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The former swampland known as Tompkins Square Park (TSP) first opened to the public in 1850 where less than a decade later a gathering of destitute LES-dwelling immigrants, devastated by the economic collapse of 1857, were violently attacked by coppers for protesting scarcity of jobs and food…
…then in 1863 TSP served as one of the staging grounds for the infamous Draft Riots, and in 1874 it witnessed the largest demonstration in NYC up to that point with 7,000+ workers protesting another devastating downturn, chased down and beaten like dogs by mounted police in what one observer called “an orgy of brutality”…
…then in 1877 there was yet another not-so-civil disturbance in TSP with thousands of city residents gathered for a Communist rally calling for revolution with the National Guard sent in to crack heads…
…and then over a century later there was the legendary1988 Tompkins Square Park Riot where homeless squatters, many pushed into poverty by drastic social cuts and gentrification, protested a new 1AM curfew…
…and then just the following year the fittingly named “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” decapitated his live-in lover, boiled her head and supposedly fed it to park denizens as (unknown to them) yummy brain soup…
…and heck just last weekend a ruckus was caused in the park by a woman who went on a random “hair pulling rampage” amongst unsuspecting parkgoers before causing some further destruction in the neighborhood…
…so far be it for us to attempt to claim TSP has never seen anything like what it’s about to witness tomorrow at the punk rock/generally heavy AF showcase (Sat. 6.9) in a teamup between the Deli Mag and the fittingly named ShowBrain Booking…
…but it *is* gonna be a wholly appropriate “orgy of brutality” in musical terms more likely to induce slam dancing and headbanging than hair-pulling or skull-crushing tho’ hey it’s TSP so you never know and don’t even ask about the soup’s secret ingrediant…
…cuz all that we’re legally responsible for is the super tasty bill featuring Joudy, InCircles, Tits Dick Ass, Slashers, and the super mysterious Cult of Chuck this Saturday afternoon (today!) from 1:30 to 6pm cuz you truly couldn’t find five better entities to pay appropriate tribute to Tompkins Square Park’s radical legacy as the true "People’s Park" than these five badass bands… (Jason Lee)
It’s a sad-but-true fact that by far most Americans are monolingualpendejos—and I hasten to add this applies to yours truly too cuz those two years of college Fraunch stuck about as well as frog legs to a Mack truck’s tires—and this in a country where almost 20% of the population is Hispanic and/or Latin American (almost 30% in NYC!) but lucky for all us gringos you don’t need to know Spanish to groove to all the great Spanish-language music on offer in our fair city with various organizations and events serving as both a guide to cultural outsiders and a haven for Latina/o indie music lovers…
…with indie music broadly defined not only as genres typically covered by this publication, ranging from shoegaze and punk rock to techno and jangle pop and hip hop, but also the many indigenous Hispanic genres that likewise exist in the independent and underground realms of musical culture ranging from psychedelic cumbia to charango music like for instance the Brooklyn-based pan-Latino band Eclectic Charango Beats who take the plucky Andean lute and spike it with heavy doses of psychedelic headiness and Chicano roots music as on their latest single "Amigo" (feat. Miles Solay), a song that "moves with cumbia and rock and talks about mental health through a metaphor about the violence left by the armed conflict in Colombia"…
…and then there’s the recent U Street Festival held at Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick this past April, hosted by the lovely and talented Ximena Zuluaga, with bands running the gamut from merengue punk (Hecho En Brooklyn) to Latin-Venezuelan fusion (La SaZound) to queer-identified operatic electroclash (Chico Raro) to "new wave meets No Wave" punk rock (Spite Fuxxx) plus many other styles besides with the stated goal of the all-day fest being “to create a crossroad for the spectrum of the people that live in Bushwick today” in response to rapid change and gentrification in the neighborhood (quoting from festival co-organizer Diana Hernandez working alongside Lucho Parra) by bringing together various otherwise Balkanized alternative music scenes in a locale where they already oft-unknowing co-exist…
…with the aforementioned gentrification vividly portrayed by Ridgewood’s own (a Queens neighborhood adjacent to Bushwick) Maria Lina a.k.a. Maria Machete, one of several vocalist/multi-instrumentalists in local punk rock combo Frida Kill, in "Mujeres Con Mangos" from 2022’s EP 1, a song inspired by reports of undocumented workers being arrested for selling churros in NYC and a memory I have of passing by an old family friend Margerita, who sells mangos year round on Knickerbocker Ave., getting ticketed by cops in the bitter freezing cold for selling mangos as described by Maria to Kate Hoos in the music blog Full Time Aesthetic…
…which featured a panoply of international and immigrant punks such as NYC hardcore badasses Kārtël, a band comprised of immigrants from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, and let’s not overlook the local Latin-American metalhead contingent either as represented by Non Residents (“no flags or race / divide our way / no shit to obey / we don’t discriminate”) nor the experimental electronica (Slic), alternative pop (Valley Latini), and hard rockin’ rawk (Joudy) artists relocated to NYC from South America as previously profiled on this blog and of course we’re leaving out many, many others…
…and when it comes to the broad spectrum of indie pop/rock/electronica from the Latin/Hispanic diaspora in New York City there’s a new player in town known as SON Estrella Galicia who made a memorable entrance with their kickoff event at Baby’s All Right a couple weeks back featuring a beer tasting paired with live sets by Brooklyn-by-way-of-Madrid-and-Galicia songstress Marem Ladson (Deli profile coming soon!) and local hypnotic-motorik-psych-rockers GIFT and in case you were wondering son means sound in Spanish and serves as a prefix for various Latin American genres such as son cubano as famously brought to the masses by Buena Vista Social Club back in the late ‘90s…
…while Estrella Galicia refers to a brand of beer from the Galician region of Spain brewed since 1906 by five continuous generations of the Rivera Family with funding from 100% Spanish and independent capital in accordance with the ten principles of the UN Global Compact and Sustainable Development Goals but best known to hopheads for their lager made from a mix of blended malts and bittering hops but if you’re looking for something to pair with wild boar or roe deer cooked over deep coals with spices and aromatic herbs garnished with chocolate then allow us to recommend the 1906 Black Coupage which received a gold medal at the World Beer Awards a little while back…
…and yeah you caught us quoting/paraphrasing from the Estrella Galicia press kit but rest assured this ain’t no paid endorsement and when we say the beer is quite good and does the job it’s meant to do it’s not because the Riveras paid for our staff to take a Harlan Crow-style luxury vacation via megayacht across the South Seas tho’ it’d admittedly be hard to turn down such an offer especially with the air in NYC being unsuitable for breathing at the moment (thanks a lot, Canada!) but for now we’re mere unpaid shills and mostly proud of the fact given how most of our staff are Bernie-lovin’ card-carryin’ commie bloggers who regard all forms of mercantile exchange as a filthy sin except for when it comes to drink tickets (they always accept drink tickets) and complimentary finger foods too…
…but I digress from the main point of how SON Estrella Galicia is dedicated to bringing independent music and emerging artists from the Spanish-speaking world and beyond to receptive audiences the world over and thank goodness they’ve made their way to these orange-hued shores cuz it’s high time someone endorsed the pairing of music and beer and introduced us to a bunch of cool new music from the Hispanosphere cuz we’re always up for cool new music, monolinguism be damned, and for expanding the DeliCorp brand in the process…
…which you already know if you’ve been listening to our “Deli Delivers” monthly playlists which routinely feature rock en español from Mexico, South America, and yes even Spain especially in the realms of shoegaze, noise punk, psychedelia, garage rock, grunge, and dreampop that so many Spanish-speaking/bilingual bands seem to have mastered and carried into compelling new directions…
…so check it all out if so inclined cuz it’s good for ya to get outside your own hermetically sealed bubble once in a while (if not your hermetically sealed apartment) and there’s a good chance at least some of this music will speak to your heart and soul no matter your native tongue… (Jason Lee)
NERO//FLESH is a band we admittedly know very little about—and would know nothing about if not for a brief email from a relation of the band with an advance SoundCloud link to their debut full length Disposition of Intimacy released this last Friday—but sometimes that’s a good thing which is easy enough to forget in today’s media-saturated Debordian society of the spectacle in which it’s not unusual for an upstart band to come armed with a slick electronic press kit ("EPK" to all you bizzy insiders) and a TikTok page full of would-be memable content involving cats (of course) and doubloons, biscuits n liquid silver ladies none of which makes a lick of sense tho’ we respect the hustle…
…but if you really wanna stop making sense, it can make even more sense to go the opposing direction by daring to remain more than a little enigmatic if not outright inscrutable which is a pretty neat trick to pull off in this day and age when your average Joe or Joesephine leaves a detailed digital footprint practically from birth (or literally from birth if your parents livestreamed your exit from the womb) comprised largely of drunken selfies and massage parlor Yelp reviews…
…and it doesn’t hurt to write songs full of gauzy, smudged melodies and hypnotically pulsating “tribal” rhythms and ambient, swirling timbres and reverb-laden-drifting-in-outer-space vocals veiled in spiderwebs of chiming bells (“Fragile Replacements”) and synth swells (“Random Hold”) and lush harp arpeggios (“The Ritual of Seasons”) and sepulchral piano tones (“Loose Change”) with influences sounding like they likely range from This Mortal Coil to Massive Attack to Saint Etienne with carefully sculpted arrangements giving the whole thing an Eno-esque Music For Films quality…
…which is exactly what NERO//FLESH do and they’re smart enough to understand nothing spoils the mood of a gloriously introspective dark-hued dreampop/triphop/shoegaze song more than looking the listener directly in the eye (ergo “shoegaze”) whether figuratively or literally so it’s just as well they keep the biographical details and representational visual imagery to a minimum with the latter geared more to a Vaughan Oliver-esque “use of texture, shapes, and mood in an overall disorienting yet cohesive manner” aesthetic…
…which is exactly how the “Flesh” from NERO//FLESH (a.k.a. Richard Flesh, a.k.a. Richard Penzone) describes his own visual art on his webpage—Richard’s other projects include Color Film, Immaterial Heat, and Head Automatica plus the occasional “Ketamine assisted psychotherapy” natch—and yeah I said "on his webpage" so there is a little info floating out there in cyberspace tho’ ultimately I decided, assisted by laziness, not to attempt to solicit any more hard facts from or about the band outside of M. Flesh’s thumbnail profile…
…cuz I’d rather just assume lead singer Lucy Nero (good luck finding any info at all on Lucy Nero and tho’ I’ve since found out her “real” name I’m not sharing it here, so there) whose breathy delivery (“Asphyxiation”) doesn’t mean she can’t let loose with a bone-chilling scream when called upon (“Random Hold”) suffers from Cat Power/Hope Sandoval levels of stage fright and performs with her back to the audience even though for all I know both Lucy and Richard are unapologetically loud-talking, mouth-breathing, endlessly blabbering extroverts (tho’ somehow I doubt it) but anyway there’s no reason for us to know either way and potentially ruin the cloud-castle majesty of their music…
…cuz even just learning that lead-off track/lead-off single “Sayings In Slow Motion” is “a deep dive into an area of extreme spiritual and sexual repression from the point of view of someone approaching the early stages of adulthood through an abstract and contradicting lens [in a] cinematically atmospheric fashion” would feel like a violation of our non-existent non-disclosure agreement if it weren’t for the description not making a lick of sense to me which is just as it should be because music as immersive and enveloping, as sumptuous and mysterious as that found on Disposition of Intimacy doesn’t need to be explained even if I just spent six paragraphs not explaining it… (Jason Lee)
There’s a well-known adage about the middle chapters of film trilogies being the darkest, weirdest, weightiest installments of said trilogies that often proves true with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Dark Knight (2008) serving as two of the best known examples…
…but for our money the most messed-up middle chapter of a film trilogy has got to be Big Top Pee-Wee (the 2016 Nexflix produced Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday served as the belated final installment) which coming on the heels of Tim Burton’s whimsically wacky Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure…
…bizarrely transformed its seemingly asexual, highly eccentric protagonist also known for starring in a classic Saturday morning TV show into a TOTAL HORNDOG AND TOTAL ASSHOLE who attempts to dry hump his virginal fianceé girlfriend on lunch dates and demonstrates clear evidence of a hair-pulling fetish and yes this is a family movie…
…finally cheating on his fianceé with a beautiful trapeze artist played by the sultry Valeria Golino and there’s a make out session scene between the two that goes on for an uncomfortably long time and the whole thing is so weirdly off-brand and off-kilter that Paul Reubens getting busted a few years later for masturbating in a porno theater should have been totally predictable…
…and likewise the April 2023 DELI DELIVERS playlist acts the middle chapter in a “Rites of Spring” March-April-May trilogy of playlist and true to form it’s the darkest/weirdest/most discordant of the three and Scout’s honor we promise not to be a month late with the May playlist tho’ to be fair this one’s been previewed on the Deli Instagram page already…
…so yeah we’re talking retrospective “April showers” in musical form and while it’s not easy to give a single sweeping characterization of 103 songs there’s a bunch of swirly hallucinatory weirdness to be found plus noisy art-damaged punk, off-kilter kaleidoscopic pop, psychedelic soul and goth-laced hip hop and damn we’re eating it up…
…from the opening ambient sepulchral strains sets to martial drum machine rhythms of 79.5’s “B.D.F.Q.” (which stands for “Bitch Don’t Fucking Quit” in case you were wondering) leading directly to the cosmic fever dream of Magdalena Bay’s “EXO” leading directly to the American Gothic fantasia of Wednesday’s “Got Shocked” leading directly to the the rapturous electopop of Father Koi’s “Promise Ring” (feat. Sofia Zarzuela) which sounds like a Venusian courtship sung by a helium-sucking autotuned cherub or maybe that’s just us…
…and heck that’s just the first four songs nevermind the Arthur-Russell-meets-The-Raincoats drone-groove of cumgirl8’s “Cicciolina” about the titular Hungarian-Italian pornstar-cum-pop-star-cum-politician who advocated ridding the world of nuclear weapons and ridding the world of war by offering to f*ck Saddam Hussein nor the other 97 songs on offer…
…until concluding at last with Glüme’s dreamy cover rendition of Metronomy’s “It’s Good To Be Back” which perhaps serves as the perfect transition out of the dark, murky waters of the middle-chapter April playlist into the musical flowerings of May coming soon to this blog page… (Jason Lee)
We’re been doing a little Spring cleaning over the long holiday weekend here at DeliCorp HQ and you’ll never guess what we found under a couch cushion…yeah you guessed it, we discovered this March 2023 DELI DELIVERS playlist which hasn’t been posted in this space yet…so here it is for your listening pleasure no worse for wear (lint and melted gummy bears besides) and be sure to follow the DELI Instagram account and our LinkTree account to so you’ll always be up to date re: the latest goings on and keep reading below for a reprint of the text from the relevant IG post, April and May playlists to follow very soon…
Mixes are all about two things—selection and flow—and while selection is obviously crucial to any mix it’s less so than in days past what w/it being so easy to skip tracks in digital formats or just to leave the selecting entirely up to “the algorithm” but there’s one skill AI hasn’t mastered yet and that’s flow…
…which is why we’re assembled a crack team of musicologists—most having never even used crack before—to compile the latest ”DELI DELIVERS” playlist whose 90 tracks were all released in March (except for one or two!?! can you spot them?!?) as can be heard by clicking on the link above…
…and lemme tell ya this whole thing flows like Mount Vesuvius getting ready to devastate the citizenry of Pompeii—we’re talking an epic five-plus-hour journey—and if you go under “preferences” and SET A THREE SECOND CROSSFADE we promise a entire magnificent Garden Of Earthly Delights will open up before your ears…
…cuz just check out how “Waste” by Nashville weirdos Snōōper flows seamlessly into “Little Palm” by New York weirdos Parlor Walls and ditto for Kill The Pain’s "What Have You Been Doing?" when paired with Shallowhalo’s "Renaissance Affair" and that’s all just in the first 10 tracks…
…plus there’s some nice “shock cuts” that purposefully disrupt the flow like when the street-preacher post-punk churn of Dead Tooth’s “Electric Earth” dissolves into the airy disco reverie of Say She She’s “Reeling” so go ahead and activate those crossfades folks…
…bur even if you don’t you’ll certainly detect some other meaningful patterns like the sequence of tracks starting with Mirrors’ “Parallax” that ends up sonding like a pre-arranged mini-suite of moody rock, extreme metal, and hard techno…
…so check it out, yo, otherwise all those musicologists we hired are going right back on to unemployment (Jason Lee)…
batsbatsbats ghostghostghost just released their newly birthed “From the Void” EPtoday and The DELI got the scoop straight from the batsbatsbats ghostghostghost’s mouth on the new tracks—available on Bandcamp as we speak and streaming everywhere else soon—a perfect embodiment of BBBGGG’s melding of otherworldly etherial soundscapes and earthy primal-scream-noise-rock-meets-doom-metal-sludge that also manages to capture the vibe of their phantasmagoric live shows which you’ll find some DELI exclusive lo-fi phone camera video footage of below…
…and best of all after the jump there’s an entertaining, informative interview with the entire band lineup (or more like “clergy")of Nicolette Johnson, Katie Ortiz, and Shannon Minor that’ll help you prep for BBBGGG’s official record release ceremony this Sunday night at Purgatory (Bushwick, BK) at which they’ll transform the halfway between Heaven & Hell space into the Church of the Void for the evening with ceremonial rites starting at 9pm sharp, preceded by a cocktail hour with other devotional acts spread across the night for all those with a cross to bear and/or a soul-baring confession to make so read on dear reader or skip ahead a few paragraphs if you’re not so into …
…the cinematic sub-genre known as “nunsploitation” which I’m guessing some of the sicker puppies amongst our regular readership know all about already (ok, most of you then!) that had its heyday back in the 1970s and hey let’s face it the Seventies were just cooler and kinkier and more intellectually fertile and more pervasively queer than any decade since—in broad pop cultural terms at least tho’ the 2020s are looking pretty good so far—so we should all be thanking our lucky stars when a musical combo like batsbatsbats ghostghostghost comes along seeing how they tick off the boxes above as well in a 2023 kinda way…
…and oh yeah one of the members of BBBGGG wears a nun’s habit on stage (read more about it in the interview below! more an invocation of a “universal priestess figure” than a literal nun per se but I’m sticking with the conceit for now!) not to mention the band’s overall vibe is strongly reminiscent of the 1974 nunsploitation classic School of the Holy Beast聖獣学園) written and directed by fêted Japanese auteur Norifumi Suzuki or at least it is in this writer’s mind, a fever dream of a movie that “allegorizes insularity, repressiveness, and patriarchy” but in a sexily phantasmagorically messed up way which is our first potential parallel but don’t worry you’re unlikely to be publicly lashed at a BBBGGG show where any bloodletting is purely of a socio-psychological therapeutic nature…
…a movie relating the timeless story of a very un-nun-like young woman who enjoys video arcades, hockey game, and one-night stands but who nonetheless checks herself in at the remote nunnery where her mother was murdered in order to find and take revenge on the perpetrators and in the process finds out the convent in question is rife with nun-on-nun debauchery (see the “nunilingus” scene above; WARNING: finger-lickin’ libidinous monastics), blasphemous rites and sadistic cruelty (see the “flower flagellation” scene below; WARNING: nudity, bondage, bright red fake blood that still may make you wince)…
…but moving one step beyond the titillation and provocation at the core of any good exploitation flick (or record review-sploitation writeup such as this) Holy Beast is a feast for the senses full of painterly compositions and dynamic tracking shots and ravishing soft-focus cinematography (not to mention the lush atmospheric soundtrack) all of which makes the story feel less literal and more archetypal with critiques of Western-based religious hypocrisy and atomic warfare thrown in for good measure…
…all of which pretty much aligns with batsbatsbats ghostghostghost as witnessed in the opening invocation above performed at a recent live show at the Broadway where the band confronted their audience (not confrontationally!) with no barriers seemingly erected in between and where they set the tenor on the opening number where only Nicolette is playing a traditional musical instrument—a bass guitar cradled and caressed and danced with in tandem as if it’s almost human…
….resplendent in religious garb and bondage gear (the band, not the bass, e.g., silk blindfold, choker, dog collar harness) and soon enough both Katie and Shannon have prostrated themselves on stage and then departing the stage entirely to venture into the audience over the course of a set that concludes with the Katie Ortiz lying flat on the floor in the middle of the room repeating an incantatory phrase, “when you love somebody you gotta watch them bleed," concluding with “I wanna feel f*cking anything…ever…again…” to rapturous applause and by this point I don’t have to tell you it’s a pretty damn intense experience even just baring witness…
…and while everything in this scenario points to heightened bodily presence at one and the same time BBBGGG inform their congregants “you are not your body” and then backed by pulsating industrial beats exhort them to “sacrifice your body” followed by the query, "don’t you hate my body, hate my body?”, with each phrase reiterated mantra-like and it’s impressive how batsbatsbats ghostghostghostlocate a charged liminal space between cinematic-style body horror and societal gender-based shaming and faith-based belief in transubstantiation with the latter brought to the fore as Shannon moves fluidly through the crowd during the set opener "Sacrificial Body" anointing every forehead in sight with ashen crosses…
…and hey if this the start of a new religion count me in and even if you’re doubtful why not get in on the ground floor of this thing while there’s still potentially a chance to become one of the apostles or at least someone they regularly put on their guest list cuz their mashup of horror, sexual politics and religious fervor feels in line with the times and could strike a nerve in a mass cult kind of way (BBBGGG-Anon) and hey even if you’re only into them for the music and the spectacle they got some pretty fine hymns to learn and sing plus they’re all about world-building clearly…
…with no true “lead” instruments or single front person to speak of which is bottom-up, little-d democratic (or maybe more like a Ponzi scheme?) cuz you know that when the bass guitar is often the lead part–even when the playing’s as unique and inventive as Nicolette’s, using a slide as both a percussive string-striking stick and as, well, a slide–then we’re talking true equity and it’s kinda crazy that just a few years ago they were known as Meansiders and wrote songs in a more post-riot grrrl style calling out repellent creeps with satirical lyrical jabs and sick riffage so read on to learn more about their history and transformation into batsbatsbats ghostghostghostplus many other tidbits besides… (Jason Lee)
K = KATIE (guitar, vocals)
N = NICOLETTE (bass guitar)
S = SHANNON (drums, vocals)
D = DELI (querying, bloviating)
D: Let’s get the obvious question out of the way. Which would each of you rather be in real life—a bat or a ghost and why?
S: That’s t ough. I can’t pick one. Bats are so cute. Ghosts are so cool.
N: Ghost. If you think about all the benefits of being a bat—you can fly, scare people—ghosts can do all that sh*t too. But they can also walk through walls. Materialize and re-materialize.
S: Plus you live forever.
N: If ghosts exist, wouldn’t everything lives forever?
K: The one thing bats do that ghosts don’t do is that bats eat mosquitos. They’re awesome. They’re good for the environment. I’d be the ghost of a bat.
N: I love how silly and irrelevant our band name is. It’s a good contrast to the more serious side of what we do.
K: With our name…you either get it you don’t. [pregnant pause]
D: What led from the transition from Meansiders to batsbatsbatsghostghostghost?
K: We’ve been playing music together now for a long time, since 2015. It’s been awesome to grow as musician together. That being said, who we are as people, so much has changed since we started playing music together—what feels meaningful, what resonates. We kind of naturally and weirdly started going in this direction.
We’d were moving in this directly already then when Shannon was injured for a while and couldn’t play drums, Nicolette and me started writing a bunch of stuff together. It was cool as an experiment, but when it was the three of us and we kept going with it, it was clearly something really special, powerful. Having to write by ourselves, the two of us, made us reexamine our approach.
N: A lot of the new music was born out of necessity. We had a show scheduled. Instead of dropping it, Katie andI decided to rework some of our set and to write new stuff, to preform with a drum track and see if it worked. Those were the seeds. Once Shannon got back in she added in her perspective.
S: I was stoked about the new direction. I love playing heavy and loud.
D: Nicky, you have an unconventional bass playing style that’s really crucial to the Bats/Ghosts sound. How’d you arrive at it?
N: Technically it’s a slide that I play with like a pick. Instead of using it in my fret hand, like you normally would with a slide, I use it as a pick. But I get more attack than you’d get with a pick, while also using it as a slide sometimes.
D: What was the recording process like?
S: We worked with Jesse French [Tetchy, King of Nowhere] who’s incredibly talented. We’d been toying with different ways of recording this record for a while, had a loss of starts and stops. Once we got in a space with Jesse it came together much more easily, and quickly, than we had planned.
K: We’d been playing these songs for a long time which helped a lot.
S: The performance aspect strongly informed the recording too. We wanted to channel, to translate, the energy of our lives shows into the record.
D: Speaking of live performance, what inspired the more theatrical/performative turn you took in BBBGGG versus Meansiders.
S: The new confiruation was a great chance for me to get out from behind the drum set and to be a little more interactive. And to bring the audience more directly into the show. Pushing out of my comfort zone is a good thing.
N: And who doesn’t love a hot nun?
D: You can say that again.
N: At the outset we had a meeting and picked characters for ourself. All of the lore is building off from this archetypical characters we picked for ourselves. Shannon is the priestess, the religious guide. This went on to Inform a lot of what we do with the performances on the whole. Shannon wrote the opening prayer that we start our shows with.
S: With the newer setup, there’s not a load instrument. It’s cool how we get to all interact together, to lead together. It’s intentional for there to be no front person. It comes from playing together for so long.
K: It’s central to our lore. We’re a pantheon of ancient gods, divine sisters.
N: There’s a lot of religious influence. Visually, there’s some Judeo-Christian influence there. But we make sure it’s not anything too specific. Instead of just riffing on religion or doing it as a parody—making fun of religion or being “Satanic”—we wanted to create something new of our own.
The central concept is that we’re worshiping what came before everything, before there was anything. The actual Void when there was nothing— before time and before the Big Bang, the space that existed before the universe came into reality. It’s a bit of a lofty concept. [laughs]
D: Horror seems like it might be another influence. If that’s true is there anything specific—films, novels, whatever else—that may have informed your approach?
N: Ahhh I went to film school, total film nerd, which in a lot of ways informs what not to do instead of what to do. I’m really into doing new, interesting things that no one has seen before. A lot of the inspiration for the stage show is just us taking what you’d expect at a regular show in Brooklyn and trying to turn the performance on its head, make it more interactive, more artistic. To do something different than what you’ve seen done before, what you always see, informed by all the horror-related stuff I’ve grown up watching and following.
K: We all share a love for horror, and doom, and creepiness. Each of us has a bit of a morbid streak.
N: In this day and age, how you can not.
D: Katie, I was wondering about the lyrics to “Sludge Screams” which feel like they’re aligned with horror or maybe just anxiety. Is there anything you have to say about who you’re addressing in the song, or any more general inspiration behind the song?
K: It’s cool well it fit with the story and Lore that Nicolette had been developing, even thought I didn’t know about it when I was first writing the lyrics. But it became relevant after. It’s most just this sense of being lost in something. Lost in the void of something. Feeling very small and letting that feeling wash over you. And those moments of vulnerability in the song, they get transformed into a force of their own at the end.
D: Thanks y’all! Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to speak on.
K: We’re doing our big release show on Sunday! It’s going to be more of an immersive theater piece than a traditional show. We’re holding a church service for the Church of the Void. It’s going to be unlike anything any of us have ever done either together or individually. And there’s a pre-service cocktail hour.
I hope that Night Spins doesn’t take offense at my opening gambit here cuz they seem like swell guys and also it’s totally meant as a compliment as you’ll soon see but nonetheless it bears pointing out that in the past year the band has come in second place in two, count ‘em two, music competitions…
…the first being a web series called No Cover produced by Hit Paradermagazine at The Troubadour in West Hollywood that’s essentially a Pop Idol type show except featuring full on bands playing original music, and the second being Our Wicked Lady’s second annual Winter Madness competition held at the aforementioned Bushwick indie music mecca with a pre-selected “Sweet 16” of local bands going head to head in front of live audiences over the course of several weekends…
…and hey without a doubt placing second in either competition is extremely impressive–not to mention placing second in both of them–seeing as the Winter Madness drew over a hundred applicants and who knows how many bands tried out for No Cover not to mention celebrity judge Alice F*cking Cooper telling Night Spins lead singer/rhythm guitarist Josh Brocki that “you’re a rock star, man…it borders on funny and at the same time I’m believing all of it” after they performed their breakout hit “Knockin’” in the first round but what impresses me even more is who Night Spins ultimately lost to…
…which in the case of Winter Madness was gonzo skronk-rockers Pons who are the only power trio we know of withtwo drummers whose overall sound and stage presence is something like Cannibal Corpse after having ingested the members of Sonic Youth (both Kim and Thurston must be pretty gamey) and contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease as a result to the point where I’d bet the avant-noise band would freak out Alice Cooper if they ever appeared on his show and nevermind Gavin Rossdale who would surely be found cowering under the judges’ table…
…whereas on the flip side the winners of the No Cover competition, The Native Howl, would be equally unlikely to emerge victorious at OWL Winter Madness tho’ less due to their bluegrass meets thrash conceit (“thrashgrass" is pretty cool if you ask me) but more due to their (with all due respect) banjo-driven Mumford & Sons-meets-Dave-Matthews-on-speed vibes that wouldn’t fly in that setting not to mention the growled Eddie Vedderisms of their vocalist that is if Eddie were auditioning for a nü metal band…
…and once again I must offer my apologize to Night Spins, this time for dwelling on other bands in what’s supposed to be their record review, but at least we’re finally reached the salient point which is that THERE IS NO OTHER BAND IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE THAT COULD POSSIBLY PLACE SECOND IN BOTH OF THESE COMPETITIONS EXCEPT FOR NIGHT SPINS or so I would contend and look, seriously, we’re talking about a Venn diagram overlap of one because what other band could possibly appeal to the almost diametrically opposed musical aesthetics of these two contests which if nothing else speaks to Night Spins’ black swan uniqueness…
…in delivering feel good party-rockin’ vibes overlain with new wave angularity (not to mention the angularity of Josh’s hair) and/or blusey hard driving Southern rock swagger and/or Tom-Waits-meets-Iggy-Pop-fronting-Modest-Mouse street-preacher abandon (seriously, see them live) while at times veering into somewhat more menacing territory like on the aforementioned “Knockin’” which should’ve won the 2018 “Every Breath You Take” award for audience-pleasing songs about stalkerish behavior if such an award existed tho’ to be fair it’s more of a tongue-in-cheek, self-effacing song than Sting’s slinky ode to watching every move you make and every cake you bake…
…serving as an extreme example of Night Spin’s overall predilection for potentially discomforting contradictions ("drench the house in gasoline / I promise I won’t be mean") and multiplicity and moral ambiguity which let’s face it are deeply human qualities that must be acknowledged even if they make us uneasy, otherwise we’re all rigid walking pressure-cookers ready to blow at any moment, and along these lines this band of Brooklyn-based Southern transplants (hailing from North Carolina and Texas) has found a way to win over both East and West Coast audiences (and talent show judges) nevermind straddling the tricker divide between Northern vs. Southern which in light of today’s polarized cultural climate makes me think maybe the State Department should fund Night Spin’s next tour as a first step in healing this fractured, fractious nation…
…but hey OK enough of my pontificatin’ cuz Nights Spins released a brand new record JUST TODAY called Woohoo, an EP of material recorded over the course of a weekend at a barn upstate, and I’m sure you all wanna hear more about their new music so let’s get right to it especially seeing as we solicited comments from Night Spins themselves–about whom it behooves us to tell you includes not only Josh (obviously) but also lead guitarist/co-vocalist Manquillan Minniefee who’s no slouch in the high energy/angular hair department himself, alongside a crack rhythm section made up of Andrew Jernigan (drums) and Jesse Starr (bass) both of whom do some vocalizing as well…
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From the electronic press kit:This is the band’s first self-produced group of recordings. With Jesse Starr(bass/vocals) at the helm, the band’s craft takes on new technical prowess as well. Having converted a barn in upstate NY into a recording studio, they were able to produce, record and mix the record that they envisioned. Mastering was then done by their old friend Joe Lambert…”Woohoo” celebrates our joys, triumphs, sorrows, and fears alike, all a part of our dance through life.
From personal correspondence: We really wanted to capture a moment that reflected us in a natural state of play; just the four of us performing in a room. No layered guitars or unnatural components, [an] un-pretty with a 5 o’clock-shadow kinda vibe. We found a big reverberant room in a barn, set up shop, and pressed record. The process of turning a barn into a recording studio over 2 days, spending the next two tracking everything we had been working on, and then spending a month mixing it, has been one of the most rewarding experiences in this journey.
On the EP’s three tracks:
WOOHOO – The song was formed in the first weeks of the pandemic when we retreated to a barn in upstate New York. Its theme rallies behind false pretense, “pretending it’s a holiday all through the storm, singing Woohoo!” which for us was justifiably the best way to appreciate our circumstances given that the world was devolving around us. It is a celebration of the shit show that is life.
The Deli says: Get ready for earworm city as the song opens with a “woo-hooing” battle cry that recurs throughout and if you’re gonna “spend [your] time playing make believe” one can only hope it’s in a make believe as happy as this one sounds even if there’s an underlying note of melancholy hidden underneath. Still, it’s the most joyous song to come out of COVID-19 that we know of.
CEREAL – touches on the frustrations of failure and deals with them through tongue-in-cheek creative dark fantasies that are fortunately never actualized.
The Deli says: A nice vibey mid-tempo rocker sung by lead guitarist Manquillan Minniefee that opens with the lines, “I got a left foot / I got a right foot / I got a hacksaw / to punish you real good” (now we’re talkin!) thus inverting the happy wish-fulfillment land of “Woohoo” into murderous fantasies that’s never come to fruition seeing as our protagonist is “just an insincere cereal [serial] killer” which ends up sounding like a personal failing and if you don’t pay attention to the lyrics and but only to the throbbing guitar and tension-filled, lusty tone of voice this sounds like a song of seduction (“we’re gonna go at in all night / in the back of the toolshed”) which I guess is the whole point.
BIG BLACK BOOK – having compounded fears and anxiety eventually reaches a breaking point, and that’s a good thing. Destructive release, but release nonetheless. The embrace of your dark side is an embrace of a part of you, and connecting with yourself leads to a deeper understanding and ultimate acceptance.
The Deli says: I remember this one from OWL’s Winter Madness and it was a standout even upon first hearing—a ranging beast of tension and release (dig those heavy AF triplet guitar chords) where “sleepless nights full of bad habits” eventually turn one’s mind inside-out (like the seduction of “Cereal” fulfilled) and here you really feel the mental wavelength created by the pandemics’s extended bouts of isolation and inward focus, alternately enticing and terrifying, where “all my dark wisdom’s seeping in” thanks to “open[ing] up the big black book” and finding your “own white rabbit” and while the latter image may suggest chemical adventures there’s something even more primal and elemental about this song imho as driven home by Josh’s frenzied vocalizing…
In conclusion: …and overall however brief in duration it’s quite a journey from the joyous escapism of “Woohoo” to the so-good-they’re-bad habits of "Big Black Book" and one thing I like about this EP is it doesn’t sound like was written by self-regarding “winners” but instead by underdogs and strivers and second-place finishers so there you have it and if the journey’s too short for you I’m sure Night Spins wouldn’t mind me telling you there’s a physical edition of Woohoo available on CD (see the band’s Bandcamp natch) including not only the 3 new tracks but also the standalone singles released since their 2018 debut LP which means if you get both CDs then presto you own every Night Spins song ever released plus two exclusive live performances from Rockwood Music Hall in 2022 so go buy all the things and then say to yourself “winner winner chicken dinner”. (Jason Lee)
Dear Banshee don’t want you to know the origin of their name—in fact it’s a running joke inside the band to assiduously avoid doing so even tho’ they often get asked to—and hey I don’t blame them…
…seeing as the Bay Area collective make music that’s been described as “haunting, hypnotizing, mesmerizing, lush, moody, introspective, and dreamlike” which are all words used in a single recent review of “Rehoboam” and not wrongly either, the lead-off single to the band’s sophomore album Wake of Modern Life (check out the video above directed by bDwS made entirely with recycled/repurposed materials which we’ll soon see is a fitting visual correlate to this record) and there’s no better way to undercut the “haunting” quality of something than by trying to logicallyexplainit which is basically what happens at the end of every M. Night Shyamalan movie and every episode of Scooby Doo…
…but imagine if every episode of Scooby Doo ended not with unmasking the villain of the week (e.g., a booty-seeking “ghost pirate” revealed to be the leader of an international smuggling ring) but instead with Scooby, Shaggy and the whole Mystery Machine gang getting sucked into an existential vortex of pure light and energy like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey and then you’d have something much closer to Wake of Modern Life which was released one week ago today…
The dark days are here again Mother, we are survivors We’re in this together — “White Lies”
……an album that’s equal parts introspective and otherworldly, but at the same it feels very much of its time and place as in 2023: A Dystopian Odyssey (does the titular “wake” refer to a slipstream or a funeral or an awakening? who knows!) and here’s another advantage of bands being unwilling to over-explain their work and that’s the freedom it gives critics and other commentators to rely on pure, rampant speculation which regular readers of this column must know is something of a hobby…
…and so when it comes to the band’s name I’m gonna go ahead and speculate that Dear Banshee was chosen as their moniker as a reference to’ “Dear Prudence” as covered by Siouxsie and the Banshees seeing as the Beatles’ cover serves as a fitting encapsulation of the Dear Banshee’s lush, ornate Baroque pop wedded to introspective lyrics overlain with a layer of gothy, black mascara laced darkness with more than a tinge of psychedelia thrown in for good measure and ahhhh there’s a good San Fran connection…
…tho’ I certainly don’t mean to give the impression that Dear Banshee are taciturn or withholding cuz to the contrary the band’s two co-lead-singer-songwriter-multi-instrumentalists James Lucas and Chelsea Wilde are warm and engaging in conversation and were more than willing to talk on the phone for nearly an hour and share some interesting tidbits about the album and some of its specific tracks such as opener “One Last Sign” which quite effectively sets the overall tenor for Wake of Modern Life…
In the wake of modern life / reflections are all I see A copy of a copy / turn around Is it one last breath or one last sigh? — “One Last Sigh”
…and when I suggest that Wake of Modern Life is very much a “headphone album” given its exquisite production and sonic detail, interweaving a rich array of timbres and textures, James gamely co-signs the idea going on to describe the record as “bedroom rave” which even if he made this up right on the spot it totally makes sense to me as applied to someone who’s spanned styles and formats from punk rock to jazz (fact: James’ father used to play clarinet in a jazz ensemble and contributes one and the same to “Greed”) to bedroom alt-pop to an entire phase spent as a drum ’n’ bass DJ…
…going on to explain that in contrast to their more guitar-heavy first album “I always wanted to start an album with just electronic stuff” which makes sense given his penchant for artists spanning the spectrum from Aphex Twin’s twisty, oft-ambient “intelligent dance music” to the glitchy electro-industrial “thrash-hop” of Death Grips and indeed “One Last Sigh” reminds me of a Xerox machine spitting out “copies of a copy” in a cut-and-paste collage of diverse influences until the ink cartridge explodes that is and smudges then all together into a blurry Rorschach test…
…which isn’t the worst metaphor for how Wake of Modern Life was assembled, or for “One Last Sign” in particular with its herky-jerky drum programming sounding like it was dubbed from a 20th-generation cassette (Dear Banshee are self admitted gearheads and may or may not have purchased digital instruments from music stores, ripped all the sounds, then returned them) soon joined by a squelchy melody formed from fragments of guitar played by Chelsea, later cut up and fed through various filters by James in a recycling/repurposing process (Chelsea: “The first time I heard the track I didn’t know what to expect. I’d done bits and pieces of guitar work but hadn’t heard it all put together”)…
…with vocal lines traded back and forth between the two, then sung in harmony, then stacked layer-upon-layer into ambient washes of sound—a technique suggested by Chelsea and largely borrowed from her own musical project Minor Birds (FFO: Marissa Nadler, Chelsea Wolfe) and it’s worth noting here that Chelsea is a relatively new addition to Dear Banshee and that she’s got a penchant for the doomier side of the musical spectrum (e.g., Idles, All Them Witches) not to mention being formally training in classical piano from early childhood which brings a literal Baroque influence into play (James: “She’ll look at me and make a little smirk when she’s playing Bach or something”) and oh yeah you may have noticed both of them are skilled multi-instrumentalists…
…so you never know who’s playing guitar vs. piano vs. some other instrument on this record (not to mention how fluidly their voices mesh together at times) all woven into the fabric of a song like “One Last Sigh” which ultimately builds up and then unravels into a tangled heap of burbling keyboard arpeggios (can’t help but think of Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump here) and massed voices and strings (Karina Garrett plays viola on the track and contributes string parts across the album) and who knows what else into a glitched-out-sonic-vortex-wall-of-sound which is pretty fitting for a song that appears to be about the very process of unravelling itself…
Quiet and still inside / phantoms are my only friends Maybe we’ll all go out again / empty streets seem so calm Uneasy thoughts slide down the walls — “Phantoms (So Much Time)”
…on an album that’s very much a product of the COVID-19 pandemic and attendant unravelling both thematically (C: “I feel like a lot of these lyrics are reflective or what we were dealing with the pandemic. We both got Covid during rehearsals. We spent two years recording. It really took a toll on us.”) and structurally (J: “We worked on the album in two phases. The first was working on the songs in live band rehearsals, getting the spines of the songs down, the vocal melodies especially. The second phase was composing on computers and piecing songs together that way. Chelsea and I figured out entire segments of songs as we were recording them”)…
…a creative process that, however painstaking, appears to suit the duo well now that ever since peak pandemic has come to revolve around the central axis of James and Chelsea especially given the fairly regular turnover among the other three members of the band—James clearly knows many proficient Bay Area players—who come and go depending upon availability and the vagaries of life as a musician overall…
…with James describing his working method as fairly meticulous (J: “It’s kind of like a science experience but if you didn’t go school for science”) while Chelsea is more inclined to “rolling with the punches” and “go with the flow” and improvise where needed (C: “99 percent of what I love about music is playing live. I knock things out in one take cuz I hate the studio”) resulting in a multi-layered, existential vortex whose sonics range from the sweeping piano-based indie rock balladry of “White Lies” culminating in a yearning string-laden coda to the neo-psychedelic of “In the Moment” with its airy Mellotron and twinkling guitar and warm synth tones so go check it out, yo… (Jason Lee)
…BUT WAIT THAT’S NOT ALL cuz it’s also a fundraiser with 100% of the door and partial bar proceeds going to the New York Abortion Access Fund (est. 2001) which pays clinics directly for low-income patients’ abortions including a growing number of out-of-state abortion patients for the obvious, troubling reasons…
…well ok maybe no free ice cream but The Deli will be “livesteaming” (as the kids say) the event all over your face and hands on IG Live and shooting a mini-doc for Deli Mag Films and oh yeah the bitchin’ flyer is by Sean Urie with festival co-producer Alexandra Blair from the Silk War (also performing at the fest!) hangin’ around for the duration conducting impromptu interviews (see above for a sneak peek!) so get ready to get crazeeeee yo…
…and yeah your heard us right "DELI frickin’ TV" is an actual thing–check us out on YouTube–cuz the Deli is going full-on multimedia with livestreams, video interviews like the ones seen above, and producing our own good ol’ fashioned music videos, it’s a whole new chapter y’all whoop whoop!–so join us on this journey won’t you please and in the meantime enjoy the music and vids below by the featured artists at Rights of Spring… (Jason Lee)
April showers may bring May flowers as the famous saying goes but here at The Deli we say why not “make it rain” year-round like Lil Wayne and Fat Joe rolling up night after night to Atlanta exotic-dancing mecca Magic City with wads of dead presidents circa 2006 excerpt where the the only G-strings in evidence are those found on an electric guitar and where the only stream to be found is the one delivered by your streaming service of choice that is unless you’ve got your music collection stored in the cloud…
…and now we’ve run out of precipitation and/or strip club based metaphors but that’s ok cuz the salient point is that it *was* indeed a particularly fecund April (and if May’s even more profligate, holy cow!) with a great deal of great music raining down from the heavens, four examples of which are featured here (including one release-day debut!) with more golden musical showers soon to be featured in this space when our next “Deli Delivers” monthly playlist goes up a few days from now but for now check out our hot takes on the four bangers below all released in this the fourth month of 2023…
This song successfully puts across the thesis that “voids annoy” (with apologies to Buzzcocks) seeing asthe"voids" in question are more than merely random unoccupied spaces, but rather spaces waiting (or more like aching) to be filled by someone or something whether it’s a person or an object or a cheap sensation doing the filling—capitalism, of course, depends upon the endless fomenting of scarcity with the resulting void only fillable by means of consumer-based gratification—and this doesn’t even account for being called upon to help fill the numerous voids experienced of others…
…which is what JessX’s single new single “Void Fill” seems to be about (I’m not your "void fill" / but I love the thrill / it’s pressure on my innocence / filled with guilt…I’m not the cheapest little item on your bill) saying "up yours" to bondage bolstered by a blur of manic energy that’ll surely fill the void in your life for punchy high-velocity melodies and piledriving riffs and chords and defiant lyrics plus there’s this cool part that comes in 15 seconds into the 90-second long track and re-appearing again later comprised of cascading, half-screamed high harmonies set against steadily building rat-a-tat rhythms…
…which is like micro-dosing a shot of sonic adrenaline so consider that particular void filled too and if there’s any one mass medium that’s all about putting people’s desperate desires to have their voids filled on display it’s "reality TV" so it’s logical the music video that’s in the works for JessX’s “Void Fill” is a take-off on competitive reality shows so stay tuned and in the meantime check out the trailer above…
Speaking of voids to be filled, Joudy’s third single from their upcoming Destroy All Monsters LP is an apocalyptic rock anthem that’s all about turning endings into new beginnings—something these three Venezuelan émigrés who also happen to be cousins are well aware of after having made their way to NYC by separate, circuitous routes—and with it’s ominous, lurching riff (played in a 5/8 time signature for all you aspiring Tool tribute band members) and vast, spacious ambience this single definitely lives up the album’s title as borrowed from the 1968 kaiju film…
…cuz one could easily see Godzilla laying waste to the iconic United Nations building as “Tail End” plays—or Rodan ravaging Moscow or Mothra massacring Peking so you’d better duck—and while the song works well as an epic alt-soundtrack to the original trailer for Destroy All Monsters (we’re talking Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz levels of synchronicity here) Tail End” has it’s own video already (dir. Gabriel Duque) and it’s also apocalyptic just like those old rubber-suited monster movies and likewise you’ll likely be cheering on the planet-smashing when it arrives more than lamenting it…
…and with Joudy’s new video garnering airplay on MTV’s “Spankin’ New” broadcast (spanking not included) it’s a good thing it’s 2023 and not 2001 cuz if Carson Daily and the rest of America got freaked out by Mariah Carey and her ice cream cart on the set of TRL back in the day who knows what the teenyboppers woulda made of this trio of face-melting South American shredders who walk a fine line between psych and doom and prog and grunge and shoegaze…
Speaking of being haunted by monsters, Powerviolets are a band led by singer/writer/guitarist/music video actor Violet Hetson. Violet likes Matzo Ball soup and hates Radiohead. Her favorite song about New York City is “I’m Gonna Move To New York” by Lumpy and the Dumpers (I’m gonna go out and score / I’ll be just like Thurston Moore) and her father is bald and Jewish.
All of the information above was gleaned second-hand and quoted near verbatim from a live podcast taping the Deli attended last summer featuring funnyman DavidCross and a panel of local musicians responding to deliberately arbitrary questions and it was a pretty odd experience and speaking of pretty odd experiences you’re likely to have one listening to Powerviolet’s music cuz Violet is self-confessedly into all things witch-adjacent and haunting-related especially haunted DIY spaces…
…and that’s exactly the energy that comes across on their new single “Furrowed Brow” which relates the story of joining a cult where you have to “choose one child to leave behind” which in this case is an “egg worm son [who] steals and lies” or something along those lines but we’re hey not here for lyrical exegesis tho’ I’ll take a crack at musical exegesis and say “Furrowed Brow” is something like a mashup of the previous two songs covered above…
…with a punk-adjacent intensity and ethereal melodies wedded to an witchy mid-tempo psych-pop groove with some nice feedback-laden textural tones adding to the overall ghostly vibe (lead guitar: Beau Dega; d: Daniel Miliambro; b: Caesar Concha) tho’ there’s a couple more “rockin’ out” parts too and the overall vibe is like Real Ramona-era Throwing Muses meets early Breeders meets Belly so in other words Tanya fuckin’ Donnelly but maybe I’m just projecting my desire for all music to sound like Tanya D. was involved with it somehow or for a more modern comparison you could go with the Paranoyds…
…but really Powerviolets just sound like Powerviolets which is exactly why you should check ‘em out, or if you’re really “with it” you already did so and already heard “Furrowed Brow” a couple weeks ago when Violet set up a dedicated phone number you could call and listen to the song before its official release cuz apparently she’s a switchboard operator for the phone company (?!?) and then we recommend you go and listen to “Ribbit” which is Poweviolets’ contribution to the excellent Warriors comp recorded at and released by Holy Fang Studios last summer as a fundraiser for endometriosis research, awareness, and advocacy…
And at last after three examples of strum-and-twang Sturm und Drang we figure it’ll be good to go out on Stallion Dunquis’ “Sunday’s Gone” which could be described as a “stripped-down, piano-driven track with lyrical and emotional delicacy drawing comparisons to Tobias Jesso Jr. and John Lennon” if the song’s official press release is to believed which after some consideration we’re willing to sign off on even though we don’t know who Tobias Jesso Jr. is (but now we do, thanks Stallion!)…
…and if you’re gonna go the stark, stripped-down, one-man-and-a-piano route you’d better have a strong concept and strong execution and Mr. Dunquis pulls it off by laying out the song’s central conceit in the first few lines (“You don’t have to make it right / some tears are not meant to dry / I don’t wanna live that lie”) over a similarly no-nonsense, nakedly emotive blocky chord progression a la “Imagine” or “Stay” or “Without You” (Tobias!) and then throw in a couple small variations like the overdubbed vocal harmonies that appear about half-way through and voilà you’ll have listeners crying in the shower stall…
…which is well-earned seeing as the song was written “for someone experiencing a profound loss. Basically, the message is saying that it’s all okay—the sadness, the madness, the tears, the guilt. Just embrace it all today as best you can because there is happiness awaiting you tomorrow. Imeant the song to feel like an arm around your shoulder” and if punk rock is all about stripping rock music back down to its three-chords-and-the-truth ethos then "Sunday’s Gone" could easily be viewed as a piano bar punk rock equilvalent… (Jason Lee)
A few weeks ago The DELI caught a live show at the Sundown Bar in Queens featuring RONI and her band and having seen RONI play solo a couple times before it was an entirely different experience (come to think of it, those two solo shows were pretty different from each other too…) and if you wanna understand how and why these differences exist just check out the DELI-exclusive interview with RONI below, after the jump, and hey let’s hear it for four-letter-long names written in all caps…
…which is totally well-earned in RONI’s case since practically every time she plays a song live it’s like watching a movie projected in Cinemascope—big in emotion and vulnerability and sonic detail and sheer power of voice with seemingly little held back—which is equally true it seems whether RONI’s backed by her band or solo, or whether it’s a rocked-out number or a more introspective, intimate piece of music where even the “smallness” is widescreen if you know what I mean…
…and after having a nice wide-ranging conversation with RONI on the phone the other day I’ve come away with more insight into how she’s able to create this live-wire tightrope-walking energy no matter the physical or instrumental setting seeing as RONI (and her band) arebasicallywalking a tightrope when they play live (or otherwise) with spontaneity being at the core of their music which extends all the way to RONI’s songwriting which starts with free-form improvisations recorded onto a voice app or other device that get further fleshed out later but with as much of the original in-the-moment content preserved as possible…
…with RONI’s most recent single “Don’t Look At Me Like That” (see the music video up top) being no exception and btw it’s on the rock ‘n’ roll "power ballad" side of the things but don’t worry it’s a long way from Winger indeed—building from a faded-in ambient intro to a stark ballad of empowerment to an lighter-waving rock ’n’ roll guitar solo to a brief hushed coda so it’s a journey you see—which is appropriate for a song that’s about how it feels when peoplelook at you thatway (you know the way) and pushing back against the patriarchal gaze and whether you know this look or not you’ll have a much better understanding of it after hearing the song…
…and ever more after reading the interview below with RONI providing us with an x-ray level look at her creative process and background and the whole story behind “Don’t Look At Me Like That” itself and to our knowledge this is the only interview with RONI currently available to the masses which we consider a great privilege to bring to you, said masses, so give it a look and learn how not to look at her like that…
***************************************************************************************************** On RONI’s formative years…
I was born and raised in Jerusalem, except for being in Paris for three years when my dad got sent there for his job. My father is French-Moroccan. He speaks French in addition to Hebrew and English. My grandmother was born and raised in New York City. So I always had citizenship here. When I was 18 I went into the military, which is mandatory in Israel, and served in the military band. About a month after being discharged I decided it was time to move.
First I moved to London. I wanted to see what it was like—what it’d be like living there and it was closer to home. 2010 wasn’t the best time to be in London. It was before Ubers and the pound was very strong which made things expensive. Nobody would hire me. I didn’t have paperwork, wasn’t a citizen and couldn’t work. But I played music constantly and played lots of shows. But after about three months I was over London.
On moving to New York City…
On September 1st, 2010 I moved to New York. It was an opportunity to play live more often and in front of more people. At that time in Israel, it wasn’t easy making music in English. Hebrew was preferred. It’s not like that anymore. At the time I was already writing songs in English. In New York I could have a broader audience, an audience that could connect with the lyrics.
When I moved here I had around $500 to my name and most of that I found at a transit station not long before moving. The money was money was stuffed in an envelope I found on the ground beside my suitcase. It was about 250 pounds in cash with no sign of who it belonged too. That’s what got me started in New York City.
On making records…
What’s even considered an LP or an EP these days? Is it still a concept or not? I don’t think about it too much. Whatever’s on deck, whatever’s ready to go, I put it out unless there’s a bigger concept at play. We don’t record to make money, that’s why I have my day job.
Recording is just the archiving of your art, which is important on its own. But the most important form of expression for me will always be performing the songs. Recording is an almost museum-like way of dealing with my music. Put it in a frame, be on pitch, produce it nicely—it’s a deliberately displayed piece of work. Then it’s done and it’s on to the stage. That’s where it matters most.
On playing live versus recording…
Playing the songs live, they change over time. Every interpretation is at least slightly different from before and sometimes much more. Either way the songs get updated in that setting. The next songs I put out will be recorded live. That’s my happiest place.
There’s three main settings for creating music as I see it: the studio, what I call the workshop—whether it’s a studio, rehearsal space, cabin in the woods, places were you’re workshopping and writing—and live venues. Which one of these is my happiest place? Playing live is number one. Workshopping comes a close second.
Recording studios can be cold and alienating places. Live performance is the opposite—all about the energy exchange with the audience. I feed off of that, need it to supply anything myself. I don’t go onstage for the attention—it’s obviously part of the deal but still—it’s what I get from the audience, and how we recycle that energy between us, that makes it a memorable experience.
On the audience-performer feedback loop…
If you’re not getting anything from the audience it’s difficult to give your all in return. But that changes 180 degrees if even one-percent of the audience is into it. You can tell just by what their eyes and what their faces are giving you. Everyone has to bring something to the equation.
Live music can be boring if it’s basically the exact same thing you heard on record. I’ve seen some big names play shows like this in the last few years—just playing the album live on stage with no extra long ourtro, no “going nuts” part. I can sit at home with my nice speakers and get that experience.
I like to give people a bang for their buck, to give some extra value. If you’re gonna come all this way, make the time, pack your weed or tobacco or whatever you do, get on the train, travel for who knows how long and then spend 3 or 4 hours of your night at a venue, I’d better bring it.
Where else does anyone get that opportunity—to have people stand there and listen to me for 30 or 45 minutes? Where do you get to experience that? It’s a special setting, a very unique experience. I like to show gratitude to all the people who make all that time and effort to come to my shows. And that’s one reason I make it a different show every time. You’ll remember that it sounded and looked and felt a certain way. I want my records to have that same energy.
On evolving…
The first 2 EP’s after I went back to playing solo were studio creations. I didn’t have band. For me, music is not about always sounding the same. You’re allowed to evolve and explore. With Crown I was invited by a friend to a producer’s studio (Or Visinger). They were working on a beat and I improvised most of what’s now “Stop Motion” along with this beat. The three other songs on the EP were made the same way. The songwriting and guitar parts were mine and the beats were by the producer FortyForty.
The next EP, Afterglow, was created from a bunch of songs that were already improvised and finished. After Crown I started improving songs all the time. I realized that was my favorite way of making music. I don’t tend to sit and write. I don’t journal. For years I was always struggling with not writing enough. Finally I stopped thinking about songwriting that way. I finally accepted it. It’s not my medium.
On songwriting and improvisation…
I’ve been playing for a long time and I’m good at making up melodies and lyrics on the spot. It’s challenging and I like a challenge. I adapted this as my new method—starting with free improv and then forming songs out of the improvs. Afterglow is exactly that—five songs that started off as improvisations. It was produced by Nir Yatzkan, an an old friend from military school since we were 18. He produced it remotely from Israel.
The way I make music now is to sit and improvise and record what I’m doing into voice notes or in a practice studio. I try to improvise everything at once so it comes out as a full formed song with chords, melody, lyrics, hooks, everything already set. The idea is to improvise a song as if the song already exists and I’m playing it live, as if I’m channeling the song.
On her new bandmates…
I want the next album to be recorded live with my new band—Pat DiPaola on drums and Tom Shani on bass. But of course that takes more money, more time and planning versus making an album mostly in the box. I’m really lucky because Pat and Tom connect with the songs.
They’re total professionals. They know how to get the work done. At the same time they’re kind and gentle human beings. Toxic masculinity was never good for me in band environments, acting passive-aggressive and that whole thing. I’m thrilled to have two great musicians to work with who are equally great human beings as musicians. We just toured together for 10 days and didn’t strangle each other so there’s the proof.
I’ve had several bands before and none stuck this way. I feel totally comfortable bringing them my songs and we figure out the arrangements together. They play whatever they’re inspired to play. I give Tom the chords and we go from there. I let them know if anything’s not the right vibe. But more often than not they get it right intuitively, right off the bat. They know my vibe—Know what’s right for me and my songwriting. I know their’s too. We don’t have to change much from how we intuitively feel things the first time around.
Bass: Tom Shani
Drums: Pat DiPaola
Written by RONI with assistance from Thomas Barranca
Produced by RONI, Jason Alexander Reyes, Jonathon Meier, with assistance from Tom Shani
Recorded, mixed, mastered by Pat DiPaola at 727 Studios (Brooklyn)
Vocal recording and production – Jason Alexander Reyes
It was a perfect team who worked on the new single. Everything was kept very much in the family, in the close-knit tribe. Nobody else touched this song, no one was brought in from outside for mixing or mastering or anything—except for the graphics and art made by Toby Verhines who I met on Instagram. He lives in Ohio. We met in person on the tour I just did, so now he’s part of the tribe too.
“Don’t Look At Me Like That” had existed for about 6 months and people were like you’ve gotta record this song but I didn’t want to self-produce it. Last June I played a show at Rockwood Music Hall and met Jonathon Meier. He introduced himself and said I love that song you just played, would love to work with you on it.
I’ve heard this before and nothing happens but I sent him the demo to see what he’d do with it. All of the sudden two weeks later he sent me his own production of the song. That was a big sign. I thought “let’s do it.” He a little new to production but I thought we could figure out the process as we went. I added my best friend, producer and songwriter Jason Reyes to the mix and both Jonathon and Jayson connected really deeply as well.
We decided to do it the Virgo way, to meet every week and focus on completing one element of the song: beats for the verse (the drums are a mix of drum machine and live drums), beats for the chorus, bass and synths and percussion, synths and pads in general. On week 5 we recorded the live drums and bass at Pat DiPaola’s 727 Studios. Then did the vocal tracking at Jason’s studio. Finally, Pat mastered and mixed it. We set our goal and stuck to the schedule and didn’t linger over anything—just get it done and we did.
On the song’s genesis, meaning, and reception…
“Don’t Look At Me Like That” is a pop/R&B/rock hybrid. It vibes to the catchphrase—there’s definitely sass to it but put across differently every time we play it live. Still it’s good to have a set version of it on record that captures all the elements—but live we take it to a different place every time, especially where we extend the ending, going off to different places and improving what we feel in in the moment. I never want to hear a song played live exactly the same way twice but that’s just me.
“Don’t Look” was written the way I described before. It started with an improv session at home. A friend reminded me that I came up with the core of the song when someone was making a lot of noise outside, honking their car horn so I yelled out the window shut up, stop honking!” which I’d totally forgotten about. That set a mood that ended up triggering lots of other things, lots of other thoughts.
I started improvising, building on the title phrase and life experiences I’ve had. The lyrics are based on living within male dominated fields, worlds I’ve been part of my whole life, and just society overall. And then one part is based on a woman I dated who is in a yoga cult. The second verse of the song gets into that, into the whole experience of her choosing between the relationship and the cult. And choosing the cult—entering into this portal of madness. I’m glad I didn’t fall into it too. It was her world, definitely not for me.
The title can be taken different ways and that’s on purpose. It’s about being assessed in a certain way, largely based on gender. Being looked at a certain way because of it—assumptions being made that aren’t there in reality. Being over-assessed. But it’s also about being under-assessed. Being underestimated and not seeing what’s there.
I switch the pronoun from “you” to “her” at some points in the song to make it clear it’s not just about me. There’s half the population at least that has to deal with being looked at that way, of be assessed in a certain way—toxic patriarchal stares—and reclaiming power from that.
For the tour I had t-shirts that have the title of the song in big script and it definitely provokes a reaction from lots of people. It’s like a kind of litmus test. In Cleveland I walked to a local diner in the morning to get a bagel and there was a table of older gentlemen, probably in their 60s, and one of them leaned over and said “I’m looking at you like that.” It started a whole interesting conversation. It’s an ice-breaker at the very least.
If you wanna skip straight to the artiste-provided liner notes by all means just scroll down past the jump we promise it won’t hurt our feelings, but on the other hand if you’re feeling indulgent then keep reading the full preamble directly below and either way we appreciate your patronage…
It’s to be expected when you listen to your average three-minute-and-a-half-long pop song (broadly speaking) there’s gonna be some unsolved mysteries contained therein—for instance, is Jay and Beyoncé’s 2018 trap-inflected banger “Apeshit” really merely about “livin’ lavish [with] expensive fabrics” or is that an overly literalistic, materialistic reading of a song intended more as a “socio-cultural text destabiliz[ing] Enlightenment universalism and its public/private split”?—and it’s just such questions that pay the salaries of music bloggers the world over so long as the artists themselves don’t spill the beans on what they were thinking…
…and true to form when it came time to review Big Dumb Baby’s sophomore EP Terrible Twos we had many questions to speculate on but before going there you should know that Big Dumb Baby (né Ashley Dumb Baby) is “an actor turned singer/songwriter from Nashville now living in Brooklyn [who] melds her love of 90s indie-rock with influence from her southern roots to create a distinctive and unfussy songwriting style that’s uniquely her own” who describes her music as “goo goo ga ga core”…
….now, normally, we’d speculate on what these four songs mean likely theorizing that “Jenny’s Place” was written as the theme song to a sitcom spec script written by Ashley herself in which she plays the titular Jenny who runs an underground tavern/high-stakes poker parlor/cockfighting ring out of her off-the-grid basement apartment alongside six male housemates (she tells her overprotective father they’re all gay, natch) not to mention one very nosy neighbor so yeah we’re talking Archie Bunker’s Place meets Frank’s Place meets Alicemeets Cheersmeets Sons of Anarchy and like any good TV show theme “Jenny’s Place” is damn catchy with a warm enveloping sound and lyrics that paint a vivid picture of a setting and a cast of characters…
…but then we thought hey, what if we actually just went to the source and asked Big Dumb Baby what these songs are all about which we figured was maybe just crazy enough to work—granted, we’ve done this a few times before but our short-term memory isn’t what it used to be—and lo-and-behold BDB accepted our offer and came through with a fantastic set of liner notes covering not only song meanings and creative inspirations (such as outright spite, among friends, natch) but also full credits for each song and some nice BTS insights into the recording and instrumental arrangements of the four songs (plus the one acoustic version, making five tracks in all) with technical details kindly provided by the EP’s multi-instrumentalist producer Ian Michael…
…with the latter being a nice, unexpected bonus cuz despite their overall unfussiness these four/five songs are downright ornate at times too esp. when it comes to some of the subtle sonic flourishes contained therein (headphones highly recommended) with flutes and recorders and violins and cellos brought to bear and so with no further ado let us hand over the floor to Ashley and Ian with a set of annotations that bring to mind the golden age of liner notes printed on back covers and inner sleeves of vinyl LPs—or in minuscule typeface in CD booklets—direct from the terrible two of Terrible Twos…
Opening Statement by Big Dumb Baby:Terrible Twos is a collection of songs I wrote in my final year living in Nashville, TN. It’s a celebration of joy, friendship and love and I’m really proud of it! We recorded the majority of the guitars and vocals in my bedroom and the rest in various living rooms and basements. Below you will find some notes on the songwriting process from me, and recording notes from the producer, Ian Michael.
Jenny’s Place was the name of the house I lived in during my senior year of college. A grimy and horribly maintained townhouse in Allston, MA with an infuriating landlord named Jenny. There, I lived with 6 dudes: Guillermo, Aoun, Eli, Ben, Jacob and Ian. It was such a special time, but definitely the kind of living situation that would only be fun in college and while you are still on your parents health insurance. As you can imagine, it was crusty and probably mold infested. We smoked cigarettes in the basement and threw parties in the glass-dusted backyard that backed up to the loudest train tracks you have ever heard. I know none of this actually sounds fun, but there was nothing more special than coming home to 6 of your best friends everyday. It was such a loving household.
While the roots for this song are in nostalgia, I actually started writing it out of spite. Two roommates, Eli and Ben, decided to start a music project called Jenny’s Place and DID NOT INCLUDE ANY OF US!!!! So rude. So I wrote this song and didn’t include them :)))
Production notes from Ian:
As Ashley said before, these songs were the last batch written in Nashville. The general process for the writing went down like this: Ashley writes the songs on the guitar and usually has the main riff and chords sorted out in the initial draft. "Jenny’s Place" started with that descending riff on an acoustic and essentially sounded like the alternate version you hear at the end of the EP, sans string arrangement.
We were working out full band arrangements of this music at the time and the song had a much faster and more driving rock groove underneath. We actually recorded an entire alternate version with this arrangement during the same basic tracking sessions for "Haircut" and "Tornado Chaser." For one reason or another, it wasn’t clicking and we felt it could be stronger. We were in New York by this point and I made a demo that is the basis for what you hear now. Literally what you hear is the demo guitars and bass with re-recorded drums instead of a drum machine. Ashley reached out to Harrison Patrick Smith, right before The Dare released “Girls” and asked him if he wanted to do a remix and he instead was kind enough to add some percussion and piano, remixed the guitar loops and I believe added an acoustic.
Credits: Music/lyrics: Ashley Mayorquin Production: Ian Michael, Harrison Patrick Smith Mixing: Saguiv Rosenstock Mastering: Sasha Stroud (Artifact Audio)
I think this is my favorite track on the EP. I stumbled upon the phrase tornado chaser one day while living in Nashville and was immediately inspired. I started to think about my friend Jack and how they continue to be a hype-man in everyone’s life. They are also one of the most brilliant and chaotic people I’ve ever met. I wanted to write a song hyping them up. I also had a lot of fun with the rhyme scheme for the song as well.
I don’t like laboring over songs, or really anything in general… if something isn’t working I just set it down and come back if I feel the urge. I had been playing around with the chords I use in the verse for quite some time but nothing ever stuck. Once I started writing the lyrics, everything came together quite quickly and easily, which is always so satisfying.
Production notes from Ian:
This song was one of the first written after we released the first Big Dumb Baby EP. I remember Ashley writing the chord progression pretty immediately, I thought it sounded like something you’d hear on a Tropicalia album or something from the 60s. The arrangement and ideas for production came together when we were rehearsing the tune for live shows back in Nashville. We knew we had this song, "Jenny’s," and "Haircut," and that we wanted to record them before moving because we had a pretty great team of people to record with at the time.
I think it was either in June or July before moving to New York when we tracked those three songs with Jeremy Berstein at his home studio. Jeremy was also the engineer for a solid amount of the first EP and we had a lot of fun tracking with him. I want to give a shout out to Victor Pacek and Aaron Lawson on bass and drums respectively, who did the amazing whole take you hear on this track. Victor has some amazing bass playing on this one, ideas I could never have!
Credits: Music/Lyrics: Ashley Mayorquin Drums: Aaron Lawson Bass: Victor Pacek Guitar: Ian Michael Mixing: Saguiv Rosenstock Mastering: Sasha Stroud – Artifact Audio
I wrote this song for my dear friend, Ian, who’s my guitarist and produced Terrible Twos. I think we were at his family’s house in Rochester for his birthday and I was just kind of messing around improvising and he was like “wait I love that keep going!!” I think I wrote “Birthday Song” in one afternoon…. Coincidentally, this is the exact same way my song “If Michael was a Dog” came together.
Production notes from Ian: This was the last song I remember being written for the EP. We did a couple acoustic recording sessions in Ashley’s room in New York. I think we had the idea to have this be a chamber pop style arrangement pretty early on but needed to figure out how to do it. Sean Brennan was the one writing the arrangements for this tune. One day, Ashley and I were having a phone call and the idea popped in my head of having Chase Ceglie play the clarinet and flute parts because I had worked with him in the past and knew he was more than capable of playing the arrangement Sean was writing.
We shot Chase a text and he recorded his parts from his studio in Rhode Island. There was a recorder part written in the arrangement and I played it on an Irish penny whistle that I had since middle school. Easily, one of my favorite moments recording was working on that recorder part in my bedroom.
Credits: Music/Lyrics: Ashley Mayorquin Guitar: Ian Michael Production: Ian Michael Mixing: Saguiv Rosenstock Master: Artifact Audio – Sasha Stroud Recorder: Ian Michael Arrangement: Sean Brennan Flute and Clarinet: Chase Ceglie Violin: Lily Desmond Cello: Sean Brennan Upright Bass: Victor Pacek
I had a mental breakdown early pandemic, and shortly after went to residential eating disorder treatment where I was diagnosed as Bipolar. Before seeking professional help and getting on meds, I never recognized my intense periods of anxiety and hyperactivity as manic episodes. I find it hilarious now because in retrospect it was so obvious. "Haircut" is me making light of a heavy situation, switching the perspective and viewing as an outside spectator. It was a ridiculous and horrible time period in my life, but being able to find humor in it now is a sign of growth. Like, woah… that happened. Ultimately, "Haircut" is a celebration because, to quote the song, “I’ve been feeling sooooo much lighter, I’ve been feeling much more like myself”.
Production notes from Ian:
When we tracked this at Jeremy’s, I had this idea of the tune being recorded in a kind of chaotic manner. There’s a part in the song where you hear a metal clanging sound and that was Aaron knocking over a mini gong from his snare drum. One thing I want to make note of too was when we were recording at Jeremy’s, Aaron and Victor were in the main studio room and Ashley and I were technically upstairs in the kitchen with the door shut to the studio, only looking at them through a small window in the door. I think I told Aaron to play bad on purpose or something. All that said, Ashley and I had no idea if that track worked or not. I remember there were actually a lot of heated debates about how I conducted that part of the session.
The catch was, the drums were great but we couldn’t use the bass or guitar. For "Haircut," "Tornado," and the first "Jenny’s," I recorded all the guitars in Ashley’s parents house in her bedroom. She had a closet I used as an iso-booth for my amp and I’d play as loud as I wanted, very fun. When it came time for "Haircut," I remember tracking the bass part at the kitchen table at their house, and playing for her parent’s dog Ranger. The bass on "Haircut" is one of my favorite recording moments.
Credits: Music/Lyrics: Ashley Mayorquin Production, Bass, Guitar: Ian Michael Mixing: Saguiv Rosenstock Mastering: Sasha Stroud (artifact audio) Engineering: Ian Michael, Jeremy Bernstein Drums: Aaron Lawson
Anyone who visited Jenny’s Place knew it was a special house. So when I wrote this song I knew I wanted a second version that would encapsulate my sweeter memories of it. My friend Sean Brennan was a frequent flier at Jenny’s place and also happens to be a sick composer, so I immediately called him to create a string arrangement. He killed it as usual.
Production Notes from Ian:
One aspect of the EP that was considered very early on was having rock tunes and more ornate folk arrangements. Sean Brennan is someone who has always been in the fold with Big Dumb Baby and truly is a brilliant arranger. We talked about this song having a chamber orchestra arrangement and figured out some names of who to record for these orchestral parts. Seamus Guy was a “Jennys” affiliate if you will and was immediately thought of to record violins. He tracked his violins at his house in California.
In Sean’s basement, I tracked him and Victor playing cello and double bass. It was a fun experience and one of the first times I engineered strings so it was quite the learning experience. I tracked Ashley’s guitar but I believe she recorded her own vocals.
Credits: Music/Lyrics: Ashley Mayorquin Guitar: Ashley Mayorquin Production: Ian Michael Arrangement: Sean Brennan Violin: Seamus Guy Cello: Sean Brennan Upright Bass: Victor Pacek
