Our readers know we rarely cover classic rock on this column. But if something’s well done we won’t shy away from featuring it, no matter the genre. Midnight Mob‘s new video/song combo for "Swing On" (streaming) rocks in way classic rock normally does not (at least in our opinion). Miss Blackley is – obviously – a heck of a vocalist (check out those churses), and that’s already a big plus. But the entire production here is spot on, including the video itself: what’s more classic rock than a jam in a motel room in the middle of… Nowhere, US? Sure, the genre is not exactly looking forward towards unexplored soundscapes, but we start having the same feeling about a lot of music that’s coming out of the city, from Garage to Shoegazer. At the end of the day, great songwriting, combined with good production values, matter more than genre. Have a classy(c) night of rock with these guys tonight (02.026) at DROM.

God bless March and the anticipation for NYC’s spring. This time of the year seems to unleash a musical competition for the next summer hit, and NYC synthpop duo Glassio, with their uber-breezy tracks, is well positioned to score in this department. The title of their latest, ten days old EP, ‘Poptimism,’ says it all, and single ‘Try Much Harder’ (streaming below) delivers on that promise. If you want to experience this ‘aural summer preview’ in person, head to the basement of Bushwick Public House on March 5th – and don’t miss CAFUNÉ, also on the bill.

Deli Readers,

Our Best of SF Bay Area Poll for Emerging Artists has been – as usual – a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music. We have finally reached our destination and we can announce the final results!

Heartwatch

The Bay Area has spoken and the local indie pop band, Heartwatch has not only won this year’s overall poll, but they dominated the Deli SF’s Reader Poll as well making them our undisputed Artist of the Year! We can tell why with their dancible brand of pop music and admirable work ethic. It all paid off this year!

Emily Afton

Emily Afton’s sultry, soulful style of indie pop melds elements of pop, soul and electronica to create original and penetrating modern ballads. She didn’t come in too far after Heartwatch. She deserves a huge congratulations and we look forward to seeing more from her.

Annie Girl and the Flight

Well, Annie is nothing but pure rock and roll! We’re thrilled to see her come in third place as she’s been a relentless force in the local underground rock scene. A great songwriter, composer and live musician is something that is sorely needed in the Bay Area right now. Congrats to Annie Girl and the Flight!

Check out our poll’s top 15 below, and don’t forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:

AVANT INDIE – ELECTRONIC – INDIE POP – PSYCH– REVIVAL POP/ROCK – ROOTS MUSIC

BEST OF 2015 POLL FOR EMERGING SF BAY AREA ARTISTS ****** FINAL RESULTS – TOP 15 ******

ARTIST J OS R TOT   1 Heartwatch 5.5   2 7.5 2 Emily Afton 5.5   1 6.5 3 Annie Girl and the Flight 3.5   1.5 5 4 The She’s 4.5   0.009 4.509 5 Eight Belles 2 2 0.029 4.029 6 The Seshen 3.5   0.015 3.515 7 Zodiac Death Valley 3.5   0.004 3.504   Night Shapes 2 1 0.054 3.054 9 Bells Atlas 3   0.015 3.015 10 Waterstrider 3   0.009 3.009 11 Wicked Man   3 0.005 3.005 12 Useless Eaters 3   0.004 3.004   Cellar Doors 3   0.004 3.004 14 Fuzz 3   0.003 3.003   Cathedrals 3   0.003 3.003 Legend: J = Jurors, R = Deli Readers, OS = Open Submissions

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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ SF Bay Area scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.

If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music SF Bay Area produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!

Many Thanks to our Jurors: David A Sikorski (Writer at SF Weekly), Doug Kinsey (The Night Light), Dace James Hines (Writer for SF Critic), Anisa (Sofar Sounds), Barry Smyth (Brick and Mortar Music Hall), Dennis Gonzales (POW Magazine), Jason Black (Writer for Beatport), Aisah Gemora (Sofar Sounds), Derek See (Indie Record Collector/Retailer), ​Sam Lefebvre​ (East Bay Express), Audra (Thee Parkside), Ash Reiter (Founder of Hickey Fest), Bob Patterson (SF Critic Managing Editor), Jordannah Elizabeth (The Deli SF).

Hope you’ll find some awesome new artists you weren’t aware of!

The Deli’s Staff

There’s something deeply earnest about the sound of Brooklyn’s power pop quartet Robot Princess. Their music feels friendly and unpretentious, although the sound maintains a constant abrasiveness that adds a restless quality to it, without really venturing into punk or garage territory. The guitar rock sound of a ’90s is obviously an influence, but the remarkable songwriting lifts this band beyond mere revival: their songs come across as thoughtful outbursts of a bunch of friends in their early twenties, singing about their daily struggles. Their 2015 debut album (or rather, cassette) ‘Teen Vogue LP + Action Moves EP‘ is incredibly consistent and, notwithstanding the obvious DIY ethos, very well recorded and produced. There’s a deep relatability to all of these songs – even when the the lyrics are hard to understand. That’s what good music does, it conveys emotion, it triggers thoughts, it evokes periods of our past without the need for rationalizing. Don’t miss these guys’ upcoming live show at Rough Trade on March 5th.

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best indie guitar rock songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

“Thee in thy panoply” is how Walt Whitman addressed a bi-coastal 19th century freight train, though his words easily apply to NYC’s Mystery Lights as well. Their garage-psych panoply is pure Sixties, albeit a variegated Sixties, which makes sense given their origins in California. The band recently won the Psych category of our Best of NYC 2015 Readers’ Poll. They will be playing LES’ new rocking basement Berlin on Friday February 26 with The Britanys – also a garage sounding, Deli award winning NYC band! – Brian Chidester

With his unique style and the voice of an old soul, NYC guitarist Ben Greenberg (formerly of The Men) proves that uniqueness doesn’t need to be complicated, but requires character and talent. We just stumbled upon his project Hubble‘s amazing tracks, built on a blurry web of fluttery electric guitar arpeggios (or something similar that still has no definition), and we are completely mesmerized by them. The artists recently has been focusing on covers of classics from the past. The one of Tim Buckley’s "Song to the Siren," (streaming, which sounds more like a cover of the cover This Mortal Coil did of that track in 1984) is one of the most beautifully intense tunes we’ve heard in a while, imparting to Buckley’s lyrics a weight that – to quote The Flaming Lips – is just too heavy for Superman to lift. Check out also the slightly more serene remake of Gary Numan "Me! I disconnect from You." You can see Hubble live at Palisades tomorrow (February 25th).

In their latest single ‘Nighttime Hunger,’ Overcoats take a simple expression of longing, ‘when the darkness comes,’ and twist the suggestive phrase around until it turns itself into a mantra of foreboding and threat. Laid over sinuous beats and rapturous harmonies. It’s a strong debut from duo Hana and JJ, who only just released their self-titled debut EP last summer and are already playing dates alongside musicians like James Blake and Hozier – and performing live for NPR. Hear the song below and see them when they play at Fat Baby on Thursday, March 3rd. – 
Mike Levine (@Goldnuggets)

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best mellow songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

Deli Readers,

Our Best of Austin Poll for Emerging Artists has been – as usual – a lengthy and painstaking journey which took us through prairies of numbers, horizons filled with band names, and a dense, (mostly) joyous rain of music. We have finally reached our destination and we can announce the final results!

1. CAPYAC

The Artist of the Year for The Deli Austin 2015, the artist voted in by our panel of Austin music folks in the know in tandem with you the public, is the inimitable future funk outfit and Austin standard carrier CAPYAC. To put it as blunt and forward as the good beats this act puts out, the win was no surprise. CAPYAC have taken their sound, their show and their presence in the music scene and have exploded them all to new heights this year. We once called them the ‘smoothest music in Austin right now,’ and not only has this sly scifi-appropriate spacefunk + beats duo lived up to that title with numerous spot-on spaced-out releases since our last review of them, they’ve also added ‘most fun,’ ‘most consistent’ and very possibly ‘best live show in Austin, right now’ to the list of claims they can make on the Live Music Capital of the World’s local scene. Those alone are some damn chops to contend with, but since CAPYAC also had the single that was the biggest repeat play in The Deli Austin’s offices this year with the cherry red, lazer-beats and deep funk glorious “Speedracer,” we really can’t argue with this pick. It’s been, and it continues to be, the age of CAPYAC in Austin, Texas.

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2. Annabelle Chairlegs

If there are two scenes producing at the top of their game in Austin right now that are most visible (out of many such scenes, let’s not short this crazy city its talent), it’d be the beat scene, of which our contest winner CAPYAC is a member, and it would also be the psych rock side of this here music town. Among those acts bending the psych thing back around to new 2016-primed directions, Annabelle Chairlegs is perhaps the most exciting. They’re also The Deli Austin’s #2 Best Emerging Artist of 2015, an accomplishment this young and daring band has achieved due both to its embracing of the spirit of early psychedelic music and for where they branch off from that parent sound to express themselves in their own new and rebellious ways. They’re as much punk and 80s/90s lush indie pop influenced as they are psych; pretty and layered when they’re being edgy and poppy and druggy, and pretty even when they are actually trying to be pretty. It’s hard to do both of those at the same time, but 2015’s Watermelon Summer was a debut album that is very likely to be the soundtrack of this summer in Austin for the young and ultra-hip in the hippy/psych scene, just as it was last summer. These young art partiers, with their bubblegum hair-sporting banshee songstress and dreamy pop singles, are one of the acts we think very well could break out of this city in a big way. With a second place showing in our contest, it looks like the rest of Austin agrees with us.

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3. Tomar and the FCs

The thing about real, good soul is that it says it right there in the name: it’s gotta hit you in the soul. That shit can’t be faked; though many try to achieve it, soul isn’t something that can be tried at or denied when it’s heard in its real form. It hits you, in your own soul like a burning weight, and you know you’re hearing it done right. And, when you hear it done right, you know just why it is so good, and why that’s important. Tomar and the FCs, our third place band this year, are soul. They’re soul, and they’re good, and it’s cool as fuck. They put out songs that sound like new classics, like the guys writing and performing them know their musical history and just went and inserted themselves into the soul canon through the sheer quality and dedication and, to bring it back to the point, the pure fucking soul of their music. Hell, Tomar and the FCs, aren’t trying to bring soul back, they’ve done it. They are soul, and it’s just plain feel good badass sing-it-out music. To do what they do with an old sound in a day that’s so aware of what’s come before, and to make it feel fresh and damn fine to boogie down to, is tremendous, and Tomar and the FCs well deserve the showing they’ve made in our poll.

Check out our poll’s top 15 below, and don’t forget to get even deeper, exploring all the finalists organized by genre:

ALT ROCK – FOLK ROCK – HIP HOP + FUNK – INDIE POP – INDIE ROCK –PSYCH – PUNK/METAL – ROOTS MUSIC – SINGER-SONGWRITER

BEST OF 2015 POLL FOR EMERGING NKC ARTISTS ****** FINAL RESULTS – TOP 15 ******

ARTIST J OS R TOT   1 Capyac 8.5   0.012 8.512 2 Annabelle Chairlegs 7.5   0.028 7.528 3 Tomar & the FCs 6.5   0 6.5 4 Loteria 6   0.015 6.015 5 Cross Record 5.5   0.005 5.505 6 Carl Sagan’s Skate Shoes 5.5   0.004 5.504 7 Super Thief 5.5   0.001 5.501   Mayeux & Broussard 4.5   0.014 4.514 9 The Cuckoos 3   1.5 4.5 10 Daniel Eyes & The Vibes 3   1 4 11 The Halfways 3.5   0.372 3.872 12 Sailor Poon 3   0.01 3.01 13 Hard Proof   3 0.003 3.003 14 Aaron Miller aka Multi-Tracker 3   0.002 3.002   Katy Kirby 3   0.002 3.002 Legend: J = Jurors, R = Deli Readers, OS = Open Submissions

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If you wonder how this chart came into existence, here is how it all went down: first, we let the local bands submit their music (for free), and got our Deli editors to pick the nominees. Then we polled a list of 15+ Austin scene expert (our jury) and asked them to nominate 3 more bands of their choice each (3 points for the top choice, then 2 and 1). Then we polled our readers. We tried to keep things open for each single genre, from Indie Rock to Roots Music to Hip Hop.

If you are a geek interested in all the subtelties related to how this poll works, you can read its rules here (happy reading!). But if all you care about is the awesome new music Austin produced in the year 2015, this list is all you need. Enjoy!

Many Thanks to our Jurors: Trevor Talley (The Deli Austin), Howdy Darrell (The White Horse), Austen Bailey (The Parish), Tyson Swindell (Red 7), Jason McNeely (Hotel Vegas), Ashley Bradley (Ovrld) Ben Webster (The North Door) Alice Geaccone (Witchxxdoctor) Matt Reilly (KUT Austin) Maggie Lea (Cheer Up Charlies) Margaret Galton (C3) Diane Scott (Continental Club) Shelley Neuman (ATX Streetstyle) Marcus Lawyer (Transmission Events) Jonathon Gaylon (American Icon Records) Gillian Driscoll (Sound Dessert) Alexander Dubois (Self)

Hope you’ll find some awesome new artists you weren’t aware of!

The Deli’s Staff

It may be a little late to make you change your plans for the night, but we just found out about this cool Brooklyn band called Milan to Minsk and they are playing the Mercury Lounge tonight, celebrating the release of their self titled debut EP. Even though the band’s name conjures up images of gray, cold cities (Milan isn’t Rome, my friend!), their elegant lo-fi pop features exotic accents that seem to preannounce the summer. 

The latest trend in electronic music has been… to make it soulful, less machine-like. That’s a stance the fathers of the genre (namely, Kraftwerk and Devo) would find borderline heretic. Shouldn’t electronic music BE about the machine? Shouldn’t it be a celebration of it? Luckily for all you synth worshippers, Brooklyn already has the antidote to the de-mechanization of electronic rock, and it’s called Operator Music Band. The quartet just released their second EP, appropriately titled ‘Matérielmusik‘ (i.e. ‘material music,’ not music of the soul!), which puts synths back at the core of everything, while vocals become little more than a regular instrument. See them live at Palisades on February 26th.

Rivaling Sade in musical sophistication and loungy atmospheres, Tiger + Man is a Brooklyn based electronic duo with a very artsy approach to music. Formed by Austin-raised Tiger Darrow and South African-born Andrew Orkin, the project is about to release a self produced EP featuring artwork by five different visual artists, but for the video of single ‘Wondering’ (streaming below) the duo went for artists from a different discipline: dance. The choice works perfectly, with the dancers’ expressive moves becoming one with Darrow’s sinuous vocals and the band sparse but rhythmically intriguing arrangements.

We have towards ambient music an attitude similar to the one we have towards olive oil – we don’t really want it by itself, but add it to pretty much anything and… BOOM! Girlyboi is a brand new duo of musically gifted models, who play music that, according to our previous metaphor, floods their simple but touching folk songs in a sea of olive oil (and just the right amount of Eastern spices); the results are pretty tasty indeed. They released three singles in quick succession since September 2015, and went for a quick east coast tour. The word about their music spread so quickly that the door to Rough Trade and Baby’s All Right opened pronto: the band released their debut album at the former in December, and is playing the latter tonight, opening for Deli favorites Wilsen, who graced our mag’s cover in our NYC Fall 2013 issue. 

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best mellow songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!