As clearly indicated by its title, What’s Yr Damage (6131 Records), the debut LP by Philly-purveyors-of-psychotronic-rock Lovelorn clearly pays tribute to two iconic ‘80s bands—the first of which being Big Fun whose one-and-only Stateside hit came in 1988 with “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It),” the bombastic-dance-pop-with-a-social-message classic featured in the homicidal-high-school-rom-com Heathers (the second greatest movie ever made!) with its iconic catch phrase “What’s your damage?”; and the second of which being Black Flag, the iconic California hardcore-sters whose debut LP Damaged (1981) served as a paganistic paean to teenage alienation and craving (“Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie!”) with squalls of squalid guitar courtesy of Greg Ginn—which isn’t to dismiss the other influences at play here (industrial, shoegaze, dream pop, trip hop, who knows what else!) and despite being released two months ago it still sounds pretty darn good.

Across the album’s ten tracks the duo of Anna and Patrick place these disparate sonic fragments into close proximity like tectonic plates colliding and coalescing and forming into massive land masses and, I mean, just take a listen to the album’s second track “Sickness Reward,” which kicks off with an ambient Cabaret Voltaire-y soundscape (R.I.P. Richard H. Kirk) that’s soon overlaid with a massive industrial-disco beat and heavy synth, and then stripped down to a minimal electro-pop groove when the vocals first enter, and then built back up again but with a growing sense of sonic disorder seeping in around the edges (the manic guitar, the power-drill synth) and be sure to check out the music video too (dir. Daniel Fried) which opens with a flipped Cannon Films logo—the production studio that put out the greatest piece of cinema ever Ninja III: The Domination (don’t worry, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen the first two) and I’m hoping the eventual sequel to this video sees the field-and-track athletes inexplicably attacked by a crazed ninja but I digress. 

Anyway, this is a record that really creates its own lane. And likewise for the lyrical content which addresses such serious topics as eating disorders, mental illness, and creating one’s own lane (shades of Big Fun again and yes I know I know) but which also captures pure desire in the starkest of terms (“Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie”) or as Lovelorn themselves put on it on "Tiger," the final track of What’s Yr Damage: “I justify what I want / I already waited too long.” (Jason Lee)

Months previous to the release of her debut full-length Chain Reaction (Born Losers Records), the first time I heard Catherine Moan’s music was with the song “Drop It!” whose refrain goes: “sway in time, it’s so sweet / drop down low and feel the heat / keep it down low / drop it, drop it feel the heat / drop it feel the heat, drop it feel the heat / drop it, drop it, drop it, drop it / drop it feel the heat” and I was immediately struck by how Ms. Moan had taken the sentiment behind Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot” (due credit to Lil’ Wayne) and removed both the simile and the spare, ultra-vivid production work—replacing it instead with a neon smear of pulsing analog synths and 80s-esque drum programming (“new retro wave” the kids call it) with the requested acts of “drop[ping] it” and “feel[ing] the heat” (not to mention “keep[ing] this fire burning / ’til the records stop turning”) framed as invitations rather than commands, supported by a bopping electro-lullaby vibe with the song’s only hint of conflict coming in the bridge: “now that we can finally breathe / c’mon and drop that ass / and dance with me.

It was the perfect summer jam and needless to say I was hooked, especially after witnessing the music video which simulates the feel of an ‘80s video dating profile. But then something funny happened. The more I listened, the more I detected a ghostly undertow to the song. Maybe it was the icy pinprick synths in the chorus. Or the airy dissociated-sounding vocals, like being seduced by someone when under ether (hello, Andrea True Connection!) or how the musical arrangement feels like John Carpenter wrote a major-key disco song for one of his soundtracks.

But far from detracting from the song this only deepened my appreciation because, for my money, it’s just this distinctively different kind of tension that makes “Drop It!” and the album it appears on now so oddly alluring—because over seven subsequent tracks Chain Reaction doubles down on the mood-altering mashup of ecstatic release and confining unease and emotional blunting a.k.a. “waning of affect” if you wanna get all postmodern about it (on the latter point, one song on the album revolves around the repeated phrase “I can’t feel a thing” while the chorus of another informs the listener “I want to feel nothing / I want to see nothing”).

And not that you asked but when it comes to cinematic associations evoked by Chain Reaction for me it’s Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner all the way. Because imho all these songs would fit perfectly at a Los Angeles discotheque and lounge circa 2019 as imagined in 1982 (natch!) perfectly capturing the retro-future sound of pop music in a society overtaken by rampant technology, alienation, and environmental degradation (but also, new methods of connection and new avenues of pleasure, so call it a draw!) which leads its citizenry to question what it even means to be “human” anymore (who could imagine such a place!) and where pop music serves both as a crucial mirror-to-society and escapist release (like how Harrison Ford reportedly loved singing “More, More, More” in his downtime). And then seeing Ms. Moan perform her first NYC live show on a rooftop on the first night that Tropical Storm Elsa brought torrential rains to the city (the Our Wicked Lady roof is covered, but still I’m surprised and impressed the show went on) really sealed the deal.

Plus on “Drop It!” in particular I get the feeling Ms. Moan is actually role-playing as a “basic pleasure model” replicant-as-pop-artist à la Daryl Hannah’s Pris character (who shoulda been in a goth band in the movie with her perfect punky raccoon look, or maybe they cut those scenes out) but a basic pleasure model who will gladly crush your windpipe between her thighs when the time’s right—plus you gotta admit “feel the beat / in your heartbeat” is a brilliantly cyborg-y song lyric but hey what do I know—while the other songs on Chain Reaction likewise bring to mind a distinctly “glowing neon signs reflecting off glass surfaces and slicked concrete streets of an urban dis/pleasure district”, with the next track “Wasted” upping the moody-pop stakes with a faded-in intro that could easily be a Vangelis outtake from the Blade Runner soundtrack.

To which you may rightly say: “Theories, schmeries! What does Catherine herself say about the record, her creative process and sources of inspiration?” Well, lucky for you, I asked and she answered, generously filling in some of the details and, no, Blade Runner was never mentioned. Ms. Moan describes her creative process thusly: 

“I write and record off of feelings and whims. Rather than going into a song with a planned idea it usually starts from a melody or lyric I hummed and came up with in the shower or on a walk. And from there it is a playful and chaotic binge of making all kinds of arrangements of sounds and melodies. I’ll sit there with my microphone and sing/speak/shout all kinds of quips and lines in different rhythms and styles until something clicks and it all falls into place. And this process goes on until I can’t stop dancing around my room until i’m out of breath. It’s a style of creativity that I feel is very true to my hyperactive and energetic personality…there’s something about spontaneity and randomness that I think can really bring ideas out of thin air and really tap into where I am at the moment.”

And ok none of this sounds very cyborg-like but instead more human than human which hey that’s a good thing and I’m just picturing this process unfolding with a song like “Body Work” as it builds from a reflective electro-ballad (“I get overwhelmed from the start”) to a bedroom-dancing-crescendo during the chorus (“I can’t feel a thing / ‘cause I’m over it all”) which all taps into one overarching theme of the album described by Catherine as “coping with an unnatural amount of alone time with yourself and your body and specifically the places my own mind went from being beside myself too long” which is all pretty damn relatable given the recent past. 

But when it comes to the creative tools she used to make the album I’m on slightly firmer ground given that the songs on Chain Reaction were created using a “tight selection of gear…using a KORG Minilogue, my pink Fender Mustang, a humble Shure SM58, and a handful of VSTs” and judging from a couple demo videos I viewed on the Minilogue it’s especially good at producing the ethereal, shimmering timbres favored by Vangelis and the Yamama CS-80 used on the Blade Runner soundtrack so there ya go. 

Moving from keyboard patches to skin grafts, on “Skin Graft” Ms. Moan elaborates her Cartesian thematics further on a song she describes as being “about [my own] frequent hospital visits and health issues” plus “reacting to a permanent scar I had just acquired on my chin from falling HARD off my skateboard,” but that also comes from “the perspective of elective surgeries people go through with to alter their appearance or ‘fix’ parts of their bodies they don’t agree with.” 

“The lyrics ‘scars on my face / stitches cut across / take them away…bind them down’ is a reflection on gender identity and a disassociation and conflict between secondary sex characteristics and androgyny. And more specifically the compulsion to want to change those things to find comfort albeit through drastic, painful, medical procedures like breast reduction [or] full on top surgery [whereas] the chorus ‘I want to feel nothing I want to see nothing’ is very self explanatory…an honest and blunt vocalization of the conflict and the wish to cease and desist any self hatred / body confusion” which raises an interesting if accidental parallel between the song and the movie because they both revolve around being in a state of ontological crisis—a crisis provoked when long-standing, dominant binaries (male/female, human/non-human) are violated and thus challenged which is a brave but risky thing to do—though at least this state of crisis is set to a catchy disco beat which makes for the best kind of crisis.

It’s all enough to make you wanna switch your mind and body onto autopilot (another running theme on the album!) which is addressed head-on in the album’s penultimate track “Lucky Lobotomy” (“Turn myself into the cerebral authorities. Lock me out, toss the key”) which is about how “all the privilege and agency that comes with having a sentient mind can be overwhelming because your thoughts will just go to such unhealthy and painful places that wind up hurting you and god forbid others. But luckily it’s a lovely track so you’re unlikely to suffer any permanent damage. 

In closing I’d say that Catherine Moan’s I-wanna-be-sedated-synth-pop bangers on Chain Reaction are perfect for turning off your mind and floating downstream (despite some heavy, heady ideas as inspiration) or for dancing madly in the middle of the street not giving a damn what anyone thinks because all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. (Jason Lee)

“Afar” is the third advance single off from Xeno & Oaklander’s upcoming seventh album called Vi/deo which is slated to be released on 10/22/21 and if you’ve got all the math figured out on that then you can move ahead to the music video below and attempt to keep tally of how many identical-twin Liz Wendelbo’s appear in quick succession (meanwhile bandmate Sean McBride is inexplicably absent, unless perhaps he’s been assimilated into the collective by the Borg) or who knows maybe it’s just my brain glitching again. 

And once you’ve mastered the math then it’s time to brush up on your French proficiency skills because that’s the language the lyrics are in tho’ lucky for us the duo have shared a full translation free of charge on their Instagram page. Plus there’s some cognates in there which should help in cases like where “encens insencé” is translated to “senseless incense” which sounds quite lovely and poetic in either language. And did I mention Ms. Wendelbo does a convincing Vanessa-Paradis-meets-Jane-Birkin impersonation both sonically and kinesthetically (how do French people sound both bored and aroused at the same time? this must to be studied…) which must come naturally to a person of French-Norwegian extraction such as herself. 

What’s more “Afar” provides further evidence there’s just something about electronic music with sensual French vocals (especially on the more dark ’n’ trancey side of things like Coldwave, Minimal Wave, and EBM-Wave (Electronic Body Music)) that works in a big way when it’s done right—which may have something to do with the language itself having such a natural sense of flow and élégance—and it’s done right by X&O on this track with a musical backing that likewise captures the so-cold-it’s-sizzling-hot Gallic vibe that very few English-language artists pull off convincingly with Boy Harsher being one exception that comes to mind.

“But nevermind all that,” you may say, “what was the inspiration behind the song and the upcoming album?” Well I don’t know how or why you’d expect me to know but fortunately for all involved Xeno & Oaklander have revealed the answer on their Bandcamp page: “Inspired by ideas of synesthesia, scent, star worship, and obsolescent technologies…Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride began conceiving the blueprint of Vi/deo while sequestered at their Southern Connecticut home studio during the pandemic. The context of isolation, streaming, and remote dreaming seeped into their chemistry, manifesting as both homage to and meditation on a certain cinematic strain of technicolor fantasy: the screen as stage, distance disguised as intimacy, where tragedy and glamour crossfade into one,” and I gotta hand it to these two because this artfully constructed statement-of-purpose makes me think maybe they should be the ones writing this blog.

“But wait,” you may say, “this is an electronic group so don’t they stare at screens all day long whether there’s a pandemic going on or not.” To which an omniscient voice from the sky may reply: “Au contraire, mon pear, because X&O are all about using self-contained vintage analog sound modules that have lots of buttons and knobs and spaghetti-like piles of patch cables threading in and out of assorted orifices in their various electronic doo-dads (sorry for all the technical language!) all of which is designed to be played live—for proof check out their set above from Vox Sinistra’s weekly Strict Tempo broadcast on Twitch which opens with an electrifying performance of “Afar”—so instead of starting at screens they’re constantly in motion with all kinds of button-pushing, knob-twisting, and cable-switching much like an old-school telephone switchboard operator which means there’s a real sense of physicality to their live sets, plus a palpable sense of liveness on their recordings" and boy is that omniscient voice long-winded!

Speaking of recordings, namely the upcoming release of Vi/deo, you’d be smart to go ahead and pre-order that puppy because special-edition colored vinyl goes fast even when it’s a recording of Sherpa sheep herders (cool stuff, actually) and don’t be a tightwad either because for an extra couple dollars you can get the record album with a special scented paper insert (read above: “synesthesia and scent”) which I’m guessing should be at least as fragrant as John Water’s Polyester scratch-and-sniff cards with exotic olfactory sensations matching the groovy moody synth-pop reverberations within. (Jason Lee)

“Pastel Colors” is the name of a single released this past weekend by self-described “90s girl” Jamythyst, self-described creator of “DIY electromotional pop jams,” and it’s an interesting choice of title because this ‘90s girl is clearly drawn to day-glo tones and darker hues elsewhere—both visually and musically—just as the Nineties itself is known for its fluorescent pop and abrasively dark rock and goth and hip hop. (Mariah meet Metallica! Hanson say howdy to Hole! N*SYNC nuzzle up to NWA! Etc. Etc.) And while Jamythyst’s music falls squarely under the pop column, tracks like “Witches in the Woods,” “Scary Movies,” and “Masochist” show that she’s also into exploring her darker side. 

So where do pastels fit into this color scheme? When placed next to electro-bangerz like “Flip Me Over’ and “Melt My Face” with their cheeky entreaties to “be your hourglass / if you flip me over” or to “drop the needle, drop the bass / rock my world, melt my face,” “Pastel Colors” is indeed more subdued, something like a mid-80s Howard Jones joint with its mix of airy synths, percolating sequencers, and reflective lyrics.
 
 
Lyrically, the pastel colors in question seem to imply both a childlike sense of wonder (“carousel in the middle of the city / gets me every time the colors go by”) and a spellbinding sense of risk (“I can’t help myself / I jump off the carousel every time / getting dizzy on the pastel colors”) as represented by the faded fiberglass horses of a mesmerizing merry-go-round going around and around in circles (just like the swirling echo effect at the end of each vocal line) or as Jamythyst puts it “it’s an electro-pop bop about being a commitment-phobe who just wants to have fun” which is perhaps another kind of going in circles. 

So we’re talking about losing control and re-asserting control here, being lured by the pastel blur of the carousel but then jumping off when things get too intense. And if this song is in fact at least implicitly about control issues (stick with me here!) then it’s obviously also an homage to Janet’s Jackson’s “Control” because that particular song from 1986 (and the whole Control album!) was a turning point in the history of dance pop, not to mention an assertion of artistic independence by Ms. Jackson (if you’re nasty!) and thus a precursor to artists like Jamythyst.

All of which makes me wonder if our featured artist’s stage name is in fact an homage to the production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who helped shape Control and thus strongly impacted much of the dance pop, R&B, and rap that came in its wake (not to mention the whole “New Jack Swing” phenomenon) and certainly Jamythyst reflects all of this “control” both in spirit—as a self-contained singer, songwriter, and producer who makes bedroom dance pop—and in terms of sonics with her proclivity for jacked drum machines beats and phat synth-baselines and angular in-your-face sampling (with the caveat that other influences obviously come into play such as early Madonna, Sylvester, Robyn, Prince, and other single-monikered artistes.

And when we look at the bigger picture, isn’t so much of pop music (and dance pop in particular) fixated on control issues—whether control over one’s own bodily and sexual expression, control over one’s own artistic expression and public image, or control over fate itself in the aspirational pop of the Idol era, not to mention the inverse loss-of-control and sense of transcendence sought on the dance floor—which is probably one big reason why marginalized groups in society are so often at the forefront of pop music’s innovations.

 

Sadly, after an astounding ten-plus year run of hits, control was taken away from Janet Jackson when the reigning queen of self-assertive pop (and a highly LGBTQ+ friendly reigning queen at that) was essentially accused of being a witch and burned at the stake by a raging mob of pigskin fans (and gossip mongers who could care less about the Super Bowl) because they were briefly distracted from Tom Brady’s ass-hugging shiny pants due to the sudden and unwelcome split-second appearance of Janet Jackson’s nipple on national TV courtesy of a former Mouseketeer. Yet, the sound that Janet Jackson and Jam/Lewis continued to refine on albums like Rhythm Nation 1814 and The Velvet Rope has continued on, often in service of “straight” artists ranging from boy bands to gangsta rappers. And so, speaking of control, it’s reassuring to happen upon a local artist, and one who just started producing her own music during the pandemic at that, digging into the roots of dance pop and re-asserting control on behalf of femme- and queer-identifying artists past and present. (Jason Lee)

 

 

You may recall a review posted in this space a few weeks ago about Nihiloceros’ third and final single “Dirty Homes” from their upcoming “concept EP” Self Destroy (Totally Real Records) or hey let’s be generous and call it a full-blown concept album because six songs is pretty much in-between an EP and an album and anyway it’s all revolves around an end-of-the-world scenario and that fact alone makes it monumental enough to deserve full album status, even if, as singer/lyricist/guitarist Mike Borchardt describes it, it was never planned to be an actual concept album, but the through-line took shape organically as the album was worked over and re-worked again during lockdown which was very conducive to brainstorming dystopic concept albums.

Well, anyway, I hope you didn’t forget about Nihiloceros in the meantime (or Dre! never forget about Dre!) because the record just came out this weekend and obviously you need to clear 20 minutes from your schedule asap to give it a close listen. And hey just be thankful this is no Tales From Topographic Oceans or 2112 (RIP Neil Peart, yes we forgive you for the whole Ayn Rand thing and have the utmost respect for any sticks-man who owns a drum set with 23 roto-toms and then actually uses them all) because who has two spare hours to spare sitting inside on a nice weekend trying to figure out why the heck a cabal of malevolent Priests hanging out in the Temples of Syrinxs would choose to outlaw creativity and individuality or how they would enforce such drastic measures. 

And Nihiloceros realize this too because they’ve distilled the most powerful bits of those albums into a concentrated paste of rocking-your-face-off, and what’s more they don’t go all pretentious about it with a fold-out gatefold design that if you stare into it long enough the whole album suddenly “makes sense." Because instead the whole idea, according to Mr. Borchardt, is to “cut the legs out from under any grandiosity” by placing the listener into the brainpan of an average schlub facing down the apocalypse and over the course of six songs working through the five stages of grief (binge-watching The Wire, stress-eating, suddenly conrtracting hives and dropsy, more stress-eating, and just being generally unpleasant) so put away that bushel of ‘shrooms because you won’t need ‘em sorry to say.

Btw speaking of weekends and monumental things, Nihiloceros will host an album release party tonight (Sat. 9/18) at a mysterious location known as EWEL (probably an acronym for East Williamsburg Exploding Lo-Fi Inevitable but don’t quote me on that) with both Desert Sharks and Kissed By An Animal on the bill as well so hell yeah that’s gonna be an epic time.

AND THAT’S NOT ALL!! Because if you really wanna “self destroy” you’re advised to buy one of the album bundles that’ll soon be available (in the next week or two) because one of the bundles comes with an exclusive limited edition “Halfway Human” hot sauce mixed up especially for you in Mike’s bathtub which (the name says it all) which includes ingredients such as habanero peppers, grapefruit juice, Allspice™, chile de árbol (also known as bird’s beak chili and rat’s tail chile, yum!) and some secret ingredients just so you don’t try to sell the recipe to Taco Bell or somebody. A couple bottles will reportedly be available at the show tonight so…

And if the sauce is too strong for your weak-ass taste buds to handle (lay off the tofu why don’t’cha!) you can always use the stuff to strip the paint off your father’s ’67 Ford Fairlane because it could use a new coat anyway and boy won’t he be surprised. Anyway it’s a highly appropriate name for a hot sauce because just listen to how the song it’s named for starts with a single anticipatory note then with a subtle little melodic bit sneaking in before exploding into a skull-stomping riff about 15 second and that’s what it’ll feel like when the heat hits about 15 seconds after you swallow the stuff.

Or, if you’re one of these guitar playing people, you can get the Self Destroy album bundled with a guitar pedal or three custom-designed by the band’s bassist/backup singer Alex Hoffman who in his down-time works as a structural engineer in the “power industry” and I’m not sure how you get better credentials for being in a power trio than that. Each pedal is named after a song on the album (and used on that song natch) so if you had a notion to form a Nihiloceros tribute band well it’s your lucky day because now you won’t need to mess around with about 100 pedals trying to get that perfect Nihiloceros tone nailing every subtle timbral variation on every song.

I had a little phone convo with Alex the other day and he walked me through the creative process of pedal-making which entails getting your hands on some blank circuit boards and wiring and other components, not to mention the enclosure topped off with primer, spray paint, clear coat enamel, and (wait for it) glitter so you can make the thing look cool enough to take on stage with you. And so yeah, while you were spending days trying to bake your own bread during the lockdown, then inevitably giving up and drinking a quart of gin instead, Alex was busy teaching himself the fine art of pedal-construction and designing three of t hem on his own which frankly makes up all look pretty shabby in comparison so thanks a log Alex (he insists, however, that anyone can pull off making pedals from scratch with the help of online tutorials and some pre-printed circuit boards with the help of small businesses like Small Bear Electronics catering to the budding stompbox enthusiast).  

The first one of these pedal is called “Dirty Homes” named after the first song on the album and it’s sort of a clone of the classic Small Clone pedal but with with an MN3007 chip with "a depth knob instead of a switch and an added vibrato/chorus toggle" because we all like nice things don’t we. To hear what this pedal sounds like just check out the intro of “Dirty Homes” and focus on the underwater-sounding tremolo effect (BTW you know you’re dealing with a serious pedal-head band when you can’t tell at many points if you’re hearing a standard electric guitar or a bass guitar at any given time) which is a distinctive timbre heard on chart-topping songs by chart-topping bands of today/yesteryear like The Police, Crowded House, and Nirvana (see the video above for evidence).  

The other two custom pedals are heard on the following couple of songs: “iamananimal” (eponymous pedal) and “Mammal Science Fiction" (the Velvet Elvis) which is along the lines of an “Acapulco Gold [pedal] modded with an added gain control” and a “Nihiloceros version of a big muff with a mids switch and a diode bypass switch” respectively as described by Alex himself. And hey why not pour some “Halfway Human” sauce (next song on the album!) on those diodes because no telling what kinda crazy sonics you’d get from that. 

But really nevermind all the hawt sauces and hot pedalboard action because the real secret ingredient on this record is the two musical collaborators who appear on four of the six tracks (two a piece!) that being Shadow Monster’s Gillian Visco and Desert Shark’s Stephanie Gunther—who also receive one songwriting credit a piece, because as Mike describes it, their contributions (in addition to the sweet harmonizing and hollerin’ they bring to the table) were so crucial that they changed the very fabric of the songs as they were still being completed—and then you also got drummer extraordinaire Carlo Minchillo (The Planes, Murder Tag, Brooklyn Drum Collective) contributing theremin on one track.

And so with the release of Self Destroy we got a true All-Stars record on our hands despite all of these talented individuals being beat out by underdog Fiona Apple for “Best Rock Performance” at this year’s Grammy Awards, but I think you know where the best rock performance will be happening tonight. (Jason Lee)

photo by @brooklynelitist

 

You gotta give it up for a band that lives up to their name right out of the gate (no knock on Brian Wilson but he was more into backyard sandboxes than actual beaches and sadly the one “real Beach Boy” in the group drowned—choose those band names wisely kids) and so you gotta give it up for The Silk War, a band that even on their debut album (Come Evening) have already got the whole “dialectical opposites” thing down cold.

Because “silk” and “war” are two things you don’t expect to go together (which is basically true of "war" and anything nice like silk or doilies or Swiss watches) but here is a musical collective that dives fully into their moniker with abandon and not in the obvious sense of depicting “bedroom conflicts” aka "silk wars" to which the real Silk War would say hold my martini (quoting directly from their frontperson: “Heartbreaks don’t really do it for me. Not like a lot of people who think that, you know, I need that and now I’m a poet. If someone doesn’t wanna fuck me anymore, it’s not bad.”) because over the course of 11 songs they delve again and again into the Freudian construct of Eros and Thanatos and some of the forms these two core conflicting-yet-codependent drives can take and translate them into toe-tapping orch pop and dark indie rock songs that combine dread and desire in equal measure.

And maybe right about now you’re thinking “here we go with the overreach” but rest assured everything written here is based on direct empirical evidence because not long ago I met up with Silk War’s singer/lyricist/acoustic guitarist and co-songwriter Alexandra Blair (the other co-songwriter in question is guitarist/producer James “Jimmy” Mullen) for a chat and she verified the broad contours of my theory and described how her songwriting is galvanized by a “circadian rhythm” of revelry and despair—with the sense of transcendence of a proper S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y Night on the town soon followed by S-U-N-D-A-Y Morning Coming Down doldrums so there’s your Eros and Thanatos interplay right there no matter the actual days of the week, not to mention the closely related notion of creative destruction or destructive creativity whichever you prefer.

And here in our conversation Ms. Blair references the Orson Welles “cuckoo clock” speech from the Third Man which is highly apropos—not to mention her mentions of Bukowski, Nabokov and Sartre at other points and her love of literature in general—so be forewarned there’s a reading list involved if you wanna fully get onto the Silk War Wavelength.

[[Before going any further I should mention any quote here from Alexandra that is sans quotation marks is paraphrased on my part because I used a voice memo app to record our talk and of course it picked up all kinds of ambient noise and nearby conversations, and using a transcription app didn’t help much either because it had me replying to the statement above with “Cool madness better. Right. Chickens, crazy” and while I wish I’d said that it seems unlikely because I wasn’t that many beers in yet. Still, I’d like to think Alexandra really did say “The vicious alliterates, but also like the tender Fucking drama” at some point and yes the phone app capitalized “Fucking” for some reason because why not.]]

Come Evening opens with “Little Souls” which sets the stage for the dialectical musical materialism (!) to come, a song that’s by turns somber and stirring, Apollonian and Dionysian. Fading in on some dour church organ tones, soon a faraway phoning-it-in voice informs us “our barbaric ritual can begin” (finally!) before a quick reverse-fade suddenly snaps us out of our reverie and we’re thrust into a new musical texture with a driving rhythm section and crisp acoustic guitar work and melodic electric lead, but never losing the downward spiral organ chords with Alexandra declaiming, “There’s a dark wet side of things / crystallized in perfumes / masqueraded with rings” which right away lays out the stakes of shape-shifting "dark wet" primal desires and fears (the perfume here may be crystallized, but soon it’ll be dispersed into the ether again) that make our narrator want to be swept away but at the same time wary of getting a little too swept up in this twilight world where we’re all “forgetting our need to sleep” and “breaking windows for the beauty of it” and there’s your creative destruction right there.

In “Little Souls” we also get our first exposure to another dialectical relationship in a singing style that alternates between half-sung-half-spoken “recitative” at one extreme and more melodic “aria” sections on the other extreme (especially when it comes to the hooks). And yeah I realize recitative/aria are terms from opera, but it’s not a total stretch given that A. is well versed with these terms as a formally trained singer because she majored in Vocal Performance at NYU after moving here from Chicago.

And oh yeah “Little Souls” includes one of my favorite images from the record which doubles as a fashion tip (“I’ll paint my nails black to cover up / all that New York dirt”) which also supports A.’s contention that this is a true New York City record and which also supports my contention of Eros/Thanatos lying at the heart of Come Evening. Because really any truly great city like NYC should be hellbent on killing you (Thanatos) but if it doesn’t kill you it’ll make you fall in love with it (Eros) not despite of it’s murderous intent but (perversely, you pervert!) because of it. Or as A. puts it: “Have you ever biked through Bushwick? You get dirt in your eyes! It’s disgusting. You have to wear sunglasses. You have to be able to withstand it. And at the same time absorb it, and love it. And fucking hate it. By becoming yourself and wearing [inaudible] with whatever you feel on the outside and creating something out of [inaudible]” and well you get the idea despite the omissions. (for those with too much time on their hands: if you wanna read up on the Marxist dialectics of modern urban living and New York City specifically then I’d highly recommend Marshall Berman’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air which is still entertaining and enlightening nearly 40 years after its initial publication…)

The next two songs on Come Evening keep riding the dialectical rails with “Barcelona” being about a man who sabotages his present by confusing it with his past (and probably a half dreamt-up past at that) and again the beginning sounds like you’re waking up from a dream before launching into a catchy piano-driven baroque-pop number with a video shot inside a Brooklyn church interspersed with shots of Alexandra walking into the sea all Kate Chopin like (and oh yeah I should have mentioned the music video for “Little Souls” is modeled on Maya Deren’s 1944 short film At Land for all you aspiring cineaste avant-garde types). And then the next song “The Blue Hour” (as befits its title) explores the liminal state between night and day, sleep and waking, dreams and reality, where they’re all not so easy to distinguish and you think to yourself, “I’ve been awake for a long time / I’ll sort it out.” 

And then and then (in no particular order) there’s the deceptively upbeat dance-pop of “Slender Slander” which deals with gun violence; and “Lark Mirror” which uses a bird hunter’s decoy mechanism as a metaphor for delusion but in string-swelling, spine-tingling form especially when it gets to the line about “not wasting my youth on you”; “New York (You’re My Religion)” has a nice glam-pop swing to it and the title’s pretty self-explanatory, while the stately closing waltz of “Sylvia” is less self-explantory but now you know it’s about Sylvia Plath; “Agoria Phobia” opens with a slinky, stop-start groove that most bands would not hesitate to build an entire song around. But Silk War are good about not repeating themselves, or at least only repeating themselves with variation, and this song completely changes after about a minute never to return to the intro part again.

And then and then “Second Age” opens up with a Joy Division beat and some doomy chords but ends almost six minutes later sounding like the song is soaring to the heaven even though the lyrics stay sick throughout; “Velvet” uses the veil as a metaphor for imperfections both hidden and exposed (those dialectics again!) while the penultimate “My Familiar” represents the demonic doppelgänger of its title with an epic eight-minute arrangement that starts with a witchy mystical sounding opening section and then makes it way through a whole serious of ebbs and flows before arriving at some Pink Floyd-worthy ethereal keyboard arpeggiating and psychedelic guitar wailing before ebbing and cresting one last time with a triumphant declaration of autonomy. 

And did I mention this song comes off impressively live? Because when the Silk War appear in person they really amps up the Dionysian side of things with Alexandra stalking the stage (and the audience!) like a test-tube fusion of Siouxsie Sioux and Stevie Nicks and Wendy O. Williams’s DNA but with the band holding down the Apollonian side of things with ornate musical arrangements precisely rendered as seen in the video above I took of them at the recent Come Evening album release party. And no the sound quality’s not perfect because this was recorded on a phone but it turned out a hell of a lot better than the interview and should give you enough incentive to see them live which like a waking dream you can never quite recapture afterward but you know it was damn near perfect when it happened. —Jason Lee

photo by John Burgundy, Berlin Under A, 08.26.21

 

Jealousy is what happens when “good” emotions get turned inside-out and then collided against a bunch of other emotions, and I was a psych major so I should know. (suck it, Dr. Phil!) As opposed to envy (wanting something you don’t have) jealousy is the act of dreading, or lamenting, the loss of something you do have. Which means that jealousy actually derives from a state of happiness, or at least contentment, until some other party appears poised to take one’s happiness-generating special someone or something away (or does take them away) which causes that happiness to get turned inside-out into something more like anger or fury. Add in some disgust, fear, and surprise (“I didn’t see it coming!”) and you got your most pungent form of jealousy. 

And guess what, I’ve just listed each one of the six most basic forms of human emotion as defined by noted actual psychologist and “emotions expert” (yes, this exists) Paul Ekman, meaning that jealousy is basically all the emotions at once and no wonder it’s such an irrational and erratic state of being and probably delusional about half the time too.

Like it’s nominal subject, “Jealous//Unreal” begins in a fairly positive state of mind with a tightly-coiled come-hither vibe that’s basically desire personified–an in-the-pocket head-nodding bassline set against a tight dance-punk beat and washed of ambient guitar chords that’s projects steady confidence no matter how much the fragmentary lyrical content may be casting shadows of doubt. But soon something like obsessive fixation creeps into the picture with a single four-word phrase repeating that includes both the words in the song’s title. And while “Jealous//Unreal” soon breaks away from the repeated phrase and goes back to another verse, it’s like you’ve just heard the moment that a jealous seed is planted, like foreshadowing for the more total slide into irrational fixation. 

It’s not until after the song appears to end for a moment at 1:50 with a quick fadeout that it proceeds to turn itself inside-out. The once unrelenting, syncopated bassline is reduced to short two-note bursts utilizing an even heavier more fuzzed out sound with only the stripped-down drums filling the gaps. And in the vocals the intrusive thought from earlier completely takes over, progressing gradually from a whisper to a scream and repeated to the point of absurdity, turned into a mantra with the vocals and music gradually building in intensity and speed until it sounds like a runaway train about to jump the tracks (peep those two parallel lines in the song’s title hmmm..) before an emergency brake gets pulled at the last minute and you wonder if the whole cycle is about to begin again (this is six-minute long song that feels like it’s maybe four minutes long that’s how immersive it gets to be).

Anyway, it’s one of the best aural representations of jealousy taking hold and then taking over I’ve heard in quite some time with a seductive groove hijacked by OCD repetition and growing sonic chaos (two sides of the same coin?) but without ever losing its animating drive (the sense of desire, the foundational groove). But however ambitious this may sound rest assured The Down & Outs don’t make soggy jam band epics for noodle dancing, or pretentious prog rock epics about how to balance your chakras, because “Jealous//Unreal” stays rooted in a no-fat-on-the-bones post-punk-ish tension and concision with strong funk and dub underpinnings throughout (and if that’s not the most stereotypically music-criticy sentence I’ve ever written then I owe you two dollars but still it’s all quite true) or at least that’s my read.

So maybe there needs to be more songs written about jealousy. Just like the world could use more movies like Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, one of the best movies ever about jealousy and I could watch Joan Crawford and Bette Davis drag each other down the stars all day in full-on psycho-biddy/hagsploitation mode all day. In my opinion a better point of comparison for the two most recent Down & Outs singles (the previous one being “Last Party On Duke Street”) would be Public Image Ltd. given that band’s groundbreaking sound in their early years with often fronted by deep-groove bass and death disco beats locked into robotic repetition with Keith Levene’s guitar parts spiraling overhead—vacillating between atmospheric swells and slashing attacks all immersed in a distinctively dub reggae production style. But who knows maybe I’m making all this up.

Luckily, I got to have a lovely conversation with Down & Outs’ bassist/vocalist/co-songwriter Ray recently (we’re on a first name basis now) when he called up The Deli HQ mistakely one day trying to order a chopped cheese and agreed to submit to a few question instead. And he seemed pretty ok with the PiL comparison while also presenting his own list of musical influences that I could hardly keep up with in my notes but I did catch Death from Above 1979, Channel Tres, Thin Lizzy, Daniel Avery, AC/DC, and I Hate Models among others and already that’s we’re talking such an intriguing grab bag of hard rock, vibey EBM-inflected rap music, techno and garage (the latter in both in the rock and electronic sense) that it’s no wonder they’re so good at depicting the collision of conflicting impulses and emotions of a jealous mind.

As it turns out, the structure of “Jealous//Unreal” grew out of the Great Lockdown during which Ray and band guitarist/co-songwriter) Benji started trading ideas back and forth in Garageband–and no doubt Tom the Drummer too, who replaced previous drummer Varun the Drummer–building these last two singles (and the next one, you heard it here first!) from the scrapheap of assembled ideas, choosing one of these scraps as the through line for an entire song and then adding/subtracting layers and applying other sonic manipulations as they traded the tracks back and forth–a dialectic technique that would make Aristotle proud and that was simpatico with their previously existing flipsides-of-the-same-coin creative dynamic.

Ray compares this working method to 1) a rock band making their version of a techno song, simulating electronic music without the actual electronics; and 2) a rock band in the vein of the Stooges, making rock songs out of minimalist pounding riffs repeated ad infinitum as a wide-open canvas for an Iggy-like shamanistic lead singer to entrance listeners with verbal incantations and acts of self-mutilation (I’m paraphrasing here) and he therefore concludes that 3) the Stooges invented techno, which truly, is just the sort of audacious thinking we encourage here at the Deli because like they say go big or go home.

This led the two of us down a much more wide-ranging but inspiring conversational rabbit hole about wanting to break the mold of the entrenched conservatism that mainstream rock music had settled into during the 21st century (case in point, Gen X “dad rock” bands like Foo Fighters are still having number one albums over 20 years after they formed and hey we love ya Dave but must you appear in every single rock doc that gets made today (!)  but still The Colour and the Shape remains unimpeachable forever) leading some of your more adventurous contemporary bands to twist themselves into “guitar-based music” pretzels just to shun the “rock” label and its current associations. 

But Ray instead advocates expanding the palette of rock’s sources of inspiration and desire for experimentation. And really when you think about it this is consistent with rock tradition already and “iconic” icon-smashing bands like the Clash (“No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones in 1977 they promised) riffing on dub, funk, ska, and Americana instead like a kid let loose in a musical candy store, or a band like Blondie being influenced by a plethora of music including uptown artists like Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash back before your average honky on the street ever heard the words “hip” and “hop” placed back to back even among many New Yorkers (clubs like the Roxy, the Mudd Club, and Paradise Garage were crucial to these uptown/downtown encounters with their eclectic punky funky bills back in the day).

So in this sense the latest music by The Down & Outs could be considered both progressive and retro (but in the most expansive and least reactive sense) proving that rock music in New York City isn’t down and out for the count yet; of course if you’re a regular reader of the Deli you know that already! So why not wish these boys luck in their efforts to twist familiar genres inside-out (which again makes me think of dub reggae innovations as critical to this equation, after all it’s also been called “X-Ray Music”) setting them on a collision course to see what’s born out of the wreckage. And if that sounds grandiose then blame me not the down-and-outers because they seem like pretty modest guys. And hey if the band’s ambition makes you a little jealous, well, such is the price of letting emotion take hold. (Jason Lee)

 

Hover over the graphic below to listen to Homeboy Sandman’s Anjelitu EP in its entirety. And if you like what you hear, you can head out to RE:GEN:CY in Red Hook, Brooklyn, tonight to see him perform live.

 
In modern-day America I think it’s safe to say that most of us don’t know too much about our homeland’s labor history or workers’ rights movements. For example, it wasn’t until I did some Labor Day googling yesterday that I first learned about the 100-year-old Battle of Blair Mountain, where 10,000 workers living in a West Virginia mining camp staged an armed insurrection against the bosses who apparently treated their interracial work force like slaves and carried out intimidation and assassination (!) campaigns against worker-residents who tried to unionize. The battle ended after five days (and about a hundred deaths) when the US Army intervened on the side of the coal mining company (interesting sidenote: the militant miners called themselves the “Red Neck Army” after the red bandanas they wore around their necks, meaning that some of the first “rednecks” were Black Americans, a term that was soon usurped by less enlightened elements).

It’s pretty crazy I’d never heard of the uprising before—another piece of our history that’s been suppressed and kept out of school curricula (see the "Red Neck Army" link above) not unlike the Tulsa race massacre, a tragedy that likewise occurred in 1921 which was not exactly a banner year for this country (and ok, my own inherent laziness get some of the blame as well). Anyway, about now you may be thinking “what does this have to do with emerging music in New York City?” Because, let’s face it, labor history isn’t the most popular subject for songwriters with some notable exceptions of course. What’s arguably more surprising is how the broader topic of work is likewise not so popular as a musical subject, despite it occupying about half the waking hours of the full-time gainfully employed and even more time if we define work simply as “concerted effort put into a given task," but then again who wants to think about work when enjoying music or to think about making music as "work"?

Hip hop artists and audiences is who. Or at least it is judging by how often work is acknowledged in lyrics and in hip hop culture as a reality of life–with words like “hustle” and “grind” used frequently and approvingly. And pro-work tendencies are hardly limited to aspirational pop-rap, or serious-minded conscious rap, because even when attention is turned to such leisure activities as sex and drugs in hardcore-oriented rap, it’s notable how often (to the point of cliché by now) these subjects are framed less in terms of pleasure and more in terms of work, with the job security of "pimps, players, and pushers" guaranteed thanks to the insatiable desires of their clientele, an even more durable subject given the exploitational parallels drawn between "underground" and "legitimate" economies. As for mumble rappers, they stand proud and tall (ok, more slouched over really) for the slacker contingent. (notably country music used to excel at work songs too, but not so much anymore, since Nashville hitmakers stay busy these days writing songs about date nights at Applebee’s and sexy tractors).

Work is clearly front and center on the opening track (“Go Hard”) of Homeboy Sandman’s Anjelitu EP (Mello Music Group), the latest in a series of collaborations with fellow underground highly-productive worker bee Aesop Rock (who produced all of Anjelitu and contributes vocals on the last number “Lice Team, Baby”) that began back in 2015 with their first record together under the Lice moniker—a moniker most recently resuscitated for their MF Doom tribute single early this year. And Mr. Sandman is clearly pretty well-versed on the subject of work given his employment history (bartending, marketing, teaching in the NYC Public School System), the three years he spent at Hofstra Law School before dropping out to become a full-time emcee ("I want to make arguments and make points and back them up with details [and] specifics, and that’s the type of stuff you work on at law school" he explained back in a 2012 interview), and finally, in his status as an underground "hip hop PhD".

And his partner Aesop Rock knows a thing or two about work too, considering that his breakthrough LP, Labor Days (Def Jux, 2001) was a concept album centered around the perils and the pleasures of labor as well as the larger plight of working-class America (“Now we the American working population / hate the fact that eight hours a day / is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn’t us”), an album that’s still considered a landmark of independent hip hop, not to mention white rapperdom.

“Go Hard” is a phrase that one online dictionary defines as “to work hard or to do something with intensity” and boy does our ‘Boy Sand (as he refers to himself on the track) go hard on “Go Hard” as he bobs and weaves between the metronomic-yet-lopsided beat like Muhammad Ali playing rope-a-dope with bars that float like a butterfly and sting like a bee (“I’m like Fred Hampton chewing on rattlesnake plantain / in other words, I go hard”) unspooling in short bursts at first then turning into long flowing lines like a bebop solo (Mr. Sandman is a jazz fan and former sax player, and his Dominican father was a champion boxer before becoming a lawyer focused on local progressive causes, so the math adds up). And hey anyone who manages to rhyme string theory, chimichurri, cemetery, and seminary and make it flow seamlessly both musically and logically has clearly put in the work and isn’t afraid to let it show.

Over the subsequent five tracks, Sandman and Aesop offer a virtual correspondence course on underground hip hop beat-making—ranging from minimalist funk grooves to beats built on what sound like Spaghetti Western samples and that’s just in the next couple of tracks—and equally on the technically complex bars favored by many underground emcees including heavy doses of consonance and assonance, alliteration, speed rapping, slant rhyming, internal rhyming, multisyllabic rhyming (a.k.a. “multis”) and other techniques—it’s telling that most of these techniques can be heard in four random lines off Anjelitu like “Another clash, another classic down the massive drain / Gene Kelly dancing in the acid rain / beneath the moon, I penned the music for the village getting raided / play while lickin’ shots, I’m still in shock from Ewing getting traded”—not to mention all the clever metaphors and allusions and colorful imagery and the constant switch-ups of flow and the lyrical callbacks to the likes of LL Cool J, Slick Rick, and Cypress Hill. With so much going on it can get pretty intense, just ask the Youtube reviewer above.

So if you wanna help support two hard-working indie hip hop stalwarts you’ll probably want to check out Anjelitu and perhaps drop the artists a few bones for their trouble. The record’s title is a mashup of Homeboy Sandman’s childhood nickname (Angelito meaning “Little Angel”) and the well-known Chinese yin-yang symbol (taijitu) which symbolizes the fluctuating dynamic caused by opposing forces coming together to form a whole—which all makes good sense given the highly personal nature of the record (“My team ain’t make it to the playoffs / luckily my demons always make it to the seance”) and its shape-shifting nature (consistent with Sandman and Aesop’s discographies on the whole) holding true to the vow made on the EP to “go to hell and back ‘fore I repeat myself.” And if you wanna witness some hip hop labor performed live before your very eyes, as stated above, you can head over to RE:GEN:CY in Red Hook, Brooklyn tonight (9/7) where our ‘Boy Sand will do his thing. Or catch him touring across this great nation’s southern and western regions over the next couple months. (Jason Lee)

I’m not usually one to quote other critics here but since I’m feeling a little lazy, and because there’s some provocative opinions on the latest album by Petite League out there, I’ll just share a couple quick ones here. Like the quote from the Americana Highways writer who says there’s no hyperbole at all in calling Joyrider “a lo-fi Pet Sounds” or prematurely naming it “the best album of the year” because “it’s just hard to image [sic] something topping this.” Congrats with that pull quote gentlemen! And over at The Family Reviews, in describing the overall vibe of the album, another writer observed that “the dominant force on this album [is being] blissful in the moment even with the knowledge that when the high wears off the hangover is going to be psychically shattering.” Which sounds a lot like Brian Wilson while making Pet Sounds so I think we have a running theme here. 

When it comes to the song “New Tricks” off the album and it’s newly released music video, Petite League demonstrate their considerable talent for making loneliness and regret and daydreams and succeeding-against-all-the-odds sound transcendent in a low-key/lo-fi kinda way, luxuriating in sharp, sweet suffering like teasing a loose tooth with your tongue. And while I can’t help but think of Rob Gordon at the beginning of High Fidelity when he wonders aloud whether the music or the misery came first, finally you gotta say “who cares!” when you can simply bask in the winsome strains of Petite League and the heart-rending tale of an old dog trying to learn “new tricks" in the parallel realms of romance and roulette.

Now that I think about it, this song’s scrappy shaggy-dog story is straight out of a hardcore country song–talk about a genre that knows how to confront everyday forms of sadness or at least it once did–about a gambler who definitely does not know when to hold ‘em or when to fold ’em as evidenced by all-night booze and baccarat filled bender at the Golden Nugget in Atlantic City spent “betting it all on the wrong dog” and returning dejectedly on the 4AM bus back to the city smelling like ashtray butts and “the bottle I was sleeping in” and then showing up on your doorstep unannounced declaring “I’ve made a terrible mistake please consider loving me like you once did” and boy does this kind of stuff pull at your heartstrings, especially given the dogged optimism of the narrator holding out hope for “one more lucky strike / one more lucky hand / one more lucky night” a lot like the tragic protagonist of nearly every movie ever made about doomed dreamers and gamblers.

And when you’re this hard up you can sometimes find a perverse succor in being a sucker, that is, in giving yourself so entirely over to something or someone so that no matter how hopeless the reality of it you at least manage to escape yourself–like our narrator drawn to pretty faces that “always drinks for free…like sugar and wine in my veins,” providing comfort to “a broken, broken man,” not unlike “the comforting heat from the warmth of a gun” or some other metaphor about being inextricably-drawn-to-what’s-worst-for-you in a way that’s “hard to explain and harder to change” but hey just raise your hand if you haven’t been there before. (Yeah, I thought so!) Then if you dress up the quasi-story-song with gently shimmering Andy Summers guitar chording and bounding basslines and in-the-pocket timekeeping (courtesy of drummer Henry Schoonmaker) and blankly blissful vocals (courtesy of songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Lorenzo Gillis Cook) all wrapped up in the warm glow of the record’s lo-fi production, and you’re likely to experience a slowly spreading sense of deep contentment whatever your current circumstances in life.

And speaking of being bathed in a warm glow, the music video only amplifies this sense of womb-like comfort and warmth with the band’s members ensconced in colorful mall-walker windbreakers kind of like oversized Members Only jackets as they wander around and lounge on a city rooftop decorated with pin-striped partitions and it certainly looks like a pleasant way to spend a day–especially with all the magic tricks and money flaunting and dice playing happening up there. This warm nostalgic aesthetic is only heightened by the video being filmed on Super 8 and 16mm film by band ally and video director KD Sampaio (Good Relation Records) with the resulting visual full of artifacts and vertical hold issues evoking the hazy, sentimental vibe of unearthed home movies discovered in the attic. 

And so the moral of the story may be "why not bet all your chips and shoot for the big jackpot, perhaps followed by a joyride in the Mojave Desert, because what else have you got to lose?" or at least that’s my takeaway. At worst, you’ll experience a psychically-shattering hangover and then write a great song about it like this one. (Jason Lee)

 

After checking out their debut single “Bourgeois de Ville,” if forced at gunpoint to guess some of the guiding lights in this young band’s musical firmament, I would propose such “old-skool-new-wave” artists as (shameless name-dropping alert!) Wire, Bauhaus, PiL, the Adolescents, the Police (peep that Synchronicity like cover image) Hüsker Dü, the B-52s, and later, the Pixies and the Breeders–as filtered through a Wall-of-Voodoo-meets-Oingo-Boingo sensibility and don’t forget to add dashes of Jesus and Mary Chain’s noisy fuzzed out bliss or Buzzcocks’ headrush pop-punk hooks. We can only hope that our deceptively clean-cut-looking boys keep raiding their cool uncles’ record collections and spinning gold from the old vinyl (yes we’re being presumptuous, but the “cool uncle” theory is a valid one to explore) and that they keep seeking out the human in the monstrous and the monstrous in the human like they do in this song just like their namesake.

Vacillating between first person and third person, the lyrics confront Frankenstein and his monster at once (and as one) coming up with such bon mots as “shut the fuck up you’re a Pisces / probably talking feels over ICEEs” and somewhere Kurt Cobain doth shed a tear. And before long the narrator is proudly reeling off examples of his own pretentious mendacity and overall asshole-acity before suddenly losing his cool and blurting out the unstated desperate subtext (“je suis intéressant!” which means “I am interesting” for all you non-Francophones) over and over again to a growing chorus of babbling voices in his head (that we can also hear) and you just know none of this can be a good sign. But it is a good cautionary tale that points the finger inward too because as frontman Jackson Dockery puts it “sometimes you’re the pretentious asshole” or in other words, doctor, heal thyself, like the crocheted pillow says.

These shifting psychological states are reflected in the music which opens on a tense anticipatory buildup like a slowed down, blunted out version of the intro of the Dead Boys’ "Sonic Reducer" before cutting off at the climactic moment and transforming into a crisp, tense post-punk-disco-beat-bass-groove with occasional guitar outbursts and soccer terrace-style vocal chanting of the title phrase which sounds like the name of a new club in the Meatpacking District. But then the song takes another turn and eventually builds up to a rush of crunching guitars and increasingly Tourette’s-like traded vocal (sometimes in Spanish) and continues apace with ebbs and flows like the tide coming in and out which is all rather fitting since there’s a strong surf-punk vibe at times too like in the breakdown section especially with the “Wipeout” drum rolls and swarming echoey guitar all building to a climactic finale of frantic Johnny Rotten style jabbering and I won’t spoil any more of it, you can just listen yourself.

Anyway it’ll probably make you wanna dance the pogo or smash things, or maybe just topple over a vase due to your spasmodic dancing, because this song doesn’t skimp on the jumpy restlessness or nervous-whisper-to-a-scream vocal acrobatics with Dockery coming across at times like Stan Ridgeway and Fred Schneider’s love child backed up by a band that echoes his manic mood swings to a tee. And by the end you’ll wanna punch your first repeatedly in the air while surfing in a moshpit in righteous fury against mindless Mobius strip banter at Bushwick rooftop parties that threatens to turn you into just another pretentious asshole, but one who likes to dance and to rant entertainingly at least–which I hope the band plan to do themselves at their upcoming gigs on 9/10 (gold sounds), 9/18 (Berlin) and 10/5 (bar freda). (Jason Lee)

 The time is almost here for summer fun! And for summer fun, you need summer music! As in, summer music conveniently organized in playlist form! Obviously! As in a MASSIVE EIGHT-HOUR-PLUS SPOTIFY PLAYLIST of songs both old and new (but mostly new) that have a summer theme, or a summer vibe, or an "I’m playing this while it’s summer" thing going on! And then, after you’ve taken a sick day off from work and risked getting fired to listen to the Spotify playlist, you can spend untold hours more viewing the custom-made YouTube playlist below–cleverly titled Beach Blanket Bedlam–which includes not only a bunch of cool music videos (and not very much overlap with the Spotify playlist) but also all kinds of wacky commercials and film trailers and news segments and other visual ephermera tied to summer somehow.

Wait. What? What’s that you say? It’s almost over? Summer’s almost over? Uhhhhh whut?

Well, I guess summer is almost over. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy some beach-appropriate-music while you’re raking leaves and baking pies and crying salty tears into the homemade crust you made for the pie because fall is here and summer is over. IT’S OVER!! JUST DEAL!!

What, what? Ahhhh, ok. So summer doesn’t end for almost a month. On September 21, you say? And it doesn’t even end "unofficially" until after next weekend and Labor Day. So yeah, then…..Better get out there now! HURRY! Summer fun is waning!! FUN FUN FUN FUN!!!! You’re on a summer countdown clock dammit so better get to work!

And hey, along these lines, if you happen to be in the vicinity of Rockaway Beach at 94th Street (Queens, NYC) on Sunday 8/29 you can get in some last seasonal jollies at the NO NEW WAVE FEST 2 which FEATURES SIX HIGH QUALITY LOCAL BANDS playing live on the boardwalk starting at 2PM. And yeah, OK, it’s not exactly supposed to be sunny. But it’s not supposed to rain either. And since beggars can’t be choosers esp when there’s only about a week (or three weeks, or who-the-hell-knows-how-long….) left to Summer 2021 you’d better just get out there dammit!! 

P.S. And here’s one last thought re: "things you should do" while I’m handing out orders here —-> You should follow THEE DELI on Instagram if you don’t already. Because if you did, you woulda already known about the two playlists above weeks ago. And while you may live your life with regret until next summer knowing what-could-have-been you never know there may be a Fall or Winter playlist in the making. (Jason Lee)

It’s one thing to know that the end will come one day (easy enough to ignore) but it’s another to know when that day will come (not so easy to ignore). The new single put out today by Brooklyn-based three-piece Nihiloceros (“Dirty Homes”) is based around the latter condition which Dr. Nessa Coyle, co-editor of The Nature of Suffering and The Oxford Textbook of Palliative Care Nursing, both of which make for excellent beach reads, has termed the “existential slap” i.e. the very moment where a soon-to-arrive demise is realized and internalized alongside the attendant trauma likely to follow a time-stamped death sentence.

Despite being something best-avoided in real life, the “existential slap” is a popular plot device in the movies like in all those ticking-clock-countdown-to-a-life-or-death-deadline type films, even if many of them cop out and allow the hero to live at the last minute. Existential slap movies also tap into our curiosity of how we’d react if we learned we’ve got only one year or maybe just 24 hours left to live, just like Ethan Hawke in that movie from a few years ago called (*ahem*) 24 Hours To Live. But my personal fave in this genre is Miracle Mile, an obscure 1988 film that’s grown a cult following over the years due to what Black Mirror sicko-satirist Charlie Brooker once labelled “the biggest lurch of tone” of any movie ever.  

Basically (warning: skip this paragraph if you hate tangents and/or spoilers) the movie starts off as a quirky “meet cute” rom-com that’s just about as Totally ‘80s as they come. And then it ends with our nerdy-adorable couple slowly sinking into the La Brea Tar Pits in a crashed helicopter as nuclear bombs rain down on Los Angeles (a surprisingly tender scene believe it or not). But most of the movie revolves around the existential bitchslap that arrives about 30 minutes in when Anthony Edwards first finds out (before anyone else) that nuclear armageddon is on its way in about an hour or so, and all the batshit crazy shit that transpires as a result.

But hey we’re here to talk about music, right? (thanks for the reminder!) While not on the same level as movies there are at least a few well-known albums (concept albums, natch) that deal with this very same theme—notable examples being Megadeth’s Countdown To Extinction, the Del/Dan/Kid underground hip hop classic Deltron 3030, and of course David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars which opens with the conceit of being down to “five years left to cry in” before the end.

But a “concept EP” that takes the existential slap as its central conceit, well this is breaking new ground. And Nihiloceros have done just that with Self Destroy (released digitally on 9/17 and then physically on 10/1 from Totally Real Records) perhaps the world’s first “existential slap EP” (make that “ESEP”) and there’s no bisexual rock aliens falling to Earth to spread moorage daydreams before the inevitable rock ’n’ roll suicide in the Nihiloceros’s rendition. Instead, we have a six-song self-described meditation on “the imminent evolutionary unraveling of the human condition and the absurdity of the end of the world” which obviously should make for good beach listening.

And guess what “Dirty Homes” is the lead-off track on the EP so we got a sneak preview now of how it all begins. Eschewing any “meet cute” gambits, the song instead charges into your earholes with a needle drop straight into a rush of Superchunky distorted intertwining bass and guitar and propulsive beating of skins (Chris Gilroy on the skins as well as production/engineering/mixing duties, whereas Siberian transplant German Sent handles current live drumming duties, got it?) and an eerie high-register melody. Meanwhile, right off the bat the narrator faces “youth erod[ing]” and “ages torn down” and the impending demise of humanity (difficult to imagine, no?) and just like Anthony Edwards in the phone booth scene above, humanity’s first reaction is flat out denial. When we talked the other day guitarist/lyricist Mike Borchardt called the song a “fairy tale vs. reality” type fableand that seems about right because the cognitive dissonance is palpable in both the lyrics and music.

Contrasting the titular “dirty homes” with pristine “white cathedrals” it seems humanity may have miscalculated in not taking better care of the places where we actually live (the dirty homes in question) instead tending to ritual spaces where we imagine our ideal selves as looked after by a beneficent god (this could be any type of “god” or "gods" take your pick). As further described in the lyrics through snatches of arresting imagery, we’ve travelled to the point of no return on “the yellow bricks [that] lead to Rome” and well now I’m picturing Dorothy hooking up with Caligula and bringing the whole gang along to a gladiator match (you know the Cowardly Lion is freaking the fuck out) followed by an imperial orgy (every tried to have sex with a scarecrow?) which all ends in chaos of course. 

Likewise on the musical side of the things the song swings between extremes—the bouyant melodies of the verses masking apocalyptical imagery of locked jaws and rusted suns and “cities built on your cries” that is until the song gets stuck in its own groove with our narrator repeating “YOU! YOU! YOU! YOU!” in the chorus in an echo of the egotism and individualism and freedom-to-be-stupid-but-fully-satiated-at-all-times-at-all-costs that got us into this end times mess in the first place. Then later there’s a breakdown section (talk about literal!) and finally an outro that opens with a nice crunchy ’n’ catchy guitar solo that soon unravels into swelling sonic murk and doomsday countdown-clock rhythms before glitching out and ending on a bass and guitar single-note that hisses and crackles like a burnt out element. 

And if this all sounds a little on the dismal side it’s not so much really because much like Miracle Mile the songs on Self Destroy are the musical equivalent of action set pieces, adrenalized and strangly exhilarated by impending doom (thought don’t get me wrong “the shit goes down”) and plus the band creates such a powerful slab-of-sound that you’ll likely be mesmerized anyway—at times I still can’t tell which parts are bass or guitar, nevermind theremin or effects-laden Rhodes piano—which could be down in part to bassist/co-vocalist Alex Hoffman designing a custom line of pedals for the record (!) that’ll be available to the buying public at some point (plus an entire line of tie-in hot sauces, I shit you not) so check out “Dirty Homes” for now and then clean up your pig-sty why don’tcha and then get ready to blast off when Self Destroy drops because, well, it’s gonna be “a thrill ride into oblivion” (potential pull quote!) and you may as well sit back and enjoy the sights and sounds as it goes down. (Jason Lee)