It’s that time of the year folks!

Submit your band for The Deli’s Best of [YOUR SCENE] 2014 Poll for Emerging Artists – who wins gets featured in our SXSW pocket issue, distributed in Austin during Music Week! (Other prizes to be announced…)

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The Deli’s Staff

Storytelling is an art in music.  Slick Rick spun some yarns, Biggie added specific details that drew us in, and countless other MCs have taken up the torch with varying degrees of engagement.  Brooklyn’s Metermaids display their instinctual yen for towing the line and reeling it in slowly with their video for “Profiteer,” the new single for their upcoming album We Brought Knives out Dec 2 on Strange Famous Records.  It’s a moody piece with a Stand By Me (the movie) vibe that makes you nostalgic for the creepy days of your childhood. – BrokeMC

We blogged about Brooklyn goth rockers Cult of Youth a few weeks ago saying how such a great band should get more visibility… well it seems like the Gods of music listened to our wishes, since the band’s new record "Final Days" is getting rave reviews – including from Pitchfork, which gave it a resounding 8.1, and Stereogum, which chose it as their "Record of the Week." For complex cultural reasons probably due to the fact that American prefer more explicit forms of rebellion, this is a band bound to find most of its audience in Europe (in particular the northern part of it), a continent that welcomes quality dark music and art more than any other. That’s why they are touring it more than thoroughly early next year. They have no local show scheduled right now, but we can imagine they won’t be short of offers after the critical praise they are receiving, so watch out!

I really didn’t know what to expect when Tiny Hazard took the stage last Tuesday at The Silent Barn.  My ultimate description of this band ended up somewhere around "surrealist nightmare fairy tale music."  Alena Spanger set the tone not just with her appearance – barefoot, a white dress, she looked young, like she was straight out of a cartoon – and her vocals, which would change on a whim from operatic disney to demon lord fury. 

Spanger and Tiny Hazard don’t want us to have any expectations, actively fooling us into thinking they’re one thing until they’re not.   They’ll be in the middle of a soft, dainty melody until someone hits the tritone on the piano and everything goes dark.  When you barely have time to adjust to the sudden change they’ll plunge into heavy, distorted, no-wave inspired insanity.  But there’s a method to the madness, their recordings and their live sets are both highly contained and controlled atmospheres, where every move has a purpose.

Their most recent single, "Silhouette" is a further demonstration of their eclecticism.  The song is disguised as a highly accessible pop song, but it’s clear that we’re in a confusing mid-point between light and dark. "All of those sick faces/Crooked and vacant/Mounting is your unrest/Warping silhouette," Spanger sings over a R n B/soul inspired synth melody, it seems almost out of place until someone turns on the ‘evil’ switch on and we’re shot into hell and the lyrics aren’t as out of place.  Stream the track below (one of their slower ones) and check them out at The Mercury Lounge on 11.22.

INTERVIEW: Read Emilio Herce’s interview with Tiny Hazard.