There is, in accordance with both local laws and strict social mores, an associated Twitter feed: @tuneMine. So if you like posts floating by you like instructions to an ADD kid, that’s what you should go for.

Thanks again for reading Naive Harmonies! Your sacrifices shall not be forgotten, brave soldier/procrastinator.

Before I sign off, I can’t resist a couple of quick thoughts:

One is another plea to you to click like and reaction buttons on the status messages and posts that you come across throughout the day. I know that a lot of people think that they’re desperate begs for attention, but they’re nothing but acknowledgements. It’s simply saying thanks or “I read this”. It was always disheartening to spend the time that I did on posts only to feel that no one even bothered to look at it except Hype Machinists trolling for mp3s. So just keep in mind when you’re reading things that those numbers do matter to the people who create the content that you’re reading.

The other thought deserves a much longer piece, but it’s about music blogs. I’m not going to be obnoxious enough to pronounce music blogs “dead” (thought I’m clearly capable of being that obnoxious), but I’ve recognized over the last couple years that, as much great new music as I’ve discovered from music blogs, it’s an imperfect way to find music. It’s hard to listen to the music all at once, it takes efforts to go back and see if there’s new music, the sites don’t always provide a good way to listen…it’s just hard. Even the few music blogs that I still love are ones that I’ll only go check out once every few weeks or so.

And speaking of, the two blogs you should be reading if you aren’t already are Fluxblog and No Genre. They’re both widely varied with fantastic taste.

Of course, thanks to all the readers and writers I’ve had over the years. It’s been fun. Thanks, everyone.

Field Music, “(I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing”
get it on Plumb (2012)

Ugh. Seriously? Saturday? We’re giving Fine Tune Friday a bad name here, people. We’ll need a new name for this Song of the Week biz, something that doesn’t…you know…LIE.

Anyway, if you can get past the mishandling of your trust (not to mention the contractual violations…what? You didn’t read the privacy policy? Okay, no contractual violations then), you can (AND WILL) enjoy this awesome new song off of spot-of-prog-in-your-indiepop geniuses Field Music. Let me just show you around a little bit: You’ve got this great, descending-staircase melody begging you to get out the air guitar (which you left in the basement), and over here at the end you have handclaps. I know! Something so simple makes all the difference, doesn’t it?

Also, please enjoy this extra set of parentheses, gratis: ()

Sleigh Bells, “Comeback Kid”
get it on Reign of Terror (2012)

Moving is crazy. Watching someone else move, it’s something you just shrug off: one house to another, what’s the big deal? But when you do it yourself, it suddenly sinks in just what a complete upheaval it is. This is not my beautiful house, etc.

So I’m a little discombobulated this week, disrupting my previous combobulated state. So maybe it’s all alright that Sleigh Bells have dialed down the fuzz on their new album. I can always return to Treats if I want an album that makes it sound like my eardrums have been blown like speakers, but they still bring the goods on Reign of Terror, and still deliver all the pop metal that you could ever ask for in “Comeback Kid”. Feels like home.

Cate Le Bon, “Puts Me To Work”
get it on Cyrk

That xtiandc is one unpredictable cat, most notably in that he’s a human and not a cat as the previous part of the sentence might lead you to believe. He’s climbed oceans and swum mountains and currently makes a living at the SW waterfront, biting heads off of live rats for $5 from tourists.

“No one’s going to pay five dollars to watch you bite the head off a live rat,” I say.

“I’m going for the high roller tourists,” he says, with no small hint of condescension.

Look. I know. I know. But there’s just no talking sense into him about these things.

I tell you what, though: in spite of the questionable past and even shadier future, the man knows his good tunes. If he tells you to go out of your way to listen to something, you grab a map and you find your way, mister. So it was with this little shambolic gem that he pointed me to: drunken guitars and pianos and vocals that are exhausted but determined. It’s when Cate (I wrote a blog post about her so we’re pals now) digs down deep into her to wail out the final vocal line that the chills start. Just see if they don’t.

The real curse of being old is knowing that you’re destined to be old-fashioned. As the idiot Abe Simpson once said, “I used to be with it. Then they changed what it was. Now what’s it seems scary and weird to me.” Not exactly the same, because I do like the glitchy bedroom electronics skipping over the internet these days. But a lot of times I miss a good, carefully constructed song, something that sounds like someone wrote on a guitar in a living room and then fleshed out in a studio.

And I know that somewhere, there’s a ten-year-old who, in thirty years, will be saying, “Oh, sure…I like all the new hardcore polka that’s around now, but I miss glitchy bedroom bass music. What’s wrong with music made on computers? Nothing, that’s what!”

Tennis, “Robin”
find it on Young & Old (2012)

Tennis is never going to win any awards for variety. They’ll play their la la shit for you anytime, and you’ll like it or…you won’t. But their new album has a little bit more of what the French call production, and said production comes from Black Key Patrick Carney, and rounds the edges a bit more than on their debut, so it’s a little easier to…y’know, actually tell the songs apart from each other. This new record comes only a year after their debut, so it’s not too surprising that “Robin” sounds like it was written at about the same time, but just with aforementioned Black Keying.

In other words, you can listen to this song and know whether you’ll love the whole album or not. I love it.

I can’t remember why I gave their 1998 album Good Humor a chance (likely because of that that constant paranoia of the music geek that you’re missing out on something good), but it completely turned around my opinion of Saint Etienne. My warming to them is probably in no small part due to the warm production of Tore Johansson, bringing in horns, electric piano and crisp drums that result in one of the coziest pop albums ever made.

Saint Etienne, “Woodcabin”
get it on Good Humor

The best example of this is the opener to Good Humor, “Woodcabin”, a track that seems titled for where it would sound best, but it still seems like an early morning comedown track. The jittery funk drum breaks place it clearly in the 90s, but there’s plenty of 70s songwriter in there. It’s clearly lounge pop, but that label suggests that it’s boring, where it’s anything but.

Mostly, though: Good Humor. Get it if you don’t have it. A too-often overlooked classic.

First Aid Kit, “Emmylou”
get it on The Lion’s Roar (2012)

We first heard about First Aid Kit (didn’t we?) when the Swedish teenage sisters popped up on YouTube singing Fleet Foxes’s “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” smack dab in the middle of the forest. Four years later, and we realize that these sisters still love Fleet Foxes AND barren forests.

But even though they’re four years older (funny how that works), they still show their youth on “Emmylou”, a song that packs in both a romantic view for music romances past as well as the the excitement of finding a type of music that you absolutely love and want to copy and worship and preach. And while the first thought may be a condescending “Oh, that’s cute”, this song nails its lofty ambitions as as a tribute to Gram & Emmylou and Johnny & June. And Fleet Foxes.

I was never a Steve Earle fan. His music always struck me as self-conscious as his politics, with every moment too carefully considered and dropped on you with a huge expectation that you’re supposed to respond to it in a certain way.

Not so with his son, Justin Townes Earle, who made a fantastic record a couple of years ago that is sincere and confident. The title track of the record, “Harlem River Blues” is a near-perfect slice of country/gospel that’s neither retro or modern, and whose allusions to suicide are delivered with little care as to whether you take it as deep meaning or a surface, enjoyable melody, making him more akin to him namesake Townes Van Zandt than his dad.