It takes some cajones to use one of the most common names in the English language as your single-named moniker and then to spell it out in ALL CAPS no less, But MIKE owns it so convincingly that if your name is Michael now you’d best contact your local justice of the peace and apply for a new appellation at your earliest convenience.
Speaking of “ALL CAPS” if you happen to be into MF DOOM (RIP)—or Madlib or J Dilla or Ghostface or Action Bronson or Earl Sweatshirt or other emcees who spit virtuosic breathless bars over dusty soul samples and smooth grooves and hard beats alike—then you’ve in luck because MIKE’s most recent full-length LP (redundant, I know) called “Disco!” has got you covered with seventeen tracks chock full of these very qualities but still totally distinctive in its MIKEness.
Released one year to the date since his last album Weight of the World with production once again by DJ blackpower (rumored to be MIKE himself in alter-ego disguise but I’m not here to spread rumours) this is deeply felt psychedelic soul for Gen Z hip hop heads (plus broke-ass-but-not-broken Millennials and grateful Gen X old heads) full of spiritual blunted ecstatic vibes that’ll have you floating on cloud nine like a runaway child running wild in route to the psychedelic shack, well-articulated mumble rap for the 2021 boom-bap set. (Jason Lee)
I can’t claim to know why Cookie Tongue are called Cookie Tongue. But in my imagination they took it from the title to an ancient fable, or a long lost Grimms’ Fairy Tale, about a child granted three wishes with her first wish being for her tongue to be turned into a cookie because how great would that be. Except her wish backfires horribly because having a cookie in your mouth that you can’t swallow would be torture. Needless to say the girl nearly goes mad and ends up biting off her own tongue off to end the torment. So she can’t communicate her next wish (“I’d like to have my old tongue back”) which is a pretty harsh way to learn a basic lesson like “be careful what you wish for.”
This is no doubt completely off base but much like a Grimms’ fairy tales the Brooklyn-based combo are made up of equal parts playful/fanciful and twisted/demented. And it’s not an easy balancing act to pull off which is why not many people write good fairy tales and not many people are in Cookie Tongue. Another parallel is that Cookie Tongue clearly appeals to children and adults alike, a fact I can verify first-hand having just seen them perform live on the opening date of their upcoming (now ongoing tour) summer tour—SEE HERE for dates—because the adults at the show were rapt and the kids were losing their minds they were so into it.
The show was held outdoors on a perfect equinox evening with plenty of little rug rats running amok as their parents drank beer and cocktails no doubt happy to be given a break thanks to the Cookie Tonguers and their exquisitely ramshackle songs playing on a Ren Faire style stage decked out with flowers and mannequins and an array of glockenspiels and puppets and Casio keyboards and other implements of their trade. Rest assured Cookie Tongue know how to put the “freak” in freak folk with an extra helping of dollop of freak on top while providing suitable entertainment for the whole family.
A Cookie Tongue performance feels like if the roustabouts tied up the clowns and took over the circus; and then went on an afternoon-long drinking binge and raided the wardrobe/makeup cabinet and put on a crazy pastiche of stuff; and then went on stage and performed a surprisingly coherent set of calliope-inspired music with bizarrely poetic lyrics sung by a male-female combo in warbling, breathy tones that you’re not sure if it’s funny or disturbing or just different. But really that’s too easy an explanation, better to just go listen to their music like their last full length, Dream Seed Ceremony (2020), on which Omer Gal and Jacquelyn Marie Shannon inhabit a rogue’s gallery of vocal personas. So you can see why these two would be into puppetry with all the voices they clearly have trapped inside.
On their new EP from earlier this month, Soggy Miracle, Cookie Tongue continue to refine their quaint yet ornate junk store aesthetic forming a bed a sonic fertilizer for the lyrics and their sinuous twisty trains of thought and mantra-like repetitions–like the one sung from the perspective of a ten-year-old child tempted to eat his own baby teeth out of a cereal bowl with milk on them along with his friend but they don’t know if they’ll be soggy or crunchy.
Soggy Miracle closes with “Orange Sky” which is centered around a rousing yet doom-laden melody that’ll make you wanna raise your mug in the air and toast the impending end–a song about taking “the back road out of here / away from the orange sky” which certainly sounds more than a little apocalyptic–especially at the end when the song turns into a swirling miasma of breathy vocalizing and megaphone man ranting and rat-a-tat snare drumming before concluding with a dramatic almost a cappella epigram or epitaph take your pick. (Jason Lee)
n.b. Credit must be given to Michele With One ‘L’ whose weekly Tuesday afternoon WFMU radio show called "Feelings" first turned this writer on to Cookie Tongue and to several other artists featured on this blog.
Queens-bred and Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/storyteller/poet/producer/multimedia artist and record cover artist Yaya Bey is a one-woman art-generating army whose EP The Things I Can’t Take With Me (released in April on Big Dada Recordings) is comprised of six songs of resilience, defiance, and solidarity with “Black women just like me” that addresses the relatable theme of “all this shit I gotta let go of, just the things I can’t take with me” quoting directly from Ms. Bey’s Bandcamp page—the things to be left behind ranging from childhood trauma to addictive-but-ultimately-unhealthy relationships to music industry fuckery. But most of all the record seems to be about gathering the strength to persevere and flourish.
This latter emphasis comes across not only in the lyrics but also in the sonic textures and warm enveloping production full of gently jazzy guitars and baselines and horn loops and funky drums played with a light touch, plus all sorts of no doubt lovingly assembled sonic details like the layers of mouth percussion and luminous self-harmonizing heard on “We’ll Skate Soon” or the snatches of studio chatter/laughter and the warm surface noise of vinyl records heard on other tracks. The EP’s advance single and mini-manifesto “Fxck It Then” is a perfect example of all of the above employed in support of its opening declaration: “Fxck being good now I’m a bad bitch / Fxck staying down now I’m a savage / I ain’t average.”
And in the unlikely event you should question Yaya Bey’s “bad bitch” credentials consider the album that launched her recording career and the circumstances around it, quoting again from the Bandcamp page:
Yaya Bey’s 2016 debut, The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown, was an ambitious project that included a dreamy, largely acoustic mixtape, book, and digital collage inspired by her front-line activism as a street medic in Ferguson. “You spend two years of your life protesting and getting assaulted and arrested—you got a lot of shit to say after that,” Bey said.
And if should you need some more Yaya you can check out the 2020 quarantine-recorded follow-up LP Madison Tapes, and we also recommend this recent in-depth interview and DJ set she performed, broadcast live on The Duane Train radio program which goes out weekly on WFMU a/k/a "The Freeform Station of the Nation”–a station based out of Jersey City, a/k/a "Chilltown"–hosted by legendary DJ/selector Duane Harriott who assembles some the grooviest mixes of vintage and brand new soul, funk, disco, electro, and hip hop anywhere that I’ve heard. And then finally, or perhaps first of all, you’re also advised to check out Yaya Bey performing live (yes, that’s right live!) tonight alongside some friends at a Juneteenth celebration being held at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room (the livestream will still be available for a couple days after the show) with guests including Boston Chery and Run P. (Jason Lee)
We here at DeliCorp Enterprises would like to wish a happy two-week songaversary to “Hell Shack,” Dead Tooth’s latest single and their disquieting but not at all quiet answer to the B-52’s "Love Shack." And since two-week anniversaries are known as the aluminum foil anniversary (editor’s note: there is no known evidence this is true) we hope that they enjoy the tin foil hats we just dropped in the mail for all the band members because judging from their latest song it seems they’ve maybe been receiving some alien transmissions lately.
On "Hell Shack" the Dead Toothers continue to refine their post-punky trailer-parky electric blues psychedelic electro-rock sound and no I don’t get paid by the word. Speaking of words, band frontman Zach James describes the song as an “almost dumb and brutish voice of a self deprecating ephemera addict who’s trying to find words for indescribable feelings of anger, hurt, mistrust, doubt and shame [and] it’s about setting fire to what was and being at war with the id [and] it’s the destructive and creative forces working together to build my heaven like I built my Hell Shack” and well hell he took the words right out of my mouth.
But damn if "Hell Shack" doesn’t live up to this hype because it’s a pretty epic piece of music squeezed into three minutes and seventeen seconds–starting with a minimalist guitar/keyboard backing which sounds kinda like the B-52s in a rare funk (see what I mean) but then vocally you’ve got more of a “Subterranean Homesick Blues” vibe with stacatto verbiage and mashed-up imagery and rhyme-schemery (opening lines: “a terse versed vulgar purse snatching witch / I’m on the back of the bottom of your itch”) that hooks the listener from the get go (editor’s note: no listeners were consulted for this write-up) and builds in intensity before a runaway Beastie Boys riff enters the picture about a minute in and then it’s straight into some techno-phallic guitar riffage and lyrics about “fight[ing] fire with fury and full choir” and “tell[ing] that fat headed pig we want out tomorrow.”
So you’re thinking "OK Dylan meets Zeppelin it’s been done before" but halfway through the song drops into an ambient "Kid A" style K-hole for a short spell before launching into an extended outro over a groovy syncopated beat and ghostly reverb slow-motion melody with a vocal line that becomes increasingly chant-like unleashing who knows what malevolent forces with lines like “the idol kills, the idol grows.” But in the end its Dead Tooth who kills it with a nicely vibey final minute that builds in intensity riding off into the sunset or would that be the sulpheric flames of Hell? Needless to say wherever you end up it was a journey getting there.
Oh and there’s a video too which you may have noticed up top, but if you prefer your music remain unvisualized check it out directly above. In the music video for "Hell Shack" people chase each other around a lot (mostly members of the band I think) but it’s definitely not the screaming teens of A Hard Day’s Nightchasing after Dead Tooth’s limo. There’s a kidnapping or something involved and maybe some gangsters and definitely a skateboard theft. So hey maybe it doesn’t set a very good example for the children but it’s fun and there’s some slow motion parts but be forewarned it gets a bit violent at times—like when Zach gets bashed across the face apparently right after he just ingested a bunch of tator tots because he spits ketchup everywhere all over the pavement. It happens. And while I’m forced to dock the video one star for not including any Trans Am sports cars (plus no cameo by Nathan Wind) it’s still a fairly entertaining piece of work. (Jason Lee)
The music heard on The Sleep of Reason, a split EP by the DJ/producer/multi-instrumentslist team of Heidi Sabertooth and R Gamble a/k/a “Drakkar Noir” released on Chicago’s Jacktone Records, is both primordial and futuristic—the sound of electronic circuits climbing out of the primordial ooze and becoming self-aware—which seemingly fits perfect for these two artists one of whom is named for a family of prehistoric predators, and the other named after the most primordialcologne of the ‘80s and ‘90s.
These eight tracks of old-school-inspired electro, industrial, acid, and EBM (electronic body music) are raw and spontaneous sounding—qualities that many wouldn’t associate with electronic music—due in no small part to the use of standalone electronic hardware, machines that the user manipulates in real time and which were recorded live here for the most part so that a certain level of improvisation works its way into things. Much like more conventional instruments, these types of electronic instruments don’t always behave as expected or as intended, meaning that it takes skilled and sensitive musicians to improvise around unexpected sonic detours and that’s a big part of what makes this method of music making and this EP compelling.
What also makes Sleep of Reason compelling are the songs themselves—built on minimalistic yet ever-morphing grooves that burrow under your skin and into your grey matter with the insistance of a funky flea circus passing through town. And that’s not even to mention the glitched-out, paranoid android vocals heard in various sonic forms from track to track whispering intimate-yet-oft-indesipherable sweet creepy nothings into your earholes.
Elsewhere Ms. Sabertooth has described her four tracks as “a channeling of angst and disenchantment about relationships, technology, and expectations of the modern femme.” And you can can hear the pure, uncut intensity of this angst and disenchantment on, say, “It Says You Read It” that with its clattering beatbox percussion and squelchy sine waves pretty much sounds like a Peaches song on Promethazine; or on “I’m Gaining Weight Again” that with its spiraling and increasingly distorted doomy sonic vortex is something like an obsessive shame spiral rendered in sound.
Drakkar Noir’s four songs mine somewhat similar territory but with significant differences as well—mining slightly more insistent beats and a stronger acid influence, all appropeiate to his nom de parfume alter-ego—like on side-opener “Free Delight” which makes the very notion of free delight sound both enticing and slightly uneasy as if you just know all that free delight is gonna come back to bite you somehow.Or the next track “Shadow Reel” which is kind of like “Planet Rock” if the planet in question were Jupiter with its cold, windy clouds of ammonia.
Which all fits well with the loose overarching concept and titular inspiration for the EP which is 18th-century Spanish painter/printmaker/iconoclast Francisco Goya’s famous etching entitled The Sleep of Reason Produced Monsters (well it’s famous if you’re an art historian at least) which depicts an artist passed out at his drawing desk surrounded by a sepulchral swarm of bats and owls, with a caption reading: “Imagination abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters; united with her, she is the mother of the arts and source of their wonders". Truer words, etc. etc.
And hey if you’re feeling these retro-futurist electro bats and owls vibes then be sure to keep an ear out for Gamble & Sabertooth’s live DJs sets on Brooklyn’s very own The Lot Radio. And if you’re the greater NYC metro area region, you may also wanna check out the Lost Soul Enterprises collective and record label of which they’re both core members and which currently has a regular bi-weekly residency going at h0L0, a spacious progressive music oasis tucked away in the borderland between Bushwick, BK and Ridgeway, Queens. (Jason Lee)
“These songs are better than Weezer!” — Unidentified fan at The Planes’s album release live show
The Planes is a good name for a band and an even better one for this one in particular. It’s a simple and direct name, plus a name about being simple and direct (and yeah "plain" vs. "plane" but hey work with me here) while at the same time it’s a name that suggests taking flight from the mundane and slipping the surly bonds of Earth on nothing more than a pair of wings and a dream.
The Zen koan state of being both earthbound and heavens-bound is a good way of describing Eternity on its Edge (question for another time: does eternity have edges?)because the album is firmly grounded in the everyday beauty and pain of the mundane but it still manages to have its head in the clouds too. Take for instance the record’s relatable lyrics about love and loss of control—songs about quarantine wishes ("Little Dream") and drinking binges ("Decoder Ring") and about how not to get your melon busted by cops at a protest ("Stand Back") and songs about taking the leap and tying the knot in the middle of a pandemic ("Summer Rain," "Unglued") all laid out in the Planes’ characteristically unpretentious fashion.
But on the other end of the spectrum singer/songwriter/guitarist Stephen Perry isn’t afraid to go Big Concept when called for like on “The Constant” which is essentially a song about the Second Law of Thermodynamics (spoiler: the one constant is decay) and how we mange to cope with this constant (“the hero can’t save the day / but you stay planted in that theater anyway"). And then there’s “Best to Break” which contains one of the more sobering fortune cookie messages I’ve heard lately (“it’s hard to find a center / when all the spokes are removed”) warning that “they’re counting on their best to break you" when the center finally gives way. And if this all sounds a bit heavy then just listen because it’s all delivered with a light touch.
Eternity on its Edge was recorded by producer/engineer/instrumentalist Jeff Berner (Psychic TV, Heliotropes, Dead Stars, Quiet Loudly) at the celebrated Studio G in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. And while "the sound is bigger and more sonically diverse" than the Planes’ previous records, it’s "still a work of minimalism…requiring just three instruments and a voice to pull off." So you see it’s all about balance: major-key melodies and unfussy arrangements running up against dirty-toned guitar shedding and tight, propulsive rhythm-section work by drummer Carlo Minchillo and bassist Matt Skiar. And then there’s Stephen’s singing voice—an instrument than occasionally falters when pushed past its limits but in a Neil Young-ish kind of way that communicates vulnerability and authenticity better than your average operatically trained voice.
These extremes came across all the more pungently a couple nights ago when The Planes played the new songs live for the first time in the intimate environs of Brooklyn’s very own Our Wicked Lady where the guitar jangle sounding all the more jangly and the heavy parts all the more heavy. It was enough to provoke attendee to exclaim loudly between songs that “these songs are better Weezer!” And while I don’t think the two bands sound that much alike–plus there’s the question of whether you view this statement as a compliment or not (editor’s note: Pinkerton still rules) or where you come down on the post-Green Album debate–in retrospect I can see that dood’s point in that both bands marry confessional songwriting (talking Blue Album and Pinkerton especially here natch) with strong pop hooks and grunged out power chords. (Jason Lee)
There are bands out there that are willing to form a human pyramid for the sake of their art and others that aren’t. For one example of the former take Radiohead for instance—no human pyramids happening there there. And they’ve even got a song called “Pyramid Song” but even with the help of Weird Al and Adele they couldn’t make it happen or couldn’t produce photographic evidence of it anyway.
Dirty Fences are clearly a band who are staunchly pro pyramid and they’ve got the esprit de corp and the overall musical moxie to pull it off convincingly too, with a sound falling in the Venn Diagram sweet spot between Bay City Rollers, Misfits, and Motörhead with some junk-shop glam a la Sweet and Slade thrown into the mix as well to sweeten the pot.
The band’s latest singles is called “Pony On” and it’s a power-popping toe tapper that could easily be a long forgotten ‘90s sitcom theme song and also you could do the pony to it pretty easily if you can do the pony. Plus it’s got a catchy b-side about a “Heartache Parade” where “high is fine and I can’t complain.lhAnd then there’s the single they put out earlier this year where both sides (“Pepper Ann / “One In Ten”) lean into the Misfits side of things, while their late 2020 single “Garbage Man”/“Sometimes Sunshine” is even more on the punkier side of things but still super melodic and if you need more musical examples they also put out a retrospective comp recently called Hand Pickled Melodies. Seriously these guys could be full time jingle writers if they didn’t already have too much integrity to go in such a crassly commercial direction.
But if you’re one of these people who subscribes to the theory that bands are best judged by how well they can pull off a Public Access TV live gig then check out the video above to make a fully informed verdict. (Jason Lee)
The small fuzzy fruit known to English-speakers as a peach, with its sweet rainbow-hued juicy flesh and its alarmingly large seeds, has an interesting history when it comes to its use as a symbol in literature and elsewhere. For J. Alfred Prufrock, the question of whether to eat a peach leads to an existential crisis in one the most famous poems ever written. In Chinese mythology, peaches are the literal “fruit of the gods” bestowing longevity to immortals thanks to their mystical virtue. And on Instagram, peach emojis are a concise way of saying to someone that they have a nice ass.
But enough about the teaches of peaches. We’re here to discuss Bad Static’s debut single, simply called “Peach.” In this song, Bad Static tap into the oft-implied association of the peach with both femininity and vulnerability, which are not associated but are often assumed to be. But rest assured you won’t make that mistake here because Bad Static is clearly anything but vulnerable.
The cover image of “Peach” depicts a peach (no surprise there) that appears to be bleeding. with a large bloodied butcher knife directly behind it sitting in a pool of blood. And while PJ Harvey once described being “Happy and Bleeding” it seems like here any potential happiness is being impeded by some dude (assumed) who’s looking for a “kitten” and a “baby doll” to whom Bad Static reply: “Don’t fuck with me / I’ll bruise you like a peach.”
This is a compelling turnabout from traditional peach imagery where it’s usually the woman identified as the vulnerable “peach” and even in PJ Harvey’s “Happy and Bleeding” there a few lines describing how “the fruit was bruised / dropped off and blue / out of season / happy I’m bleeding long overdue.” And while we’re probably talking about two different forms of bleeding here, it’s still notable how Bad Static turn the tables on their attempted oppressors (and on the standard symbology) where they are the ones “waiting to attack / scratching down your back.”
On the musical side of things, Bad Static create a peachy compliment to their message with a musical vibe that’s basically like Pleasure Seekers meets X-Ray Spex (the vocals are especially Poly Styrene-ish) with a dash of Runaways for good measure that builds to a climactic sonic vortex over a chant of “thrill me, kill me / on your knees please. And they do it all in a tidy two minutes and five seconds, and truly nothing says punk rawk more than a two minute long song about fruit and blood and "don’t fuck with me" and empowerment. (Jason Lee)
The four members of Bad Static were kind enough to answer a few inane questions cooked up in the middle of the night when The Deli was admittedly maybe possibly a bit inebriated and here’s a selection of their responses to said questions:
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: What rock academy did you guys attend to learn how to rock so hard?
Kelsie Williams (bassist and singer): "The rock academy of your mom ( insert theme )”
Its My Rock and Im Ready to Roll Academy
The Anxious, Depressed and Overdressed Academy for the Elite Rockers of Rollers
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: The song “Peach” ends with a refrain of “thrill me kill me / on your knees please.” By this we assume you mean to say that the addressee is the “bee’s knees” in so many words. Who do you consider to be the bee’s knees for yourself personally whether it’s a personal hero, or an admired musician, or whatever?
Nicol Maciejewska (singer and guitarist): That section of the song is about cheap thrills and asserting your dominance on those that try to dominate women.
I really like Patti Smith! She’s and great writer and musician. I inspire to do something along those lines. I also really like Kathleen Hanna and how she was one of the pioneers of the riot grrrl movement by creating her zine Bikini Kill and then later starting a kick ass band under that name.
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:What’s your favorite method for bruising oppressors (or just plain jerks) either physically or mentally or both?
Ryan Kevett (lead guitarist): Favorite method for bruising oppressors is nihilistic flatulence
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:When your VH-1 “Behind the Music” episode premieres in 20 years or so from now, what will be the worst story that a roadie or other associate can tell on you?
In today’s fast-paced modern era of music streaming and profligate playlist making (not to mention Twitch DJing and all the other means of assembling original musical mixes) the notion of an old-school compilation album (or “comp”) may seem hopelessly out of date. But comps can still be wonderful things, and Subversive To Care (referred to as Sub2Care forthwith), which has been released to coincide with the launch of Paul Is Dead Records, checks off many of the boxes that make them good things.
For one thing, comps are often assembled to raise money for charitable/activist organizations and this one fits the bill with proceeds going to several AAPI organizations—The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (www.NAPAWF.org), Asian Mental Health Collective (www.ASIANMHC.org) and The Tibet Fund (www.TIBETFUND.org)—in response to alarming levels of hate crimes and ongoing struggles against prejudice against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
What’s more, a good comp is a great way to discover new music and new artists without having to continually troll Spotify’s Teen Beats playlist (granted, SyKo’s “#BrooklynBloodPop!” has its pleasures). And with 60 original songs by the original artists Sub2Care should keep you occupied for a while as you make your way from the start (Wake Up’s “Hurricane” in exclusive demo form; the band is pictured above) to the finish (Squires’ “Tombstoning”) so you basically have got a conceptual theme here of moving from wakefulness to the Big Sleep—not that you can’t skip around within and between individual tracks which is another one of the nice things about comps. They’re basically sampler platters in musical form.
Sub2Care was put together by the new LA-based label Paul Is Dead Records (with satellite offices in New York and Wisconsin apparently) and is likely named either after the notorious Beatles urban legend, or the recent death of Paul Van Doren, patriarch of the Van’s sneaker empire. And while LA artists predominate on the comp (speaking of Vans some of these LA artists no doubt look a lot like Jeff Spicoli or perhaps Phoebe Cates) there’s also a decent number from other locales including New York/New Jersey like Frankie Rose,New Myths, Mevius, Dahl Haus, CITYGIRL, Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes), The Natvral (Kip Berman from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart), and Shana Falana (featuring Shana Falana).
Across musical history, comps have occasionally played a key role in defining the sound of a nascent genre or a new record label—like the Lenny Kaye-compiled Nuggets (1972) that set an early template for punk rock, or the 1988 Sub Pop 200 comp that was a who’s who of future grunge all-stars—and while Sub2Care isn’t strictly speaking a “label comp” since it’s made up of tracks donated by “artists who are close friends and family members of our label” quoting label head and co-founder Evan Mui, it’s still got a certain vibe or aesthetic, if you will, while being pretty darn eclectic at the same time.
I would prospectively call this vibe or aesthetic Twilight Music. By Twilight Music I mean songs that’ve got a certain hazy/dreamy/slightly off-kilter quality whether they’re upbeat or downbeat or mid-beat. And in this way it’s good music for putting on around twilight say when you’re pregaming for a Saturday night out (tracks #13 and 14 are two good examples: Smirk’s “Do You?” and Eternal Summers’ “Belong”) or waking up Sunday morning trying to recall what happened the previous night (rewind to tracks #10-12: Four Dots’ “I Left My Heart Pump In San Francisco,” D.A. Stern’s “Funky Holocaust (Drunk Demo),” and Big Nitty’s “Chemical Plant”) or songs that fit equally well for either scenario (for example, tracks 32-34: Dahl Haus’ “Silhouettes and Alibis,” Black Needle Noise’s “And Nothing Remains,” Built Like Alaska’s “Ran Into A Coroner").
So throw a few bucks in the Bandcamp bin for Paul Is Dead Records if you like what you hear. And in return you may discover a new favorite artists or two–whether one of the ones mentioned/displayed here or some other deserving object of your musical admiration. (Jason Lee)
On their debut single released in 2016, Nation of Language asked “What Does the Normal Man Feel?” and it’s a question that’s become all the more relevant in the five years since, given, you know, the five years since–five years which has made our brains hurt a lot. But “normal” itself doesn’t feel so desirable anymore anyways (if it ever did) and N.O.L. already understood this when they distanced themselves from normal man feelings (“free from it…can not find it in myself”) backing up this sentiment with a neo-Devo meets Human League meets Howard Jones sound, a sound harking back to men (and women) who didn’t exactly scream normalcy either back in the day despite penning many hits between them.
In the interim Nation of Language put out a bunch of singles and one full length calledIntroduction, Presence, exploring a range of musical tributaries without deviating too far from their core sound. For instance, just listen to the band’s stark coldwave cover of “Gouge Away” which evokes the Pixies’ extreme dynamics but in a whole different fashion.
On their most recent single, N.O.L. acknowledge how we’ve crossed “Across That Fine Line” (see the video up top) and go full-on Motorik throb a la Krautrock/Kraftwerk which fits perfect with the notion of being in transit/transition from one state-of-being to another whether literally or figuratively or due to falling in L-U-V or whatever. And they manage to work in an anthemic chorus which is not really native to Krautrock so it makes for a cool push/pull dynamic which even comes across in the song’s opening lines, alternately comforting and disconcerting:
“Reach out, call my name
Whenever you want
Faced with the final convulsions
Contorting my tongue”
It’ll be interesting to hear what other new accents and dialects Nation of Language work into the mix on their next full-length, A Way Forward, scheduled for towards the end of this year, no doubt to be made available at your local record and tape outlet. (Jason Lee)
UV-TV’s Always Something opens with “Overcast Forever” which itself opens with two intertwined chiming guitars played in exuberantly Johnny Marr-ish fashion but with a jangly jagged dissonance between them and a quick single-note bass suspension adding more tension right before bassist-guitarist-vocalist Rose Vastola recalls calling up an unidentified “you” on a sunny day and being confronted with shadows and darkness as a result. This unnamed someone “went away so long ago” but maintains a presence that still lingers apparently which may account for the song’s title with its lingering stormcloud that never breaks but never passes over either leading to a state of perpetual grey skies or at least that’s my purely speculative reading.
What isn’t speculative is UV-TV’s mastery of taking hints of darkness and discord (with lyrical themes ranging from "the art of doing nothing" to "the inevitability of inconvenience and false hopes") and enveloping them in a sweet candy coating much like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup but made with bittersweet chocolate and extra crunchy JIF peanut butter straight from Iggy Pop’s personal stash (watch out for shards of glass) but with music that’s less Stooges-like and more along the lines The Muffs meets My Bloody Valentine in a dark alley and gets jumped by Joy Formidable—nervy guitar-based pop-rock balancing big pop hooks and big bright production with a simmering post-punk tension propelling the whole thing forward.
It’s a musical blueprint that never really goes out of style especially when it’s done well and UV-TV ups the ante by adding dashes of dreampop and shoegaze and modern indie vibes. Like on “Distant Lullaby” which opens with Ian Bernacett’s guitar pedals set to stun with a two-chord swirl of cacophony but ultimately culminating in a stupidly catchy ba-ba-ba-bum-ba-ba-bum-ba-ba-bum singalong refrain which is like going from Sonic Youth to a Saturday Morning Cartoon theme song in one fell swoop, and I didn’t even mention the cowbell heard faintly in the song’s bridge as if the band were just daring you to quote that one over-quoted Christopher Walken line.
Or like on “Plume” which starts off with a stark “Be My Baby” beat—or a Jesus and Mary Chain “Just Like Honey” beat if you prefer—like a plume of smoke rising off in the distance, before locking in with bass and strummed guitar and gradually building over several minutes to a swirling wall-of-sound miasma complete with machine gun snare drum fills by Ian Rose (who borrows a name from both his bandmates) before cresting and briefly resorting to its stripped down rhythmic pulse. The ending of “Plume” then leads right into the title track which could just about be mistaken for a Brian Jonestown Massacre number at first what with the tremolo guitar and groovy maraca and driving motorik pulse. But hey I don’t wanna give it all away so just go listen to the nine songs on Always Something if so inclined and savor all the flavors on your own. (Jason Lee)
Much like Jamie Lee Curtis ‘s fitness instructor and John Travolta’s investigative journalist in the movie Perfect from 1985, pm the EP recently released by Mannequin Pussy also called Perfect (Epitaph Records) thePhilly-based band likewise walk a fine line between outrageous provocation and romantic distress and Lycra-sheathed sensuality and moral confrontation and it’ll likely hit you just as hard as Ms. Curtis’s pelvic thrust routine hits in the movie whatever your thoughts on Travolta’s form-fitting shorts and his overall spotty ‘80s filmography (excepting Blow Out, the Philadelphia-set Brian De Palma classic) culminating with those talking baby movies and don’t even get me started on Battlefield Earth because that’s its own ball of wax.
Fortunately, in stark contrast to the big-budget bloat of Mr. Travolta’s L. Ron Hubbard Scientology-flogging space-opera dud, Mannequin Pussy’s Perfect is a far tighter affair. Which is also great news for anyone too lazy to digest their three existing full-length records since the EP successfully distills their most outstanding qualities down to an economical 13 minutes (almost 14 minutes!) with a running order that follows the age old pentatartite structure of extended play records:
Track 1) Melodic power-pop/alt-rock banger alternating between lighter waving and head banging parts; track 2) ferocious punk rock rave-up with verbal dressing down of the enables of oppressive social forces; track 3) melodic power-pop/alt-rock banger alternating between lighter waving and head banging parts; track 4) ferocious punk rock rave-up with verbal dressing down of the enablers of oppressive social forces; and track 5) the unexpectedly wistful, ethereal ballad closing number expressing undying devotion so believably and sweetly that even Karen O may be a little jealous.
To give one example of impactful brevity you can check out the title track above where the band maintain a face-melting musical escape velocity for a full two minutes as do the Real Punk Rock Housewives of Philadelphia who star in the accompanying music video. Brevity doesn’t equal boredom obviously.
And speaking of which if your band is called Mannequin Pussy you better not be boring or ever lose your sense of humor or provocation and the band hasn’t done any of these things by a long shot. It’s just that they’ve taken the prude-provoking attitude of early songs like "Clit Eastwood" and "Pissdrinker" and "Meat Slave 2" and filtered it through a hard won sense of maturity and cumulative life experience so that that now a line like “spit on my tits / tell me I’m perfect” registers with a newfound impact placed in the larger context of the insecurity and masochism encouraged by societal beauty standards and social media and high school class reunions. (Jason Lee)
