Flying their freak flag

Dylanesque rhymes from an "outsider," a free song from a potential Next Big Thing and the shiny, happy sounds of I Am the World Trade Center.

By Thomas Bartlett

May 26, 2004 | The digital music stores just keep getting better, adding more music and more features every week. They now carry all pop/rock/hip-hop major-label new releases and are quickly filling in the back catalogs. But the available selection of classical, jazz, folk, world, electronic, blues, etc., remains frustratingly weak. Luckily, it's become part of indie-rock culture for bands, both obscure and popular, to post a few MP3s on their Web pages, giving me a nearly inexhaustible wealth of music to choose from. But sadly, the habit of posting a few songs for free hasn't spread to experimental, jazz, classical, folk or any other genre -- and I dislike having the contents of this column so homogenized. There's so much music I've been enjoying -- recently records by Charles Lloyd, Madvillain, Fennesz, Burnt Sugar, Dirk Powell, Tethered Moon and many more, as well as pianist Pierre Laurent-Aimard's brilliant performances of Ligeti and Messiaen -- that I can't feature in this column because it isn't available online. So, please, everyone out there who makes music that's not indie rock, put some tracks up for download on your Web page. You won't lose oodles of money, and you might gain a lot of new fans.

"Motel Sex," Danny Cohen, from Dannyland
Danny Cohen flies his freak flag right at the beginning of this track, striking a humorously out-of-tune chord on the guitar, which serves as a reminder that Cohen is often referred to as an "outsider" musician, the very concept of which is either bogus or offensive. Then you're tumbled into this glorious piece of Captain Beefheart-style R&B rock, with Cohen's energetic, half-spoken singing and scrumptiously exaggerated Dylanesque end-rhymes. Cohen's guitar part on this song -- harmonically tame, but beautifully and unusually voiced -- really is worthy of Beefheart, and the meandering organs give the track the same air of casual, unrehearsed brilliance as Dylan and the Band's "Basement Tapes." Some of Cohen's new "Dannyland," released Tuesday on Anti, is too scattered and incoherent ("quirky," they call it) to be enjoyable, and none of it is as immediately accessible as this track. But much of the time he sounds like a slightly stranger, less tuneful version of his friend, admirer and label-mate Tom Waits, but with a strange, possessed and slightly demented magic all his own. Fly your freak flag, Danny. Free download: "Motel Sex"

"On Vacation," The Robot Ate Me, from "On Vacation"
The Robot Ate Me, a band from San Diego, make indie-pop that is wistful, catchy and a bit goofy, not unlike the Flaming Lips. Unfortunately, they do not share the Lips' talent for self-promotion and so remain unfairly obscure. They recently released a double-CD album titled "On Vacation," from which I've heard only the four free tracks available on the band's Web page, more than enough to get me excited about the record. "The Genocide Ball," which features Ryland Bouchard singing over an almost impossibly smooth big-band sample, is sonically astonishing, a strange and evocative combination of Victrola static and vivid technicolor gloss. If it weren't for the cuttingly ironic lyrics -- I can't decide if they're intriguing or absurd -- this would be my pick. Instead, the nod goes to "On Vacation," a more successful, if less unusual, song. The band's most formidable weapon is Bouchard's voice, and this carefree, gently pulsing song showcases his beautiful singing to great effect. His voice is not unusual in kind -- a fragile indie falsetto -- but there's an extra resonance to it, and a submerged but piercing intensity that I find dazzling. There are also some tracks from The Robot Ate Me's debut available on the Web page, notably the brilliant "They Ate Themselves." This is a band to watch, far more talented than many of their better-known peers. Free download: "On Vacation"

Next page: Can music that is almost purely derivative also be genuinely good?