"how many times can you say you don't know?"
Fingertip is alternative / indie rock Merit Badge's follow up to their ambitious fifteen track 2019 self titled album. The band started as a project of Brooklyn based songwriter, Joshua Davis Dillard, formerly of Heads Up Display. As press notes clarify: In 2015, he took on the project of recording one song per month. In 2016, he relocated to southern California, his twin sons were born, and he continued his songwriting saga throughout the haze of new fatherhood.
Listening to Fingertip, it is apparent, from the very beginning, that, while pretty, the tone is serious, the stuff of life, complexities. Appropriately Dillard sings about "puzzle pieces" and unpacking "your detective kit" as the song spirals into a dense votex of things, of sounds, of stories unfurling in mysterious ways. Dillard does not vocally sound at all like Ben Gibbard (Death Cab) or Doug Martsch (Built to Spill) but for some reason I thought of both of them. It may be the warble in Dillard's voice or the fact that you seem to hear him thinking in his words (and feeling deeply) or maybe it is just his penchant for deep storytelling that feels pained, but I did think of those luminaries.
Fingertip is not an easy swim. There are turbulent waters to navigate, huge crescendos, bits of art rock and inexplicable diversions. At one point when the guitar rhythm seems to be fanning in triplets? or double time after a furious sprint, my jaw dropped. It is the kind of song that after it finishes (with some nice ambient sounds) you might ask yourself "What the fuck just happened?"
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
Merit Badge is an alternative/indie rock band from Los Angeles. Merit Badge started as a project of Brooklyn-based songwriter, Joshua Davis Dillard, formerly of Heads Up Display. In 2015, he took on the project of recording one song per month. In 2016, he relocated to southern California, his twin sons were born, and he continued his songwriting saga throughout the haze of new fatherhood. Many of Merit Badge's songs are a product of these times. We've been compared to Teenage Fanclub, the Pixies, and Dinosaur Jr., though also share a musical landscape with the cinematic drama of Bernard Herman or John Williams.
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