Tiny lights

Tiny Lights, Mike Golding

The Sharpest Knife In The Drawer - Piano Magic

I won't attempt to catalogue the myriad tiny wonders of this song. I wouldn't know where to start and when to stop. Instead, allow me to direct you to just one winking bulb in a string of sparkly fairy lights. Here, starting at 1:26, a small spit of hi-hat, a tamped sizzle on the down beat. Almost insignificant, it rides a wave of low frequency drone, nods shyly to the toms, winks at the rippling guitar, smiles at the soupy keys. A passenger, yet a driver.

All Music does a nice job of relating Piano Magic's knotty history. From Seasonally Affective: A Piano Magic Retrospective, 1996-2000 (eMusic).

Daughters - Golden Shoulders

"Daughters" has a neat, trim piano motif you could build a song around. Which Golden Shoulders has done and well. I haven't lived with a piano for ages, but with six or seven years of lessons lodged in my physical memory--my wrists and arms, back and shoulders--my instinct when listening to a song like this is to cradle keys in the palms of my hands as it rocks forward, inching by short, measured bursts. Yes, it's physical like that.

The first 15 seconds or so will, inevitably, make you think of Spoon (certainly a physical band, though more in the hips than torso). The comparison may only be superficial, though. Singer Adam Kline is a storyteller smiling through his teeth, his medium lending itself to his message. Which is? Whatever you wish. Though I may be getting too old for it, I'll take the evergreen theme of rejecting authority.

From KIN (Welcome Home Records, iTunes).