Over the last year Cold Blue Kid has transformed from the solo thoughts and tunes of Alex Longoria into full-bodied musical exploration of this six-piece band. The group played their first show back in March and began working the follow up to Alex’s debut album back in November. The result is a 6-track ep that is a force in melodic guitar rock. The ep, Mimic, will be released on February 14th.
Check out the final track from Mimic, "Maybe Town" below. You can catch Cold Blue Kid at Beat Kitchen on January 12th with Unplugged & Reborn, Videotape, and Smoke & Magic.
Arlington VA’s darkwave duo Screen Vinyl Image emerge again with electronic shoegaze splendor in Strange Behavior (released Dec 2011.) IMO, Kim and Jake Ried are at the top of the leader-board when it comes to their genre, and after a listen- I think the SVI audience would agree.
One could simply spin this entire record at a Goth Prom night and have the place jumping with doom & gloom in SVI’s catchy rhythms as heard in "Revival", a gothic boom layered in pumping beats and fuzzy guitars. And "Rx" hits even darker notes, welcoming a good ol’fashioned blood rave.
"Stay Asleep" gets beautiful with lush guitars oozing over that beat that keeps you swaying on the dancefloor, before pushing through into another realm of intoxicating synth swirls and hallucinogenic vocal reverbs. Acoustic guitars come in on "My Confession" as Jake’s echoes melt into the atmosphere that remains from "Stay Asleep." Chilling yet soothing, and dark as all hell. –Dawn
On January 20th Brice Woodall is releasing his new ep, Some Odd Years. Brice’s music is best described as experimental folk, but it is hard to pin down his sound. He utilizes layers of electronics, and various sounds and noises. The ep will be released on cassette and will be given away for free at his release show at Ace Bar on the 20th.
Common Shiner made a late run in our recent poll, but fell short to Hidden Hospitals. However, you should still head out to Double Door on Wednesday, Jan. 10th, and check them out live. The band will be performing a set filled with new music, and the show is only $1.
The results are in from the Open Submissions stage for our DC/Baltimore Year End Poll for Emerging Artists. All of the submissions were ranked by Deli Editors from other cities and the list of acts that have advanced to our Readers’ Poll phase are below. We will also be releasing the list of nominees chosen by our local jurors very soon. We would like to thank all of the talented artists who submitted. It was our largest Open Submissions pool yet! (Pic: Satori Trova)
Tonight kicks off Lilia Halpern’s Monday night residency at PA’s Lounge this month. A veteran of the Boston music scene and founder of the band Incinerator, Halpern sat down with me last week for an interview.
Magic Milk has release a new digital ep called "Deep Stuff Vol. 1". The band embraces the lo-fi sound and have almost slacked to perfection on these three tracks. Keep in mind it takes some skill to sound and look like you don’t really care.
Boston’s By The Throat’s four-song EP Riders of Boards provides standard fare for the mischievous skate punk. While they are self-advertised as hardcore punk, they can’t quite be categorized under the same umbrella as other current hardcore punk bands. Rather, their style is defined more by hardcore punk roots of the seventies and eighties– they cite Minor Threat, Black Flag, and early Replacements among their musical influences.
But without getting too wrapped up in genre-labeling, rowdiness outweighs heaviness on Riders of Boards. The title track could very well be the theme song to a cross between Rocket Power and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with its rampant, testosterone-pumping urgency and skate manifesto lyrics like “And if there’s a bowl we’re gonna carve it / And if I get air I gotta method.”
Besides shredding, their songs go into subject matter such as beer, challenging the status quo, and getting even. Indian Summer Revenge takes advantage of catchy guitar fills, but when the band members shout “We want revenge!” in unison, it doesn’t sound as viciously convincing as it could.
The biggest strength of these four tracks is in the band’s straightforward punk aggression, but there’s still room for them to go louder, harder, more distinct. While the lyrics seem a bit generic and under-developed, the three-chord energy works for them. The band members– who go under the names of Biff, The Muscle, Brat, and Dimwit– convened in 2010, bringing with them experience from various other punk outfits including The Dimwits, The Acro-Brats, Buried in Leather, and Blood Vessels. Riders of Boards is the follow-up to their self-produced EP One Good Night.–Sarah Ruggiero
Mirror Lady’s first song, Roman Candles, begins like a low fidelity dream sequence. Simple and eloquent for the first forty seconds, the listener has no idea what to expect. Then, a heartbroken howl haunts over the backing music, which is equal parts simple and celestial. They state on their Facebook page: “Mirror Lady was born deep in the hills of Silverlake, CA with just her Casio Keyboard and a Cassette Deck.” Mirror Lady’s self-titled debut comes out in February, and be sure to see their very first show on January 22 at Central SAPC with Flora and Fauna! – Ryan Bussard
Here at The Deli we call "Alt Folk" all those bands who reference traditional American music but graft some less traditional elements onto it. These are the results of the top bands from this genre who submitted to be considered for our Year End Best of NYC Poll for Emerging Artists.
NYC YEAR END POLL 2011 OPEN SUBMISSIONS RESULTS FOR ALT FOLK:
Jurors: Kate Shepherd (Deli Seattle), Annamarya Scaccia (Deli Philly), Erin D’Souza (Deli NYC)
– QUALIFIED TO THE POLL’S NEXT ROUND
The artists in this list qualify for the next phase of the poll, and will be added to the bands nominated by our jury of local scenemakers.
Big Wilson River plays my favorite kind of trashiness: Here you’ll find songs written about badass literary figures the way other bands discuss a wild night out. In ‘Hemingway Had a Cat’ for instance, you get your hard truths served up right alongside beer anthem-ready singalongs. Singers Darrin Bradbury and April Acerno sing in the kind of flannel only Jersey musicians can wear right, with big brawling songs like ‘Noah Goldstein,’ together with downhome front porch sentiment like ‘Twenty Little Soldiers.’ You won’t have to get dressed up to appreciate this band, but you will have to get down.
If you’re looking for a pithy descriptor to file Food Will Win the War under, you’re bound to be disappointed. Singer/songwriter Rob Ward and company have been routinely re-inventing themselves from their dreams of extra-marital astronaut affairs to their latest full-length, "A False Sense of Warmth." This abstract folk ensemble constantly challenges expectations by inserting dreamy lyrics through Ward’s steady baritone and allowing his raucous band to burn the barn down in intensive sets of acoustic string shredding.
Like any self-respecting Brooklynite, there’s nothing I’d like to see more than The Band make a return and show all these alt-folk cats how its done. Fortunately, now I can finally put that sentiment to rest. The Due Diligence picks up right where Robbie Robertson left off, carving a unique line extending from roots rock preservation to loud and brawling bar jams. Lead singer Sir Isaac Diligence sports a nautical disposition with one of the best beards I’ve seen yet in an otherwise crowded city of beards. Plenty of bands can jam, but few have this much to say while doing it.
An active performer in Citizens Band and Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout, Leah Siegel has written a number of albums under her own name before she founded Firehorse. In this new project’s debut album "And So They Ran Faster…" she boasts a range of roles in diverse compositions that explore pop, rock, jazz, funk and soul with electronic flourishes. The genre-leaping tracks showcase Siegel’s versatile, intense vocals that lead her band into challenging sonic landscapes.
Futurist have some very big ideas. As much a multimedia project as 5-piece experimental folk outfit led by singer Curtis Peel. This group doesn’t just write songs, as much as they construct whole movements like a folk-rock symphony. Listen to just a couple measures into "Slackjaw Pilgrims" or "Wingspan" and you’ll find yourself getting pulled into their unique way of hearing the world. Like their name implies, there’s nothing old about this group. Good thing foot-stomping dance grooves never go out of style.
– ALMOST QUALIFIED TO THE POLL’S NEXT ROUND
These artists had outstanding ratings from our jurors (almost 8 out of 10!) but won’t qualify to the next round of our year end poll.
6a. GANGSTAGRASS
Folk music, meet hip-hop. Hip-hop, meet folk. Country singer Rench has been singing his mind for years now over some solid downhome beats, but with his band Gangstagrass, he’s something else entirely. He’s teamed up with rapper T.O.N.E.Z. to come up with a unique blend of these styles you probably haven’t heard before. This is a group that doesn’t bother with distinctions between hip-hop and folk styles, these come together with the same attitude both Hank Williams and Chuck D have in common: A hard-hitting beat placed under an outlaw sentiment.
6b. THE MAJORLEANS
This is what it would sound like if Lou Reed or Bob dylan played summer jams. Telling downtown stories of lost romance and strange motivations in songs like Damager and The Main Vine, singer Michael Daves takes rootsy tradition and gives it a distinctly New York feel, placing our town’s music in the middle of the heartland.
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– HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The competition in this category was really, really tight. 20 artists received an average rating of 7 of more points out of 10, here are the 4 one that with 7.5: Ben Lear, Lucius, Shenandoah & the Night, We Are The Woods.
Metal might not be the music genre that made NYC famous, but it’s a growing scene, mostly fueled by artists based in Long Island and New Jersey, areas covered by our blog. We only had 6 submissions in this category, but all very good.
NYC YEAR END POLL 2011 OPEN SUBMISSIONS RESULTS FOR METAL
Jurors: Mike SOS (Deli NYC), Erin D’Souza (Deli NYC)
– QUALIFIED TO THE POLL’S NEXT ROUND
The artists in this list qualify for the next phase of the poll, and will be added to the bands nominated by our jury of local scenemakers.
Jam packing its copmposition with an encyclopedic knowledge of a multitude of rock genres, Long Island based Exemption allows its prog rock sensibilities to overshadow their stoner metal tendencies and modern metal panache, while tumultuous percussive rumbles and layers of delectable guitars illuminate their variety-addled path to musical enlightenment.
Self-professed hard rock psyche metal troupe Thinning the Herd lays down a thunderous backbeat that shares as much with Blue Cheer as it does with Soundgarden, while offering a dastardly amalgamation of doomy blues, fuzzed-out psychedelics, grungy post metal , and ‘70s arena rock.
Schizophrenic Queens quintet Fall of the Albatross serve up a soulful smorgasbord of eclectic heaviness, fusing mind-blowing funk, smooth jazz, headstrong progressive rock and blistering technical metal into a surprisingly tidy package. – Mike SOS
The results are in from the Open Submissions stage for our Philly Year End Poll for Emerging Artists. All of the submissions were ranked by Deli Editors from other cities and the list of acts that have advanced to our Readers’/Fans’ Poll phase are below. We will also be releasing the list of nominees chosen by our local jurors very soon. We would like to thank all of the talented artists who submitted. It was our largest Open Submissions pool yet, and certainly a testament to how many rad acts we have in Philly.
