle Weekly.

It’s odd to me that this band is considered ‘garage.’  When I think of a garage band, I think of something much punkier than this.  Koko and The Sweetmeats seem to owe a bit more to the layered sounds of 4 A.D and the head-down-low esthetic of Lo-Fi than the DIY anarchy of garage rock judging from this song.  They seem positively laid back, with a slight blown-speaker fuzz giving the guitars a decay that adds some body to the melody itself.

To be honest, there’s not a lot I can find in listening to this that I can take away from it, or that I can remark upon...sometimes, unfortunately, that happens with a random exercise like this.  It’s decent music, and the price can’t be beat. I know I have some readers from the Seattle area; maybe you guys can write in and tell me more about them in the comments space?

Apparently, Koko And The Sweetmeats announced an ‘indefinite hiatus’ earlier this year.

Here's a live performance by the band.  It was the only Youtube-y video I could find.

30 Songs, 30 Days (2009 Edition), Day Nineteen: I Believe by Abra Moore

(It seems, looking back at these things while reposting them, that I produced two Day Nineteens in the 2009 Edition...which makes me feel a little better about how the 2010 Edition got truncated.  I decided not to correct the mistake for versimilitude's sake....so enjoy!)

It seems that this week is The Week Of Shoulda Coulda Been Bigger...for here we have Abra Moore.

Abra Moore's second album, Strangest Places was one of the seemingly dozens of review albums I received through the mail when I was a music journalist, so I didn't have much hope for it. But upon listening to it straight through, I thought the record label had something here in this ethereal blonde girl with the country twang in her voice--a twang she got legitimately, being an Austin, Texas native. And it seems that at least part of the country agreed with me, as the first single from that album, "Four Leaf Clover," was a mainstay of VH1 for a short while and became something of a hit in the midwest.

This song is from her most recent album, On The Way, and I think it's indicative of why I was charmed by her--the lush production manages to be full without drowning out her true strength, her voice. At turns coy and sad, but always with a hint of a smile, Abra's voice has an undeniable delicateness that works for the variety of songs she writes.

I don't have a video of the song we're discussing here, but here's a live performance of the aforementioned "Four Leaf Clover"....

I don't know why Abra Moore's success seems confined to the Midwest (although I do wonder if her wistfulness--it wasn't a surprise to me that she was a member of the Hawaiian collective Poi Dog Pondering prior to her solo career--in the age of the pop tart doesn't restrain her potential). I know that she's one of these artist who seems to have perpetual label troubles--her last three albums have been on three different labels, after all. But it's a shame that more people don't know her and appreciate her work.