Words by Jason Lee; Cover photos by Nick Charnas
We have an extraordinary machine here at Deli HQ that we don’t publicize too widely so mum’s the word (lest our competitors get their grubby hands on one!) which at first glance you’d swear was a seismograph with its long, inky needles tracing elegant lines over the top of an unspooling ream of graph paper, that is, until the needles spring into action like Edward Scissorhands’ fingers scribbling jagged yet aesthetically pleasing contours—‘cept instead of measuring seismic waves beneath the Earth’s surface this machine measures emotional reverberations roiling underneath a human being’s subcutaneous layer…
…emotional reverberations set into motion by soundwaves to be more specific esp. those carefully sculpted soundwaves known as music which unlike shifting tectonic plates measuring 6.0 or higher on the Richter scale during an earthquake won’t knock down bridges or buildings (or will they?!) but which cause inner turmoil instead penetrating all the way down to one’s core being or soul if you prefer: stirring the heart, speeding and slowing respiration, releasing biochemical bursts of dopamine, oxytocin (not that Oxy!), serotonin, and other hormones designed to make one feel highly agitated and/or highly elated in equal measure…
…with the machine known in some quarters as a Hook-o-meter™ cuz it measures the magnitude and frequency of hooks in songs in real time which are the parts that reverberate deep down the deepest like a shiver down the spine or as Jerry Lee Lewis aptly put it like “a whole lotta shakin’ going on” with seismic waves vibrating thru one’s nervous and limbic system and grey matter (hooking the subconscious mind) shaken to one’s foundations to the point aftershocks are likely where the hook is prone to randomly popping back into yr head hours, days, weeks, or months after the fact apropos of nothing so when the needles on the Hook-o-meter start scribbling madly you know that what yr hearing in the moment will likely recur again in yr imagination, hitting that sweet spot that’ll make the song a hit given ample media exposure and a savvy publicist…
…and while hooks are admittedly subjective to a certain extent—based on taste, socialization, overall mood or presence of mood-altering substances in one’s system—what’s most notable is how near-universal they seem to be with more overlap than deviation between subjects re: recognizing and reacting to hooks stemming from some ineffable alchemy of melody, rhythm, texture, timbre, lyrics and of course repetition that makes ‘em “pop” on an almost primal level which isn’t to say hooks are always a good thing (this is the subjective part!) cuz if you’ve ever had “buh-bay-beee shark / doo-doo-dah-doo-dah-doo!” stuck in yr head so badly you considered plunging a pair of needle-nose pliers deep into your cochlea then you know why they’re also sometime called “earworms” with worms hating hooks for good reason but when brought into service of music that you actually like otherwise they can be a wonderful thing…
photo by Nick Charnas
…which brings us to NYC indie wunderkinds SKORTS’s debut album Incompletement (a word best pronounced in a thick French accent dropping the plosive ‘T’ at then end) cuz clearly they been squirreling away hooks for years like a cult of doomsday preppers which came out a little over a month ago and damn if it ain’t hooky as one of RuPaul’s corsets at a Japanese tackle shop w/random fragments from it popping into our head on the regular so we thought here’s a chance to make sure the ol’ Hook-o-meter is still in good working order cuz if it can’t measure deze hooks then the machine must be broken…
…given how adept the band are at reeling off unabashed, arena-sized hooks so seismically powerful that Jim Steinman, Diane Warren, and Ester Dean all went into retirement but you won’t need to feel guilty for getting hooked by their catchy little ditties cuz clearly SKORTS are a band of authentic badassery and not manufactured badassery, not some cheap, cynical phonies (we can just tell!) with the realness quotient dialed up to ten-and-a-half and if you don’t believe us just catch ’em live sometime and witness their untrammeled passion and badassery first-hand with audiences at SKORTS’ shows routinely losing their minds as a result which come to think of it we hope they’re not some kinda new holographic, generative AI prototype with the dial set to “super catchy and cool indie-rock badassery” and if they are well we’d rather not even know it…
…so anyway we’re here to measure hooks, not badassery, which cannnot be easily quantified except by influencers at better paying blogs and magazines whereas hooks have a measurable effect on the body and the brain so as a public service we share w/you dear reader the MRS scores (Musical Richter Scale!) of every individual song on Incompletement as measured by our own private Hook-o-meter which btw the music industry has suppressed for decades (we got our hands on an early prototype!) cuz imagine if just anyone could measure and thereby manufacture hooks it’d be a disaster for artists and for the industry alike…
…unless, let’s say, the music industry decided to partner with generative AI platforms but that’s too fantastical to imagine, selling out our own humanity just so you can type a command into Suno and have Justin Timberlake replace Fred Durst in Limp Bizkit singing “Nookie” at Woodstock ’99) with Incompletement being a word coined by the band themselves meaning a permanent state of impermanence (contradictory, and thus, very human being-ish!), or more specifically, “allowing oneself to live and create in an ever-changing state of impermanence” in the band’s own words or as professional music nerd John Shepherd puts it in the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Vol. 2:
Repetition is meaningless without its opposite, change. Hooks therefore form a vital aspect of the economies of desire present in popular music: the desire for that which is the same, familiar, and safe in the context of an often subtly shifting background. It is this enticing opposition of sameness and difference, predictability and volatility, comfort and insecurity, grounded in the everyday that comes to be represented and encapsulated thru the hook.
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SKORTS is:
MAX BERDIK: drums
EMMA WELCH: bassist & backing vocals
ALLI WALLS: singer & guitarist
CHAR SMITH: lead guitarist
Photo by: Jason Belmondo
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“BURDEN”: 6.7
A 6.7 is a strong reading, especially for an opening number, strong enough to cause serious structural damage from the get-go with no more than 13-14 seconds of pure vibeyness elapsing, drawing you in close, before the first major hook enters albeit briefly on “pushing them down below” as a kind of precursor to the line’s later repetition, built up with added harmonies and instrumentation which then mutates into a couple closely related hooks (the one on the title phrase plus the “one shot” bit) that by the end becomes so swooningly epic that you’d swear the whole thing was recorded with band members aloft soaring above a bombed out, decimated landscape atop four celestial pegasuses (pegasii?) with nostrils flaring and jowels foaming…
…and while there’s surely no 1-to-1 comparisons for what SKORTS does musically and conceptually, on this opening track we can’t help but be reminded of another band’s debut album but not due to both featuring two ladies w/contrasting manes or two boys tight of trousers cuz that’d be flat out shallow—released nearly 50 years ago to the date of Incompletement coming out which likewise starts off with a mystical, etherial, yearning-yet-low-key-brutal opening number (Heart’s Dreamboat Annie with “Magic Man” in the pole position) spruced up by some dramatic pauses and finger-tapping axeman wizardry (tho’ no closing Moog solo) with lyrics about the eyes being a window to the soulless yet seductive (let’s be real) exertion of control over another which itself serves as warning of just how much yr mind is about to be taken over by this record…
“BODIES”: 7.6
This song sounds like machinery dreaming where right off the bat we get a mildly earwormy guitar melody played thru what sounds like a broken amp soon joined to a falsetto-flirting, hesitant vocal melody with plodding, doom-laden drums ’n’ bass tones that is until the song’s first towering hook rises out of the muck after about 1:20 with some chest-thumping power chords, staccato drums fills and sky-scraping vocals with the whole thing repeating again with the Hook-o-meter’s needle not going nuts until the song’s final minute or so as it eases into what sounds like a bridge section except it’s a bridge that builds and builds (“so fleeting and so temporary / fading bodies what will we take”) and that shoots straight up into space …cuz it’s really just the verse with a new vocal melody and some tasteful pedal-steely weeping guitar slowly building and building ’til four-plus minutes in the song cracks itself open like a cosmic egg with no little ferocity (“It’s not like we remember anythiiiiiiinnnnggg / ahhhnnnnyyyttthhiiiinnnnggggg”) never reaching the destination of another full verse or chorus just a brief tag at the end which some may claim is a trend in popular these days but either way it works cuz it’s the hookiest part of the song and pushes the MRS level past 7.0 for the first time thus far…
“R4DR4M”: 9.1
OK, now we’re getting into massive devastation territory with a Hook-o-meter reading that’d lay waste to a small, unfortified mind so be forewarned with “R4DR4M” (pronounced “RAD-RAM”) being something like Bonnie Tyler covering a KISS song from their brief but glorious disco phase with the song’s title standing for “Right 4 Dreamlike Retreat From [4rum] Reality” (obviously!) which is a slang phrase used by the kids today for taking a mind vacation just short of ego death which you wouldn’t guess from its first few minutes with the first mini-hook being a booty-shimmying call to “run for days and run for miles” which is the titular acronym’s secondary meaning tho’ oddly the runner doesn’t seem to get anywhere (“you run for miles, and you’re still in sight“)…
…that is until Alli sings, “I hold it in, hold in in”, while not at all holding it in—with the most heart-rending, gut-wrenching, highwire vocal delivery this side of Grunge Adele before admitting “there’s no use in warning, I’ll forget it all in the morning” which could be about the lure of dissociative love or the complete breakdown of coherent, shared systems of communication (“If your words could break my fall / there’d be no bruise / I’ve got nothing else to lose”) take yr pick and with references to environmental collapse, serial killers, trigger warnings, and disease-tattered, cold-hearted men there’s lots to work with here for the amateur sybologist tho’ the 30- seconds near the end where the vocals explodes into rapturous ululation the very notion that rational thought plays into it at all appears suspect and that’s the beauty of hooks cuz they tend to circumnavigate the rational mind too going straight for those other organs instead just be ready for the melodic aftershocks (this song will get stuck in yr head)…
“EAT YR HEART OUT”: 4.9
OK so here’s a good example of a song that’s more than a “4.9” in terms of overall quality but not super high on the Hook-o-meter at least not by the SKORTS’ elevated standards cuz it’s more vibey and dance-y than hook-laden but if disco style woop-woop’s and leotards are more yr speed paired to a lyric about how we’re all clout-chasing slaves to our voracious social media feeds and needs to feel worthy then this is the song for you with a music video that looks like it’s been overdue from Blockbusters since somewhere between 1985 and ’95 but if you’re kind and rewind it they may let you off the hook…
“STEAL THE NIGHT”: 7.9
One thing you may’ve noticed is SKORTS are confident enough to not always repeat every hook ad infinitum thus showing impressive restraint with “R4DR4M” & “Bodies” not even repeating their biggest hooks once but in keeping with the theme of living in an ever-changing state of impermanence “Steal the Night” throws off any notion to restraint (yay!) by repeating the living daylights outta the refrain’s titular hook so good thing it’s good—first heard over a shimmering, translucent veil of chiming guitar alternating with low-key verses soon but then the song bursts open like overripe plums with a soaring dirty-toned solo followed by a bass-led breakdown with the multiple build-up-and-breakdowns acting as a kind of hook in their own right but wait cuz there’s more with one last earworm to go (“some form of ornament”) on an LP already LOADED with hooks just be sure to enjoy responsibly cuz there’s some Everclear-level strength hooks here with cans of Miller strength hooks strewn across the front lawn and why do we get the feeling the members of SKORTS all moonlight as a bartender…
“LACE”: 3.3
…good timing for a hang-out track with “Lace” serving nicely, opening with a electro-bossanova beat sampled from yr grandmother’s organ and when the hula guitar comes in it gives off “ladies and gentlement, we floating in a fully stocked tiki bar in space” vibes which is quite a swerve which shows just how much they’ve committed to the concept of switching things up continually (“put down your restless mind…play it cool or just pretend”) until at the end where they do one of their patented big buildups (not to sound flippant, we dig the big buildups!) with the feel flows towards the end evoking the ghost of Carl Wilson with some nice first-rays-of–peeking-thru-the-clouds harmonies as SKORTS makes one final request for you to dress New York City’s rats in lace after they’ve finally take over for good which is the perfectly matched image for SKORTS’ actually combining sheek, hip (in the good sense) elegance with urban grit and grime…
“DIZZY”: 6.7
And now back to our regular programming chock full o’ hook ‘n’ turbulence even if at first “Dizzy” sounds like one of SKORTS more straight-laced numbers (“mistakes, mistakes, mistakes / I’ve got a lot!”) with an upbeat, major-key feel and little hooks (hookettes!) strewn about tho’ eventually the title is apropos as the song spins you in dizzying circles with abrupt tempo and meter changes (talkin’ ‘bout rhythm y’all!) first as a rollicking waltz ‘until’til it gets to the “I’m so dizzy / from the writing on the wall” part (cool yelping backing vocals) where suddenly the tempo drops and the meter shifts to 10/4 (a ten-beat cycle!) in a minor key (“You’ve got nowhere to hide, you’ve got nowhere to hide!”) next transmogrifying to a Iommi-esque plodding doom-metal number (“Now, you’ve got me acting strange, spin all over the place”) then into a sort of sea-shanty in the round back in waltz time takes building to quite the climax with one last assurance of there being nowhere to hide which is all dizzying enough to make this song a hazard to anyone operating heavy machinery mmkay…
Photos by Kristopher Johnson
“I WON’T BE THE ONE”: 5.6
“I Won’t Be The One” makes one point crystal clear: namely, few other living singers can invest a lyric like “whoa-oh-oh-oh-whooaaa-oh-whoa-whoahhhh-oh-oh-whooaawhooaa-ahhhheeeiii” with as much grandeur and gravitas as Ms. Walls can which means the band better be able to match her intensity and they do staring off like they’re writing their own rendition of Joan Jett’s cover of Tommy James & the Shandells’ “Crimson and Clover,” and there’s just something the vibe that guarantees you’ll find yourself gently swaying in place even if unwittingly like Audrey Horne overtaken at the Double R Diner, finally building up a to a roiling boil of fuzzed-out power-bottom chords (heavy on the low end!) and lofty harmonies…
…with the song reaching its apotheosis of hook-i-tude on the title phrase which doesn’t sound like a much of a hook at first but the more the band repeats “I won’t be the one (to stop this)”, the more it starts to feel like a mantra building itself up layer by layer, like a sonic cathedral with the swooping vox acting as the flying buttress (talk about yr low end theory) with soaring, majestic angelic strains over churning, metallic riffs seemingly played by Satan’s house band gradually working its way to escape velocity when a whole new scalpel-sharp hook enters once again this time about fallin’ out my head again so I think we’re purgatory now with a brief bit of afterglow tacked onto the end to help ya catch yr breath again…
“ANYONE”: 6.6
And at last we end with a homecoming slow dance that feels more Laura than Audrey (James was always cool) with a lovely string-assisted buildup that’s quite affecting as SKORTS declare “We’ll count one, two, three, we’ll be anyone” which is perhaps a final twist on the Incompletement theme in declaring that if you never officially complete the process of becoming then at least you never close yourself off to the potential of being an infinite range of possibilities like a walking, talking multiverse containing multitudes as SKORTS put it, “‘round we go again / we’ll be face to face with everyone / with anyone, with anyone, oh oh oh oh oh”…
SKORTS recently completed a seven-date German tour and will celebrate their homecoming with Miss Grit and Caitlin Starr at the Sultan Room on Friday, December 19th…
L: Photo by Nico Malvaldi; R: flyer feat. album art development details by C e l i n a