Last month the band Scam Avenue unveiled a long-playing record titled Scam Avenue and maybe you know how the whole self-titled thing is often shorthand for an intimately-revealing-or-even-autobiographical record which appears to apply here. At the very least, Scam Avenue is a marked departure from the pair of EPs they put out in 2015 and ‘16 (Mercury and Sailor, respectively) comprised mostly of hook-laden-lushly-produced-yet-minimalistic-coldwave-infused-electropop-with-a-guitar-peeking-through-every-now-and-again-songs-suffused-with-a-playful-sense-of-sensuously-inclined-tightly-coiled-sexual-tension which just happens to be a verbatim description of my favorite niche category to be found in the CD bins of Tower Records back in the day when physical media and highly-hyphenated genres ruled the roost.

In the intervening years Scam Avenue released but a single single—a song called “Jailbird” with lyrics about “the history you now disown” and “a crisis of your very own” (so long, flirtatious electropop!) featuring some of the moodiest saxophone interludes (played by Stephen Chen of San Fermin fame) to be heard this side of Tears For Fears’ early repertoire, played atop a downbeat, descending chord progression and a skittering breakbeat style rhythm, culminating in a tremulous upper-register sax cry sustained for the better part of 30 seconds that all taken together could lead even Roland Orzabal towards a call to check in and make sure you’re doing ok—a song that (as it turns out) served as a fitting precursor to the new album and which is fittingly included on said album.  

So it’s no surprise to learn that the band’s principle-but-not-only-songwriter-plus-producer-guitarist-synthesist Laurence Kim had been through some stuff in the preceding years (and hey haven’t we all!) which he himself describes with admirable candor on the band’s Bandcamp page: “I had been in a relationship with someone and it came to an end. That was the inspiration for about half of the songs on the album. In addition, I had already been working on some other songs, which were in various stages of completion. So the album wasn’t conceived as a break-up album, but it could be viewed in that way. Each song can be seen as an expression of some aspect of that central theme.” 

So there you have it and kudos to the band for not putting out any music in the interim because who really who wants to hear a bunch of I’m-so-happy-and-fulfilled-in-my-current-long-term-stable-relationship songs. Scam Avenue has instead admirably jumped straight from the coy, flirtatious phase of romanic infatuation depicted on their initial EPs to the post-breakup-baroque-electro-indie-rock cri de coeur statement of their debut full-length, a worthy new entry to the canon of classic break-up albums like Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours, Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Kanye West’s 808s & Heartbreak, and Kermit the Frog’s Unpigged. And hey, I bet you didn’t know that the birth of the LP format as a medium for popular music owes its existence to a certain fedora-wearin’ mafia-lovin’ artist’s desire to explore and express the various facets of post-separation bereavement and if you don’t believe it I recommend you watch the enlightening video below.

Back to Scam Avenue, you can tell that this album’s gonna be a a melancholic headtrip from its very opening moments when “Fevers Fade” fades in on a burbling, circling synth arpeggio complete with knob-twisting timbral warping (*insert joke here about romantic withdrawal and knob-twisting*) which I’d say is musical semaphore for “help I’m stuck deep inside the folds of my own grey matter but hold up it’s not so bad in here and not so bad retreating from the world at large and just tripping out on my own emotional fluctuations and whatever else I got laying around” (the track’s duration is exactly 4:20 if you get my gist and I’m guessing that you do) an impression only enhanced with the layer-by-layer entrance of Nate Smith’s dead-eyed disco beat and Julie Rozansky’s goth-funk bassline and singer Devery Doleman’s airy falsetto haltingly reciting the opening lines (“blood / in the water / falls / like a flower / feels like fate / fevers fade”) after which even more layers of swirling synths and choppy rhythm guitar and plinky piano melody and bass guitar lead parts are introduced before the song folds back in on itself, ending back where it started with the isolated arpeggio line.

It’s really quite the low-key tour de force so it was a wise sequencing decision on Scam Avenue’s part to follow it up with the floaty-retro-dream-poppy ballad “To the Quick,” a song that’ll make you wanna go Julee Cruising Into The Night and maybe I should mention here the highly-relevant fact that Devery and Julie also play together in a Twin Peaks/David Lynch-themed band called F*ck You, Tammy (if you’ve seen Twin Peaks: The Return you’ll get it) which seems to have strongly informed this song because it’s got some strong Roadhouse vibes for sure. 

And here’s a fun fact you probably won’t care about but I’ll share it anyway—the first post-Covid lockdown gig that I attended was seeing F*ck You, Tammy in mid-May 2021 playing outdoors in rural Pennsylvania in front of a drive-in movie screen as part of a weekend long tribute to (and viewing of) David Lynch’s filmic oeuvre at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater (the only drive-in in the world still screening 35-mm movies on the regular for all you b-movie cineastes out there) and lemme tell you it was a gig both wonderful and strange. 

Anyway it’s probably clear by now that I’m starting to lose concentration and anyway you don’t need me to spell out the rest of Scam Avenue for you (the band or the album) so just move on to the heart-rending harmonies of the six-minute-plus “Destroyer” which I’d say is one of the best aching-with-longing-indie-pop-epics since Lush’s “Desire Lines” (ok ok I’ll stop now) and keep going. And if you have any more questions I recommend you head out to the nearest forest clearing and throw some stones at a bunch of empty bottles. (Jason Lee)

photo by Ebru Yildiz

Between the name of the band and the name of their new single (released just today!) and the photo above and the video below, I’m not sure I’d wanna meet Knifeplay alone in a dark alley.

But I would wanna listen to “Hurt Someone” alone in a dark alley because it’s perfect music for a dark isolated place (whether interior or exterior) but at the same time perfect music for a place that’s ethereal and womb-like and otherworldly, with the steam rising up from a gutter nearby that catches the blue and pink light cast by neon signs just outside the alley while also diffusing the glow of dancing red and orange flames burning in the multiple unattended garbage bins that dot the landscape of Philly’s grittier neighborhoods, or at least they do if you believe what you see in the movies, like in pretty much every Rocky movie where there’s at least one flaming garbage bin to be seen in the requisite jogging-through-the-streets-to-the-strains-of-horn-driven-disco scene.

You can probably tell I’m going for a cinematic vision here and it makes sense because Knifeplay makes widescreen-worthy life soundtracks with layer-upon-layer of oceanic guitars and hovering strings/synths and rhythms like a steady undertow that’ll make you wanna swim out to sea so far away that the rest of the world fades away from view. (or it’ll make you wanna hang out in a dark alley at night, I really need to pick one metaphor and stick with it!)

Anyway, Knifeplay is a six-piece made up of Alex, Johnny, Jack, John, Max, and Tj (no, I have no idea how to pronounce the latter) and according to the official press release released by their record label Born Loser Records it’s “their first new piece of music in nearly three years. Engineered by Philadelphia’s Jeff Zeigler, Hurt Someone offers a dark yet empathetic view of a character who fits right in with the world they’ve crafted in song since their early EPs” and there you have it.

And while you’re at it, you should head to your nearest streaming service asap and check out the single’s B-side as well (“Ornament”) which is hardly ornamental because if the A-side is ethereal and amniotic, this instrumental B-side is the side that’ll actually make you feel like you’re about to be stabbed to death in a back alley because the track ratchets up the nervous tension with a delicious-yet-demented-sounding dissonance until it builds up and up and up to an almost (almost) unbearable climax and then suddenly jump-cuts to black. (Jason Lee)

—>>> CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO CLIMATES’ NEW SINGLE “END OF NIGHTS” RELEASED TODAY!!! <<<—

In 1999 Universal Pictures released an apocalyptic-themed thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger called End of Days that the Washington Post panned as “all fire-and-brimstone bunk, a tired compendium of involuntary crucifixions, grim messages carved into human flesh, fly buzzings, ominous choral chants on the soundtrack and at least one head twisting.” 

Fortunately, Climates’ new single “End of Nights” has nothing to do with this movie (not even one head twisting!) but still it provides an interesting point of comparison. Whereas Y2K-era-end-of-the-world scenarios tended to be big, loud and stoopid (e.g., Satan trying to impregnate one of the hottie high-school witches from The Craft in order to spawn the Anti-Christ) in 2021 as depicted by Climates in fitting-to-the-times form, we’ve come to realize that the apocalypse may be a little more quiet and insidious, to the point where it may have already started (“I feel apocalyptic at night / and I sleep fine”) and anyway it may be time for a good house-cleaning (“pick up pieces / take them to the morning / waiting on sunrise”) especially for those among us that stand to lose the most (“watching all your empires thriving / hope the walls are high enough where you sleep”) who may finally be held accountable for their excesses (it’s beyond the scope of this piece, but you may wanna check out the Red Bull Music Academy article linked here on apocalyptic themes in ‘90s hip hop, which were plentiful, in terms of how these themes tied into racial injustice and societal reckoning).

Returning to Climates, personally, I consider “End of Nights” to be a worthy new entry into the established canon of doomsday songs—songs that often make one think hey the end times could actually be kinda sublime in a goodbye-cruel-world-let’s-throw-ourselves-into-the-abyss kind of way, or even straight-up exciting-and-energizing-in-a-wiping-the-slate-clean-and-starting-over kind of way—joining the likes of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” Prince’s “1999,” and heck even Nena’s “99 Luftballons” if you’re up for a new-wavey doomsday and who isn’t. In fact, I’d say Climates combines elements from all these aforementioned musical approaches to the apocalypse because “End of Nights” brings together a nervy new-wave vibe (the band could write earworm pop hooks in their sleep apparently) with Five Years-style wistfulness alongside a 1999-ish drive to party ’til the wheels fall off as in “something perfect / if only for a moment / end on a high note.”

In other words, we’re talking levels here folks. “End of Nights” opens with a catchy crunchy note-bending guitar riff played by the band’s newest member whose name is Mitch (we’re on a first-name basis here!) soon joined by a pulsing rhythm section and the chiming opaque tones of the band’s other guitarist Molly (aww, Mitch ’n’ Molly!) and already you’re given some idea of Climates’ gift for mashing up sparkly pop and post-punk grit (there’s a reason they refer to their music as “glitter grunge”) a compelling contrast that’s only reinforced by bassist/vocalist Theadora’s twisty, melodic basslines and her airy-yet-penetrating pipes with her voice swathed in warm reverb (production/engineering duties are filled by the dream-pop-team of Digo & Jennica from the band Colatura) and from there on the song moves through multiple build-ups and breakdowns (the guitar intro reappears later, but enmeshed under many more musical layers) and it all feels highly cinematic even if there’s no ominous choral chants (but there are some nice harmonies!) 

Speaking of levels, I had a nice conversation with Theadora recently which greatly informed everything I’ve had to say about the song so far, and she used this striking phrase describing “End of Nights” as being about “clarity as things get darker” (levels!) and that really unlocked the whole song for me ("darkness as enlightenment” is one of the most appropriately-twisted optimistic takes on recent times I can imagine). So, besides the whole apocalyptic angle, you can also take “End of Nights” as being about the night itself, and more specifically, the fellowship of nighthawks and “creative people who thrive at night” (makes sense to me as I sit here at 4am finishing up this writeup) who already understood all about “darkness resetting things, making things truer” before the rest of the world caught on, living an after-hours existence at the “end of the world” in the sense of existing at the figurative end or edge of the world, off the grid, under the radar, otherwise removed from daytime’s demands and rituals. 

And finally, speaking of The End Of The World as an actual geographic place…when I mentioned to Theadora how her band’s music strongly evokes actual physical spaces in my mind, or simply space itself (how perfect is the name Climates then?!) what with their songs’ highly ambient, environmental atmospherics and the tangible sense of open space that you can often hear in their songs (composing her songs on bass has something to do with this as Theadora revealed to me, given how it leaves so much open space to work around, and suddenly I feel like listening to some King Tubby tracks) a sense of open space that makes me think these songs would be perfect for the soundtrack of a road movie, especially one with its protagonists traveling through the American Southwest, and as it turns out, Theadora loves this part of the country and its vast, wide-open landscapes, inclined as she is to take cross-country road trips whenever given the chance, and as it also turns out, the cover image of “End of Nights” is a shot of the night sky taken in Arizona by her truck-driver friend Keith Blevins, a friend she met at a Loves Travel Stop somewhere in the Western US (the cover image was edited by Theadora adding the superimposed sunrise, again, layers!) a guy who’s also a photographer who captures evocative images of "for spacious skies and purple mountain majesties" alongside his other big-rig adventures, and then add on top of all this the cover image of the band’s 2020 single “Super 8” which was taken in Sedona, Arizona, an image shot by Keira who also happens to be Climates’ drummer (Sedona, in particular, is a fave place of Theadora’s natch) and it just goes to show how powerfully music can communicate deep-seated associations and emotions and even specific places and landscapes and climates, especially when you’ve already somewhat on the same wavelength as your audience. Cool.

It’s just these kinds of unexpected synchronicities that tend to reveal themselves late into the night when the layers of the mundane world are peeled away. And so I’ll close here by declaring Climates to be a 21st century indie rock reincarnation of Arizona-based story-song master and country music giant Marty Robbins (harmonies! reverb! moodiness! wide-open landscapes!) which is a thought that would only occur to me at 5 in the morning, and more importantly, I’ll encourage you, dear reader, to click the link at the top of this page and go listen to the new song by Theadora, Molly, Mitch, and Keira before the apocalypse hits so you better snap to it. (Jason Lee)

photo credit (top of page): Francis McNeill

This past weekend Fiona Silver released her latest single (most of the profiles written to date about the native-New-Yorker-turned-bottle-blond-R&B-and-soul-belter refer to her as a “spitfire” so I’m going to resist that trend oh whoops..) and it’s another corker, a contemporary throwback closing-credits-ready mood piece with some seriously soulful feels (the track was recorded in Atlanta with Randy Michael as co-writer and producer) that’s something like a classic girl group number sans the girl group and it’s very appropriately titled “Swoon.”

And by feels I mean it’s an aching atmospheric ballad full of gently caressed drums, shivering strings, mellow groove low end, mournful organ chords, and crying electric guitar (dig that heavy reverb and tremolo not to mention the subtle yet sublime note bends in the solo). And that’s even leaving out the classic-Americana-high-lonesome-style-whistling towards the end, all of which echoes the lyrical content about “deep black skies” and “cry[ing] lovebirds” and the like. And in the chorus, when Ms. Silver reveals that “everyday / from midnight to noon / autumn to June / you make my heart swoon,” not only do you actually believe it but you also feel it because this song is a straight-up declaration of lovesick blues that’s more along the lines of Hank Williams than Doris Day when it comes to coping with the blues (tho’ the latter could get a bit emo when she was down for it).

And hell, I’m down for it. In fact I’m sincerely hoping that “Swoon” is the first advance single from an album (or an EP, I’ll even take an EP) to be titled Staring Pensively Into Your Whiskey Tumbler While Thinking About What Could Have Been, Or What Still Might Be, Against All Odds, Because You’re A Hopeless Dreamer That Way. Because who couldn’t use an album by that title right now or any time really…

…which is precisely why artists like Fiona Silver (or Lou Ann Barton, or Bettye LaVette, or…maybe just check out Brooklyn-based Dala Records‘ roster for more contemporary examples) are still necessary in this world, artists who write songs for cutting a rug at the juke joint on a Saturday night and songs for chain smoking Lucky Strikes alone at the kitchen table on a Sunday morning, songs that evoke and update the universal sentiments of dance-ready R&B and good time rock ’n’ roll and gutbucket blooz for modern types who’re still cool for cats. (Jason Lee)

photo credit: Michael Lavine; HMUA: Paige Campbell 

Some people say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” And some people say “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” And then there’s the people in the middle, who say “taking pictures of music is worth a thousand hours of dancing about architecture.” These people are very confused.

Or are they? Because I know of at least one person who’s the embodiment of this latter statement and her name is Jen Meller—photographer, media instructor, music video director, editor, dancer, actor, DIY music capturer, livestream videographer, product pic lighting ninja warrior, and maker of nine-foot-tall mushroom installation pieces perfect for “dancing about architecture.” 

So how’d we get here? It all began when we planned to post some of Jen’s images as part of the recent piece on A Very Special Episode and their debut full-length, Fix Your Hearts of Die. But since the Deli’s MySpace-era blogging platform can’t accommodate more than one photo per post (so DIY!) we came up with the idea of making a video montage (or multiple video montagi) of Jen’s photography (both studio and live shots) set to AVSE’s music, which you can view above and below.

Jen is also friends with and neighbors of AVSE so I thought why stop at using Jen’s photos when she could also be plied for "behind the music" style salacious tidbits about the band and their lifestyle choices. Well, suffice to say, the band aren’t that inclined to salaciousness (rumor has it they spend most of their down time binge watching Law & Order re-runs, the ones with Ice-T) but still in a scintillating phone conversation Jen did have some interesting things to say about AVSE and about her own work—which is cool cuz it’s about time we started featuring some of the many “artists behind the artists,” in particular those who make musicians presentable in visual form. Our conversation has been loosely translated into the writeup below.

Beginning from the beginning, Ms. Meller grew up in South Huntington, which is in Suffolk County, which is on Long Island, a town that Wikipedia notes is “the birthplace of Walt Whitman, and the Walt Whitman Shops mall is nearby.” I kid you not this is exactly what the entry says, which then goes on to observe that “the Walt Whitman Shops were previously known as the Walt Whitman Shopping Center.”

Fending off the siren call of the Walt Whitman Food Court, Jen moved to Washington D.C. to attend American University and got her B.A. and B.F.A. in photography which allowed her to say F.U. to the M.A.N. and get an M.F.A. which led to work in fashion photography and also a gig with the D.C. based record label Blight Records doing press photos, set design, stage design, and lighting all while still in grad school (sorry Jen if I’m getting any chronology wrong here! I’m just a music blogger!) and through this association with a label self-reportedly specializing in “challenging new forms of sonic expression" with artists on their roster like “Philly slime wiz Nyxy Nyx” (sounds cheesesteak related but I’m not sure) it all led to Jen becoming cooler than she though she’d ever be, but still quite modest I would say.

The next stage in Jen Meller’s professional development came with a move to New York City, skyscrapers and everything, where she really spread her wings—shooting and later hosting live band segments for BTR Live (R.I.P.) for a couple years while also pursuing many other undertakings (need someone to make you a floral mic stand? Jen’s got you covered) and it was through a meet cute Zoom interview for BTR Live that Jen and AVSE were brought together becoming quick “pandemmy pals” which led to an IRL picnic date with the band and the rest is history. 

Even when AVSE had only demos to go by Jen says she was drawn to their “intense rhythms” and later to how mesmerizing they were live (quite true!) and to how lead singer Kasey Heisler’s voice “stood out in a room the way Stevie Nicks’s does” which is high praise indeed, especially seeing as how the white winged dove has been know to set rooms on fire.

When it comes to Fix Your Hearts Or Die, in particular, Jen says the latest song she’s been hooked on is “New Coke” because of its “sense of anger and sense of release” (see photo montage #1 above) and because it’s a "good song to throw on after a bad day." She also praises the LP for capturing “the chemistry they all have together” seeing as it’s their first record with drummer Chayse Schutter who goes all Phil Collins taking over lead vocal duties on one track, “Evergreene” (see photo montage #2 above). Speaking of a unique band chemistry, Jen captures it in her photography: dark-but-drenched-in-color shots, lit by swaths of glowing neon and moody studio lighting, that serve as the perfect visual counterpart to the band’s auditory presence—images sometimes crisp and vivid, other times blurred/oversaturated into abstraction, much as AVSE’s songs pivot between extremes of clean and pristine indie pop-rock, and grimy pedal-saturated white noise freakouts.

And hey, here’s a scoop: Jen and AVSE are slated to shoot a music video later this month with a projected release date sometime in February 2022 (incidentally, all the videos in this post were conceived/directed/edited by Jen save for the Mixed Chicks doc above, solely edited by Ms. Meller). Regarding her music video-making technique, Jen says she’ll listen to a song hundreds of times until images start organically forming in her head, later pulled together to create some kind of story in consultation with the musicians and their own visions using “tweezers to pluck out the right idea.”

Jen says she views making videos as a form of choreography seeing as she first came to filmmaking as a dancer (those "intense rhythms") and you’ll see what she means if you watch the vid she made for Nihiloceros’ “iamananimal” which was filmed in one single take and which obviously required some serious choreography to pull off with a hand-held camera trailing Shadow Monster‘s Gillian Visco as she wanders about a labyrinthine two-story house in the midst of a surrealist fever dream and so if you wanna see what “dancing about architecture” looks like, well here ya have it.

And how ‘bout this to bring things full circle, it was groundbreaking Ukrainian-American dancer/choreographer/experimental filmmaker/photographer Maya Deren (1917-61) who first attracted Jen to photography so you do the math because I’ve reached about a thousand words already. (Jason Lee)

Reader’s note: This write-up is the first of two pieces on A Very Special Episode’s album Fix Your Hearts Or Die, the second of which is a profile and interview with music photographer/video director/general polymath Jen Meller who’s worked extensively with AVSE and who generously provided the image above.

The recent holiday got me thinking “what’s it all about, Alfie?” and here’s what I came up with after binging on chicken tamales from my local taco truck washed down with a few El Presidentes in the middle of the night. Halloween is all about transformation—much like a tamale emerging from its protective corn husk, and yes I’m over-reaching—with kids transformed into demonic pixies looking for their next sugar fix (ok, not such a big change there) and adults transformed into monsters and witches and sexy EMT workers, etc. with the open secret being how it all serves as an excuse to fully inhabit the freaks we already are inside (by “playing pretend” oh the irony) all the while peeling back the façade of normal life and exposing it’s oft-monstrous or just plain weird nature, not to mention our too-frequent complicity in playing the roles we’ve been assigned.

Deep, huh? Or, to put a more positive spin on it, Halloween is an all-American spin on Old World carnivalesque rituals, not to mention Caribbean and South American Carnival traditions, where trickster figures rule the day and where established identities are subverted, taboos broken, excesses accepted, and existing power relations turned on their head. Check out Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World if you got time and wanna read more about it but I’d better move on for now.

Or, as lead singer/lyricist Kasey Heisler of A Very Special Episode puts it on “Fuck Everything,” a track off Fix Your Hearts Or Die, the band’s debut full-length release: “I’m here but I feel like I’m losing me” and it’s not an isolated sentiment, because the notion of identities being up for grabs, potentially transformed and power relations along with them, pops up again and again in Kasey’s lyrics—like on “Cowboy” where she rebukes the song’s titular cowboy in such terms (“you know you had my going / tell me exactly who I am / to keep yourself from knowing”) or on “Weather the Storm” which evokes volatile weather systems as a parable for weathering change (like H.G. Wells said "adapt or perish" or in other words "fix your hearts or die") or on “Fire Walk With Me,” a mood piece that samples dialogue from the film of the same name in which Laura Palmer routines transforms from “goody two shoes Laura" to “very naughty girl Laura" when the sun goes down ("night time is my time") while suffering at the hands of evil, powerful men on both sides of the spectrum.

Related to this theme, it’s perhaps worth noting how by day Ms. Heisle works as an elementary school teacher—and how even outside of the classroom she often wears the wide-open yet indecipherable smile of the grade school teacher that says “no matter what kind of severe behavior problems you happen to have I’m still going to whether the storm”—but come evening, once onstage, and who knows maybe in the teachers’ lounge as well, she transforms into an alternately snarling/smiling rock ’n’ rolling bass-playing demon, a pixieish Gene Simmons with severe bangs but minus the compulsion to bang all her groupies. (to my knowledge, that is, not really my business anyway!)

Lyrics aside, it’s in the music where AVSE really drives home the theme of transformation, for rarely does a band captures volatility/mutability so potently in sound with guitarist Patrick Porter in particular having perfected a pedal-heavy playing style that makes you feel like you’ve entered the eye of a hurricane and been sucked into its vortex and passed into another dimension, assisted by Chayse Schutter’s powerful, nuanced drumming and Kasey’s dynamic bass-ing. 

And while loud-quiet-loud dynamics aren’t exactly a new thing, what sets Mr. Porter’s playing apart from many of his post-Pixies indie guitar brethren is that instead of changing from quiet to loud and back again on a dime, he’s got this thing of gradually morphing and warping the sound from one stage to another like a molting insect in a way that feels organic and highly visceral—who knew there were so many shades of white noise, ranging from etherial to abrasive?—for one example check out “Introspectre” with it’s oozing, mewling, turned-inside-out flanging musical timbres to hear what I’m getting at here, not to mention the vocal echo effect that sounds like someone left their vinyl copy of Fix Your Hearts Or Die out in the sun for too long.

For another example, go no further than album-opener “DFP” (down for pack-hunting?) which could and should serve as the soundtrack to a horror-movie werewolf transformation sequence. From the opening moments of the track the sense of tension is gradually ratcheted up bit by bit (“consume my brain and make it spin / don’t recognize the place you’re in […] there’s a sound that’s humming inside / a feeling that something’s not right”) until finally after several minutes the full on full moon lycanthropic metamorphosis takes place (from about 3:13 to 4:03 to my ears) after which a sudden state of calm descends and it sounds like the song may be over (AVSE are pros at the fake-ending fakeout) before a concluding coda that sounds like a wolf baying triumphantly at the moon. (Jason Lee)

What whattaya know…it’s almost Halloween! And since we’re fully aware of our target market of ghouls and goblins and witches and warlocks and slashers and sickos and other demented and deranged types–we’ve assembled not ONE but TWO very special "DELI-WEEN" playlists (branding!) for your delectation. The first of these is a video playlist (see below, duh!) chock full of 159 video clips including lots of holiday-appropriate music both new and old, plus lots of vintage horror movie trailers and other Hallow’s Eve ephemera. Plus, if you share the Deli’s viewpoint that "Everyday Is Halloween" (due credit to Uncle Al!) then you can enjoy this sick-in-every-sense playlist all the year round.

And btw the cover image above is taken from Surfbort’s recent single "Happy Happy Halloween" which just so happens to be the leadoff track of the video playlist below because Surfbort rules. 

As those late night informercials used to say…THAT"S NOT ALL because there’s also a whopping 113-song strong DELI-WEEN Spotify playlist that can be enjoyed by clicking on any of the highlighted words here. Likewise, this playlist is full of music new and old–and even more than the video playlist, it’s all-year-round appropriate given that only a smattering of the songs are explicitly Halloween themed–it’s more just a playlist of music that’s on the darker side of things, but all over the map genre- and sensibility-wise, with the songs ordered alphabetically by song title for your browsing pleasure! So maybe just pretend it’s the soundtrack to I Know What You Did 20 Summers Ago or something along those lines and have a good time listening. (Jason Lee)

In Richard Dyer’s classic 1979 book Stars (classic, that is, if you happen to be a Cinema Studies major) the distinguished British scholar considers how stars/celebrities provide a kind of psychological and sociological map to the culture from which they are spawned—kind of like how actual stars once served as maps, used to cross unfamiliar lands and strange seas. (of course today we’ve all got our omnipresent pocket computers and GPS apps to fill that function, and of course nothing bad ever comes from putting machines in charge…)

Anyway, Dyer goes on to unpack at length how these star-driven mental maps are formed through the art of storytelling—the TV shows and movies and long-form music videos and youtube makeup tutorials that the stars star in, and also in the many, many stories about the stars themselves that circulate in our society which can collectively be called “star texts” if you’re nerdy like that—stories that help to shape the collective belief systems through which we navigate our own lives in a celebrity-driven culture, a lot like how all those nutty stories about Greco-Roman gods captured the belief systems of Greco-Roman times—gods that provided the names for many constellations (names used to this day) which of course are made up of…STARS! (ok I’ll give the whole metaphor a rest now)

 Like the gods of ye olden times, modern celebrities appeal in large part because they’re both human and superhuman, both highly relatable and highly aspirational. Consider, for instance, how Glenn Danzig can be going out to buy kitty litter in one moment (highly relatable!) and bestriding the stage ike a buff little garden gnome the next (and later, he can go on to direct a straight-to-Shudder horror movie featuring three stories of surreal and bloody erotic horror and ginormous breasts.

In other words, we are all Glenn Danzig. And there can never be another Glenn Danzig. And if we can navigate this contraduction, we can maybe face down all the contradictions we face on a daily basis in normal everyday normal life

Another way to put it is that, when it comes to star idols and celebrity worship, we as fans get to live vicariously between two worlds: fantasy and reality. And this is one thing Teddy Grey seems to "get" given that this self-described purveyor of “the tastiest garbage on the market” has written and recorded an entire double-album telling the stories of 30 high-profile celebrity couple breakups–granted, taking significant creative license in playing these roles himself alongside a wide array of musical and vocal collaborators, and imagining their inner thoughts and everyday experiences–stories we can all likely identify with (that is unless you’ve never been through a messy breakup and if so bully for you) but which are also quite exotic and impossible to identify with (that is unless you’ve ever had your nose cave in from doing too much coke, or been elected to Congress on the basis of a popular ’70s TV variety show before skiing head first into a tree and expiring).

The album in question is called The Great Failed Romances of the Twentieth Century (Mother West) and it features songs with titles like “Everything Will Change When We Have Money (Lindsey & Stevie),” “Our Voices Aren’t Made For Duets (Sonny & Cher),” Popular Kids (Burt & Loni),” “Second Best” (Billy & Courtney)” featuring Blaise Dahl (Dahl Haus) as Mrs. Love-Cobain, and “Like I Mean It (Ike & Tina)” featuring Jack Colquitt and Brandeaux and opening with Ike berating Tina during a recording session ("It’s a love song, girl, you gotta mean it!”) before turning into a rollicking brass-assisted number with Tina imagining better times ahead: “When I imagine you gasping for breath on the floor / I’m giving up for another auteur / I can see my happy ending…someday you’ll be dead / better days are ahead" and anyway I think you get the song-naming convention at work here. 

Personally, I think my favorite song on the album is “There’s Nothing That I Love (But You Come Close) (Sid & Nancy)” because it so brilliantly punctures the over-inflated mythology of the junkie couple with a rock musical-ready arrangement and a number of choice couplets like “let’s make out on the toilet, fuck on the floor / I think we forgot to close the bathroom door” and “take me in your arms and hold me close / tip me on my side if you hear me choke.” Oddly enough, my second favorite track happens to be the very next song on the album, called “Provocateur (Serge & Jane),” which drops some deep knowledge of Serge Gainsbourg (“bad puns and lollipops / concept albums donning Nazi rock”) or it does for an American audience at least, even if Teddy’s Serge impression sounds more like Pepé Le Pew meets Jarvis Cocker meets Dracula for a breathy ménage à trois session.

“But what does the album actually sound like?”, you may ask? Let’s go right to the press release for this one: “Shimmering guitar pop, piano ballads, arena rock—even a 32 second hoedown detailing the 32 day marriage of Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman!” and really who can argue with a press release that evokes either Ernie or Ethel never mind both. I would also add that The Great Failed Romances of the Twentieth Century has a Broadway Cast Recording kinda vibe—which makes sense since if you Google the album title you’ll find a backstage.com public notice looking for guest singers/celebrity impersonators for the project, which also makes sense since Grey’s main collaborator on the album is one Michael Lepore, a singer-actor who’s in the cast of the upcoming Broadway musical Sing Street. And, finally, if you ever wished Weird Al would record a double concept album (let it be noted that "Weird Al" Yankovic is also quite the musical polymath) which also serves as the soundtrack to a Broadway rock musical, well, here’s the closest you’re gonna get so get at it! (Jason Lee) 

The debut full-length set by Furrows, called Fisher King, is basically the folk-rock-baroque-dream-pop version of William Wordsworth’s The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind because on this record Mr. Furrows (a.k.a. songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Peter Wagner) stares into a chasm and declares it sublime. 

Sounds like bullshite, you say? Well, mmmaybe, but I’m sure my high school English teacher would be impressed. Anyway, if you’re looking for a record that’ll help you to achieve a state of mellow euphoria, with more than a hint of longing to throw oneself into the abyss, and with lyrics overflowing with pastoral nature imagery like “shining suns” and stars and mountains and horizons and “skies receding out of sight” and “the sounds of the sea filling the air” and really all that’s missing is the “craggy ridge” that got Wordsworth so hot and bothered—then lucky for you because now you’ve found it. (note: even the word furrow itself refers to "a long narrow trench made in the ground by a plow" so it’s nature-adjacent at least)  

Given Fisher King’s immersive yet highly generalized lyrical imagery, it’s easy to let your mind drift away and get lost in the pure essence of the music and, fortunately, that’s where Furrows excels most of all. Assisted by producer Sahil Ansari, this is a record full of cellos and Mellotrons and tense synths and “delay wobbles” and “psychic spaces”—played over bedrock layers of delicately strummed acoustic guitars and gently shimmering electric guitars and a rhythm section (Mr. Wagner’s on bass, natch) that somehow maintains a steady beat despite all the sedatives they must’ve ingested before hitting the record button.

And sure, there’s some other bands from the past that have given off a similar eternal-golden-hour-bathed-in-a-meloncholy-glow impression ranging from the Chills to the Shins—but this is the present and Furrows’ music speaks to the present-day widespread state of generalized anxiety masked by numbness. (tho’ don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful album and you’re allowed to be happy while listening to it, you sick bastard!) Either way…we all need to take the edge off sometimes, no? Rest assured this long-playing rekkid will help you to do just that. But only if you don’t mind an uneasy undertow underneath it all which is, as Mr. Furrows himself puts it on “Grey Cities,” “unseen, but always there.” (Jason Lee)

 “Look, this thing of ours, the way it’s going, it’d be better if we could admit to each other, these are painful, stressful times.” — Silvio Manfred Dante

The Alchemist is something like the equivalent of a consigliere in the world of hip hop having worked largely behind-the-scenes for the past several decades as a super-prolific producer and beatmaker, providing dusty-groove beats for legendary rap kingpins like Mobb Deep, Nas, Ghostface Killah, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, Eminem and Freddie Gibbs—the latter of which released a full-album collab with the Alchemist in 2020 called Alfredo, an album-length meditation on being a Black Godfather, peep the album’s cover art, that’s been deemed “pretty much an instant classic”). 

For his latest project, the LA-based hip hop consigliere appears to have consulted his extensive Rolodex of close contacts and called in a few favors seeking guest emcees willing to collaborate on two EPs released under his own name (and more to come, one hopes) with the emcees ranging from established names to underground-up-and-comers but all equally skilled in performing verbal acrobatics.

The first installment of This Thing Of Ours (its title phrase the literal English translation of “La Cost Nostra”) dropped in late April with four tracks featuring the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Navy Blue (see his previous Deli mag featured HERE), Pink Siifu, Boldy James, Sideshow, Maxo, and Tony Soprano—sorry to say James Gandolfini hasn’t been reincarnated, but his dialogue as the panic-attack-prone boss has been as sampled across a couple tracks here—resulting in a tight ten minutes of dizzying bars and euphoric, blunted beats (the inclusion of instrumentals for all four tracks stretches the running time to 20 minutes).

Released just over a week ago, This Thing Of Ours 2 (ALC Records) follows the format established by The Godfather Part II in splitting its action between two locales—except instead of New York and Sicily in this case it’s New York and the Motor City—with the opening two tracks narrated by two of New York’s finest young emcees, MAVI and MIKE (both are fans of ALL CAPS) and OK the former may have returned to his native Charlotte, North Carolina earlier this year but he’ll be back, we believe, because like Silvio Dante is known to say “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in.” Anyway the two emcees set a moody and mindful tone (but still with mucho energy) on the first part of the EP that musically and lyrically echoes the post-golden-age laments of latter day mafiosi and street-level scrappers alike.

On the opening track “Miracle Baby” (see the music video up top) MAVI bobs and weaves between multiple mood swings—equivalent to Michael Corleone in Godfather Part II caught up between triumph and tragedy—spitting lines full of bravado one moment (“stop taking so much seriously / I’m taking all that’s given to me”) and mournful sorrow the next (“a waiting fate there to sneer at me / I talk sometimes just knowing my phone the only one listening”) but always demonstrating total control with a masterful head-spinning flow (which is a perfect fit for the head-in-the-clouds “cloud rap” musical backing) built  on rapid-fire-machine-gun multisyllabic rhymes intercut with chopper-style-triplet-time-scat-rapping (“civilly, liberally…” etc.) all-the-while keeping it playful (“I just put my hoe through college, Lori Loughlin”) and taking no prisoners (“How we feel toward domestic terrorists? Prepared for them”). 

Track number two features MIKE on the mic (featured HERE in a Deli profile from back in June) who rides a loping, J Dilla type looped beat (RIP J Dilla, the Detroit-based godfather of soulsy lo-fi-hip-hop as you likely already know and if you don’t know, now you know) matching his flow expertly to the beat with the Alchemist laying forlorn female vocals and a distant lonely trumpet m over the top for maximum effect, and MIKE’s lyrics fully vibe with the overall vibe of course with lines that again sound like could’ve been penned by a depressed gangster.

"war on the rise, if you sure it wasn’t like us / born in the plight, we was torn from the right stuff"

"I used to take the 4 or the 5 to explore from this gauntlet / make sure we alive, it’s not a corpse I was caught in"

And speaking of J Dilla at this point the EP transitions over to Motown starting off with the posse track “Flying Spirit” featuring four artists on Danny Brown’s new Detroit-centric record label Bruiser Brigade with J.U.S., Fat Ray, and Bruiser Wolf mixing it up with Danny himself (J.U.S.: “it only take a knife to turn you to a flyin’ spirit, like Casper the Ghost / me and Brown on collards dumpin’ blunts in the ghost”) which comes across like a more demented “Scenario” (especially the closing verse by Bruiser Wolf with its breathless Busta Rhyme-ish manic intensity) and hey by the way “Bruiser Brigade” is a name taken from Danny Brown’s decade-old XXX (call it XL these days) easily one of the best hip hop albums of the last ten years in my highly non-authoritative book.

The EP finally comes to a close jury under a dozen minutes later with its two shortest tracks (each clocking at under two minutes) the first being “Wildstyle” by Zelooperz (a Bruiser Brigader not featured on the preceding posse track) who throws his voice like a demented ventriloquist so put this track on the hi-fi Halloween night to scare the crap out of trick-or-treating brats harassing you for free Pixie Sticks. 

And then finally it’s full circle back to LA (Compton, specifically) for Vince Staples’ “6 Five Heartbeats” and yeah it’s freakin’ Vince Staples so you know it’s good (even where short in duration and mellow in disposition) and I gotta at least the opening line “you had a blog, we had Berettas” (I don’t care what some fool posting on Genius says the lyric is, he clearly says “blog”)) with Vince going on to call out keyboard gangsters and other fakers (“How is every single rapper been a dopeman?”) before going on to pine for true love and true crime and don’t worry Mr. Staples I’m no consigliere (fake or otherwise) just a humble blogger writing criminally long-winded sentences. (Jason Lee)

photo by: Wyeth Collins

Over the past year-ish Kendra Morris has released one soulful-funky-R&B banger after another. And since we’re currently in the midst of a “singles round-up” phase here at DeliCorp (honestly these themes are chosen willy-nilly by our barbiturate-addicted CEO, the Colonial Clive Fowley, but we find a way to make them work regardless) it’s appropriate that we provide a round up of Ms. Morris’ recent singles output on the occasion of her recent 45-rpm release “This Life”/“Who We Are” (available on opaque red vinyl!) on the Dayton, Ohio-based Colemine Records (Dayton being the ancestral home to everyone from Bootsy Collins to Lakeside to Ohio Players and thus a fitting home to the Funk Music Hall of Fame & Exhibition Center) the A-side of which is laid-back, mid-tempo number called “This Life” which simmers at a rolling boil for its nearly-four-minute-run-time whilst utilizing a series of gambling metaphors (“I believe / if I lay myself on the table / just like an ace of spades / needs a queen to win / will you let me in?”) to describe the willy-nilly tossing of one’s heart across the Big Craps Table Of Life And Love And Everything Else. 

So yeah “This Life” is a great koo-koo kinda tune that one could easily imagine Frank Sinatra covering at his last engagement at the Sands (ain’t so far from “That’s Life” to “This Life” baby) but being a b-side kinda guy myself the real standout to my ears is “Who We Are” (both are co-written and co-arranged by Ms. Morris’ songwriting partner Jeremy Page) because it’s one of those burn-the-house-down-to-the-ground kinda songs that (unless you’re Peggy Lee) will lift you up to the heavens (peep those two-part harmonies around the two-minute mark) but then break you down again when the tune breaks down to a funeral organ accompanied by full choir that’ll have you sobbing into your Purell hand-sanitizing-wipe as Kendra repeatedly inquires “What is left to be living in?” and as the world disintegrates before our very eyes it’s a question on a lotta minds these days, baby, and most of all it’s that voice that puts the heavy emotion across and makes it appealing because Kendra’s obviously adept at belting it out to the cheap seats but with sentiments that are anything but cheap. 

But don’t get it twisted because Kendra Morris can put across sunnier material too with great conviction like slow-ride phunk of “Catch the Sun,” a single released a month ago in collaboration with “the world’s only synth and soul record label and production team” known as Eraserhood Sound with the sweetly nostalgic “When We Would Ride” as the b-side. and then nevermind the 2018 single just flat out called “Summertime” with a video shot at Coney Island.

And when you check out her repertoire it makes sense that Kendra got her earliest musical education from her parents’ Ruth Copeland and Chaka Khan records, but rest assured that what you see and hear above doesn’t cover all this lady’s capable of as made clear by her being the only artist ever to tour with/collaborate with/and be remixed by Dennis Coffey, DJ Premier, and Scarlett Johansson (please let them all collaborate one day as Kennis PreemoJo) so clearly she’s got some serious range. Oh and she’s got Wu-Tang/MF Doom connections too having contributed vocals to the Czarface Meets Metal Face and Czarface Meets Ghostface projects (plus Ms. Morris even animated and directed a music video for the former record) so just in case you think you’re cool Kendra’s ready to take you to school. (Jason Lee)

“Love Bomb” is a title utilized by musical artists ranging from N*E*R*D to Nick Cave (with Grinderman) from British-reality-show-girl-group Girls Aloud to Korean-reality-show-girl-group Fromis_9 which isn’t really that surprising because the phrase itself lends itself to a wide range of interpretations whether it’s used to say something like “I’m gonna bomb you with my love bomb, baby” which sounds like a Zep-era Robert Plant lyric if there were a few more baby’s added at the end, but then it could also be used in a song about bombing with an attempted romantic connection, or about how obsessive love can be a destructive force, or about how amorous feelings can fall from the sky seemingly without warning.

Or (stick with me here!) a “love bomb” could refer to how love has been weaponized by the capitalist-imperialist elite to subjugate and indoctrinate "the sheeple" who are compelled to pair off into nuclear family units (kinda like nuclear bomb fallout shelters!) thus helping to mitigate the threat of a collective uprising against the ruling class while also acting as the driving force behind capitalist structures of exploitation and continuous economic expansion (because if you’re truly in love you’re gonna rush out and buy that new washer-dryer set on sale at Best Buy!) but hey it’s just a theory.

But it’s a theory I feel like Phranque may be on board with (not to be confused with lesbian folk singer Phranc!) on his/her/their/its newest single called (wait for it…) “Love Bomb” which contains lyrics like “the greatest love ever known / re-wire the brain and forfeit the soul” and “turn the toxic swan song upside down / carve your favorite amputee / blast away the world we see / liquid metal heart / from your love bomb” and look I didn’t say all the lyrics make perfect sense but you get the gist of what Phranque’s maybe trying to say.

Lest you miss the subtleties in the lyrics, the music of “Love Bomb” gets across a similar subtext of capitalistic false consciousness with its shiny musical surfaces (the propulsive garage-rock riffage) acting as a sweet candy-coating for the darker stuff underneath like the spooky-sounding organ (perfect for Halloween!) and the doomy chord progression (the bridge section in particular!) not to mention the lyrics.

So just imagine if ZZ Top had suddenly gone goth in the ‘80s right in the middle of their MTV-friendly Eliminator phase and you’re in the ballpark at least. But even more than ZZ Top the band “Love Bomb” reminds me of most of all is Blue Öyster Cult because if you took out “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” from that one scene in the original Halloween (1978) where it’s playing on the car radio as Jamie Lee Curtis and that other chick are driving around and smoking weed before the latter gets turned into chopped liver by Michael Myers and replaced it with the Phranque song under discussion I think it’d work pretty well.

And come to think of it some of their other songs remind me a bit of Blue Öyster Cult too because much like Long Island’s finest AOR rockers—BÖC are best known to the youth of today as an SNL punchline but back in the day they were cool enough to hang with Patti Smith—Phranque are not afraid to inject dark vibes and synthy textures into their sturdy rock tunes (check out “Mick & Keith Forever” off his/their last full-length 13 (La Cosa Nostra), or “Sea Winds” off Butcher the Scapegoat and peep those Blue Öystery vocal harmonies while you’re at it—nor afraid to inject some serious weirdness into the mix because Phranque’s albums are full of trippy instrumental interludes and other left-field touches. And hey maybe someday they’ll cover BÖC’s ”Joan Crawford” (1981) because that’s some crazy-ass shiz too but let’s just hope Phranque never becomes the butt of any cowbell-related future memes (stick to the maracas fellas!) featuring Christopher Walken. (Jason Lee)