visit this link to download the song of the day. Today’s song will not be downloadable for free tomorrow.

Today we have three songs, one for Tuesday, Wednesday and today.

The first song, “Avatar” by Jeremy Pelt is a moody, 8 minute jazz song. Spare, with just drums, piano and trumpet, Avatar seems like a simple enough song. The trumpet wanders around, looking for a melody, or at least a motif to hold on to. Beneath it the piano seems to think to itself, brooding over some reproach, and you have to wonder if it means anything, its slightly creepy chords that are not at all normal jazz piano. After about 3 minutes, a sax joins in, just different from the trumpet. The piano goes back to its normal jazzy self, and earns a solo, which is interesting, as solos go. Not the impressive blitzy solo, but it sounds cool. At around 7 minutes, the whole thing slows down, and all three instruments play in unison for the rest of the song. I’m quite confused as to why it’s called Avatar, but the song is nice. PS - unfortunately the upload didn’t work, so either download it today, or you’re out of luck.

A second song (I’m hesitant to say the second song, because I don’t remember downloading this yesterday or the day before, but I listened, and it came from emusic, so I’m reviewing it.) is “Dog Park” by The Saturday Knights. Starting with a panning electronica chord, and an even more electronic synth bit. Then a few whistles and you get ready to listen to your typical electric song. Nope. Instead you have a singer who sounds like he’s rapping, but he’s doing it melodically. You end up with the best of lots of worlds. A) the electric instrumentation that I fall for so easily, B) hip-hop lyricization, full of witty wordplay, C) Singing in tune, without a vocoder. Much more than Snoop Dogg can say. T-Pain doesn’t count, because his vocoder is his style, but I have yet to hear another rapper that can manage this. Best of all, it ends with these lyrics: “Get yo leash, get yo leash get yo leash… The park will be closing in five minutes.” The song as a whole, by the way, is about the singer, whose girlfriend has left him, and left her dog too. I’m not totally sure, but I think he falls in love with the dog.

Then we come to “Trouble In My Way” by ‘Various Artists’, or Como Mamas feat. Mary Moore, whichever you want to believe. “Trouble” is a soul/jazz song, completely accapella, with several distinctive singers all singing perfectly in tune. You even get a little scream-ish emphasis from the lead singer. Towards the end, the song gets quite repetetive, but they pull it off. I’m most impressed.

Finally, we end with Takka Takka’s “Everybody Say“. Muted-ish guitar, of which I have not heard outside of a punk song starts off this soul/folk song. The song as a whole is quite perplexing, though. Unfortunately, the song also falls into what I might call the “Say” trap. John Mayer’s “Say” is a pretty song, however, it’s chorus (one line “Say what you need to say” repeated practically endlessly) brings the whole song down. “Everybody Say” has a similar chorus: “You say, everybody say” repeated. Although, oddly, it only happens once, so they’re forgiven.

Visit this link today to download this song. Tomorrow this link will point to tomorrow’s song.

The Orb’s “Katskills” starts with a heavily echoed sample of something, a bit of flute, and some laughter. Perhaps water dripping? No, it’s “about it” from “don’t worry about it” echoed. Throw in a few synths, a hint of a beat, and you end up with a creepy techno tune.

Full of random samples edited to perfection, I must say I’m quite impressed with this song. Quotes from something, echoed and edited in to perfection. Hard to pull off, definitely. But it works.

(visit this link today to get this song)

Comfortingly amazing acoustic guitar backs The Avett Brothers’ “Murder in the City”. After a few bars of this, the singer comes in. Reminiscent of Ernie or Bert from Sesame Street, his voice honestly sucks. But his singing and guitar are done so well that you don’t even mind.

The song is one that you would expect them to have covered long ago, a sort of brotherly rivalry–a which one did they love more thing. The whole song is rather confusing, but hey, whatever. It sounds pretty.

(visit this link today to get this song)

PAS/CAL’s “You Were Too Old For Me” is jazzy indie pop/rock with an alt edge. Exuberant whoa-oh’s, nonsense, manic piano, drums, guitar, and everything. Add self harmonizing beyond belief, and those little breaks-from-the-rhythmn-where-the-artist-sings-so-fast-that-he-gets-back-on-the-beat-and-still-gets-to-use-a-long-word that sound hideous if done wrong, but are amazing if done right are sprinkled into a song that should by rights be downright depressing. eMusic’s review of the album, designed for the whole album, not just one song from it usually bore, but this one makes me want to hear more, if only for the little quirks highlighted therein. Even the title of the album is fun: “I Was Raised on Matthew, Mark, Luke, & Laura”

If one gets down to actually paying attention to the song and its lyrics, which is completely optional, with all the ear candy pre-packaged in, you’ll find that the whole song is a story. One of my favorites is the second verse (which I looked up, that’s how much I like this song):

“Much too old for me
Oh, the shortness of breath and the missteps never
Well, they never really fazed me
And all your old stories of war and depression were
Well, they were really something
Were they really something?
Well, they must be something”

The singer seems to be a forgetful sort. In the end, although the girl’s much too old for him, he gets her, and, well, it ends happily. Does it end happily? Well, it must end happily.

(visit this link today to get this song)

Rail Band’s “Finza” starts with a complex guitar lick, “Ah!” repeat lick, repeat “Ah!” Straight out of 1970s Mali, Rail Band is mostly a jazz band. And although, one can’t understand a word the singer says, you can tell that he can sing. Keeping up with the guitar’s quick fingering is one thing, but doing it well is another altogether.

After about a minute of voice/guitar only, the rest of the band comes in and the song becomes decidedly jazzy, with congo drums, saxophones, and snares. (I was surprised too). A second singer, not nearly as musical as the first comes in later, who has an aura of “Hey, this singing thing is fun. And it can be my job too? Golly!” whereas the first dude would be singing for a living anywhere, in an opera, in a band, in a choir. You can just tell.

Since it wouldn’t be a jazz song without solos, you get two–guitar and saxophone. The singer comes back in sounding a little flustered–missed his cue, did he? But he makes up for it, singing more rapidly than ever. Although the quality of the sound is bad (it was recorded 30-some years ago, what do you expect), and I have yet to meet someone who knows what they’re saying, I like this song.

(Visit iTunes to download this song (try this link, which may or may not work). Unfortunately, because iTunes DRMs its music, I cannot post the song for you to have a listen)

Kerli’s song, “Walking on Air” starts with a complicated beat and a creepy minor synth-y background. The whole song seems to follow the creepy theme, despite the title, which should mean a happy, summertime, the-world-is-perfect song. Instead you have a halloween-ish song.

The chorus is much happier than the verses, and almost manages to pull the song out of its halloween aesthetic into a slower “Pocketful of Sunshine” in a minor key. The contradictions are intriguing.

This song is most definitely going to be one of my favorites. And it’s free all this week. How could you not want it?

The All Powerful Gore Has Spoken

You know, you do have to hand it to Al Gore. His images is so spun, that no matter what he says, he’ll be accepted as an expert source. It’s like we’ve forgotten that he’s a politician, not a scientist. You’d think someone would have warned us off of politicized science. Oh wait, someone has. But because he’s a fiction author who happens to source his facts (Michael Crichton in his State of Fear, I mean), we don’t believe him.

(visit this link today to get this song)

Ron Sexsmith (is that his real last name?) rocks with a slow-ish folk feel, but with trumpets, backup singers, piano, and a voice one would call too low for pop. At least, his range is lower than I’ve heard in a while, which is refreshing. The rest of the song, is put together well, but is kind of boring because the chorus “She’s my Brandy Alexander, but that’s another matter” is repeated over and over and over, which starts to grate, but not enough to make one stop listening: real trumpets in the background is so refreshing.

(this song is no longer available, sorry to review late)

“Follow The Dollar” sounds superficially like country. It’s got the guitar right, and the spare production-ness, but the singer is definitely not a country singer. Instead of twang, she’s got an almost English accent through her singing. The whole song is kind of a mixed up genre mash. The rhythmn of the chorus is purposefully rushed, as if the artist really wanted to fit that extra word into the song, but didn’t have enough words for another line, but had too many for the lines she was on. Odd. Very odd.

(this song is no longer available, sorry to review late)

Opio\'s "Stop the Press" is an odd combination - Indie and Rap. Indie Rap is always slightly ironic, because most rap these days is about how much money the rapper has, and if you’re an indie artist, you almost certainly are not rich. “Stop the Press” avoids the whole money issue deftly, and instead disses other wannabes, because they don’t have the skills. The whole song has about as many pop culture references you can have without your lyrics devolving into a list of brands.

Later in the song, the synths turn jazzy, and Opio throws in a sample from some movie (I don’t know what) that goes something like “… Wait a minute, b—-, what do you think you’re doing? … You’re looking behind you when you’re s’posed to be looking in front of you.” But you don’t ever hear the whole thing together, as it loops and rewinds with mandatory DJ scratching.