There are bands out there that are willing to form a human pyramid for the sake of their art and others that aren’t. For one example of the former take Radiohead for instance—no human pyramids happening there there. And they’ve even got a song called “Pyramid Song” but even with the help of Weird Al and Adele they couldn’t make it happen or couldn’t produce photographic evidence of it anyway.

Dirty Fences are clearly a band who are staunchly pro pyramid and they’ve got the esprit de corp and the overall musical moxie to pull it off convincingly too, with a sound falling in the Venn Diagram sweet spot between Bay City Rollers, Misfits, and Motörhead with some junk-shop glam a la Sweet and Slade thrown into the mix as well to sweeten the pot.

The band’s latest singles is called “Pony On” and it’s a power-popping toe tapper that could easily be a long forgotten ‘90s sitcom theme song and also you could do the pony to it pretty easily if you can do the pony. Plus it’s got a catchy b-side about a “Heartache Parade” where “high is fine and I can’t complain.lhAnd then there’s the single they put out earlier this year where both sides (“Pepper Ann / “One In Ten”) lean into the Misfits side of things, while their late 2020 single “Garbage Man”/“Sometimes Sunshine” is even more on the punkier side of things but still super melodic and if you need more musical examples they also put out a retrospective comp recently called Hand Pickled Melodies. Seriously these guys could be full time jingle writers if they didn’t already have too much integrity to go in such a crassly commercial direction.

But if you’re one of these people who subscribes to the theory that bands are best judged by how well they can pull off a Public Access TV live gig then check out the video above to make a fully informed verdict. (Jason Lee)

The small fuzzy fruit known to English-speakers as a peach, with its sweet rainbow-hued juicy flesh and its alarmingly large seeds, has an interesting history when it comes to its use as a symbol in literature and elsewhere. For J. Alfred Prufrock, the question of whether to eat a peach leads to an existential crisis in one the most famous poems ever written. In Chinese mythology, peaches are the literal “fruit of the gods” bestowing longevity to immortals thanks to their mystical virtue. And on Instagram, peach emojis are a concise way of saying to someone that they have a nice ass.

But enough about the teaches of peaches. We’re here to discuss Bad Static’s debut single, simply called “Peach.” In this song, Bad Static tap into the oft-implied association of the peach with both femininity and vulnerability, which are not associated but are often assumed to be. But rest assured you won’t make that mistake here because Bad Static is clearly anything but vulnerable.

The cover image of “Peach” depicts a peach (no surprise there) that appears to be bleeding. with a large bloodied butcher knife directly behind it sitting in a pool of blood. And while PJ Harvey once described being “Happy and Bleeding” it seems like here any potential happiness is being impeded by some dude (assumed) who’s looking for a “kitten” and a “baby doll” to whom Bad Static reply: “Don’t fuck with me / I’ll bruise you like a peach.”

This is a compelling turnabout from traditional peach imagery where it’s usually the woman identified as the vulnerable “peach” and even in PJ Harvey’s “Happy and Bleeding” there a few lines describing how “the fruit was bruised / dropped off and blue / out of season / happy I’m bleeding long overdue.” And while we’re probably talking about two different forms of bleeding here, it’s still notable how Bad Static turn the tables on their attempted oppressors (and on the standard symbology) where they are the ones “waiting to attack / scratching down your back.”

On the musical side of things, Bad Static create a peachy compliment to their message with a musical vibe that’s basically like Pleasure Seekers meets X-Ray Spex (the vocals are especially Poly Styrene-ish) with a dash of Runaways for good measure that builds to a climactic sonic vortex over a chant of “thrill me, kill me / on your knees please. And they do it all in a tidy two minutes and five seconds, and truly nothing says punk rawk more than a two minute long song about fruit and blood and "don’t fuck with me" and empowerment. (Jason Lee)

photo credit: Max D’Amico

*****

The four members of Bad Static were kind enough to answer a few inane questions cooked up in the middle of the night when The Deli was admittedly maybe possibly a bit inebriated and here’s a selection of their responses to said questions:

Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: What rock academy did you guys attend to learn how to rock so hard?

Kelsie Williams (bassist and singer): "The rock academy of your mom ( insert theme )”
Its My Rock and Im Ready to Roll Academy
The Anxious, Depressed and Overdressed Academy for the Elite Rockers of Rollers

Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: The song “Peach” ends with a refrain of “thrill me kill me / on your knees please.” By this we assume you mean to say that the addressee is the “bee’s knees” in so many words. Who do you consider to be the bee’s knees for yourself personally whether it’s a personal hero, or an admired musician, or whatever?

Nicol Maciejewska (singer and guitarist): That section of the song is about cheap thrills and asserting your dominance on those that try to dominate women.

I really like Patti Smith! She’s and great writer and musician. I inspire to do something along those lines. I also really like Kathleen Hanna and how she was one of the pioneers of the riot grrrl movement by creating her zine Bikini Kill and then later starting a kick ass band under that name.

Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:  What’s your favorite method for bruising oppressors (or just plain jerks) either physically or mentally or both?

Ryan Kevett (lead guitarist): Favorite method for bruising oppressors is nihilistic flatulence

Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:  When your VH-1 “Behind the Music” episode premieres in 20 years or so from now, what will be the worst story that a roadie or other associate can tell on you?

Demetrio Abikkaram-Ricardo (drummer):  [REDACTED]

In today’s fast-paced modern era of music streaming and profligate playlist making (not to mention Twitch DJing and all the other means of assembling original musical mixes) the notion of an old-school compilation album (or “comp”) may seem hopelessly out of date. But comps can still be wonderful things, and Subversive To Care (referred to as Sub2Care forthwith), which has been released to coincide with the launch of Paul Is Dead Records, checks off many of the boxes that make them good things.

For one thing, comps are often assembled to raise money for charitable/activist organizations and this one fits the bill with proceeds going to several AAPI organizations—The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (www.NAPAWF.org), Asian Mental Health Collective (www.ASIANMHC.org) and The Tibet Fund (www.TIBETFUND.org)—in response to alarming levels of hate crimes and ongoing struggles against prejudice against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

What’s more, a good comp is a great way to discover new music and new artists without having to continually troll Spotify’s Teen Beats playlist (granted, SyKo’s “#BrooklynBloodPop!” has its pleasures). And with 60 original songs by the original artists Sub2Care should keep you occupied for a while as you make your way from the start (Wake Up’s “Hurricane” in exclusive demo form; the band is pictured above) to the finish (Squires’ “Tombstoning”) so you basically have got a conceptual theme here of moving from wakefulness to the Big Sleep—not that you can’t skip around within and between individual tracks which is another one of the nice things about comps. They’re basically sampler platters in musical form.

Sub2Care was put together by the new LA-based label Paul Is Dead Records (with satellite offices in New York and Wisconsin apparently) and is likely named either after the notorious Beatles urban legend, or the recent death of Paul Van Doren, patriarch of the Van’s sneaker empire. And while LA artists predominate on the comp (speaking of Vans some of these LA artists no doubt look a lot like Jeff Spicoli or perhaps Phoebe Cates) there’s also a decent number from other locales including New York/New Jersey like Frankie Rose, New Myths, Mevius, Dahl Haus, CITYGIRL, Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes), The Natvral (Kip Berman from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart), and Shana Falana (featuring Shana Falana).

Across musical history, comps have occasionally played a key role in defining the sound of a nascent genre or a new record label—like the Lenny Kaye-compiled Nuggets (1972) that set an early template for punk rock, or the 1988 Sub Pop 200 comp that was a who’s who of future grunge all-stars—and while Sub2Care isn’t strictly speaking a “label comp” since it’s made up of tracks donated by “artists who are close friends and family members of our label” quoting label head and co-founder Evan Mui, it’s still got a certain vibe or aesthetic, if you will, while being pretty darn eclectic at the same time.

I would prospectively call this vibe or aesthetic Twilight Music. By Twilight Music I mean songs that’ve got a certain hazy/dreamy/slightly off-kilter quality whether they’re upbeat or downbeat or mid-beat. And in this way it’s good music for putting on around twilight say when you’re pregaming for a Saturday night out (tracks #13 and 14 are two good examples: Smirk’s “Do You?” and Eternal Summers’ “Belong”) or waking up Sunday morning trying to recall what happened the previous night (rewind to tracks #10-12: Four Dots’ “I Left My Heart Pump In San Francisco,” D.A. Stern’s “Funky Holocaust (Drunk Demo),” and Big Nitty’s “Chemical Plant”) or songs that fit equally well for either scenario (for example, tracks 32-34: Dahl Haus’ “Silhouettes and Alibis,” Black Needle Noise’s “And Nothing Remains,” Built Like Alaska’s “Ran Into A Coroner").

So throw a few bucks in the Bandcamp bin for Paul Is Dead Records if you like what you hear. And in return you may discover a new favorite artists or two–whether one of the ones mentioned/displayed here or some other deserving object of your musical admiration. (Jason Lee)