Words by Jason Lee
In late-breaking, history-in-the-making news over the weekend it was leaked that we, The Deli, are officially reviving our “Soundbites” columns from back in the magazine’s print days with Soundbites being essentially a round-up of (mostly) new singles and other short-form reviews all compiled together mixtape style to give you the reader a sampler pu-pu tasting platter of some various musical foodstuffs recently (or not so recently) released spanning across various genres and styles and emotional hues and astrological signs that you may then want to explore in more detail esp. for whatever sounds most up yr alley or simply as a distraction from these dire times so please do enjoy this first return installment of Soundbites just in time for the second summer weekend of, um, summer, but do please enjoy responsibly…
PANIK FLOWER — “Rearview” (Last Bloom Records):
Rearview is hardly in our rear view mirror despite having come out nearly two months ago cuz we still put it on when we need another chunk of our cerebellum melted into a quivering puddle of dead brain-cell paste with the title track in particular doing the job like a panic attack on wax (opening lyric: “pacify myself / unkind / I turn into a comatose / my heart crumbled in” etc.) as the music moves in relatively quick succession from calm-before-the-storm hush to simmering tension to cresting waves of anxiety to all-out, heart-racing, palm-sweating, ears-ringing sonic vortex sucking us into the abyss yet the noisier it gets the more it feels weirdly vulnerable too (“fever dream / the life unseen / until it falls / apart”) like a delicate flower (you guessed it!) gamely holding its own in the midst of a tsunami of white noise (guitar pedals vs. flower petals) so anyways welcome back to the Flowers having recently returned from an eight-date tour of the Midwest and Northeast…
PHANTOM SIGNALS — “he is noise” (self-release):
It’s cool when a band calls it quits (not the cool part) on their own terms (the cool part!) esp. when it comes complete with a “final statement” release something like giving the eulogy at your own funeral which Phantom Signals have done with great aplomb and without resorting to maudlin sentiment on their new moth EP out today (note: this entry was originally written last Friday) with the short, spiky rave-up “he is noise” arriving precisely at the midpoint of the EP serving as just the sort of eulogy any deceased person would rightly be thrilled to receive neither pious nor cloying but instead brimming with life and vitality in tribute to the ongoing real-world ripples of their positive life force even or perhaps especially when facing a seemingly malicious possessing spirit whose presence is signaled by what sounds like alien radio signals (perhaps the “phantom signals” of the band’s moniker!) or maybe that’s just a theremin…
…with Melody Henry’s best explanation being, “I can’t explain! I can’t explain!” (fair!) and if she sounds half-peeved and half-galvanized well that’s kinda how we feel (the opening track “Sentimental” sees Melody admitting that “living through darkness stokes the flame”) cuz obviously we’re bummed the Signals are calling it quits but grateful they left us this record to resonate into the void for all eternity and what’s more they put on a helluva last-stand these past couple/few weeks with shows at The Broadway and The Gutter and the East Williamsburg Econolodge and when we caught ‘em at the first of these venues at their penultimate NYC show they performed “he is noise” (at the time still unreleased!) with such go-for-broke carpe diem brazenness that it’ll probably stay imprinted on what’s left of our cerebellum forever (thanks for nothing, Panik Flower!) plus that chorus is hella catchy (um…) and whatever we’re reading into the song and the album here’s the real-deal explanation from Melody herself plagiarized directly from Phantom’s social media:
…this album is really special to me but also incredibly personal. it was what i needed to make to process grief over the loss of a parent and also feelings of sentimentality over not wanting change and honestly wishing life would just slow the fuck down. a special thank you to my incredible bandmates john, mike and joey for giving me grace while we wrote this together and taking it to a place i never could have on my own. i fucking love you guys. and a big shoutout to jeff berner who engineered and mixed our tracks, and to derril sellers for mastering…and to liz marra, the only visual artist who can listen to my thoughts and make the most beautiful album cover i could only dream of.
ROREY — “Nobody’s Fault But My Own” (Killphonic Records):
Rorey’s latest alt-singer-songwriter-psych-folk-ambient-tinged-guitar-strumming-song-poem (well, not literally a song poem but certainly introspective and poetical) is a powerful declaration of self-accountability that whether intended or not serves as a much-needed intervention of sorts in a world that seems to grow more shameless by the day (especially amongst the “elite”) but in saying so we’re admittedly somewhat willfully missing Rorey’s point which is to refrain from shifting blame to others (even when they really, really deserve it…oof we can’t help ourselves!) where effectuating change whether personally or socio-culturally begins by looking within cuz ain’t nobody gonna fix you but you…
…which is an impressively mature stance for a young artist or just a young person in general to take and speaking of maturity Rorey’s sound has matured too into an expressionistic canvas equally attuned to abstract mood-setting soundscapes and straight-up meat ‘n’ pinto beans songwriting craft that’ll having you singing enthusiastically along to lyrics about inability to hide from oneself and crying with the lights on and when it comes to the octave-leaping dulcet tones Rorey executes in the song’s chorus good luck attempting that yourself and again we’ll throw it over to the actual songwriter to explain in more clarifying detail what’s going on with the song as stolen from another source:
I’d been running away from my bipolar diagnosis for six months. At the time, I was in the middle of my third major episode in that span. The night before my session, I was sobbing—I couldn’t sleep, and I was going insane (literally). In that moment, something shifted because I really had to ask myself: what is so scary about choosing not to suffer? I knew I deserved to live a better life, and nobody could do that for me except myself.
PARENTS — “Mood Ring” (BF Rec):
This one was also released a couple months ago but despite the passage of time we still can’t get this gold-dang song out of our head (we see you, Panik Flower) what with its cocksure rhythmic strut and killer hook and vocal yelps courtesy of Wilt Hemphill and if we’re unable to get it out of our head just think of the children (parents everywhere must be vigilant!) cuz this is just the kind of dance-punk banger that led numberless numbers of impressionable youth to be taken in by the terrible scourge of so-called “indie sleaze” (before it’d even been named as such!) at the height of Tumblr-era delirium pinning photos of Sky Ferreira and Julian Casablancas and Frank Ocean to their wish boards and do we really need to go thru all that again tho’ we suppose the Parents must think so cuz the band’s five members appear lithe and spritely enough to dodge underwear thrown on stage (note to Fueled By Ramen: sign this band!)…
…plus anyways let’s face it each generation has its own version of indie-sleaze with “Mood Ring” having more than a little of The Knack’s “My Sharona” in its DNA and truly no band from the late ‘70s/early ‘80s period was more sleazy as in a band that were around during Parents’ parents’ adolescent years (perhaps the name ain’t so ironic, eh!) at a time when actual mood rings were actually the hottest thing going but hey when a song slaps this hard it crosses the generational divide like how about a month ago yours truly had “Mood Ring” cued up on a playlist I was playing at a work party (sadly, The Deli has a day job) and no one young or old batted an eyelash at it being inserted between two punk and post-punk classics by the Adolescents and Killing Joke respectively where in fact they were totally groovin’ to it so clearly Parents have got the knack and know how to get it across to multiple demographics plus they can be pretty dang charming too (on social media at least!) unafraid of being “uncool” enough to admit to liking their own song for the most mundane but relatable of reasons…
POOK HUSTLE — “Rush” (self release):
Not to open with a humble brag but we gotta put it into the public record here that our writeup on Pook Hustle’s “Bounca” posted in February of this year helped put him on some radars that scored him an opening slot with ONE OF THE NINE CORE MEMBERS OF WU-TANG CLAN (Wu wuuuut!) namely Masta Killa as Pook was kind enough to inform us so now you know where to get written up if you wanna play a show with Hip Hop Royalty jus’ sayin’ and there you all thought we only broke legendary indie bands like The Strokes [editor’s note: we didn’t!] and Grizzly Bear [editor’s note: we did!] cuz hey we love muuuusic and aren’t about boxing ourselves in not in terms of genre or stylistics which speaking of stylistics Pook’s latest single has style to burn as he burns thru the opening bars, “I like to take my time / when I rhyme / but people wanna rush / til they turn to dust,” spitting these bars at an ironically rapid-fire clip and soon it’s made apparent Mr. Hustle not only has style to burn but also plenty o’ swagger and suggestive humor to add to the conflagration…
…and when it comes to “Rush”’s overall vibe we hear some Mobb Deep in there (dusty production, snake-charmer melody, a flow that bobs and weaves) and maybe some Ja Rule too (that baritone voice flipping nimbly between hard rhyming and lover boy come-hithers) tho’ more laid-back if not more blunted than either of those artists so throw some J Dilla Another Batch in there as well and the pigments are starting to take on the appropriate hue but tho’ of course there’s plenty of other ingredients in there too however subtle (or not) with Pook shouting out artists from Pharrell to Fall Out Boy as longtime faves so don’t get it twisted cuz he’s way too cool to give or receive a purple nurple and if someone tried our man would no doubt chop ‘em up lyrically with the dozens being the pacifist’s strategy to defeated adversaries plus those verbal wounds take longer to heal just ask Wu-Tang (again!) or ask a scholar who studies such things but we digress…
CALISTA GARCIA — “Carnival” (self-release):
“Carnival” is off Calista’s carnivalesque full-on, full-length concept album Animal Magnifique! (think boardwalks, sideshows, lion tamers, cotton candy, bearded ladies, etc.) released two weeks ago which for our money is the best bright ’n’ shiny yet-sharp-edged-and-sometimes-quite-dark artpop confection we’ve heard inna minute (Chappell wha? Sabrina who?) with the LP’s songs featuring a menagerie of modern misfits in the form of seekers and fugitives perpetually running to or from something even if they don’t always know what it is and it’s this sense of big stakes for the little people under the big tent of modern life-as-spectacle that galvanizes the album (alongside the fine-tuned, multi-hued song arrangements and production) where even the one song about a teacher keeping young school children suitably distracted and entertained during a horrifying lockdown drill (which of course no one knows if it’s a “drill” or not) based on Calista’s real-life experience with a class of first-grade piano students which even then it’s a song about emotional turmoil and escapism from realism and yearning for a miracle so it fits perfectly…
…all of which makes “Carnival’ perhaps the purest expression of the LP’s essence with a narrator looking to find home in the bright fluorescent lights of the carnival but instead “end[ing] up spinning, spinning / more lost than before” as the song surges forward with the same discombobulated glee of Tilt-A-Whirl riders high on funnel cake powder and roasted suckling pig on a stick (stealing a little imagery from the lyrics and the promotional materials here!) with a scar-faced carny pushing the machine to dangerous speeds which leads Calista to exclaim in an octive-leaping falsetto tone, “What a beautiful day to lose my grip…” and if this is what losing one’s grip sounds and feels like well then sign us up…
…and finally here’s how Calista herself describes “Carnival” and its origin story via an Instagram post if you really want nay need the real lowdown on the song and its creation: “I’ve always found anger uncomfortable, unsafe. However, it can be a powerful tool to tell us when something isn’t right. Right now, we have every reason and more to be angry. What we don’t express stays in the body, turns to illness or depression or slips out in unsafe ways. It’ll eat you up. Music has always been the biggest outlet for my feelings. I wrote this in 45 minutes (unusually quick write) when I was feeling so angry I couldn’t bury it, and wondered if there was a way I could make this feeling almost fun? Satisfying? Like a song that rips” or as the lyrics to another song on the LP puts it, “I’m hot and full of rage…coming out of my cage”…
CHATTERBOX — “Count to Ten” (Trudie Studio):
This is admittedly the oldest of our “new songs” (released in the latter part of last year) but we gotta include it here cuz for one thing it’s a catchy-as-hell, rabble-rousing, singalong stomper which is just what’s called for in these dire times cuz I mean c’mon what are you even doin’ here if you think it’s wrong (right..right?!) with now being the time to step up and go big or go home and if you put “Count To Ten” on the old Victrola and turn it up to ten (Victrola’s don’t go to 11!) you’ll have at least a 69% better chance of bravely facing whatever you need to face cuz it’s that inspirational plus lead singer/screamer Erika Nolan is no longer phased by your intrusive gaze and if you can’t take the chatter then get out of Chatterbox’s kitchen or you may get chopped up into little pieces as demonstrated in the music video below with “Count To Ten” granted a new lease on life a few months back when it appeared on the band’s Love, Chatterbox EP, Part Deux of their double-EP concept recording project (try an’ keep up here!) which is indeed full of chatter (we told you!) like listening surreptitiously to a day in the life of Chatterbox…
…with both EPs as a whole structured as crazy quilts of overlapping girl talk (more than any Girl Talk album!), demos and off-the-cuff live song sketches (e.g., “Where’s Alice,” based on bassist Alice Danger’s tendency to go missing at times) and fully fleshed out, professionally recorded songs like “Count To Ten” and “BAD” (recorded at Trudie Studios in Rockaway, Queens) so basically we’re talkin’ a non-stop exotic cabaret kinda like Brian Wilson intended for the Beach Boys’ SMiLE before having a mental breakdown and not finishing the LP proper ’til decades later (RIP to tha genius!) with the members of Chatterbox emerging from their experimental double-EP relatively unscathed by comparison with sanity intact (purportedly!) plus there’s a cover of Amy Winehouse’s “Back In Black” (RIP to tha genius!) which is a perfect fit for the band’s love of jazzy chords, soulful vocals ’n’ romantic turmoil but with the rough edges of a garage band in a city with no garages and no parking garages don’t count (to ten)…
CRYS — “(I Might Not Be) Cut Out For Honky Tonkin’” (self-release):
I mean, sure, maybe it wasn’t G*d who made Honky Tonk Angels but if not we gotta question the Big Guy’s judgement cuz just imagine you were a deity with unlimited powers to create whatever lifeforms pop into your holy head but where you didn’t create Honky Tonk Angels on the first day or even the second day and what the heck’s wrong with your celestial self and even if Kitty Wells didn’t have the Great Patriarch’s deficiencies in mind when she wrote the country classic in direct response to Hank Thompson’s monster 1952 hit “The Wild Side of Life” which spent 15 weeks atop the country music chart (“I didn’t know God made honky-tonk angels (sarcasm!) / I might have known you’d never make a wife (harsh!)”) she most def had the broader deficiencies of the patriarchy in mind in calling out the double standard of self-proclaimed honky-tonk cocksmen themselves calling out and slut-shaming the honky-tonk ho’s who kept them entertained and often fed and clothed too (for context: Kitty Wells vs. Hank Thompson was like the Kendrick Vs. Drake of it day)…
…cuz why should the wimmin folk have even half the sexual license of then menfolk and whereas we’ve witnessed first-hand how CRYS (short for Crystal for those in the know) is clearly cut out for honky tonkin’ cuz we’re talkin’ an artist who’s more than conversant in covering tunes from the classic country tune handbook when not composin’ her own ditties that is (like this one!) on upright bass, banjo, and vocals not to mention generously assisting two-left-foot cursed New Yawkers tryin’ to learn the Cotton Eyed Joe the fact remains that much like Kitty Wells before her CRYS likewise has no illusions re: the pitfalls of taking on such a role what with all the bulls***ttin’ bullriders out there who pull into town spitting game and going nowhere that is ’til they inevitably decide to hightail it outta Dodge (or Brooklyn, or the Bronx) and lash their steed to a new hitching post so to speak (a rodeo man may hold yr hand / and take you out to see a show or two / he sure wants to stay / but he’ll still ride away) so no wonder she prays to Loretta Lynn for strength as weeping fiddles and pedal steel commiserate regarding the fate of a lonely cowgirl in New York City…
95 BULLS — “Gin Shot” (self-release):
Here at The Deli we always appreciate bands who practice transparency in song titling and this single by 95 Bulls doesn’t disappoint (the first advance single from the band’s sophomore LP Canadian Nightclub which came out this past Friday) in that the song accurately reproduces the sensation of taking a generous shot of gutrot gin minus the juice whether yr talking Seagrim’s Melon Twisted Gin or something even more exotic like Snoop Dogg’s Indoggo’s Strawberry Swill which some say will have your mind on your tummy and your tummy on your mind due to its overbearing saccharine sweetness and the artificiality of its flavor as many imbibers have observed which come to think of it doesn’t describe 95 Bulls at all and what’s more this venerable NYC rock ’n’ roll institution is comprised largely of bartenders moonlighting from their day jobs in the nighttime economy (sunlighting?) thus meaning they must have pretty easy access to the quality “top shelf” stuff and finely developed palettes to boot thus making this song more akin to getting tanked on Tanqueray No. TEN…
…as “Gin Shot” moves in relatively quick succession from the sonic equivalent of the soft shock of a shot of premium gin as the burn moves from your throat to your stomach to your loins (a sensation captured in the swerving bent-note sustained guitar tones) with the next phase being a sustained endorphin rush followed by a series of aggressive outbursts and finally a false sense of omnipotence and invincibility with 95 Bulls being the perfect band to pull off this emotional and spiritual journey in convincing fashion what with Emily “Ash” Ashenden’s gravel-throated vocals (feel the burn!) and the carnival funhouse-punk backing provided by the rest of the band (see ’em live!) and like a gin with a good clean bouquet with notes of lemon zest and juniper that closes with sage it should only take two-and-a-half minutes ’til you’re ready to start all over again…
DARLA DEAN LEWIS — “Throwing Darts” (DDL Records):
Not even two months back we reviewed Darla Dean Lewis’s “Bred To Be” which is the rare inspirational/aspirational song that doesn’t make us wanna smack the seemingly well-intentioned but self-interested life coach right in the kisser but instead genuinely makes us wanna get out of bed before noon and start plotting our eventual rise to pop superstardom between Pilates and hot yoga classes led by Jamie Lee Curtis but all that said “Throwing Darts” is something like “Bred To Be”’s mirror-image shadow self in song form and we’re totes down with it cuz there’s times in life where you don’t wanna be a productive member of society (most of the time, actually) but instead wanna make someone or something “good” turn “bad” just for the sheer rush of it (you’d never know that I was running with wolves / and babe, I bite to the bone…’cause if I take you boy I’ll swallow you whole / and maybe that’s what you want) and if you could somehow e-mail this song back to the 1980s with the decade’s veneer of compulsive self-improvement masking an underlying, deep-seated nihilism [editor’s note: e-mail didn’t exist back then but sure go with it]…
…we know for a fact “Throwing Darts” would’ve been a perfect fit and a crossover pop and adult-contemporary hit that would’ve most likely ended up soundtracking one of those ubiquitous montage sequences seen in virtually every other ‘80s movie cuz it just has that sound from its twinkling synthesizer opening to its leg warmer-wearing fist-pumping chorus to its breathy bridge to the country twang appearing when “boots” briefly come into play (start walkin’!) to the point where I half expect E.G. Daily to suddenly emerge from under the high school gym’s bleachers decked out in an asymmetrically frilly, sliver prom dress (the ultimate avatar of the good-hearted bad girl) perfectly lip synching to Darla’s words, and speaking of words DDL somehow manages to rhyme “bambina” (Italian for “baby girl” and not for “bimbo-ino”) with “casino” (rightly pronounced “casinah”) in a manner that’s surprisingly naturalistic and following on from Calista Garcia’s “Carnival’ this is the second song in this list featuring a ravenous protagonist who takes feminine rage and wraps it up in candy-coated production which should make for good business in 2025 where under-the-radar rage is the order of the day…
DARLING ROBB — “sexy baby” (Cowboy Lilac):
Ok, so this one came out last summer thus making it even older than “Count to Ten” but hey it popped up on a playlist recently and we always regretted not getting around to reviewing it so here we go with this being yet another number that subscribes to full transparency in titling cuz it sure as heck is sexxy as all get out to the point we’re compelled to spell the “sexxiness” in question with two X’’s but not three cuz there ain’t nothing explicitly dirty or even overly lascivious in the lyrics here with the “X factor” instead being all about how Darling Robb sounds like she’s whispering the lyrics directly into yr ear (kudos to the production) with a musical backing that gamely throbs along in a manner so much sexxier than mere words could ever be and if yr like us you’ll be seduced in short order (figuratively…musically!) by the song’s motorik beat and its diaphanous textures that threaten to evaporate into a thin mist of cool condensation at any moment (pleasant for summer!)…
…with Darling’s airy vocalizing practically daring you to lean in closer to the point where you swear you can feel soft breath entering your ear canal as you listen if that doesn’t sound too weird but here’s what’s weird to Darling Robb and that’s living under the constant scrutiny of the male gaze and how it can so easily make the gaze’s objet de gaze question their own self-worth (“sexy baby / what is your worth / f*** off if you’re not / what I’m wanting”) so maybe the xx in “sexxy” actually stands for XX chromosomes and for sneaking feminist subtexts into what at first blush comes off as a coquettish slow-burn seduction number that’d have no less than Marilyn Monroe herself taking notes…
LA BANDA CHUSKA — “La Mariposa” (self-release):
We just heard this song from La Banda Chuska’s Basic Bichos LP for the first time thanks to WFMU this past friday afternoon as we sat inside a local bagel joint trying to stay cool and get some work done or something resembling it and damn if it’s gently undulating, hip-shimmying, wafting-breeze melodies and riddims didn’t make is wanna hop on the J train transferring tothe A train and go straight out to the Rockaways and throw our laptop into the ocean and start a luau and spit-roast a suckling pig with LBC set to play Ripper’s on the boardwalk this 4th of July 4th by the way and just wait until it gets to the part with the psychedelic bongos breakdown and with that we wish you a happy first weekend of official summer coming up..
