LPR Presents will present another night of The Hum, the curatorial, programming, and production child of Rachael Pazdan. A night of "womanly" collaborations will be held this coming Monday at Greenpoint venue Good Room.  The lineup is of particular importance to us here at The Deli because it features some favorite artists we’ve covered in the past including Buscabulla, Ela Minus, Beverly, Escort, Novelty Daughter and NOIA. You can purchase tickets over at the LPR site and we’ve created a playlist of our favorites while you wait for the festivities. 

-Andrew Strader

PPL is a three-piece outfit from NYC that has dragged the shoegaze aesthetic from its late 80s/early 90s heyday right up into the present. They play extensively with dynamic shifts, layering feedback, using delay to create dronescapes, soaking guitar hooks in chorus and reverb, and providing sudden bursts of carefully crafted sonic walls. For such a bare bones lineup like guitar, bass, and drums, it’s genuinely impressive how massive this band can make itself sound. Every noise they make is meant to serve the song. The sonic textures they design prove remiscent of My Bloody Valentine while the arrangements of songs often carry alternative rock and pop sensibilities that bring 90s classics like Weezer to mind. Be sure to catch their record release show for their self titled EP Post Personality Loss on May 24th at Union Pool. 

-Andrew Strader

It’s been called baroque, ambient, and psychedelic, but whatever it is, Thad Kopec’s style of songwriting cuts through the noise created by today’s two dimensional “indie folk” crowd. Immersing himself in a creative tradition of poetry and southern gothic literature, his lyrics build layers of imagery over complex orchestral arrangements and unique sonic collages that showcase a knack for songwriting talent and undeniably good aesthetic taste.

The Shadow & the Caster isn’t content to offer listeners anything other than total sonic immersion and its songs feel as unlimited and as expansive as the landscapes they often describe. In the literary vein of John Steinbeck or Flannery O’ Connor, much of the narrative and symbolic elements Kopec wields in his work center around the natural world and the descriptive nature of his language is undoubtedly born out of past experiences on a rural Florida farm.

In addition to the literary traditions the album keeps alive, it also displays a fondness for modern folk god influences like Fleet Foxes or Sufjan Stevens. He manages, however, to stay away from the caricatured second-generation style imitation that haunts indie folk today. Even Kopec’s voice feels entirely authentic with its relaxed disregard for being always perfectly pitched.

As a body of work, The Shadow & the Caster masterfully balances variety and elemental agreement. The songs all float down the same stream, and despite immediate twists and turns or sudden directional disorientation, every song comes out as a simple break in the current. All the water comes from the same source and goes to the same place.

Be sure to make it to Thad’s release show on Friday, May 12th at WELD Nashville and pick up a copy of the album. His live performances are magical.

-Andrew Strader