There was once a band called the Ramones who wrote a song about wanting to be sedated but the song itself sounded anything but sedated because, well, those guys spent a lot of time in a van together and, well, just imagine spending half your life trapped in a van with Dee Dee, Johnny and Joey (and whoever happened to be the drummer at the time) and you know that shit was far from sedate.

Based on the new single and video released today by New York City band Colatura (the song in question being “King Kalm” which also happens to be about wanting to be sedated) I actually don’t think I’d mind riding around in a van with Digo, Jennica, Meredith, and Alex especially if they brought along their gorilla suit, skateboard, and prescription meds and played more songs like this one on the van’s tape deck or 8-track player featuring chiming swirly guitars and synths swells and gently insistent bass/drums all topped off with gossamer overlapping airy vocals to the point where if this was 1987 or even 1993 it’d probably get you signed to Sarah Records on the spot and it would definitely make you feel sedated.

However, upon further inspection, I should mention that should the band Colatura drive up next to you in a sketchy looking van and offer you a ride to your destination along with some unwrapped candy then you may want to think twice because once you dig under the surface of “King Khan” (lyrics here) you’ll find it’s actually a song about battling anxiety and loss and regret and finding that the only way to do so is through some combination of denial, self-harm (if scab picking counts that is) and (wait for it…) drugs. So while your trip in the van probably won’t be stressful on the level of Dee Dee pulling a big Bowie knife on Johnny after the latter called his girlfriend a skank, instead you may be faced with four minds full of worry (and, who knows, possibly some passive-aggressiveness followed by a long icy silence) so maybe you’re better off just walking. But you can at least put their beautiful new song on your headphones. (Jason Lee)

Warning: This blog entry is rated ‘R’ for rockist content and for frank discussion of cock rockery

The Nuclears make rock ’n’ roll about rock ’n’ roll and god bless ‘em for it. Led by the brothers Dudolevitch, Mike D and Brian D share vocal and electric guitar duties and are ably assisted by Bobby Sproles (bass) and Kevin Blatchford (drums) who function as the control rods to this long-running Brooklyn-based musical nuclear reactor with additional assistance from vocalist/tambournist Briana Layon who acts as the band’s steam generator with her Tina-Turner-meets-Valerie-Brown-meets-Julie-Brown-rapped-in-the-body-of-a-white-girl-soulful-belting-and-on-stage-shimmying-and-tambourine-shaking. 

Earlier this year the band released what is said to be their final studio album Seasides (Rum Bar Records) and last week they played a farewell-to-Manhattan show at Mercury Lounge that burned with a white hot molten intensity (check out the Deli’s Instagram account for a clip from the show in question alongside the super fun self-described "Maximum Oi’N’B" opening act 45 Adapters who shared sensible advice like "don’t trust anyone who doesn’t dance") and in case you missed that one their very very last NYC show will happen at TV Eye in Brooklyn-adjacent Ridgewood, Queens on 9/18—the giant centerfold portrait of Iggy Pop in the front room couldn’t be more appropriate for this stacked bill alongside The Fleshtones (!), Televisionaries, and Spud Cannon—and really you’d be crazy to miss it. Over their decade-plus existence The Nuclears’ sound has been compared to everyone from Chuck Berry to the Stones, the Ramones to the Dolls, the Kinks to Kiss, Deep Purple to Black Sabbath and the list goes on—not to mention their own self-stated musical influences such as The Who, MC5, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Radio Birdman, Turbonegro, and the Hellacopters. In other words, they don’t just rock. They rawk.

And speaking of “rock about rock” (sorry, make that “rawk about rawk!”) The Nuclears are/were essentially a living breathing rock ’n’ roll Hall of Fame traveling circus with intertwining stands of ‘50s rock und roll, ‘60s garage, ‘70s punk, ‘80s metal, and ‘90s grunge and the result is one hell of a lot more fun than staring at Mick Jagger’s slacks behind a glass case in Cleveland, Ohio (not to deny that “Cleveland rocks”) while still putting across their own singularly opened-hearted let’s-get-the-party-started vibe especially live. Speaking of which it’s a shame The Nuclears never recorded a live album because the band’s insane level of shreditude and kinetic livewire energy in the flesh can’t entirely be captured in the studio kind of like a vampire trying to comb his hair in a mirror.

But hey don’t let it discourage you from giving Seasides a spin because for one thing it contains a couple honest-to-Abe “rock about rock” songs that truly rawk (both feature Briana on lead vox) right smack in the middle of the album. First there’s “Mystery Slinger” about meeting a guitar slinger “down at the crossroads” (could it be…Satan?!?) who “possessed a magic in his fingers” (not to be confused with the Magic Fingers™ at your finer hourly rate motels) and Bonnie Raitt oughta cover this song on her next record because there’s some insanely groovy blooze clues to be detected here; and then next comes the equally self-referential “Bow To The Queen” (“I’m the best this world has ever seen…burn it down with gasoline”) with some serious-as-a-sheer-heart-attack heavy metal wailing both vocally and in the Dudolevitch’s truly juicy Judas Priesty twin leads. 

All of which raises the question: Should the Nuclears be classified as roots rockers; or is it more accurate to call them meta-rock postmodernists? Which raises the answer: Who cares?!? Because Seasides should convince any remaining skeptics not to “knock the rock” with songs that measure up majestically next to classics by Queen and Zep and Joan Jett (and of course “The Tap!”) when it comes to rock songs about rock that also happen to rawk. ROCK! And not to worry they don’t forget to throw in some sex (“Make the First Move,” “Small Talk”) and drugs (“Siamese Connection”) for the masses with that lastly mentioned song adding some social commentary into the mix with lyrics about the CIA importing narcotics into the USA (“it’s not a crime / if you’re on the right side”) but don’t worry this isn’t a message album unless that message is "let’s rock!" 

Speaking of postmodernism, the next song is called “I Just Wanna Have Nothin’ To Do” which is a title the Ramones somehow never came up with and they make doing nothing sounds pretty fun (especially when they wanna do nothing with you) but peel back the onion and it’s a straight-up deconstructive text about wanting to want nothing, desiring to be free of desire, because desire is akin to being stuck on a “hamster wheel…going nowhere slow” and I’m starting to wonder if these boys and their side chick are Buddhists or maybe they’re just students of Schopenhauer. This impression is only solidified in the next song on the album “Doin’ the Same Thing Twice” which further explores the futility of striving with lines like “one day you’ll find / you’re just a cog in the machine / trying to turn into a bigger cog / well that’s the American Dream.” And once a band’s arrives at this stark realization well how can they not break up so yeah it’s all starting to make sense now.

The Nuclears fittingly bow out with two truly head-banging-devil-horn-displaying-fist-pumpers. The first of which being “Slash Run” which opens with the lines “There’s a place that speaks right to my soul / the best parts of rock ’n’ roll / a drug (drunk?) house full of degenerates like me / and I never wanna leave” and admittedly I may be misinterpreting a word or two in there but misinterpretations can be revealing and then the song segues into a cover of KISS’s “Strutter” and it’s hard to misinterpret a couplet like "everybody says she’s lookin’ good / and the lady knows it’s understood" so of course she struts her stuff and I mean wouldn’t you. And then finally comes “Flat and Nasty” where The Nuclears look back to a pre-Internet-porn era when rock ’n’ roll jollies could only be had by non-Paul-Stanley-types through such primitive rites as heading to your local ShopRite to buy a pack of smokes then going back to your bedroom and shuttering the blinds and, well, “the only way I could get my release / was all the flat girls on the TV screen.” 

So lest you accuse these New Yawk "rock about rock" meta-rock-masters of being masturbatory musically or otherwise, well guess what, they just beat you to it (!) by writing a terminal song that’s literally about “beating it” but which also speaks directly to this particular band’s artistry. Because in typical Nuclears fashion they make the love of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll sound like the most wholesome thing you could ever aspire to—especially, again, at their tent revival style live shows—a Hellfire Holy Trinity suffused with a nostalgic cathode glow that’s as "All American" as that well known perv Norman Rockwell eating a slice of warm apple pie and then using the rest of the soft yielding pastry to pleasure his love gun American Pie style. (Jason Lee)

Photo by Kem Ettienne (@primo34)

Psychic Graveyard specialize in creating music built around a rich noughty center of garage rock backbeat and drone-y pummeling marshmallow fluff and infusing it with gooey streaks of wah-wah effects and random nuggets of congealed noise and covering the whole heart-clogging concoction in a hard-candy shell of throbbing synthesized sub-bass and Sprechstimme vocals—with the end result being vaguely menacing and entirely intoxicating, that is if you’re built for this sorta stuff which is something like if you took the entire candy bar aisle at your local Wawa convenience store and somehow transformed it into a gnarley fused musical version so if you’re “Looking For Mr. Goodbar” well you just found him.

Who are Psychic Graveyard? Enquiring minds want to know! The band themselves describe it best, so I’ll quote from their Spot-i-fried bio here: “Noise Rock pioneers, Eric Paul (Arab On Radar, Chinese Stars, Doomsday Student), Paul Vieira (Chinese Stars, Doomsday Student), and Nathan Joyner (Some Girls, All Leather, Hot Nerds), [and] Charles Ovett (Battle Beasts, Joules) venture through uncharted territory with their new band. Nathan Joyner’s grinding synths and ‘found sound’ buries the seed of each song deep into the fertile ground–while Paul Vieira’s manic, fuzzed-out guitars, Ovett’s bombastic drumming, and Eric Paul’s obsessive lyrics shower the proceedings with equal parts sunshine and rain" and see below for some interesting and occasionally alarming but in a good way videos (parental discretion inadvisable) from the various projects listed above.

Psychic Graveyard’s latest single is called “A Good-Looking Ghost” and it can be witnessed at the top of this page. It’s a strong contender for this year’s Most Outstanding Achievements In Creating A Song That Sounds Exactly Like It Should Based On The Title Alone award and it’s also commendable for its opening quatrain which ably lays out the ghost’s origins: “This is not the death that I wanted / but this is the death that I got / The bleeding started around Christmas / and I was dead by March.” So if this sort of thing gets your goat (or your ghost’s goat, or goat’s ghost) and if you’re digging this then check out more of their stuff below. (Jason Lee)

Now that the calendar reads "August" we’ve officially entered the dog days of summer which begs the questions of why summer is always so fleeting and what does it all reeeeally mean maaan so to help in considering the larger significance of summer in our daily lives it would probably help to name an Official Musical Statement of the Summer™ for the year 2021 and herein we officially bestow this honour upon Pom Pom Squad’s inaugural full-length release Death of a Cheerleader (City Slang Records) which is not only a great record that happened to be released the first week of summer but it’s also a record that powerfully evokes summer itself.

On Death of a Cheerleader Pom Pom Squad take elements of classic girl group R&B and balladry and combine them with power pop and post-punk and hints of psychedelia and emo (imagine a mashup of the Shirelles and the Pleasure Seekers and the Savage Rose and Cheap Trick and Joan Jett and Elastica and the Muffs and Rainer Maria and and Hot Sundae and Sleater-Kinney but that’s a vast oversimplification) which are well-chosen ingredients for a summer album that’s equally sweet as candy and gritty as sand. Against this musical backdrop squad leader Mia Berrin (alongside bassist Mari Alé Figeman, drummer Shelby Keller, and co-guitarist Alex Mercuri) paints a vivid picture of endorphin-rushing desire and brash F.U. bravado beset by waves of self-doubt and lovelorn ache. If this record were a book instead of a record it’d make a great beach something like the musical equivalent of a pulpy novel about forbidden love and crushing heartbreak and a voyage of self-discovery that hits harder than you’d expected cuz yeah we see those little puddles of mud next to your beach towel.

Plus there’s something about summer’s odd mashup of physical immediacy, romantic longing, and built-in nostalgia that this album taps into in a major way making it a worthy entry into the summer song canon, a musical repertoir notable for oscillating wildly between extremes of heedless abandon and pleasure seeking versus heedful self-reflection and lamentations hoping for something better—especially when it comes to the subject of summer flings, breif encounters that paradoxically linger in the memory forever—the escapism of having “Fun, Fun, Fun” (“Fun”) forever haunted by mournful Pet Sounds and that’s how this album hits imho. 

Death of A Cheerleader opens with “Soundcheck” which is something like the music you’d hear in a movie when the picture goes all wobbly and the protagonist get sucked into a daydream or fantasy or past recollection—here represented by a vortex of swirling vibraphone tones and a static-y radio signals beaming a spectral distorted voice from a distant star—thus setting the reflective and hyperreal tone for the rest of the album. After passing through this sonic portal we’re thrust straight into the sugary headrush of “Head Cheerleader” with its interrelated admissions that “I’m going to marry the scariest girl on the cheerleading team” and that “my worst decisions are the ones I like best” coyly delivered with a hint of Valley Girl uptalk—the exhilaration and vulnerability of the lyrics mirrored in a musical arrangement that audibly squirms with anticipation (“I’m squirming out of my skin”) and buzzes with nervous butterflies (“stay away from girls like me”).

The specters of Roy Orbison and Phil Spector haunt the next number, “Crying”, which shares a title and a theme with Orbison’s “Crying” but whose opening line (“it hits me and it feels like a kiss”) paraphrases Phil’s most notorious song (“He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” was written by Gerry Goffen and Carole King and recorded by the Crystals with Spector producing and arranging) but with Mia belting the song out Ronnie Spector style which complicates an already complicated dynamic despite the relative straight-forward simplicity of the lyrics—a pleasure/pain dialectic further amplified by Sarah Tudzin’s crucial role in co-producing/co-arranging/mastering/mixing the album which on this song results in a Spector-worthy Wall of Sound with glissing violins and angelically strummed harps creating an otherworldly tableau of tears streaking down the singer’s cheeks as Berrin soars and sobs over the chorus and really this song is not fooling around (Tudzin is the lead hottie in Illuminati Hotties in addition to being a prolific and distinctive producer-engineer). 

Continuing down this intertextually referential path “Second That” reworks the titular phrase of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ soul music staple “I Second That Emotion” but re-imagined as internal dialogue more than romantic entreaty (“I saw someone you were with in the summer / and now I wanna be just like them”) with a fittingly minimalistic arrangement matched to the song’s sense of isolation. Next up is “Cake” which is more punk rock confrontational and chaotic with the half-sung, half-spoken vocals eventually splitting into two parts Sybil-style between an upper register and a menacing low growl reflecting the multi-layer cake mix of assuredness and insecurity in the lyrics.

The identity play continues on the Joan Jett-inflected cover of “Crimson and Clover” and then on “Lux” where Mia provides an inner voice (“How do you expect me to figure myself out / when I cannot tell the difference between good and bad attention”) for Lux Lisbon, the mysterious lead protagonist of The Virgin Suicides, that’s absent from both the book and the movie and in the song Lux redirecting her fury from inward to outward in a galvanizing ninety-nine second rave-up (just a few songs on Cheerleader crack the three-minute mark and just barely at that) followed by another crimson-themed song “Red With Love” that’s flush with unflinching desire and defiance (“I need you closer and you’re not even an inch away”) and then next comes a soul-baring/spine-chilling ballad called “Forever” that marries a mournful string choir to an octave-jumping vocal and a “Be My Baby” beat.

In its final act Death of a Cheerleader moves from the frenetic “Shame Reactions” wherein Ms. Berrin alludes for the first time to the album’s title and and its implication of murderous desire (“Is there a way for me to kill the girl I wish I were?”) followed by the sodden rebuke/pledge of devotion of “Drunk Voicemail” and the sign of resignation “This Couldn’t Happen” and the spent emotional afterglow of “Be Good” reprising the flashback vibraphone theme of the opening “Soundcheck” as if we’ve woking up from the album-long dream/flashback/fantasy before concluding with the short backmasked coda of “Thank You and Goodnight.”

In (almost) closing it’s worth noting that the title of Death of a Cheerleader is taken from a 1994 NBC-TV movie (originally titled “A Friend To Die For” but wisely renamed upon its many reairings on Lifetime and in that same network’s 2019 remake) which follows the trials and travails of a geeky-cute but deeply insecure girl-next-door type (portrayed by Kellie Martin who was known at the time for playing the similarly characterized albeit less murderous “Becca” on ABC’s Life Goes On) entering her sophomore year in high school who totally loses her marbles when she gets rejected by the yearbook committee and fails her cheerleading tryout on the same damn day. 

And so naturally she uses the rather large and sharp knife her older vegetarian sister keeps in the car for cutting up cucumbers as a makeshift murder weapon to dispose of the Heather Chandler-esque mean girl cheerleader who gives her shit (played by Tori Spelling aka “Donna” from Beverly Hills 90210) a crime of passion provoked in part by the high school’s principle who insists at a pep rally that secon best equals total failure and also most likely more than a touch of dissociative identity disorder which further manifests itself when the Homicidal Girl Next Door briefy takes over Mean Girl’s social standing after the murder while still remaining a Nice Girl and it’s like she’s a hybrid of Heather Duke and Heather McNamara but then finally the gnawing sense of guilt and a local priest’s sermon gets the better of her and she confesses and goes to trail with many upper-middle-class Santa Mira townies in attendance (the setting being a clever touch given that Santa Mira itself is an illusory town—the fictional setting for films ranging from the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers to the Sharknado franchise g*d help us) who come to the difficult realization that they themselves helped create this situation through their materialism and aspirationalism resulting in a mere second degree murder conviction and really I gotta say it’s the happiest ending that a cheerleader slayer could hope for especially one in a Lifetime movie.



Anyway, the movie is really more of a trenchant examination of late capitalism and social class in America and their mental health impacts than it needed to be for a pulpy TV movie, but maybe this unexpected resonance had something to do with making Death of a Cheerleader the most watched TV movie of 1994 because surely it wasn’t that viewers wanting to see Donna from 90210 stabbed to death by a goody-goody character from another show because you just know Americans aren’t sick that way as a nation. And perhaps it’s maybe no wonder either that Mia Berrin and her Pom Pom Squaders would also identify with the TV movie because in certain respects it’s deeply queer and plus it addresses double consciousness which is an ontological state familiar to individuals and social formations where the individual or social formation in question is effectively denied membership in the ruling class’s hegemonic social world, a world they must nonetheless interact with on a daily basis—thus necessitating the development of a kind of adaptive split personality in order to cope with the unreal reality of being forced to live between two worlds, between two distinct and segregated realities.

Along these lines, Mia Berrin has explained elsewhere how her choice to take on the persona of the badass rule-breaking cheerleader was based in part on the overwhelming whiteness of indie rock subculture and how it can make a Queer Jewish-Puerto Rican Woman of Color feel more than a little out of place—a state of affairs that is (arguably) slowly improving thanks to bands like Pom Pom Squad—not to mention the Mean Girls and Mean Boys Ms. Berrin was forced to deal with in high school especially before she transferred to a private school (New York City’s public school system is one of the most segregated in the nation) and here it’s worth pointing out that Mia’s father happens to be MC Serch (Michael Berrin) who himself happens to be one of the most respected “white” (Jewish more specifically) emcees in hip hip history lauded for his work with 3rd Bass but who also helped bring the talents of major figures like Nas and Zev Love X (better known later as MF Doom (RIP)) to a bigger audience at a crucial point in both their careers and then standing back afterwards. 

And what does all this have to do with summer songs? Hmm. Well maybe this is reach but I’ll take a stab at it anyway (heh heh) because from the discussion above summer is basically the most “Other” of all the seasons—with summer viewed as a temporary reprieve from the more mundane day-to-day existence of fall, winter, and spring with summer desired and fantasised about but also straight-up exoticized. And then after it’s over, summer is largely cast aside as irrelevant to “normal existence” (and maybe even disavowed, depending on one’s extent of mischief) which probably goes some way to explaining the odd duality (double consciousness) of summer’s mix of carefree fun and complicated longing. So that’s a working theory, but for now the more immediate takeaway is that all you weirdos who’ve read this far had better enjoy the rest of this summer to the fullest (because who knows if we’ll have one next year, hello 2020) and either way try not to fogget about it once it’s over. (Jason Lee)

After lighting up a thick stick of incense Taja Cheek a/k/a L’Rain (by day Ms. Cheek is a curatorial assistant at the MoMA PS1 contemporary art center) turns to manipulating a number of electronic modules alongside her bandmates and their guitars/keyboards/drums/digital thingymebobs (taken together the collective itis also named L’Rain, try to keep up here!) as they ease into a musical piece called “Find It” weaving together a sonic tapestry that’s built layer-by-layer starting with celestial washes of synth and other ambient clouds of sound eventually joined by percussion with brushed cymbals and tom rolls and then some guitar harmonics produced by hitting the backside of his instrument with a drum mallet and then some cresting waves of saxophone with its trilling tones fed through a swampy layer of echo—with the band enmeshed in a spider’s web of electronic gear, effects pedals, and wiring which they manage to engage in tandem with their more conventional instruments—and then five minutes into the whole thing of building up an entire sonic sculpture, L’Rain, the woman, not the band, leans into the microphone and sings a short vocal line going on to loop her voice in harmony with itself as she continues singing which creates a spinning/spiraling Spirograph-like pattern against which L’rain adds bass into the mix with a melodic winding line (all this twisting and turning is mirrored in the POV camerawork winding in and out of the individual players) and the opening lyric: 

“How did I collect these clouds / from rain that fell for days / feel bad just to feel sane / my mother told me / make a way out of no way / make a way out of no way” and that’s exactly what the musical composition itself does as it builds out its own structure from the inside out, starting from the barest bones and building to criss-crossing patterns of polyrhythms, like an bug spinning a cocoon from within before emerging fully-formed. And it this isn’t the perfect musical representation of “making a way out of no way” then I don’t know what is. 

And this is just the start of L’Rain’s mini-set, taped for Seattle’s KEXP as part of their KEXP At Home series, recorded live in L’Rain’s own Brooklyn environs. The album “Find It” is taken from is called Fatigue and it was released late last month and it’s interesting to compare the two versions studio vs. live. But never mind that because you’ll wanna listen to the album in its entirety asap whether for comparative purposes or not because it’s a heavy, heady, head-spinningly immersive album co-produced between Taja and fellow L’Rainer Andrew Lappin). And it also contains “Two Face” which is the other song heard in the live set above. Returning to the notion of making “a way out of no way” the whole record is a sonic and poetic exploration of the struggle to make sense of the senselessness of the preceding months or years or centuries (take your pick) and to emerge out the other side with something of beauty that’s ready to take flight. 

So whether you’re already into SAULT or Solange or simply music that’s both soulful and boundary-breaking in equal measure then here you have another one for the listening queue. And then for more L’Rain in audiovisual form you can check out some of the clips below, but most of all go listen to Fatigue in its entirety because somewhat contrary to its name it’s a galvanizing ride even while taking listeners into the heart of darkness. (Jason Lee)

In March of this year Lizzie Donohue played her first live performance, in virtual form natch, as part of a live-streaming benefit for Save The Scene—a benefit organized by Pan Arcadia (recently profiled in this space) together with the Sweet Relief Musicians Fund in support of fellow independent artists during the lockdown.

In the midst of two evenings full of fine musical entertainment Lizzie caught my ear with her two-song acoustic set (see above) and most of all with the sheer presence of her voice—a voice both smoky and sweet, kind of like Kansas City barbecue sauce in audible form (insider tip: most voices can be compared to regional barbecue sauces) or, in case you’re a vegetarian, a voice that’s one of those gritty-pretty voices where you’re likely to assume the speaker’s got a chest cold or some other similar ailment, but then it turns out it’s just their normal singing/speaking voice like with say Tina Turner or Rod Stewart or Bonnie Tyler, or legendary late-night NYC radio DJ Allison Steele (aka The Nightbird) which suggests a possible alternative career path for Ms. Donohue should she ever need one.

But probably not on the new career path, because as revealed in an exclusive interview with Deli Mag, Lizzie Donohue recently acquired a degree in Textile Design and Photography from FIT and already does freelance graphic design work on the side, including band logo design, and we all know lots of bands out there with ill-considered logos or no logo at all, so it sounds like lucrative work to me. But back to the music. Lizzie’s first song in the virtual concert performance above is now her first officially released single and it’s called “What’s it Matter.” Opening with some strummed guitar chords, the rhythm section soon kicks in alongside Lizzie’s voice reading you the riot grrrl act (“Hey, fuck you / you gotta pretty face but that don’t make you cool”) and really you had it coming didn’t you? But the the blow is softened by the quality of her voice, thus making for a compelling juxtaposition. So you see it’s complicated.

And it’s further complicated by another insight gleaned during our interview, namely that Lizzie sees herself singing the song to herself as much as to anyone else. So when she gets to the next lines about “what’s it matter if I dye my hair blue?” and “all the things I say just come out lame / what’s it matter anyway?” she’s basically saying why worry about socially-mandated appearances or SAT-enforced verbal skills when it’s more important to just be yourself and put yourself out there. So basically it’s like an Id vs. Super-Ego situation we got going on here (“I’m completely aware that I’m my own worst enemy”) if you happen to be into psychoanalytic theory.

These lyrical sentiments are supported by an uncluttered pop-rock arrangement that’s got some nice, subtle flourishes like the occasional up-the-neck bass notes and the faint, breathy background vocal at 1:22 (something we’d love to hear more of just sayin’) and the cool slide-guitar-break-down-and-build-it-back-up section that comes soon after. Incidentally, “What’s it Matter” was produced and mixed by Dylan Kelly who plays guitar and keys for Pan Arcadia (those guys again!) and plays bass and lead guitar on this single, a recording laid down in a friend’s basement DIY home studio somewhere out on Long Island using camping tents for isolation booths which is a pretty cool idea.

And speaking of Long Island musical happenings, Ms. Donohue hails from Nassau County (on the westernmost edge of L.I. directly adjacent to Queens) which is the ancestral home of one Lou Reed. So it’s fitting that 1) Lizzie opened her Save The Scene set by noting that is was Lou Reed’s birthday; and 2) her second number was a Velvet Underground cover. And a well chosen one at that, namely “After Hours,” the last track on the Velvets’ self-titled third album a.k.a. the mellow one, sung by drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker. Like a lot of Lou Reed’s best-known songs, "After Hours" expertly walks the line between nihilism and humanism but leans more toward the latter, thanks to Tucker’s sweet lullaby-like but rough-hewn singing on what’s essentially an impish music hall number about staying in and finding comfort in solitude, but longing for human contact at the same time. Needless to say the song fits Lizzie’s voice like a glove and she adds some vocal flourishes of her own, including a brief fit of giggling at the end when she flubs a guitar chord. (even her mistakes are charming, and if you wanna hear an original take on a similar theme you can listen to “Going Nowhere Slow” on Lizzie’s Soundcloud page)

Besides Lou and VU, Ms. Donohue is also a fan of Patti Smith, Pavement (a car stereo staple whilst driving around aimlessly with her friends in Long Island), Alanis Morissette, and Mazzy Star among others and hey that’s a pretty good list. Personally I’m also reminded of the female pop songwriter renaissance of the late ‘90s moving into the aughts with artists like Lily Allen, Avril Lavigne, and Nina Persson of the Cardigans (each of whom, in different ways, take riot grrrl-like attitude and wrap it in deceptively "mild girl" packaging) but maybe that’s just me. Lizzie says her upcoming EP will cover topics and themes such as outer space, Elon Musk, and the movie Heathers so you may wanna stay tuned. (Jason Lee)

For the second entry in our Summer Songs series, despite today being a very un-summery day in New York City, we submit to you “Stay Away Still” by the musical duo known as My Idea (that’s their name I’m not trying to imply it was my idea) a song that’s got a buoyant bounce in its step and a sunny disposition—not to mention an accompanying music video shot against a bright blue sky with My Idea’s two bandmates making their way across various city locales like silver painted rooftops (discuss: why are so many NYC rooftops painted silver?) and shimmering bodies of water and perilous looking radio control towers, which are all good places to hang on a pleasant summer day but please be careful on those radio towers you’ve probably had a few already today or maybe even a few too many. And even if upon closer inspection the lyrics are a little bit dogmatic in their strictly enforced state of happiness, or perhaps even a bit paranoid like in the opening lines which all but insist that a laughing friend is crying on the inside and then move on to blanket statements like “why so sad bitch / depression’s a conspiracy theory”—but when we’re coming out of a bummer of a summer like the one in 2020 it’s not easy to properly enjoy the presence of “friends and animals and family” without a little paranoia and dogmatism creeping into the picture as reasonable defense mechanisms just in case things fly off the rails again in every conceivable way.

And that’s not even to mention how the song continually deconstructs it’s own aforementioned sunny disposition (grr) with a point-counterpoint vocal (racks on racks) in which the narrator is constantly confronted (pew-pew-pew) by a monotone inner voice (damn, damn) casting doubt on every single line of the song (in your face) but again not entirely unwarranted (winning) given what we’ve all been through lately (bad). And anyway when it comes to summer song vibes (drank) it’s notable that “Stay Away Still” (Draco) shares a number of qualities in common (brrah) with Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” (dope)—and ok so that song was originally released in the fall (glah) but hey stick with me here (hey) because I’ll bet that you hear the Migos track (drop top) at least once at an outdoor barbecue this summer (whoo) when people are feeling all nostalgic (run with it) for the halcyon innocence of five years ago (lock up)—the biggest one being the aforementioned inner voices (private) which comes off (thot) like a cascading series of ad-libs (dab) delivered by Quavo, Offset, Takeoff, and Lil Uzi Vert (gang) which in other words (word) are a series of parenthetical asides (improvise) and exclamations (yah! yah! yah! yah!) that break up the main lyric (blaow) by repeating or riffing on (savage) the directly preceding lines (call and response) and ok I’ll stop with the ad-libs now (skrrt) because it may be annoying when I do it (nobody).

Plus, the main theme explored in “Stay Away Still” is quite similar to the lines heard in the chorus of “Bad and Boujee” where Offset says “call up the gang and they come and get ya (gang) / cry me a river, give you a tissue (hey)” where he dismisses the crocodile tears of his lady friend and makes clear he won’t be held back by such overly dramatic sadness. And whereas Quavo “float(s) on the track like a Segway,” lead singer/backing vocalist Lily Konigsberg brags about “dream(ing) in straight lines (you can?) / goal achieved by the time I open my eyes (that’s pretty fucking weird)” culminating in a rapid fire chant of the title phrase “Stay Away Still” that nearly turns those three words into one single syllable not unlike Little Uzi Vert’s heavily meme-ed “yah! yah! yah! yah!” And just in case you’ve read this far and you were wondering, My Idea is comprised of Lily Konigsberg (Palberta) and Nate Amos (Water From Your Eyes, This is Lorelei, Opposites) and their stated mission statement (redundant) is to create “bite-sized pop experiments…over tightly wound indie rock” (sounds good) if their official Bandcamp page is to be believed (industry plant) which creates a nice tension-and-release effect (skeet skeet) but luckily they’re here to remind us that summer fun (surfs up) will be even more fun (fun! fun! fun! fun!) when set to a bitchin’ summer tune (Bangles/Avril Lavigne) about self-reliant happiness (quarantine) and staying the hell away from other people. (Jason Lee)

On their debut single “Disco,” the Brooklyn five-piece Geese depicts a dark night of the soul at the disco and on the home front too—fatalistic imagery abounds in the lyrics which may signify a waning relationship or may signify, well, the fatalism of death—that ends up with the narrator getting a drink thrown in his face and dancing along in an empty house, backed by layers of tense intertwining guitars and metronomically repetitive melodies all anchored to a steady pulsing “Psycho Killer” type beat—it’s damn near funky in a high-tensile wire kind of way, but try dancing in asymmetric alternating 7/4 and 6/4 time signatures and you may sprain something—so that in the end “Disco” comes off something like Talking Heads meets Philip Glass meets Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and hey that latter disco crossover hit had a 7/4 part in it so there you go (note: some music theory knowledge is required for this post). Anyway, it’s a fairly ambitious song to get off the ground with and that’s not even to mention it’s almost seven minutes long, building up and stripping away and building up new musical layers throughout (“I return to the dirt / and then I rise again”), or that it ends with a dubby outro part that winds down like a dying music box in its final moments.

So no telling where Geese will go from here but at least we know where they’ve started and that “Geesus Has Risen”.

The South Jersey/Philadelphia-based band UgLi unabashedly bash out ‘90s style alt rock with panache—but still their music feels uniquely relevant to right now and it rocks hard enough to be relevant to any era.

Taking a genre (grunge) originally associated with flannel-wearing, chainsaw-wielding, primal-screaming lone-wolf types, the Philly foursome uses it to address topics like mental health afflictions, gender fluidity, body dysmorphia, medication overutilization, and the pure unadulterated joy of a new love. Surprised you with last one, huh? And while in reality grunge was always pretty multifaceted (oddly enough it only became less so in the later ‘90s morphing into rap-rock, nü-metal, and post-grunge all culminating in the nightmare of Woodstock ‘99) and it’s always included great female musicians (L7 easily rocks just as hard as Soundgarden) but in 1992 it was still necessary for a certain “sad little sensitive Pisces man” to put a not-unsubstantial contingent of his own band’s fans on blast in the liner notes to the Incesticide comp:

“If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don’t come to our shows and don’t buy our records.”

UgLi could in this way be considered the culmination of Kurt’s wishes, and one can only hope that in between floating around and hanging out on clouds that somewhere up there he’s looking down pretty happy about it. Because as a band that’s otherwise made up of three pretty average looking rock dudes (no offense guys!) UgLi is fronted by co-guitarist, vocalist, and primary songwriter Dylyn Durante who also happens to identify as a queer trans woman. So when she sings lines like “How would you find love / you don’t fit in the box / you’re mixing colors and shapes / I think you need to get off” (“Why Be Pretty…when you could be free”) it speaks not only to the youthful alienation of grunge-loving kids across a couple generations but also to a very specific situation—a situation driven home by the tight instrumental work of co-guitarist Andrew Iannarelli, bassist Lucas Gisonti, and drummer Teddy Paullin who pushes the album forward with Jimmy Chamberlin levels of energy.

Wait, what album? The track above plus seven others make up the band’s first full-length on the self-released FUCK, which at first glance may come off as a blunt, simple-minded attention grabber of a title. But when you break it down “fuck” is actually one of the more nuanced and versatile words in the English language given its dozens of potential meanings, ranging from a modifier used to add emphasis (“no fucking way!”) to a single-word exclamation indicating anger or disgust; ranging from the sensual physical union of two or more human beings to the state of being badly damaged or even ruined. And on FUCK, Dylyn covers all these meanings and more in songs where she “gets fucked” in every possible sense, and in songs where the band modifies the grunge formula to fit their own means—adding musical flavors ranging from the proggy side of the alt-rock spectrum (e.g., the Pumpkins/Radiohead-esque “Bad Egg” which deals with the difficulties of transitioning) to the dreamy chamber pop turned shoegazy slowcore rock ballad of the eight-plus-minute closer “Naegleriasis” with it’s vibey vibraphone and hazy horn section played in waltz time.

And finally, when it comes to the exclamatory qualities of FUCK, the record benefits greatly from the aforementioned intricate arrangements and the impressively warm/crisp/clear yet crunchy/dirty/overdriven production work on the album—produced in collaboration with Dave Downham at Gradwell House in Haddon Heights, New Jersey (Dave is credited with recording, mixing, and mastering the album alongside a full production credit on “Naegleriasis”) and I’m guessing that Butch Vig may be feeling just a little bit jealous now reading this. So whether you consider yourself a “House Pet” (“Nobody taught me how to care / I think I should’ve picked it up somewhere”) or a “Bad Egg” (“I’m searching for that high note / grasping for survival / well, what the fuck do I know”) you may want to follow the former song’s advice to “shimmer while you can” because the album itself follows this advice and it seems to work out pretty well. (Jason Lee)

On this the day when our nation celebrates its proud history of annual mattress sales and of drunkenly blowing off one’s own digits while setting off small incendiary devices purchased in Pennsylvania, music is a crucial aspect of any such celebration. And not just any music, but music befitting a nation known for its above ground swimming pools, Natty Light, and Freedom Rock CD compilations.

Airspace are a band hailing from the Billy Joel-beknighted town of Allentown, Pennsylvania who make just such music. And let there be no doubt this is intended as a compliment because no one wants or needs to hear Animal Collective at the backyard barbecue cookout even if that otherwise quite worthy band happen to have a song called “Fireworks” (sample lyric: “A sacred night where we’ll watch the fireworks / the frightened babies poo”).

Quoting directly from their Bandcamp bio: “Airspace always aims to leave their listeners feeling strong, alive, and inspired” and thank goodness there’s still indie bands out there willing to perform this service and who aren’t embarrassed to admit it. And on their recently-released full-length All The Way Up, Airspace pull off this ambitious goal with style and panache. Plus the barbecue gang will welcome this album being played off the iPod’s portable speakers cuz it kind of like Green Album era Weezer being welcomed back with open arms after the post-Pinkerton years in the desert ready to just have fun again but long before they would reach a point of resorting to recording Toto covers just because the Millennials love the memes (no disrespect intended to either Millennials, Toto, or Rivers Cuomo).

But I digress. Airspace are the focus here and to these ears their music evokes the Everyman working-class rock of one Bruce Springsteen and the Everyman suburban party rock of one Mr. John Bon Jovi in equal measures and don’t worry Everywomen are invited to the party too just ask Courtney Cox and Heather Locklear who are already here having a great time. And yes while this description is a bit New Jersey centric the state is of course a neighbor and close cousin to Pennsylvania.

And speaking of the latter let’s give the Quaker State it’s due too as an ancestral home of feel good, quintessentially American music ranging from Bill Haley and his Comets (authors of the first rock ‘n’ roll crossover pop hit “Rock Around The Clock”) to the many greats of Philly Soul and the whole Gamble & Huff/Sigma Sound Studios catalogue of classic R&B, soul, and disco hits without which this country’s young 70s-era young Americans would have ended up trying to dance to the Carpenters “Superstar” which is a great song but not exactly an obvious floor filler.

But I digress, again. All The Way Up opens in boisterous form with a quick strummed guitar and a solid backbeat before breaking into a hummable lead guitar line that’ll get you waving your sparklers in the air to the point that you’ll probably not even notice that the lyrics open with a bummer sentiment ("The sun is out, but I don’t care / it only hurts my eyes") before going on to describe a lost love and the obsessive longing that follows. But Airspace are one of those bands good are writing songs that sound like heroic, even patriotic, aspirational anthems but whose lyrics feature an assortment of seekers, schemers, and dreamers just looking for some kind of break–a better life, a better place to live, a better love life, etc.–much like a certain previously mentioned Boss Man. The very next song "Monaco" is another good example where the narrator longs for a fantasy getaway on the French Riviera ("In Monaco it’s not so cold / limitations never hold") or for another example check out "Making It Out" ("And it’s days like this that make me miss / the years of hell in the South / ’cause God at least I had the hope / of one day making it out") or really most of the other songs on the album (but don’t worry there’s a few more lyrically optimistic songs on the album too cuz you gotta mix it up some).

Because really, when you think about it, what’s more American than being all upbeat and brash and very nearly arrogant on the surface (the music) but underneath it all being very nearly crippled by self-doubt, disappointment, and longing (the lyrics). So there. I got you sorted musically for the 4th and proud to be an American to boot but without having to listen to that godawful Lee Greenwood song. Now please drink responsibly and try not to blow any fingers off! (Jason Lee)

On their sophomore long-playing record, Come Down, Pretty Sick push the needle even further into the red than before when it comes to being both pretty and being sick and then they take that needle and stab you in the f***ing heart with it (another way of pushing it into the red) but in a way that’s not lethal like you’d expect but just the opposite so that after the music’s over you feel something like Uma Thurman must‘ve felt with a hypodermic needle sticking out of her chest after ODing and feeling gobsmacked by what just happened but also equally grateful for being brought back to life by a rush of adrenaline injected straight to the heart.

So yeah, they stay sick.

Last year’s Deep Divine opened with a short instrumental called “Comedown", a state of being embodied by dirgy bass and grinding guitar and slow pounding drums. But the comedown cleared pretty quickly on that record with something approaching a state of ecstatic release over the next six tracks, though still with plenty of rough edges and the occasional dreamy reverie. But this new one takes those rough edges and reveries and puts them at the center of things.

On Come Down’s centerpiece songs (e.g., the advance singles “Bet My Blood” and “Devil In Me”) Pretty Sick bassist/vocalist/songwriter and master of sickitude Sabrina Fuentes and her musical co-conspirators go into full on shred mode including the shredding of vocal chords and of bougie standards of decency and decorum which of course have always been applied most harshly to women. But other track are shred-averse leaning into ambience and minimalism, or full on "bedroom pop" on the album closer. In a way it’s like a movie sequel where they take what people liked about the original and push those qualities to new extremes in every direction ("into the red") to the point of incoherence at times. But the approach works better here than it did in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The album opens with a song called “Dumb”—a track that predates even Deep Divine and acts as a bridge between that record and this one. It’s also a throwback in that it sounds like a long lost outtake or forgotten b-side from Bossanova, but sung by Kim Deal who was mostly absent from that album on vocals, in that it’s a hook-laden mid-tempo rocker but with a very non-Pixieish music video to match that should maybe come with a disclaimer warning “prudes beware but sickos welcome.”

Next up is “Bet My Blood” which gives the listener a feel for where things are headed with its grunged out, Big Muffy guitars and raw riot grrrly vocals, all in service of a catchy and well-constructed song that is until it implodes, crashing in on itself with a quickening pulse and babbling spirit-possessed glossolalia and growingly unhinged musical backing to match before ending with the sound of a feral creature’s panting. And if that’s not enough to get your goat there’s a music video featuring some quite possibly un-board-certified nurses including Ms. Fuentes wielding a hypodermic needle (see paragraph one) with a glint in her eye and administering fatal care to a few pretty young patients.

On track three (“She”) the album takes another turn with a stealthy, stalking rhythm section and shuddering guitar melodies over which Sabrina takes on yet another new vocal persona that’s by turns breathy and bleating and then finally primal screaming and pushing the audio into the red again, before settling back down into a reverb-laden refrain of “Shee-eeee la-la-la-la-la-la-la” as if words alone no longer do justice to how she feels about the titular femme fatale. And by this point I’m starting to think Miss Pretty Sick may be angling for a career in voice acting à la Mercedes McCambridge after it’s all said and done.

And here we reach the exact midpoint of the record, a song called “Self Control” as in "(I Ain’t Got No)", where the overarching theme gets laid bare as it’s been hinted at elsewhere in lyrics lamenting/celebrating said lack of control—“punish myself for years after / but I can’t help myself"—a theme that works its way into the music itself, repeatedly teetering on the edge of order and chaos with the latter engulfing the former more than once on the album. 

The next couple songs begin the descent down the other side of the mountain—i.e., the comedown of Come Down if you will or even if you won’t—with “Pillbug” floating by on slow waves of woozy harmonics for a full four minutes before ending with a vow to “curl right up and roll over for you." And then comes “Bare” which fittingly is a stark, tender love song with Sabrina singing in unison with her bass and in harmony with herself and it’s not unlike some of the more minimalist post-Last Splash stuff the Breeders have recorded (sorry for double-dipping on Kim Deal but I can’t help myself either). And then on to the penultimate track “Devil in Me” where there’s a return to stable destabilized alt-rock territory. But this time it feels any control issues may have abated somewhat, or a state of acceptance achieved at least. Because “the Devil in me likes the Devil in you” sounds like a healthy way to cope and a good line for couples therapy. And even when the song spins off its axis it feels like more of a climax than a comedown.

And at last we get “Physical" a song that strays into panda-eyed dream pop territory with synthy strings and intense ominous whooshing custom made to appear in Twin Peaks Season 4 (one hopes) and yes I’ll accept that music consultancy position, Mr. Lynch. Except that the Julee Cruise/Chromatics vibes are mixed with some NYC grit (and some London grit since it’s Pretty Sick’s current base of operation) and probably only a born-and-bred city kid could be so seen-it-all jaded to write lines like “now that the party’s done / […] now that thе glamour’s past / and everyone’s come down / I know I won’t be remembered well” before turning 20. But it’s also like a city kid to declare “I know I will never let myself down" which somehow I doubt many Pretty Sick fans will feel let down either by a record that, comedown or not, is such a shot in the arm. (Jason Lee)

The jury’s still out on what (no doubt worthy) song will end up being officially designated the Song of the Summer 2021™ and far be it for us to even acknowledge such a hackneyed premise. But hey that doesn’t mean we can’t start our own highly unofficial list based around a hackneyed premise because who says summer deserves only one song so take that Billboard and Tik Tok Nation. And so here we reveal our first entry in the Deli’s summer song playlist, an unparalleled honor bestowed upon Charlotte Rose Benjamin’s “Heatstroke Summer.”

Now mind that this is a song some would call a “B-side” using the no-longer popular parlance (ask your parents) but here at DeliCorp we openly acknowledge that this is a B-side kind of blog so it’s totally fitting. And even Ms. Benjamin herself has stated an affinity for musical obscurities such as B-sides and "deep cuts" (ask your parents) to the extent that she wrote an entire tender aching ballad based around the notion of deep cuts named, quite fittingly, “Deep Cut" based around the premise: “Songs are are like lovers / and if it was a record / we’d be the deep cut / that no one remembered.”

But I digress. Let’s get back to summer songs shall we because right now there’s a good chunk of this country that’s undergoing a relentless heatwave like here in New York City with a forecast high of 97 tomorrow, or Seattle and Portland which hit 108 and 116 degrees yesterday (wut?) which is a full 18 degrees above recommended boy band temperature. And that’s not even to mention Canada’s westernmost province British Columbia reaching 116 degrees yesterday which shattered national records. So, you see, if we don’t get around to naming a designated Song of the Summer 2021™ soon we’ll all be melted into a congealed mass of musical indecisiveness before this week is even over.

But I digress again. On “Heatstroke Summer” Charlotte Rose sketches a sonic portrait made up of fleetingly observed slices of life with an evocative Zen-like concision like in the opening lines—“Heatstroke summer / yellow is the color / cowboy in Corona / but the beat goes on and on”—which is either about a cowboy living in Queens or living through coronavirus or possibly both because before long she observes that “you can’t prepare for death anyway.”

And hey I’m not gonna spell out the whole song for you but there’s an appears to be a theme of escape running through some of the lyrics (piña coladas optional) with the song’s narrator dreaming about it being New Year’s Eve again and weighing an invitation to hit the road for parts unknown, until the song’s extended coda rides off into the sunset with overheated dogs barking in the background and an intertwined guitar solo that’s equal parts jangly and distorted/dissonant much like the jangled, destroyed nerves of a heatstroke victim. But with the overall gentle swaying vibe, and with Ms. Benjamin’s voice being as winsome and gentle as a tall glass of pink lemonade, "Heatstroke Summer" is equally suitable listening for backyard barbecues and existential (or literal) meltdowns alike.

And hey we can’t ignore the A-side of this two-sided single which is called “Cumbie’s Parking Lot” in reference to Massachusetts-based convenience store chain Cumberland Farms (aka Cumbies) which just happens to be the state where CRB was raised before she returned to her ancestral home of New York City where her parents launched careers as a dancer and a musician/TV jingle singer. Anyway she seems to have a fairly solid grasp of the typical thought patterns of Cumbie’s parking lot denizens expressing sentiments like “I wanna separate my brain from my body / I want you to let me use you like a drug” and “I don’t wanna go home yet / you can take pictures of me and post them on the Internet.”

And even if summer isn’t explicitly mentioned it feels strongly implied with the theme of escape still to the fore—escaping home, escaping the city, escaping oneself—and with the phrase “I wanna” employed nearly as much as on a Ramones song. And when the song reaches its first chorus the whole thing opens us like a blooming summer flower with sweet fragrant melodies and lush floating harmonies that’ll hit your senses like a face full of pollen (in musical terms it’s something like taking all 35 volumes of AM Gold and distilling them into one single refrain).

And hey if the songs don’t do it for you right away then the accompanying music videos just might ("Cumbie’s Parking Lot" is even directed by CRB herself) because there’s a clear aesthetic at work. Though be forewarned that based on the video above you really don’t wanna ask Charlotte Rose to serve you up a slice of cake, because she approaches the task of cake cutting like Jason Voorhees and his mother approach cutting up summer campers and you probably don’t wanna drink your cake through a straw. But it’s a minor misgiving and you were already forewarned in the song “Deep Cut” after all. 

But I digress one last time. So anyway now you’ve at least got somewhere to start with your summer-themed listening and you can continue to check this space for more to come. (Jason Lee)