“Mean” is the latest single by the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer known as ISY who’s name is pronounced “I see” but in reality the song and the artist are neither “mean” meaning cruel-hearted (more like open-hearted) nor “mean” meaning average (more like “who farted?”) just don’t get it twisted because ISY ain’t your standard issue Manic Pixie Dream Girl either—more like a girl who happens to like Manic Panic and the Pixies not to mention Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, John Denver, The Weeknd, Biggie, TLC, and Flatbush Zombies (most of whom she plays on her acoustic guitar named “Joni”) and while that’s a pretty dreamy list of influences it’s clearly not in service of anyone’s incel fantasies cuz it’s no accident ISY rhymes with “agency” and "self-sufficiency" (well, sort of!) and she’s perfectly happy hangin’ on her own in rural New York in an aluminum trailer reading, drinking coffee, and chillin’ with her coterie of inanimate friends so do you see what I mean? (if not watch the video below!)

Quoting from the song’s lyrics, “Mean” is about “trying to get that grace / from the bad days” while admitting that “I’m just another stupid human…they used to laugh at me” and acknowledging that the “demons chasing you [are the] same ones after me” and asserting that “I know how it feels, but you don’t have to be mean” which all sits ambiguously between being a kiss-off and a gesture of empathy. Overall it’s a good message for Mental Health Awareness Month or for any month really—we should all be “free to be you and me” and have freedom of choice without fear of bullying. And what takes this message to the next level is the way ISY’s nimble voice rides and amplifies the fluctuating waves of emotion in the lyrics and the music, culminating with the refrain “you don’t have to be me” 

On the sonic side of things “Mean” likewise rides a series of musical waves over its 3:33 duration (3:33 is the same exact duration of ISY’s past five singles!) opening on a Garden of Eden soundscape with chirping birds and airy keyboard chords before shifting to a vibey stripped down first verse and then building to an EDM type “drop” followed by a thumping house beat with ISY laying down a warn pillow of vocal overdubs over the beat, the equivalent of little fluffy clouds floating by overhead, which is a recurring sonic motif of ISY’s music in general (you’ll understand why when you listen) and then after building to another climax with the vocal lines crashing into one another the song ends back where it started with the peaceful Edenic soundscape and it’s like escaping back to a perfect private world. 

And speaking of private worlds, the self-directed music video for “Mean” (co-edited by JD Urban, shot by Jesse Turnquist) depicts ISY hanging out in an Upstate Eden in the vicinity of where she was raised. And speaking of non-private worlds, the video contains a trail of Easter eggs that’s sure to resonate with her online fans and followers in the form of various stuffed animals and doll parts and bewigged mannequins and assorted other items recognizable from her thrice-weekly Twitch stream that’s something like Alice in Wonderland transplanted “through the looking app” to her New York City apartment decked out with all kinds of cool stuff for viewers to look at (my personal fave is the neon-hued, fluffy cotton clouds crafted by ISY herself, sorry Long Furbies!) a setting that’s just as DIY magickal as her music.

But maybe I’d better back up in case and explain that this thing called "Twitch" which is a social media platform for live-streaming first designed for gamers but even before that it started as "justin.tv" with a guy "lifecasting" his existence 24/7 and now it’s come somewhat full circle with an ever-growing army of Twitchers who taken together cover the full panoply of life’s rich pageant with Twitch channels dedicated to everything from ASMR rubber-earlobe-licking-and-sucking streamers (don’t ask) to the many music-centric channels ranging from songwriting sessions and all-request streams to multi-tracking violinists and fast-fingered harpists to piano loungers and chilled-out Brazilian guitarists plus tons of live DJ’s of every shape and stripe broadcasting at all hours from all around the world.

And for me personally, the discovery of this new-to-me platform (with ISY being one of the first Twitchers I got hooked on) was a lifeline as I was then undergoing a serious case of live music withdrawal during Endless Lockdown 2020-21 and here was a platform that was great not only for streaming live music but that also gave a kind of "behind the scenes" peek into artists’ creative processes, and their personalities, with a culture based around interactivity and community-building (the chat section is more than just an appendage with streamers responding to comments in real time, plus lots of cross-talk between viewers) and also audience-performer intimacy (the homebound setting of most streamers only encourages this) and also on the development of what I’ll call “microfandoms," where it only takes a handful of followers to create an intensely-felt musical community (compare this to Tik-Tok with its emphasis on highly staged, semi-scripted videos and "challenges" which OK thank you very much but I’m challenged enough already!)

For her part, ISY first came across Twitch when she found out that one of her favorite musical artists, DJ/producer/emcee Erick the Architect of Flatbush Zombies fame, had a Twitch channel and was hosting a special birthday stream a couple years back. She logged on and before long was kicking back and cracking open a beer and talking back to the computer screen like she was there in person with Erick because it felt that relaxed and personal. And with having own channel on Twitch now for nearly as long, ISY says she’s never been so fulfilled as a musician, with friends/fans/followers showing their love through modest tips measured in “bits," and “custom emotes” earned from subscribing to her stream, but mostly through chat-section displays of encouragement and support (“your voice calms my bird down” being one of her faves) and the development of close-knit, long-distance friendships.

What’s more, ISY also points out that as a female musician, this kind of online environment has been good for avoiding the kinds of predation and condescension that she’s more likely to experience IRL or on a more anonymous, unregulated platform (the presence of a trusted, hand-picked moderator on Twitch is helpful too, yo Adriaeeeeeen!) thus allowing her to develop a circle of smart, funny, and kind people (as ISY herself describes them!) who enjoy hanging out together and share her sense of loopy humor and undaunted honesty and eclectic musical tastes.

And OK just to be clear I’m not a paid shill for Twitch though I’m not making any promises going forward (Twitch: call me, maybe (!) and yeah Twitch is an affiliate of Amazon Inc. boooooo but I wouldn’t mind getting that Bezos money!) and the focus is justified here as ISY says that “Mean” is a direct outgrowth of her online fam both in how the song was constructed (getting direct feedback from followers as she was writing, and being influenced by her fellow streamer pal LILYKAY to try out a house beat and the EDM drop) and also in terms of the song’s subject matter, but suffice to say you can no doubt find and explore the virtual platform of your choice for touching from a distance. Because in "this modern world" we’re always gotta be looking for new ways to reorient the very tools and technologies that will otherwise divide and even enslave us, using them instead to form human connections and to heal until the next upgrade comes along if you know what I mean. (Jason Lee)

Okay, it’s the middle of the night as I’m writing this and I’ve had a few glasses of cheap Malbec from a bottle acquired at my local hooch hut with the double-paned glass and I’m just trying to figure out what to say about this extremely intense, emotionally unprotected song by LEONE, and its accompanying video slated to debut on the Deli today (here it is! directed by Rosie Soko!) and for starters I’m gonna say first of all that you should probably help yourself to a glass or three of cheap wine (except for recovering alcoholics, we respect you!) to get in a fitting mindspace for “Talk To Me” because it’s not a sober song at all and I don’t even mean this in the alcohol-imbibing sense but rather in the sense of being “muted, sensible, or solemn” because as a musical artist LEONE is none of these things (and thank goodness for that!) being very much willing to “lay it on the line” to the extent that you’ll be “laying it on the line” just by listening and viewing the video below that is if you’re fearless and foolhardy enough to check out this EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE not available to the general public until tomorrow (those clueless suckas!) and I’m just warning you that you’ll soon be huddled in your shower in the fetal position just like LEONE is in the music video because there’s no double-paned glass to protect you when it comes to “Talk To Me.”

With assistance by Peter Savad (co-production, mixing and mastering) “Talk to Me” is the second single and second music video from LEONE’s upcoming solo EP slated to be released in early summer (title TBD) and according to LEONE—formerly knows as Richie Bee and formerly known as frontman for the queer glam (redundant, I know!) band DEITRE for those keeping score at home—“I made a choice to get very personal and literal with this upcoming EP both lyrically as well as visually. I really wanted to paint the picture of the actual events that took place." And personally I love it when glamsters and punk rockers write power ballads because power ballads are supposed to have power goddammit, not to mention serious drama, and this one certainly ticks off both boxes.

And if you’re going to go out on a confessional limb and write a song about “the feeling of desperation after experiencing a lost connection” and a “song [that] personifies the loneliness that can live within a relationship” then it helps if you already understand battling-demons-thru-disclosure, not to mention transcendence-thru-transgression and ecstasy-thru-abjection, like any good glammy-punky rocker should and seriously just go watch Phantom of the Paradise or Velvet Goldmine if you don’t believe me. 

And here’s one cool thing that LEONE does musically to capture this state of agonized longing and vulnerability, a state that would lead someone to declare “you’re giving me the same ol’ silly lies / wrap my arms around you tight / so you know that I’m here” and that’s having the confidence to spend three-plus minutes slowly-but-surely ratcheting up the tension starting with delicate acoustic guitar and gradually adding new musical layers before finally bursting open like an overripe plum and it’s certainly fulfilling when it happens.

And so it’s extra gutting when the song recedes back into itself in its final moments and you realize (as made even clearer by the music video) that this damn-bursting explosion of emotional release was only in LEONE’s head and that in reality he’s still trapped in a heartbreaking “lonely together” co-dependent relationship mired in a state of communication breakdown and I hope you’ll excuse me while I go and curl up in the shower.

But lest I end this review on a downer note, based on these two songs by LEONE, here’s a new musical artist who knows how to write shattering, ravishing songs which, let’s face it, play an important role in this world because who amongst us hasn’t suffered the loss of a loved one, whether on the physical plane (see “Monochrome Colors” above) or on the emotional plane. And how better to begin healing than with music that confronts trauma head on and turns it into something exquisite. (Jason Lee)

Readers note: If you wanna go straight to Bunny X’s very own song-by-song liner notes for their new album that’s under discussion here, please feel free to skip the think-piece-cum-rant and scroll down to near the end (below the jump) and hey I seriously won’t hold it against you but I am watching, always watching…

“If you wanna believe in something / then let be this one thing / Paradise
We could make it last forever / as long as we’re together / Paradise” — “Perfect Paradise”

“Young and in love / fast-forward to the past” — “Young & In Love”

Bunny X is a musical duo made up of Abigail “Abbi” Gordon and Mary "Mary" Hanley who self-identify as an “Italo disco/retrowave duo with influences ranging from early Madonna to FM Attack.” But I hope they’ll forgive me if I use the term “synthwave” rather than “retrowave” seeing as most people prone to discussing such things consider the terms interchangeable and also I’d venture that many punk rock bands, for instance, are “retrowave” just as much as any synthspop act, so let’s go with synthwave for clarity’s sake and if you disagree you can write an angry letter to the editor. 

The duo’s latest album is what’s known as a “remix album”, a term I unpacked in some detail a few weeks ago so I won’t repeat myself here. On their Bandcamp page they explain that “after releasing the hit album Young & In Love last year, New Yorkers Bunny X asked some of the hottest names in the international electronic scene to reimagine some of the highlights of the album and were truly thrilled with the response they received” and ergo the new album. (see below for one of the unremixed songs off from Young & In Love, and see above for the entire “remix album” and the original album and please try to keep up with me here!)

Listening to Bunny X’s Young & In Love (The Remixes) (Aztec Records) has been a learning experience for me because for one thing I’ve learnt is that the album’s 80s-throwback mix of percolating synths, gated drums, robo-funk baselines, Super Mario 64 worthy DX7’s, etherial and even vocoderized vocals, and omnipresent washes of airy ambient sound is virtually guaranteed to turn you into Molly Ringwald for at least long enough to dance frantically on a balcony for your new reprobate friends during detention.

What’s more, I’ve also learnt about the existence of a bunch of cool remixers and producers I’d never heard of before. (more on them below in the “liner notes” portion of this article!) And I’ve also learnt that I enjoy Bunny X’s music very much having not had much exposure to their music before, that is until I saw them perform live opening for Fuck You, Tammy a couple weeks ago, and subsequently getting lost in their hypnotic synthpop sorcery. And finally, I’ve also learnt and come to appreciate that Kim Wilde was one of the key architects of the genre today known as synthwave. Allow me to explain. (Warning: digressions ahead!)

The first track on Y&IL(TR) is a remix of the Bunny X song “Perfect Paradise” and the remix was made by Ricky Wilde with additional vocals contributed by Kim Wilde. And in case that latter sounds familiar it’s probably because she recorded two now-iconic hit singles in the ‘80s (actually 17 hit singles in her native UK, but only two that made the US Top 40) both of which are “80s Night” DJ staples to this day—namely “Kids In America” (1981) and her Hi-NRG style cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in 1986.

And it turns out that Ricky Wilde is Kim’s brother (surprise!) and that the two Irish twins (“Irish twins” are siblings born less than a year apart and thanks to Wikipedia for perpetuating this ugly slander upon my ancestors) co-wrote many of Kim’s early hit singles together with their father Marty (an early UK rock ’n’ roller) and let’s hear it for family values. But here’s the kicker, I’m gonna go out on a limb and claim that the Wilde family basically invented synthwave (or at least helped!) decades before that term even existed, and well before “retro” even entered the picture, with Kim’s debut single “Kids In America.”

How, and why, you ask? Because “Kids” combines the musical DNA of Kraftwerk’s avant-artpop-techno (check out that single-note drone and weird atonality in the intro) with the electrified postpunk of Gary Numan, OMD, Ultravox, Thomas Dolby, et al., all topped off by the poppiest of pop tropes like Kim’s girl-group-esque vocal harmonies and the la-la-la bubblegum hook sung by Ricky I presume. 

And this combination of sunshine pop with a dark techno and/or postpunk undertow, however subtle, is the very epitome of “synthwave” in may book as are the lyrics, which come off like an A.I. computer-generated description of adolescent suburban longing (got to get a brand new experience, feeling right / outside suburbia’s sprawling everywhere…New York to East California / there’s a new wave coming, I warn ya) in a song written by precisely no one who was an actual kid in America (ergo the puzzling mention of “East California” screw you Angelinos!) in a fantasy-based depiction that’s all the more resonant for it. 

Overall there’s something about all these elements cut-and-pasted together that gives the song a hyperreal quality (in other words, an exaggerated or even simulated reality) which in my mind makes it a harbinger of ‘80s music in general since hyper-reality was super big in the 80s ranging from Top 40 pop to 120 Minutes alternative rock, routinely utilizing everything from drum machines to Neo-psychedelic guitar pedals (whither goth music without the humble flange pedal?) and brand new digital synthesis technology all of which took “natural” sounds and pushed them into hyperreal exaggerations and simulations (I mean clearly the “brass” and “orchestral” sounds on 80s synths can be easily distinguished from what they’re imitating, but in the process they created a cool new retro-futuristic sonic vocabulary).

Synthwave is fixated on just these sorts of blatantly ersatz futuristic-but-now-nostalgic digital sounds which are the sonic equivalent to Patrick Nagel’s extreme ‘80s illustrations—a visual aesthetic that also set the template for synthwave’s own visuals with its own “nostalgic logic” where Nagel took 50s pinup art and 60s/70s Playboy centerfolds and pushed them into pastel-and-neon-hued hyperreality portraits so exaggerated and ultra-vivid that they’re like half photograph and half cartoon. And could it be mere coincidence that both the music video for “Kids in America” and the cover art to Young & In Love (The Remixes) have a strong Nagel vibe (the latter refracted through modern day manga art) I’m thinking not!

The sublime Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” perhaps sums up synthwave aesthetics best (not to mention being a beautiful queer love story) where time-travel back to the 1980s acts as a form of spiritual salvation, with an ending that poses the question of whether living in an idealized and sanitized simulation of existence would be superior to the living in the messy real thing, not to mention the existential quandary of having an actual choice between the two. And come to think of it “Perfect Paradise” sounds like it could’ve been directly inspired by the episode hmmmmmm……

Either way, “San Junipero” has something insightful to say about the nostalgia value of 80s music and synthwave’s ritualistic recreation of such which seems to have a surprisingly cross-generational appeal. And I’m thinking this may have something to do with how a synthesizer is clearly a “synth” i.e. synthetic in this music, while a drum machine is clearly a machine and so on. Because today technology has come to be implanted deep inside of our bodies and our minds, with our phones and other electronic and virtual devices acting as a extension of our physical beings, and a component part of our mental functioning, to where really who can even tell the difference anymore. But synthwave takes our current state of social and physical unreality (alternative facts, anyone?!) rewinding and re-mixing it back into good ol’ fashioned hyperreality…

And on that optimistic note (!) here’s the real star of the show–the song-by-song liner notes provided by Abbi from Bunny X, providing some background and insights on the seven songs remixed on Young & In Love (The Remixes) and their multiple remixed-ified renditions. (Jason Lee) 

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"Perfect Paradise"

Originally released as an instrumental track by Swedish retrowave artist Don Dellpiero in January 2021, Bunny X and Don Dellpiero collaborated and released the track with a vocal arrangement in June 2021 and ended up receiving quite a nice response from the community. Fast forward to 2022 and a true stroke of luck when Bunny X befriended UK music blogger Lee Bennett who happens to be well acquainted with the brother and sister dream team that is Ricky and Kim Wilde. It was a remix match made in heaven when Ricky Wilde offered to take a stab at a remix of "Perfect Paradise" and Kim Wilde ended up gracing the track with her iconic vocals. After so much isolation and separation during the pandemic, "Perfect Paradise" speaks to the simple yet profound joy of just physically being in the same space as your friend or lover. This track was also remixed nu jack swing style by Syst3m Glitch and with Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69” vibes by GeoVoc.

"Can’t Wait" 

When you’re in the last year, month or week of graduating, quitting your job, moving out, breaking up, etc. The list goes on but this track goes out to all those that are just on the cusp of and getting “so close to the finish line” that they just might burst. This track, written with LA-based artist SelloRekt/LA Dreams, and recently remixed by Italian producer Le Cast, was truly inspired by a Brat Pack type of montage (you can picture it) when you’re studying for that last exam and then you finally make it through to the other side…

"Head Rush"

In keeping with the teen angst theme of Young & In Love, "Head Rush," remixed by Sferro, Fulvio Colasanto and Uncover, is about that pure adrenaline rush that comes with first (real) crushes when you are positively intoxicated by being around that certain someone. When you feel like “there’s just something different” about them because they see you as no one else ever has and “when you’re all alone together” you “can finally” be yourself. 

"Diamonds"

Pure and utter nostalgia. "Diamonds" is about remembering how you felt when you saw your crush in the hallway or watched them from afar wondering if they even knew you were alive. This track, remixed with care by Mike Haunted, is a look back through time, albeit with a much different lens, since “those old high school days are long in the past now” but sometimes it’s okay if you prefer to remember that particular person the same way they were back then. It’s probably – definitely – a suspension of reality but is that such a bad thing? 

"Back to You"

We’ve all been there. The push-pull and the complicated feelings around just not being able to get over someone. About wanting to go back and try again because “there’s such passion every time” you’re together and so you want to just "keep coming back.” Swedish-based artist, The Secret Chord, stays true to the original sentiment of the track while simultaneously breathing new life into it with some excellent Laurie Anderson-esque vocoder effects throughout. 

"Lost Without You" 

UK-based producer Maxx Parker’s remix of "Lost Without You," written by Bunny X and Don Dellpiero, brings a tropical, romantic and even vaporwave twist to the original track. True to the theme of the original album, the track is full-on Sixteen Candles style romantic lust and delusion – “when you called me up I was speechless, why would someone like you talk to me in the first place?” Those same hopes and dreams are quickly dashed because “when the last bell rang” the object of your affection “grabbed their friends” and “just walked away.” Ouch.

"Go Back"

France’s Sight Telma Club gives "Go Back," originally released as an instrumental by SelloRekt/LA Dreams, a darker spin with the vocal pitch bending effect throughout and it works because the theme of Go Back is a somber one – again in keeping with the overall nostalgia wave that is Young & In Love. When you just wish you could go back and do it all over again. Maybe it would be different this time and maybe it would “just turn out to be the same.”

Grand Army Reapers are a five-piece band who make music that weaves and careens like a cheap wobbly spinning top or an extremely revved-up hamster wheel or a tipsy Midwestern sailor on shore leave for the first time in Times Square and you just know there’s going to be trouble but which doesn’t collapse in on itself despite the mix of chaotic energy and woozy insouciance, or maybe exactly because of the mix of chaotic energy and woozy insouciance which produces a sort of centripetal force that keeps the whole contraption from jumping the track. 

It’s a theory anyway. But one based on first-hand observation because a couple weeks ago I got a chance to see the Grand Army Reaper gang play live which inspired the overstimulated mixed metaphors above, although not right there in the moment because the band were too transporting with their blissed out unhinged energy to be verbalized upon first encounter, and plus there were drinks and conversations to be had after.

And here’s another thing. The band recently put out an EP called Alive, Alive (from King Killer) made up of six self-recorded songs laid down over a mere couple days in the band’s own practice space, recorded live in large part ("a semi-live, DIY studio album") with no more than a few takes allowed for any one song, thusly giving the listener a good taste of GAR’s visceral impact in the flesh (reader’s note: you should still see them live) opening with a downright groovy garage rockin’ Strokes-meets-Cramps-meets-Clash singalong (granted one about police brutality) called “Black Tape” and culminating 18 minutes later with a Stoogey sax-assisted howl into the abyss called “Bug Hunt” and yeah Kiss Alive or Alive II this ain’t, it’s more along the lines of Naked Lunch.

Other cited musical influences range from Oingo Boingo to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to classic surf rock and on GAR’s very own Bandcamp page Ben (sticks and skins), Chuck (strings), Erik (mouth stuff), Krish (strings), and MK (low end) describe their sound as “occult rock inspired by the energy and weirdness of early-70’s NY and warped cassettes found under the passenger seat of your sister’s 1984 Volvo 240 DL” and while I’ve never been in a 1984 Volvo 240 DL before (or had a sister, I think!) the Seventies New York comparison rings true seeing as how when the city was careening out of control and nearing a state of total societal breakdown its inhabitants somehow managed to invent punk, disco, and hip hop.

And this teetering-on-the-edge-between-chaos-and-control musical quality bleeds over into Grand Army Reapers’ lyrics as well on Alive, Alive overflowing as they are with extreme emotional states, fury at state-sponsored violence, and personal reckonings with addition, disease, and mental health issues, all while managing to be purging and affirming too (that’s the magic of music!) a realization I had thanks to generous track-by-track liner notes provided by GAR’s lead songwriter Erik Reaper who was kind enough to share some revealing insights into both the EP’s lyrics and music and he really laid it all out (respect, sir!) liner notes which can be read in full after the jump… (Jason Lee)

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Black Tape

          This is a protest song, written around the anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s murder. Cops are here to maintain the status quo and punch down on behalf of property owners. That’s it. “NYPD, murder with impunity. NYPD, a theater of security. NYPD, white ego, white fragility. NYPD, a menace to communities.”

          Musically it’s very much inspired by The Clash. I wasn’t trying to overthink this one. It snowballed from a riff idea into a fully formed song within one afternoon. I usually torture myself for days to weeks, finalizing the structure and lyrics before committing to a demo that I send to my bandmates. With this song, there was an immediate momentum that I wanted to maintain throughout the process. 

Distraction from Sadness

          This was originally 3 different songs that I kinda forced together: an intro/refrain that was really hooky and angular like a Buzzcocks or Nick Lowe song, a morose chorus that’s basically Johnny Thunders’ “Society Makes Me Sad,” and an outro that veers hard into a Buddy Holly dreamscape. Lyrically, it’s about being paralyzed by self-doubt, so you make excuses and distract yourself with bullshit. There isn’t really a conclusion, it just ends with a complete detour, kind of like the concept behind the lyrics I guess.

Long-Covid Blues

          I actually despise songs that are overtly topical, but I felt like torturing myself a little on this one. This is basically a Richard Hell song about long-hauler covid symptoms, insomnia, delirium, and shapeshifting into some kind of werewolf while exchanging coded messages with some outside entity in the personal ads section of the NY Post.

Screenplay 1979

          Joy Division (referenced at the mid-point of the intro) becomes The Damned covering “Jet Boy, Jet Girl”. This song is about a girl and a boy. Big whoop. While recording this song, I had just learned that my cousin had overdosed on fentanyl, that plays a weirder role in “Snowed Out,” but it definitely affected my mood and vocal delivery in a way that felt pretty terrible. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to keep recording that day, but I really wanted to push forward. We weren’t necessarily on a tight schedule with this album, but I had a set of rules in mind about maintaining a “live” feel, even if performance get a little weird.

Snowed Out
         I just couldn’t go on with vocals for this one. I had to call it a day after the first take. Lyrically it was too on-the-nose considering the news I got that morning. I called my aunt. I didn’t really have anything to say. She cried a lot. I haven’t seen my family in 3 years. I finished vocals the next day.
        This is a song about substance abuse and functional junky-ism among us over-educated, over-worked, and underpaid. It’s also about poor management of mood disorders, oscillating between depression and grandiosity, with substance abuse and pseudo-spirituality thrown in.

            I’m not sure why I went that route lyrically. I think there’s a sense of get-up and hustle to the verse that pulled me in that direction. The chorus feels like melodic despair.
         I also struggle with mood swings and ADHD to the point that it affects my relationships, my work, and my sense of self. A lot of it is how I manage the content of my thoughts as well.
         There’s a really ugly trend on the internets these days that romanticizes mental health and mood disorders. Maybe it’s not new, but I see content pop up on my feed that makes me cringe. This song is meant to be an indictment of that sort of content.

I should also clarify that I don’t mess around with opioids, and I don’t want this song to be taken as anything less than extremely critical of using drugs as self-medication for self-diagnosed problems, especially when it hurts the people around you and eventually yourself.

Bug Hunt

            This is an east Texas bug-stomper of a song. CCR meets the dropship scene from Aliens. Lots of Captain Beefheart and Willy DeVille inspiration on this one. Not much else to say about it.
 

photo by Andrew Bisdale

People tend to think of Hawaii as this idyllic laid-back paradise full of hula dancers in grass skirts and coconut bras where everyone get sloshed on Mai Tais nightly at sunset lūʻaus on beaches full of chiseled surfers and letting-it-all-hang-out ukulele strummers where the worst thing you’re likely to face is a cursed Tiki idol that’ll cause you to smash your souvenir ukulele and throw out your back hula dancing before being attacked by a big hairy spider and a spear-wielding Vincent Price archeologist—impressions formed by decades of deliriously kitschy Hawaii-themed pop-culture exotica ranging from Brady Bunch family vacations to Elvis playing the girl-happy scion to a Hawaiian pineapple fortune to Tom Selleck’s garish private dick wardrobe and magnum-sized mustache to an alarming number of cheese-laden rom-coms set on Hawaii half of which star Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. 

But hey, don’t get us wrong, we here at The Deli are hardly averse to kitsch (this writer proudly owns an autographed photo with Don Ho!) and could listen to twee-pop ukulele covers of the Misfits’ “Last Caress” for hours on end. Still, it’s perhaps telling that no musical instrument has been so relentlessly kitsch-ified as the ukulele has been in the USA—which is why the Misfits covers are so pleasing, playing off the contrast between the lyrics about baby-murdering-and-mommy-violating and the cutesy associations of the "uke" kinda like if Glenn Danzig’s kitty litter meme came to life. 

So it’s a nice change of pace to hear a ukulele-based song that dispenses with these associations, instead going for a haunted, hauntingly celestial vibe—the song in question being “The Haunted Mask of Lono” by the artist/entity known as Phranque. And it totally works, alternating between apprehensive pinprick arpeggiations and cresting-wave-of-nervous-tension choruses—the latter helped along by the spectral cello of Jane Scarpantoni (who makes all manner of spooky, shuddering atmospheric sounds) and the steadily churning rhythm section of Josh Davis on drums and Jason Smith on bass (see the top of this page for the video) all of which enhanced by the crystalline production work.

Lyrically, the song opens with the line “stranded here under starring skies” going on to describe a mask that once you “put it on, can’t take it off” culminating with yearning vocal overdubs in the uneasy, etherial choruses. And wouldn’t you know it, singer-songwriter-ukulelist Frank Gallo (better known as the longstanding frontman for Karabas Barabas, a hard-rocking Zappa-esque band known for its songs about “Connecticut” and “Brighton Beach”) not only wrote this song while “on vacation” in Hawaii (not the “scare quotes”!) but he wrote it about literally being masked and stranded—because after a few days of long scenic runs (fun fact: Frank runs triple-marathons in his downtime!) he developed a persistent cough and sure enough tested positive for Covid.

As a result he spent the rest of his Hawaiian trip in self-imposed “tropical prison” in his hotel room overlooking the beach. But hey, when life gives you rotten avocados why not make Rolie Polie Guacamole which is the name of Frank’s children’s music project. So he called up the local musical instrument store and had them leave a ukulele on the hood of his car and resolved to work on kids’ songs but his creative impulses struck out in other directions (as they will!) composing an entire LP’s worth of music inspired in part by a recent read of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s The Curse of Lono and its “bad trip” (in multiple senses!) illustrations by frequent artistic collaborator Ralph Steadman, a book that relates the pair’s trip to Hawaii to cover the 1980 Honolulu marathon for a runner’s magazine and then proceeding to have one of the worst vacations ever.”

Which is fitting on multiple levels because if you dig a little deeper, far from being “laid back” or “kitschy,” this tropical archipelago has had a pretty gonzo history itself. For instance, when English explorer Captain Cook first landed on the Hawaiian Islands at the end of the 18th century, he was assumed to be the fertility deity Lono in human form (also the god of music, and he’s into surfing and rainbows!) due to some lucky happenstance. But after his naval crew spread tuberculosis and venereal diseases among the native population, and after Cook shot and killed a local chief, his luck unsurprisingly ran out, soon after being attacked and dismembered and with his ass literally delivering on a platter back to his countrymen (but still the name he gave to the islands stuck for over 50 years, i.e. “The Sandwich Islands” named after the actual guy who invented the sandwich).

Anyway, by the time six days passed in the hotel Frank had written ten new songs inspired by his unusual circumstances that, after being recorded months later at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, with finishing touches applied at Moon Studios in Brooklyn, will be made available to the general public on 5/27 under the title Mahalo Chicago (available for pre-order now, fool!) an album that according Frank/Phranque "reimagines what a ukulele album sounds like and falls somewhere in the realm of Pinkerton, Plastic Ono Band, The Eraser, Morning Phase, with a dash of Blood Sugar Sex Magic" and I would tend to agree.

Beyond its uniqueness in the present day, I would submit that Mahalo Chicago is actually a throwback of sorts that implicitly calls back to the more radical, experimental roots of Hawaiian uke music such as, for instance, the first big hit in Hawaii’s ukulele repertoire (also its first big “crossover hit” in the US) which is a song called “Aloha ‘Oe” (“Farewell To Thee”). "Aloha ‘Oe" was written in 1878 by no less than the reigning monarch of Hawaii at the time who also happened to be a prolific songwriter, namely Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was both the first female to rule the territory and its final monarch. 

Placed under house arrest in 1893, Liliʻuokalani was dethroned by a coup d’état engineered by colonial interests that resulted in US annexation of the archipelago five years later (full statehood wasn’t granted until 1959). Ironically, it was while under house arrest in the royal palace that the queen transcribed “Aloha ‘Oe," with the notation sent to Chicago for publication in sheet music form and ergo its subsequent crossover popularity was born.

According to sociologist Evelyn Chow, while "Aloha ‘Oe" was "initially composed…as a mele ho’oipoipo (love song) between a man and a woman, over the years it has been socially, politically, and culturally redefined by Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) into a song of melancholic farewell between the Queen and her realm." And with Hawaiian cultural practices in general—from hula to the Hawaiian language itself—all but banned from the islands after the U.S. overthrow, to even perform "Aloha ‘Oe" on the island was viewed as a form of protest. And likewise for other music where “the ‘sweet’ local songs, unintelligible to most visitors, often were anthems of protest against the new rulers.”

It was only with the rise of the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance and the parallel civil rights movement of the late 1960s and ‘70s that these cultural taboos were removed, leading to a new resurgence of slack-key uke music (a key part of the movement itself) along with the revival of other indigenous practices and, concurrently, new musical fusions (Hawaiian psychedelic folk music, anyone?) and a new wave of overseas Hawaiian exotica (full circle) with the Hawaiian struggle for self-determination persisting to this day so keep it in mind next time you hear to that cool ukulele cover of “Skulls” cuz it gives the song a whole new resonance! 

For more on some of the key musical artists of the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance you can check out names like Eddie Kamae, Gabby Pahinui, Palani Vaughan, Leah & Malia, and Edith Kanaka-ole. And when you’re done with that you can check out the sister EP to Mahalo Chicago comprised of three straight up rock songs recorded by Phraque at the same Electrical Audio sessions called 101.3 Krock New York and it’s embedded for your convenience below. (Jason Lee)

As befitting their moniker, Night Sins make music that could easily and equally serve as the perfect soundtrack to a very good night out or a very bad night out depending on how and when the drugs kick in and by “drugs” I mean “hugs” of course (stay off the drugs, fool!) and if you’re a sucker like I am for highly-emotive-yet-emotionally-distant death disco that makes you wanna dance into the abyss and to never, never ever come back down again (as Jarvis Cocker once opined “at four o’clock [in the morning] the normal world seems very, very, very far away”) then you should take a listen to their new single “Kill Like I Do” (Born Losers), a euphoric eulogy that puts across this vibe to the extreme.

Night Sins is a project helmed by Kyle Kimball and “Kill Like I Do” is the second advance single off their upcoming fifth album Violet Age due out this summer, a single that proves you can teach an old goth band new tricks with Kimball honing his “Sisters Of Xymox meets Clan Of Mercy as fronted by Dave ‘Marty Gore’ Gahan” aesthetic and pushing it into new territory while still hitting all the sweet spots—like the driving gated-reverb drumbeat and menacing synth-bass hook, the serpentine guitar line that doesn’t skimp on the shuddering flange or the dirty distortion, and the infectious little sing-songy toy keyboard melody similar to those featured in an least half of the Cure’s song intros and some New Order ones too.

And all this before the vocals even kick in (come inside and burn this all down / spread my ashes on the ground) vocals alternating between a creepily seductive stage whisper (a crucial vocal technique for any self-respecting dark wave singer!) and a double-tracked Peter Murphy-esque baritone that sounds like Bela Lugosi’s not feeling at all well. And you may ask yourself, "Where did such a potent doomy-yet-danceable fatalism originate from?” Well, according to Night Sins’ official bio, the project emerged “around 2010 under the oppressive skies of Philadelphia…fitly connected to a city engrossed in shadow-soaked vices and dilapidated architecture” which makes me think “hmm is Philly actually the North American version of Manchester?” and I’m willing to believe it. So look out for Grand Theft Auto VI: The City of Brotherly Vehicular Manslaughter coming soon.

And when it comes to “shadow-soaked vices” Mr. Kimball has described “Kill Like I Do” as being a “metaphor for having zero self control…about not being able to stop until you’ve hit the floor” and hey I don’t wanna make too many assumptions here but it’s my guess that in his other life pounding the skins for the Philly-based shoegaze mainstay Nothing for over a decade must have taught Kyle a thing or two about this type of subject matter. Just take a gander at Nothing’s Wikipedia page or Spotify bio etc. after which you’ll likely come away saying “here is a band that has seen, and somehow survived, some seriously f*cked up dark times” which fortunately-for-us-all Nothing’s frontman Domenic "Nicky" is expert at trans-mutating into eviscerating, ethereal art…

…which Night Sins does too, but in their own form and fashion, shining an icy cold cold-wavey neon light into the darkness that, far from obliterating the gathering gloom, instead makes it sound newly romantic. (Jason Lee)

photo by Connor Rothstein

It’s really nice when an album title does at least half the heavy lifting for a reviewer such as myself and Le Big Zero’s A Proper Mess (released today on Know Hope Records –> LISTEN HERE <–) is one of those because not since TLC’s CrazySexyCool has an album title so succinctly captured the combination of elements at play which in this case is kind of like a finger painting by a precocious preschooler beset by ADHD and OCD at the same time (lucky kid!) with songs marrying garage rock manic energy and grit to intricate, unconventional song structures.

Which is to say what you’ve got here are nine songs combining the raw and the cooked in equal measure with jagged and cascading song structures, jittery post-punk rhythms and odd shifts in time but with some serious head-nodding grooves to be found too which, not to get too technical about it, it’s a neat trick how on a song like “Beach Seance” it’s the parts in asymmetric 5/4 time that’ll make you wanna get up and do the funky chicken whereas the 4/4 parts have a lurching, off-kilter quality, with the song culminating in a climactic instrumental squall that implodes in its final moments into stuttering inside-out sonics and all of this happens in just over two minutes (only one song on A Proper Mess breaks the three-minute mark, barely at that, but rest assured despite their name Le Big Zero know how to pack a lot of musical calories into their compact song snacks).

Math rock for English majors. There’s the pull quote. Or imagine if Rush had abandoned Ayn Rand early on and kept playing Buddy Holly covers but with crazy arrangements and minus the chipmunk vocals (love ya, Geddy) and speaking of vocals the not-so-secret secret ingredient in Le Big Zero’s musical consommé is undoubtably the sweet and sour male-female harmonies that suture together the ever-shifting musical surfaces with a Richard-and-Linda or better yet John-and-Exene level of dulcet-toned-yet-tension-laden harmoniousness (good luck getting “Horror Movie Pie Fight” out of your head once you’ve heard it a couple times!) adding a hint of sweetness even to lines like “keep your friends just close enough / to push them off the ledge / when the day comes” (from “Anthem,” see below for song analysis) which ok to be fair is one of the exception-to-the-rule lines on the album being sung by frontman/guitarist Michael Pasuit solo minus co-vocalist Carolina Aguilar but you get the idea.

As a working combo Le Big Zero is rounded out by bassist Ben Ross and new drummer Lukas Hirsch, with co-vocal duties currently handled by another new member (due to Carolina being with child) namely Katie Cooney who I can verify nails the harmonies, having seen them live recently, in addition to filling out LBZ’s sound with a second guitar and keyboard parts with resulting plans for the band to expand to a five piece in the future. And if you need any more deep background on the band I’d recommend that you head over here for an account of LBZ’s origins and history by Mr. Pasuit himself. 

Speaking of first-hand accounts, Michael was kind enough to share his thoughts on A Proper Mess with the Deli—providing some handy song-by-song liner notes which are reproduced in their entirety below—which is why you’re the lucky recipient of a special double-dip blog entry here.

In comparison to Le Big Zero’s debut album Ollie Oxen Free, Michael tells the Deli that “A Proper Mess feels more like a complete album, a statement with a beginning, middle, and end…I know we’re caught in a period of streaming content, sound-bytes, and instant gratification, but there’s still an undeniable romanticism about putting a whole album on and letting it play. Additionally, Ollie Oxen Free was aggressively lo-fi while there’s definitely more spit-and-polish with A Proper Mess…opening the album with "All Bark" (as opposed to something as frenetic as "Dryer Lint Trap" with our debut) we hope signals to listeners that something slightly different is happening here. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still the same attention-spastic band, but maybe we’re breathing out more than we’re breathing in this time, if that makes sense.”

******

A Proper Mess track by track:

All Bark

A scathing ode to the work-a-day lifestyle. "Real life will suck a day away/Reprise, anon." We began working on this one as we were recording the first album, and it definitely draws from that woe-is-me lyricism that defines the perspective of Ollie Oxen Free. In the middle of the song, there’s this laundry list of futile gestures that we take part in as a matter of course, without real thought to the pointlessness of it. Musically, it’s a bit more traditionally structured than our typical fare, a bit pop-punk forward, even if it switches between 5/4 and 4/4 and back a few times. The longer intro we felt was a nice table setting for the album. Starts a bit sparse and builds. The outro repeats the same, but almost has this "She’s So Heavy" feel about it.

Anthem

Sigh. Trump. The ridiculousness of politics when the one in charge thinks they’re literally infallible. Oddly enough, this one dates back to the George W. administration. It seemed even more fitting once we dusted off. If you think about what national anthems are, these declarations of who and what we stand for, in spite of what anyone else thinks, on the surface appear very positive and rah-rah, but if you step back they seem foolishly strident and even sociopathic.

Blink and you’ll miss it. This is the only time on the album we repeat a full chorus in its entirety. And the whole thing is in standard timing. We’re a bunch of sell-outs.

Sequel

Carolina came back from the movie Us thinking about doppelgangers, inequality, and the lottery of birth–all wrapped up in an emotional narrative. We open with a confused, second-guessing protagonist, move into triumphant, optimistic moments that track with a musical crescendo, followed by moments of reflection and desperation before an abrupt end. WIth this song, there’s probably the heaviest contrast between melodic singing and angular, raunchy chords. You catch your breath for a bit in the middle, but not for long before it ends where it began.

Horror Movie Pie Fight

The instrumental core of this one came together in the room. We don’t spontaneously jam all that often, with no initial germ of an idea, but that’s how this one came about. That verse part was so fun to play and we just kept repeating and repeating it. I filed it under "hmpf" on my phone to listen back to. After we toyed around with it again and got no further, I again named it HMPF. Then I started wondering what would happen if that actually stood for something. It was completely random that "Horror Movie Pie Fight" emerged. Just sounded like a silly concept. So the lyrics were written about a person that writes a great independent horror film, gets bought by a studio that ruins it, who then all get murdered by real monsters/vampires/etc. during the wrap party. It’s 100% absurd.

Since we were already leaning sillier with this one, and we knew some sort of "Part B" was needed to break-up the verses, I actually took inspiration from the video game Mega Man 2. I was down a YouTube rabbit hole where the intro music to that game came on. 

Unique to the song is that Carolina and I don’t harmonize. It’s the only song that’s sung in parallel octaves instead. I had been listening to a lot of Better Oblivion Community Center, that project with Connor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers. It struck me odd that throughout the duration of the album, they’re just singing in unison. Very sparing harmony parts. But their two voices together were the identity of the album. When we didn’t come upon a decent harmony for HMPF, we decided to go that route as an experiment, and we really liked the result.

Beach Seance

The guitar riff is essentially just syncopated noise. And hella fun to play. Someone told me it reminded them of Sleater-Kinney, which I was thrilled by. As the rhythm section, Tim and Ben did most of the heavy lifting in creating the vibe of the song. The main hits on the chorus are on the "one and" beat, which gives it a nice off-kilter feel. After a rehearsal or two of working on it, Carolina said the song sounded "beachy" while I thought it sounded a little eerie. So, like HMPF, we went the way of abstraction, married the two ideas and explored what that could possibly look like. It’s probably the most ridiculous of our songs conceptually. 

Dumb Summer

There’s something irresistibly cheesy about a he-said/she-said relationship song. Few get it right. There will always be defenders of Grease or "Don’t You Want Me" but "Sometimes Always" by the Jesus and Mary Chain is the one that got it perfect. "Dumb Summer" is exactly what it sounds like. Two people who are clearly no longer a match but sticking it out for one more season even though they know they’re doomed. Then they realize they wasted a perfectly good summer. Ain’t that a stinker?

From a songwriting standpoint, it’s four songs for the price of one. They weren’t even developed as separate ideas, they just naturally flowed into each other. Some more melodic, some more angular, some louder, some softer. Probably the way the end of a relationship might feel anyway. 

Music City

Like everyone else, we weren’t immune to obsessing over the 2019 election season. This is about politicians doing whatever it takes to get supporters, even performative inauthentic gestures. A bit cynical, but who wasn’t feeling a bit cynical in late 2019? There’s this David Bowie song "Candidate" that’s nestled in the middle of "Sweet Thing" on the Diamond Dogs album that’s sounds like an ominous chat between a backer and a contender. That’s kinda the tone. And things like "chow down a sacred cow" are just fun to sing. Hey look at Michael, it’s an actual guitar hook, too.

You Don’t Say

I don’t know who it is specifically, but the person in this song is the absolute worst. They probably work for the bosses in All Bark. Someone who thinks they’re important but all they really do is leech off of others. I always think I’m singing the wrong lyrics when the song starts "You’re in my will." How did we get here so fast? This asshole found their way into your will?

This one started as a pure country tune. There are acoustic recordings of it as a waltz-y song in 3/4. We retrofitted it to have a more garage rock feel.

Coda

Pieced together from a discarded track by my previous band X-Ray Press. It was a song that we wrote earlier in our existence as a band, but never found a home on an album or even in a live set. Yet to me, it always had such potential. I changed the meter from 7/8 to 4/4 at the start of the song so the vocal harmonies could take a more commanding presence. The punkier middle section was written specifically for Le Big Zero as to ground it in the type of rock we do (as opposed to my former band’s aggressive, super-weird math rock approach). I’d like to lay claim to that ending guitar riff, but it was written by X-Ray Press’ guitarist Paurl Walsh. All members of X-Ray Press have song writing credits on that one.

Lyrically, the song is about the band breaking-up a la famous blow-ups like Fleetwood Mac or Oasis. What if we were successful but couldn’t stand each other? Signing autographs at a mall while begrudging each other seems like a torturous fate.

(Jason Lee)

I can totally get where Flycatcher is coming from with their new single ”Sodas in the Freezer” released earlier today and you probably can too because who amongst us hasn’t thrown a soda in the freezer out of sheer indolence and impatience eager for that damn Shasta to be ice freakin’ cold in a matter of minutes but then after a bong hit or six you totally forget about it with explosive consequences and now you’ve got a big mess to clean up but soon after you think to yourself “fuhgeddaboudit, accidents will happen!” and spark up a bowl and toss another Shasta into the icebox which is roughly equivalent to playing an April Fools’ joke on yourself over and over again which just goes to show how some of us never learn. 

And in case you think I’m just talking out my orifice again rest assured the band themselves have confirmed the theory above describing the song as being about “people’s tendencies to acknowledge their shortcomings and poor behavior” while exhibiting a total “inaction to fix them” and when things escalate in the lyrics from a soda left in the freezer to our protagonist carelessly leaving a gas appliance on and seeing double from the fumes then the stakes of kitchen-based disaster are raised considerably along with the song’s metaphorical resonance in terms of humanity’s endless capacity for self-sabotage.

As far as a band bio goes Flycatcher are a four-piece rock combo hailing from New Brunswick, New Jersey, three of whom have immaculately sculpted facial hair (well ok one of them has a bushy beard but still it’s neatly trimmed and shaped) and come to think of it ever since residing in Jersey City a few year back I’ve had sculpted facial hair too so go figure. On the musical side of things Flycatcher carry on in the fine tradition of immaculately sculpted extremely catchy power-pop-that-rocks made in the Tristate Area with oft-witty lyrics and a distinctly que será, será attitude as established by such legendary acts as Fountains of Wayne, The Feelies, The Smithereens, and the ripe–for–revival Cucumbers.

Or as Flycatcher’s official bio puts it their music has a “driving, angular melancholy” which is a phrase I may have to steal and use elsewhere because that’s some high quality music crit-speak and certainly applicable in this case (check the melancholy in that floating-in-space bridge section yo) and maybe even more so for their previous single “Games” (see above plus you may wanna check out the band’s 2019 full-length Songs for Strangers too) and thank goodness because let’s be real no one really enjoys flaccid, perpendicular melancholy too much even if it’s omnipresent in today’s world. And finally, for all you true musos out there, here’s how lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Greg Pease describes the genesis of “Sodas in the Freezer”: 

The idea for the song was initially conceived back in 2017 when we performed it a handful of times during that summer. However, the only aspect of the song that truly remained unchanged was the intro/outro chromatic riff. As I was looking for new song ideas I kept playing that riff over and over and eventually found additional chord progressions that complemented it much better than the original composition. I spent the following months composing the lyrics and melodies while driving to and from work in an attempt to make use of time that was otherwise going to be lost to me. 

So let’s all follow Greg’s example and stop slacking during those long work commutes and start using the time to write songs about some of the terrible dangers that face us around every corner! (Jason Lee)

Death to the remix album. Long live the remix album. 

I mean, sure, an entire album of remixes can be nothing more than a cash grab or career holding pattern or or third-party opportunism. But at their best remix albums can add fascinating new facets to an existing artistic expression as filtered through others’ musical imaginations and predilections. Plus it ain’t exactly 2002 anymore so no one’s selling millions of CDs anymore, remixes or otherwise, I’m lookin’ at you Linkin Park! (RIP Chester B.)

Anyway you can bet French literary theorist Roland Barthes woulda loved how remix albums subvert the very notion that a given work of art has a singular point-of-view or a single decipherable meaning, instead existing in "a space of many dimensions" with each "original" artwork "made out of a tissue of citations." (I’m quoting directly from "The Death of the Author" here, obviously!) Or, to put it another way, the art of the remix "resist[s] the ways that genres normatively operate as straight lines of descent from musical forebears, instead engaging in a queer kind of reproduction, a joyful excess of proliferating versions" which is exactly how Lil Nas X would put it no doubt.

What’s more, remixes subvert the strict dividing line between "originals" and "covers" because they’re some of both and not entirely either and that’s pretty dang "queer" too in the non-pejorative sense.

And if this all sounds a bit highbrow, don’t worry, it’s not really because "remix culture" is totally commonplace these days (no French literary theory required!) whether applying filters to photos, rearranging music into playlists, throwing memes into everyday conversation, making chroeographed Billie Eilish response videos, or taking the latest viral challenge on TikTok (yeah don’t even pretend you didn’t nearly bite the bullet from tripping on nugmeg back in 2020) and thus "remixing" has become smaller and more scaled down as it’s become a common feature of our mundane daily lives.

And when it comes to this "scaling down" maybe that’s why remix EPs seem to be all the rage these days, pretty much overtaking the full-on remix album, with three recent examples being Adeline’s Adi Oasis (Remixes) and Beau’s Forever (and more) and Lapeche’s Spirit Bunnies (Remixes) each comprised of 3 or 4 remixed songs. And with this in mind could it be a mere coincidence that the EP format itself, much like the remix, occupies a vaguely defined middle ground, half-way between stand-alone singles (A-side plus B-side) vs. long-paying full-on-artistic-statements album? (well OK it could be mere coincidence, but I prefer conspiracy theories!)

Anyway, speaking of going outside the constraints of black-and-white either/or categories, Adeline a.k.a. Adeline Michèle is a French-Caribbean bass-playing record-producing multi-instrumentalist-and-vocalist wunderkind who moved to NYC from Paris when she was only 18 to make it as a musician and then did just that—first by playing in the house band for NBC’s Meredith Vieira Show which led to her touring with CeeLo Green, later taking on bass and vocal duties for nü-disco party starters Escort and then releasing of her debut solo LP plus two EPs, the first of which being INTÉRIMES—"it’s title a mashup of the French words "intérim" (the time in between) and "rime" (French for rhyme)…with each track captur[ing] a specific mood as a days turns into night"—an EP which already received its own remix treatment and truly who’s better qualifitied to be releasing remix EPs left-and-right because Adeline is fascinatingly betwixt-and-between in so many ways—seemingly covering all the bases and all the stages in her musical journey at once.

And wouldn’t you know it a song called “Stages” is the first track on the original unremixed version of Adi Oasis and it’s a groovy, deceptively laid back sounding song about getting your groove back during not at all laid back times. And it gets the remix treatment not once but twice on the four-track Adi Oasis (Remixes) and how fitting for a song that’s all about transformation with its lyrics touching on the transcendence of playing music live on stage, and the stage shen went through (along with many others) of not being able to play live on stage but retreating to the studio instead with a music video that features Adeline overcoming these conditions, doing push-ups on the Brooklyn pavement and pull-ups on corner lampposts all while decked out in a leopard-print catsuit.

And then there’s the (not so) little matter of overcoming systemic bias in the music industry that "Stages" also deals with ultimately arriving at a final thereapuetic stage of self-reliance (just gonna do me / don’t need nobody […] to tell me / how to lay my bass down) but not without transcending this state of isolation with the support of allies like guest vocalist KAMAUU (treat her like your Muva or she’ll have to beat / your ass like she’s your Daddy) who returns the favor for Adeline’s production work and vocal feature on his 2020 mega-hit “Mango" and damn, so many levels! (and speaking of levels don’t ask me what happened with the crazy block of random characters above, but I’m just gonna roll with it because they don’t seem to be erasable and this is a pretty crazy blog entry anyway…)

Both the remixers of “Stages” wisely keep the emphasis on Adeline’s Bootsy-worthy bass part but otherwise they go in two opposite directions. First, the British four-piece Yakul strips away just about everything but the bass and vocals which are baked into a musical brownie of gooey, woozy keyboards and a shuffling beat that only amplifies the Zen self-contained contentment of a line like “just gonna do me, don’t need nobody” as a spacey exploration into inner space. Meanwhile the remix by Natasha Diggs is the extroverted version, jacking up the tempo considerably with a thumping house beat that gives a boost to the self-empowerment theme not to mention being a gift to aerobics instructors everywhere.

This leaves two more remixes on the EP—one being the lead-off track, a remix of "Maintain" by Australian-Germanic DJ/producer Jafunk who plays up the blunted out housebound escapism depicted in the lyrics (gotta meditate / gotta wash my face / gotta get out this place / gotta smoke a J / can’t go out anyway) with Adeline’s rubbery bass pushed up in the mix alongside a new four-on-the-floor beat and syncopated guitar vamping and a keyboard solo with a phat funky Moog sound that should get your funky fatty shaking. And then finally there’s the penultimate track, a remix by Soul Clap that puts an electro-house-acid-jazz-cocktail-hour spin on the Barry White-worthy “Mystic Lover” complete with newly introduced horn charts and flute solo.

But whatever your feelings may be on remixes and/or EPs in the end these are all just useful delivery mechanisms for a bunch of nice, smooth tunes so my final piece of advice to you, dear reader, is that you "butter" check out these three EPs because they’ll get you "churnt up" for sure [end scene, curtain and bow]. (Jason Lee)

((photo above and cover image below by Shelby K))

You’d be forgiven for assuming a band called Birthday Girl would write songs mostly about what they want what they really really want seeing as birthdays are all about making a wish and having it come true whether a nice hot bath or nookie or cake cake cake cake cake. 

But instead, their recent single “anymore” is all about what the Birthday Girl really really doesn’t want as in “I don’t want you anymore” repeated about 13-and-a-half times culminating in a bloody altercation outside somebody’s party (they’ll all think / I killed somebody) seemingly inspired by a serious case of amour fou a/k/a “crazy love” (you’re fucking crazy / but I love you all the same) in the midst of a relationship notable for its extreme and erratic power dynamics (I know you get mad when I treat you like a person / you wanna be a dog and get your heeeeead scratched-uh) and contradictory desires (you want a Mommy and a whore / I could be both of them but / I don’t want to anymore / I don’t want to anymore) which yeah I quoted that last line as “I don’t want you anymore” above but hey it’s only fair rock critics also get to be contradictory sometimes.

On the musical side of things “anymore” is a straight up pop-punk banger (who says the Deli ain’t hip in 2022?!) which over the span of its few minutes moves from stripped-down confessional to anthemic singalong to cage-rattling rage with an infectious hook to boot and a snotty ‘tude again with emphasis on “I don’t wanna” over “I wanna” so what more do you want really?

Admittedly I don’t know a thing about these people. But what I can tell you for sure—if their Bandcamp page is to be believed—is that “Birthday Girl is a six-piece rock band living in Brooklyn comprised of singer/songwriter Eva Smittle, bass/songwriter Layla Passman, rhythm guitarist Max Bush, lead guitarist/producer Avinoam “Avi” Henig, drummer Akiva Henig, and keyboard/synth Alex DeSimine [that] spans experiments with different genres, often taking inspiration from 90s alternative rock, riotgrrrl, emo, and pop." It’s also been said that "anymore" was the first song the group wrote as a full combo and what’s more both Avi and Eva are in another groovy band called JessX that’s been described elsewhere as “a DIY project for gay punks” so there you go!

And finally, one last thing I can say with some certainty is that if you’re into “anymore” you’ll probably dig Birthday Girl’s 2020 EP Roxy too not to mention the CrazySexyCool (TLC™) music videos for two of their songs off the EP (both viewable above!) with “Hollywood Girl” strongly evoking AOL-era dial-up-modem pop-up-window slow-loading Web 1.0 PG-13 erotica a/k/a “glitchrotica” (prospective new genre name!) whereas “MAN UP!” is something like if Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was reenacted by two members of The Cockettes so now you know what to do clearly. (Jason Lee)

Dead Tooth’s EP Pig Pile (Trash Casual / Academy Fight Songs) lives up to its title and then some featuring not only “pig piles” but also the aforementioned swine piled onto piles of sheep (an image from the EP’s title song and cover art!) not to mention the packs of white wild wolves eyeing your coop and soft white doves conspiring with savage baboons to make a man out of you and then of course there’s the hawks and fury’d doves flying off white horses bucking hard and spitting blood knee high in crude oil and that’s just to paraphrase a few of the animal-related lyrics on the record. 

So clearly we’re talking less “docile petting zoo” and more “insurrectionary animal farm” because the beasts on Pig Pile are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore which is more than justified and I wouldn’t be surprised if they invited Orca, Cujo, and Willard’s rodent friends over for later.

In the interim since Dead Tooth put out their debut EP Still Beats the DT’s spent their Plague Years pretty productively by putting out a clutch of compelling stand-alone singles including a summer beach party jam (see below) plus two collaborations with Darius VanSluytman from electro-soul rockers No Surrender and a cover version of a well-known disco anthem transformed into a yearning dirge about trying to survive, and thus they could have easily put out a full LP’s worth of material if they’d just thrown all these other songs onto the "Pig Pile" but there’s a reason "EP" rhymes with "integrity" I suppose.

Pig Pile sees Dead Tooth up the ante on their already nervy and dirty post-punk with six gnarly, gnarled songs full of intertwining guitar and no shortage of shredding (shredded guitar is rich in fiber!) ably anchored by the roustabout rhythms of drummer Dylan DePice and bassist Jason Smith who provide ballast for the vocal musings of head songwriter Zach Ellis aka Zach James aka The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman as he pivots between ranting-and-raving-street-preacher-who-may-actually-be-a-derelict-prophet mode (“Hell Shack,” “Pig Pile,” "Hollow Skin") and slapback-echo-laden-Lux-Interior-in-baritone-tones mode (“Nightmare America") and full-on-crooning-slow-burn-building-to-a-head-and-heart-clutching-climax mode (“Blind,” “Riverboat”).

To the ears of this listener all this rampant Pig Piling resonates strongly with the contemporary moment in all its weird-mixed-up dread and euphoria glory whilst spinning around on a planet playing chicken with its own fate at least until all those chickens come home to roost. And “Blind” is a prime example building up gradually like a suspense movie soundtrack equal parts ominous and intoxicating (that chorus tho!) and the same goes for the eerily beautiful feral-fever-dream postindustrial walkabout music video featuring the animal graces of dancer/choreographer Nola Sporn Smith and maybe all this is tied to Zach’s skateboarding past too and the Platonic ideal of living forever in-the-moment whilst teetering on the edge but who knows.

If you wanna "read more about it" re: the history of Dead Tooth and about their creative process and all that sorta stuff then you could start by watching the interview above and then by clicking on some of the hyperlinks found in this piece but the quick version is that the band was borne out of a chance encounter between our man Zach and one Andrew Bailey while both employed at a vegan diner near Brooklyn’s fabled Sweatshop Rehearsal Studios (RIP) and at the time the former didn’t even know the latter played (and still plays) guitar in a scrappy little band called DIIV who likewise know a thing or two about joining together tension, bliss, and catharsis.

And finally just to make sure you’re all up to date (that’s our job!) the Dead Toothers spent the past week down in Tejas playing SXSW culminating with the Austin EastCiders X BdBK X Our Wicked Lady showcase, and not too long before that they were victorious in the OWL Winter Madness Battle of the Bands (who needs "March Madness" sports yuck!) which led to an officially designated sponsorship by CHEETOS® brand Crunchy FLAMIN’ HOT® Cheese Flavored Snacks so here’s hoping some of that hot processed cheese-puffery fairy dust rubs off on the rest of us because we’re animals like that. (Jason Lee)

Repping NYC at SXSW this coming Wednesday…

I’m not sure which benign deity brought the twin-sister dark electronica duo known as MOTHERMARY into our plane of existence (Lilith? Kali? Ishtar? Cher? Dolly?) but we owe them a debt of gratitude because not since the heyday of Prince and Madonna have there been two such solid proponents for eroticizing religious dogma which is great for Christianity in particular with its central conceit of “original sin” where being tempted to enjoy a piece of deciduous by a sexy wifey made from your own rib is grounds for the eternal damnation of humankind not to mention eternal shame at our own nakedness. 

And then it doesn’t help matters when a few millennia later these same humans somehow managed to murder God’s only son in a particularly gruesome fashion and all this is without doubt deeply guilt-inducing and deeply unsexy. Or is it?

MOTHERMARY offer strong evidence to the contrary on their debut full-length I Am Your God released in late January and they know what they’re talking about because Elyse Winn and Larena Winn were raised in a devout Mormon household in Missoula, Montana (where a deep love for music was self-reportedly instilled alongside the Mormonism) and both attended BYU before moving to Salt Lake City and eventually NYC (first Elyse and later Larena) and recording their debut single “Catch Fire” which caught the attention of their friend Alex Frankel who’s also one-half of synthpop duo Holy Ghost! (how appropriate!) who passed it along to Megan Louise at Italians Do It Better which is basically the go-to label for cooly restrained yet highly and sublimely dramatic electro music—kind of like Italo-disco on steroids and tranquilizers at the same time—a perfect fit for the duo and their own melding of kewl and hawt, sinful and angelic.

And speaking of hotness “Catch Fire” is smoking hot—all swelling organs and throbbing bass and pulsating rhythms accompanied by Johnny Jewel-style synth-tom fills (RIP Chromatics and the fabled Dear Tommy LP) with lyrics from the POV of the sneaky snake in the Garden of Eden (see the truth when / it’s in the nude / taste the fruit / put the blame on me) and geez if Tipper Gore ever heard this song she’d likely have an aneurysm on the spot nevermind if she saw the music video we’re talking heart attack (brief synopsis: Bible study group/faith healing ceremony transforms into a polymorphously perverse strip club complete with crucifix tossing and leather-studded-slow-motion gyrating by Elyse and Larena).

But it’s not all “hotness for hotness’s sake” as MOTHERMARY point out I Am Your God “isn’t about a god complex, it is an invitation to ponder what you worship. It’s about women reclaiming their holiness and inviting you to acknowledge your own…it is a mirror to religion both reflecting the bad and salvaging the good” with the very name MOTHERMARY being “the ultimate symbol of religi[ous] hypocrisy & the insane expectations placed on women…These two extremes. Have children to procreate, but don’t be sexual beings.” The Madonna/Whore complex is an impossible needle to thread for sure but on the album’s most recent single and music video (title track “I Am Your God”) the Winn twins come pretty darn close with a song that floats by on ethereal clouds of airy heavenly electronic oscillations, but it’s equally voluptuous and lusty (and a bit creepy with that pitch-shifted vocal) with the repeated line “I can come again” straddling the same line between holy and horny.

I guess guilt is complicated that way when you think about it—it’s an age-old tool for subjugation (especially used against women natch) but keeping people form what they want and need only builds desire upon desire and before long they’re developing some pretty elaborate fantasies and fetishes to redirect some of that energy not to mention making cool art and beautiful music to express their frustrations and longing not to mention how it makes being bad feel so good so guilt is a volatile thing to say the least. 

But enough of this music blogger’s theological thoughts! In closing it should be mentioned that some of I Am Your God was created together with compatriot/co-producer Chris McLaughlin with whom Elyse Winn likewise collaborates on the Cigar Cigarette project fronted by Chris where she takes on the role of co-composer, art director and music video director, and by the way MOTHERMARY direct or at least co-direct all their own music videos which makes sense given their backgrounds in art and theater alongside music plus “sacrilegious spectacle” of course and if the “Pray” video below doesn’t deliberately riff on Garbage’s glorious video for “Queer” I’ll eat my hat!

And so let’s pray all these beneficent forces keep working together and spawning more (un)holy ravishing music because the world really needs it and I’d even be willing to try and guilt them into it. (Jason Lee)