Having lived all over this city and its vicinity for a good number of years (Jersey Cit-tay!) this blog writer finally ended up in the borough of Brooklyn in 2019 and felt a sense of unrestrained joy at being in the middle of a live music mecca and seeing tons of shows at tons of venues. And one of the most special of these venues has been Our Wicked Lady aka OWL.

Ever since the pandemic first hit, OWL done everything right. They’ve sold food and delivered beer and bottles of liquor and sold shirts and other merch and even held an online auction. They’ve supported their staff and their customers by opening OWL’s rooftop bar with safety precautions in place, and supported live music by hosting and livestreaming audience-less shows for anyone to stream, with optional donations, and even made those shows viewable in real time from the rooftop.

But despite their efforts there’s one major catch. New York’s regulatory laws for bars and nightclubs are famously complex and capricious–even under the best of circumstances–harder to discern and follow than it is to figure out what exactly is going on with Andrew Cuomo’s nipple rings or clamps or piercings or pasties or breast milk pumps under his form fitting polo shirts. So no big surprise then that a worldwide pandemic and the subsequent chaotic and disorganized response has only made things that much more difficult for small business owners, bars and clubs in particular.

Regrettably but understandably, the proprietors of Our Wicked Lady have recently come to the conclusion that they must shut down for the time being, and raise significant funds to continue on in the future. So please, if you can, OWL is a crucial venue to this borough and its inhabitants and its music, and all those who enjoy its music, and they deserve your support if you’re someone who reads this blog and if you have the wherewithal which, sadly and understandably, many don’t. But if you do, you can donate to the Our Wicked Lady go.fund.me HERE or buy sexy OWL merchandise HERE and also read more about the people behind OWL and their plight in a recent Reckless Magazine feature HERE.

And now for the personal testimonial part. Two shows in particular at Our Wicked Lady are extra vivid in my mind at this moment even in my quarantine addled state. The first was a packed rooftop show in late summer 2019 as part of Jonathan Toubin’s Sunday Soul Scream series. It was an interesting bill to say the least with its diametrical extremes between the two featured acts but they worked perfectly together, kind of like one of those McDLT sandwiches. Appearing on stage first was L.A.’s Warm Drag with their cool vibez and programmed beats and textured noise and waves of fuzzed-out psych guitar complete with reverb-laden male-female vocalizing kind of like a darkwave Cramps. 

And then next they were followed by the King Khan and BBQ Show which was just straight up god damn rock ‘n’ roll (referencing the Cramps again) something like watching a combination religious tent revival and illicit basement burlesque show led by a man inhabited simultaneously by both Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis but with less sense of restraint than either. (!) Truly it was one of those shows where it feels like the crowd turns into one big amorphous organism all moving and shouting and singing and dancing and jostling together–fully achieving a sense of pure ecstatic rock ‘n’ roll communion that’s sadly lacking in these covidly times. 

The other show that stands out at Our Wicked Lady was one of the last shows I saw period in March 2020, an indoor show that had more of an indoor feel to it–like a private party between friends, and indeed there were many friends and fellow musicians there, but with a vibe where anyone could join in and be comfortable. I won’t go into musical details on this one since there were four acts but I’ll list them off–Kino Kimino (see below), Vanessa Silberman, Catty, and Janet LaBelle–and this was another one of those “something kinda magical happening here” shows.

Thinking back on this Kino Kimino et al. show highlights something that’s only been reinforced by witnessing the recent outpouring of love and concern around the plight of Our Wicked Lady. And that’s how OWL in its four or five years of existence seems to have created and sustained an authentic community among its regulars, musicians, and employees (categories that easily overlap) which is not the kind of thing that can be easily replaced or replaced at all. Also, during the four or five months that I’ve been the blogger for this site, it’s become that much more apparent how much OWL is a central hub for Brooklyn’s music scene, and certainly for quite a few of the individual bands I’ve written about, some of which I’ve never even gotten to see live so I have my own selfish motives here.

And finally, for any aspiring filmmakers out there, here a little tip: there’s a Decline of Western Civilization Part IV just waiting to be made at OWL alongside other local venues (I’m sure Penelope Spheeris will license the franchise no problem) (LA is over) (jk) so we just need to get these venues around the last lap of this thing and get some bands up on stage like maybe OWL stalwarts like Ash Jesus and Bipolar and Spite FuXXX (see above) plus some others and this’ll be ready to happen. (Jason Lee)

If you’re at all retro-minded or if you’re J.G. Ballard-minded you’ve probably heard of a song called “Warm Leatherette” by a band called The Normal, or maybe you’ve heard the cover version by Grace Jones. It’s become pretty iconic over the years. But it was originally released as a mere B-side and The Normal was not really a band (probably fooled ya with that ’70s-looking-collective pictured above) being instead just this one British guy named Daniel Miller who founded a record label called Mute Records to put out the single, with the label soon becoming a pretty big deal and taking on a life of its own.

But back to our subject, the original A-side to "Warm Leatherette" was called “T.V.O.D.” which stands for Television Overdose and its entire lyric consisted of the song title’s repeated over and over broken only a single stanza: "I don’t need a screen / I just stick the aerial into my skin / Let the signal run through my veins / T.V.O.D."

Well what if we told you there’s also a contemporary Brooklyn-based band called T.V.O.D. and that the band (not entirely unlike the song "T.V.O.D.") addresses our posthuman future in song and in sound–a future that may have finally arrived in full blown form in 2020 and ’21–but with strong intimations of human longing and even intimacy hanging on for good measure. Fittingly for their name, Brooklyn’s T.V.O.D. are prone to making sounds that could make some listeners feel a bit jittery or twitchy (call it David Byrnitis) or have you feeling mildly sedated and mildly euphoric all at once all while being catchy and cool sounding, in support of lyrics on subjects like self-medicating in disco huts and sentient sexually-frustrated bank accounts.

Give a listen to the EP Daisy up top to see what you think, or listen to the song below which happens to be one of this writer’s faves from the EP. It’s their slinkiest song and apparently the band got some nice endorsement money for making banking options sound so sexy so good on them. And then below that you can check out an earlier single that gives a very different perspective (a more puke-splattered perspective!) on the world of high finance and the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Despite all my hopes based on their band name, T.V.O.D. are in fact not a collective of sad horny TV-addicted cyborgs who like to go out dancing to disco punk, but really just five human beings sitting on a couch in Queens–as I recently witnessed–humans who have played (or still play) in other NYC-based indie bands like THICK, Star 80, Low Mein, and Acid Dad. But on the couch they don’t bring these bands up instead sharing their thoughts on the moral culpability of Godzilla, and their desire to eat like Ryan Seacrest, and then they get up and walk over to a stage with instruments on it and play songs in real time including several songs that have yet to be been committed to digital circuits or streaming media which is pretty cool.

If you need proof of any of this there’s an app for that and it’s called FLTV (editor’s note: not technically an app but a dedicated webpage on Vimeo) where the letters stand for Footlight Television–another acronyms with TV in it which makes it easy to remember. In addition to the T.V.O.D. segment, the Vimeo page is full of other live-show-and-interview content provided by the good people at the Footlight Bar in Ridgewood, Queens and made available for a small fee. Just think, for the amount it would once take you to order a good-quality draft beer (non-happy-hour rates) at a bar or club, you can now order a band to sit down for an interview and play a live set all for your own pleasure. So maybe this whole post-human thing isn’t all bad after all. (Jason Lee)

It’s my working hypothesis that Becca and Miles are hands down the cutest drug-buddies-slash-couple since the dazed heydays of Juliana and Evan Lemonhead who once dueted on a song called "My Drug Buddy" about just this exact subject. And c’mon I mean being drug buddies with benefits, how much better can life possibly get? Well I’ll tell ya how it does, you could also be in a cool indie band together–a cool indie band that could’ve very plausibly scored a gig at the Peach Pit if this were ah say 1995 meaning you could hang out together with Brandon & Kelly and Brenda & Dylan in cute couple nirvana much like the Flaming Lips and the Cramps and the Cardigans before them. 

In celebration of this winning trifecta of lovin’ touchin’ and squeezin’ the previously mentioned Becca and Miles (have you forgotten the first paragraph already?! maybe slow down on those drugs bubby!) named their musical collaboration Drug Couple. Also not unlike Evan and Juliana before them and their various musical projects over the years, the Drug Couple couple have quite a knack for writing sugary sweet pop hooks backed up by musical textures that can veer from pleasantly jangly to pleasantly jagged at a moment’s notice (case in point being the opening track from their 2020 EP called Choose Your Own Apocalypse ((which really is the best any of us can hope for these days)) with said track being called "2027" which is a year that can’t get here soon enough). 

And dammit if Becca and Miles are not deceptively wholesome enough to take home to Mom and Dad should you choose to form a thruple with the couple and just in time for Valentine’s Day you lucky dog. With all of this in mind and given that Drug Couple are pretty easy on the eyes I don’t feel wrong in recommending that you watch them play a live set coming up here in a few hours at 8pm EST–streamed on one of the Deli’s very favorite virtual concert outlets known as BABY TV–after which you will no doubt be moved to exclaim, and here I quote the esteemed Steve Sanders after having witnessed the aforementioned Flaming Lips play "She Don’t Use Jelly" live at the Peach Pit: "You know, I’ve never been a big fans of alternative music but these guys rocked the house!"

And here’s a big bonus and added incentive. Drug Couple will be sharing the stage with Moon Kissed, an also very cute thruple (in the musical sense that is) who are likewise highly skilled at combining big melodic pop hooks with rocking the f*ck out and if you don’t believe me peep the song above which as far as I’m concerned should have been declared the "Song of the Summer" in 2019 when it came out and for every summer subsequently. Moon Kissed are also recent Deli Artists’ of the Month so rest assured you should keep an eye out for what these ladies have coming up soon… (Jason Lee)

photo credit: Allyson Pinon

If you live anywhere in this country’s northeastern regions you probably got walloped with a foot or two of snow last week and more since. With more of the white stuff and also frigid temps forecast all week it’s perfect weather for staying in–not that we weren’t doing that already, but hey added incentive–and watching live sets of electronic music performed by a wide array of live acts and DJs on the screen of your own choosing. 

Or if you’re NYC-based electronic musicmaker and painter/multimedia artist Nuxx Vomica, who recently released her debut EP A Different Place, it’s perfect weather for traveling a few hours upstate and performing a live set in the middle of a frozen lake to an audience of confused yet grateful freshwater fish. And lucky for us, said performance was filmed and broadcast (and now archived) as part of last Thursday’s installment of Strict Tempo—a weekly livestream originating out of Seattle featuring a world-spanning Whitman’s Sampler of live DJs and live acts in the veins of EBM/industrial, acid/electro/techno, minimal wave/darkwave, Italo-disco/hi-NRG and other equally cool-sounding slashed and hyphenated genres…

…and after watching this performance one thing I’d like to know is where one finds an extension cord long enough to reach all the way out to the middle of a frozen lake. Then again sometimes it’s best for the stagecraft to remain mysterious and what mysterious it is as a latex body-suited figure crawls across the snowy landscape to open the set and there’s some neat-o Chroma key & chemtrails effects added to the visual mix and also what a perfect setting for Ms. Vomica’s raw thrumming beats and burbling coldwave oscillations and icy ethereal vocal interjections. Plus SHE’S PERFORMING IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKIN’ FROZEN LAKE and I can’t help but flashing back to that one scene in Omen II but thank goodness that didn’t happen, instead the setting just ramps up the otherworldly urgency of the music even more.

And as if this wasn’t enough for one show this installment of Strict Tempo had/has lots going for it, which granted is pretty typical but this one went extra hard with additional sets by Asymptote from Arizona who creates haunted experimental industrial soundscapes, Crimental from Colombia who specializes in driving dystopic electro EBM (his latest full length The Human Plague is indeed pretty sick) and Hands of Providence–a project “rooted in dark psyche of the human mind” especially those of various politicians and televangelists and other undesirables–all kicked off by a DJ set from our host Vox Sinistra.

As reigning queen of dark & danceable and occasionally not so danceable beats, Ms. Sinistra introduces each show with a charmingly low-key, unassuming and always informative description of the acts about to perform while backed by green-screened backdrops of infinitely scrolling bondage chains or dancing skeletons or nightclub footage or surreal film clips with occasional cameos by her tuxedoed cat—the production values on the show are consistently aces with each DJ/EDM artist bringing their own distinct look and vibe and setting. 

And there’s more from where that came from so if you enjoyed these sounds and visions you’re in luck because there’s 43 previous episodes of Strict Tempo in existence as of this writing to be explored in part or in full on Vox’s Twitch channel and Youtube channel and Mixcloud and probably other portals I’m unaware of even existing. (Jason Lee)

Released exactly one minute before midnight on December 31, 2020, the opening moments of the opening track “Washed Out” on Meviu§’s latest EP, Washed Out, is the perfect soundtrack for the way I remember feeling at that precise time–sitting at home by myself with “hands tied behind my back / and face down on the floor.” Well, figuratively *ahem*. It’s been a strange couple of months or couple of years. Wait, what day is it? Oh yeah it’s Bandcamp Friday Day™ which means that it’ll not only cost you a mere pittance to buy the Meviu§ EP, but also that the entire pittance will go straight into the hot pockets of Meviu§ which’ll help him be able to buy an actual Hot Pocket™ and avoid starvation for another day. As of the time of writing you’ve got about five-and-a-half hours left so go buy it now!

OK back to those opening moments of “Washed Out” and the slowly-unfurling echoey guitar arpeggio whose notes fold back in on themselves and suck you, the listener, into a swirling sonic vortex that serves as the perfect launching pad for the rest of the song with its somehow both driving and turgid guitar work & rhythm section in the instrumental parts and stripped down verses and catchy melodic choruses. It’s a Cure-worthy opening, and song overall, especially if you’re into Disintegration and Wish era Cure back when the mascara-smudged Camus-quoting Friday-loving gothsters managed to have a couple bonafide pop-chart hits here in the US which is pretty crazy when you think about it now. And on this note it bears pointing out how Meviu§ has a similar grasp of combining catchy tunes with serious “in your feels” feels.

But, hey you, I wonder why Robert Smith & Friends loved Friday so much? I thought these boys were supposed to be sad. Well duh because it’s Bandcamp Friday™ in case you already forgot! I mean sure Bandcamp wasn’t even close to existing yet in 1992 but obviously The Cure had a premonition, which is pretty impressive considering how just about every GeoCities-induced psychedelic headtrip of a web site during those years looked as if the entire cast of Saved By The Bell had just projectile vomited on your monitor screen (RIP Dustin Diamond) creating a big mess of neon backdrops and spinning icons and animated-and-sometimes-flaming text. and how in this world could you ever order something so pragmatic as vinyl records, or these new things called em-pee-threes, on these strange primitive machines but I digress.

 
Anyway I didn’t mean to imply that the entire Meviu§ EP sounds like the Cure because it doesn’t. In fact it’s got a pretty wide stylistic range for just four songs. Track number two “Find You” features Edith Pop on co-vocals and it’s a nice downbeat acoustic ballad that’ll have you weeping in your kombucha with its aching harmonies and doleful sentiments. Up next is “Ghost of Memory (Ghost Stories Remix)” which at times reminds me of Moon Safari era Air but just when you think Kelly Better Keep Watching Those Stars there’s suddenly an Aphex Twin-y breakdown so hey you never know. And then on track number four the EP wraps up with “Maybe Next Year (featuring Searmanas)” but specifically in the form of the “Jeremy Bastard Remix” although I hear that really he’s just misunderstood. This closer features an immersive darkwave groove and some more female-to-male harmonizing from the aforementioned Searmanas and it’s truly an apropos song title and musical vibe to go out on. But maybe just maybe if we’re all lucky next year will come before next year. (Jason Lee)

The good folk over at Bands Do BK premiered the The Oracle of Marcy EP exactly a week ago and far be it for me to try and steal their thunder not that I could anyway. But hey it’s Bandcamp Friday Day™ and I wanted to give this fine EP by the Planes a little extra shine and encourage you to download it within the next six-and-a-half hours so that Stephen, Matt, and Carlo will have enough money to go and buy two slices of pizza between them and then try to figure out how the hell to split two slices of pizza between three bandmates. (note: most bands have been in this situation before at some point)

So if you wanna get the full skinny on The Planes’ latest check out the aforementioned BDBK post with Sam Sumpter interviewing frontman Stephen Perry who breaks down the EP’s four songs one-by-one and tells how the band wrote and recorded the album in a single week flat. One thing I’ll add is that while the band definitely have their own thing and their own sound–witness for instance Perry’s uniquely and endearingly unguarded sotto voce vocal style and his willingness to color outside the lines with it–when it comes to the music itself The Planes are all about the music itself, proudly making good meat ‘n’ potatoes indie rock for the indie rock meat lover. And at Tad’s Steaks prices.

Or as they state it on their very own Bandcamp page™ The Planes “stand up for the things that are, refreshingly, always cool and relevant and fun. Three-minute pop songs. Analog recording equipment. The unmistakable sound, and the visceral pleasures, of banging on a Fender guitar hooked up to a tube amp.” And sure enough none of the songs on Oracle stray far from the three-minute mark but that’s not to say you don’t get some pleasing musical variety between or even within individual tracks like on the opener “The Oracle” which veers between Chronic Town-ish chiming guitar work and reticent vocals and other parts that feature delicious Daydream Nation dissonance with alternate guitar tuning in full effect. 

The Oracle of Marcy (as well as The Planes’ past work) is very likely to land solidly for fans of oh let’s say Sebadoh or for those who enjoy the gentler stylings of Dinosaur Jr. and J Mascis but not only. And finally, one other thing for when this becomes a thing again, I’ve seen The Planes perform live a few times now and they really bring it so you’d be smart to check them out too. Stephen’s stage wear often includes a Bruce Springsteen style bandana wrapped around his forehead and while I’ve yet to see the band play ten encores in a row, they do bring a Bruce-level energy level so keep an eye out for Courteney Cox dancing in the crowd next to you. (Jason Lee)
 

LIVESTREAM RESCHEDULED BUT STILL HAPPENING! Spawned from the bohemian artist environs of Greenwich Village and the gypsys that remain, Heather Goldin and Emma Jenney’s first mutual encounter was a self-described opposites attract moment at their nonhierarchical arts-intensive public grade school in third grade which eventually led to them becoming complimentary songwriting partners and eventually an active musical concern known as Beau. Now, some years later, the latest single by this fully grown up duo called "Dance With Me" continues the dualistic dynamic with its high-gloss-yet-gritty-in-the-city sound.

It’s a dynamic that feels pretty right for two Joni Mitchell lovin’ wild childs who ended up playing Paris Fashion Week (Paris the city, not Paris Hilton) when barely into their 20s and then signing to a French-Japanese fashion-label-cum-record-label. And it also feels pretty right that the song vibrates with the urgency and abandon and sense of pure joy you’d expect of two highly creative artists coming off from a five year recording hiatus (but not a songwriting hiatus) to work independently with a team of local collaborators. 

“Dance With Me” started with a piano line written in a dank NYC basement and came to fruition across multiple recording studios while preserving many elements of the original demo. It’s a multilayered musical cake and let’s not forget the lyrics that portray dance as both carefree ecstatic communion and urgently needed escape from inner and outer demons, and the music video that opens on an image of the ladies smokin’ up on a treadmill. Now that’s a health regimen we can get behind.

And here’s the kicker, you can watch a live show by Beau here in a few weeks on FRIDAY 2/26 in the comfort of your own homes while jogging on your NordicTrack and working your way through a pack of Marlboros or rolling up a big fattie or doing whatever you want we’re not here to judge. Jump on over to Baby TV, a subsidiary of Baby’s All Right, to get your tix before the scalpers snap ’em all up and to read more about what Beau has in store for the future. O, sweet anticipation! (Jason Lee)

Ellen Kempner and Palehound require no more than a minute and forty seconds to take the listener on a ride through languorous bliss and lingering despair on Palehound’s new song out today called “How Long.” Opening with a salutary cough and a strummed guitar like a train rolling round the bend, the first stanza veers between reveries of a marble sky and “three months of cops and blacktops” and taking cover from a sudden hailstorm. Over its brief duration of plucky major-key banjo and toy keyboard stair-step melodies like “a watersnake slicing the skin of the lake” the song ends on an unsettled and unsettling note bent out of tune: “how long ‘til the sweetness melts / how long ‘til there rings a bell / how long ‘til there rings a bell / how long ‘til there rings a bell / that signals us returned from hell.” 

As guitarist and singer and bandleader of Palehound over the course of three albums and a clutch of singles–including the Elliott Smith cover above on last year’s reissue of his 1995 eponymous album–Kempner has proved her mastery of fusing sweet and sour emotional hues to deeply-felt memorable effect–especially well suited to the current state of inertia for sure–whether addressing episodes of physical abuse, body image issues, buying dry pet food, lending support to a gender-transitioning friend, identifying with selfish girls named after drugs, or getting shitty tattoos. However serious or frivolous the subject Kempner infuses her words with a warmth-radiating humanity owing in no small part to the grain of her voice orbiting between near-collapse faltering and rock-steady empathy and resolve.

Plus she shreds on guitar. Witness the instructional lesson below for a song off Palehouse’s first album ably supported by feline companion. (Jason Lee)

“Skin. It’s like skin. I’m like an animal.” — Marianne Faithfull

“I love you and your toys. Motorcycle boy.” — L.A. Witch

If your weekend’s been missing a certain something so far you are strongly advised to drop everything now and witness the music video released mere days ago by L.A. Witch which is really something to see if you haven’t seen it already (dir: Ambar Navarro). It’s called “Motorcycle Boy” and it’ll appeal in particular to fans of Motorcycle Boy(s) but also equally to fans of Motorcycle Girls and to other assorted Wild Ones and Easy Riders, Dead Man Curve-sters and Leader of the Pack-sters, Gum Snapping Pinky & Leather Tuscadero Type Hipsters and Finger Snapping and Swaying Shangri-La Girl Gang Sisters and Marlon Brando Leather Daddy Hat Wearing Kinksters Especially When Accessorized By A Leather Bikini Top That The Wild One Could’ve Never Pulled Off Himself Even In His Prime Years-sters. 

But in truth all that’s required to "dig it" is a love of neuvo-retro rock ‘n’ roll tunes with enough sexy menace to spare to getcha motors runnin’ even on a sunday.

As a considerable bonus the video opens with a homage to the opening credit sequence of Girl On A Motorcycle which is pretty dang obscure to your average punter today but this blogger happens to know the movie and happens to be quite excited by the homage because years ago said blogger (that being me) came across a VHS tape at a Blockbuster fire sale and there it was in the big bin o’ tapes with “Girl On A Motorcycle” on the label but without the original packaging and even though I had no idea what the heck the movie was or even who was in it, the title alone was enough for me, so imagine my pleasant surprise after laying down a few bucks and taking it home and it turns out to be an erotic pseudo-philosophic mind-tripping psychedelic exploitation-cum-art-film from 1968 starring Marianne Faithfull where in the film’s opening moments she wakes from a disturbingly freaky dream and walks over to her closet with nothing but her birthday suit on and pulls out a head-to-toe black leather catsuit and shimmies right into it and leaves her boyfriend behind still asleep in bed and goes outside and climbs onto her motorcycle and rides off into the distance for further adventures that comprise the rest of the movie but not before thinking the following line in voiceover as regards the leather catsuit: “Skin. It’s like skin. I’m like an animal.” (Jason Lee)

Blood Cultures is a headtrip whether you’re talking about their music or their music videos and “Keeps Bringing Me Back” is no exception. The song’s electro pulses are APA-approved hypnosis fodder in combination with the raspy flute loop and intensifying beat and introspective vocals and climactic finale and all the other little sonic details apparent on subsequent replays.

Speaking of hypnotic, the music video which features actor and activist Dimitri J. Moïse (pictured above) depicts a Freudian psychotherapy session complete with pocketwatch-induced hypnosis gone horribly wrong or horribly right or possibly both. And then there’s a nice little homage in there too to “Karma Police” as a bonus. If you dig this vid you may also wanna check out their videos for previous singles “Dunk On Me,” “Hard To Explain,” and “Broadcasting”—plus the “Operators Are Standing By” apocalyptic informercial series to fully delve into the heart of darkness of late night channel surfing—which are all equally thought-provoking or thought-revoking depending on where your head’s at man.

Finally, when it comes to the thematics of the song and the video for “Keeps Bringing Me Back,” you’re encouraged to check out Blood Cultures’ official Book of Face page for a thoughtful statement on the artistic and personal reasons for keeping his/their identity shrouded up until now (plus some very cool maskwear featured on their photo feed) and for deliberate self-revelation at this point in time as a proactive political gesture, which revolves in part around the challenging realities of being a Pakistani-American coming of age in a post-9/11 America and of being a rational adult in an age of white nationalist reactionary revolution, but with the opportunity to be agent of change. (Jason Lee)

Trace Amount isn’t really a phrase you want to hear too often as in “your bowl of Lucky Charms may contain a trace amount of toxic heavy metals and/or rat feces” or “you failed your drug test due to the trace amount of THC in your Maui Melon CBD gummies.” The same goes for "trace amounts" of highly contagious and equally toxic sociocultural and biological viral agents, which under the right/wrong conditions have the potential to spread unchecked and infect an entire body or body politic. Not that we’d know anything about any of that lately.

Brandon Gallagher’s industrial music project Trace Amount takes this notion of the toxic trace amount and translates it into sound and image. Following up on his debut 2019 EP Fake Figures in the Sacred Scriptures with a second EP Endless Render released two months ago, Gallagher describes the latter project as “about all of the uncertainties and varying levels of anxiety that were felt during the times of quarantine, the feelings about the recent upsurge in police brutality and political injustice, and first hand encounters of other people’s ignorance regarding basic human rights in general.” 

The track “Pop Up Morgues” is a perfect example of how industrial music, with its characteristic harshness and fatalism and fury, is a good antidote to help with purging at least some of the toxicity hanging everywhere in the air today. As John Lydon once put it, before he was totally embarrassing, “anger is an energy.” But then on the flip side laughter can be good as well for dealing with crazy shit and exposing real-life absurdities. Trace Amount has us covered here too given that Gallagher happens to be a graphic designer/video artist which is a side he brings to the fore in recent collaboration with BTKGOD where they riff on the classic apocalyptic "War of the Worlds" alien invasion scenario whilst bringing an agreeable synthwave vibe to the mix musically.

Speaking of collaborations I’d be remiss not to mention Trace Amount’s latest project that came out just last week, which is a fully re-imagined remix of his first EP undertaken by Blake Harrison, yes that Black Harrison the one from East Coast grindcore legends Pig Destroyer, retitled Under the Skin in its new form. And while listening to the remixed EP may not conjure up Scarlett Johansson in alien form ready to f*ck your brains out and submerge you in oily viscous goo, it does at least include a remix of the track “Scarlett Johansson” (retitled, you guessed it, "Under the Skin") which may at least count for something for all you craven maniacs.

And finally, speaking of maniacs, you should know that Trace Amount/Brandon Gallagher is also one half of grungy-sludgy bi-coastal hardcore-sters Coarse, alongside Ryan Knowles, whose latest EP features “The People of the State of New York vs. Coarse,” a song inspired by the two bandmates being arrested by the NYPD in late 2018 for putting up wheat paste posters around lower Manhattan. And on the musical side the song was inspired in part by the Cure’s epically bleak/seminally goth LP Pornography (1982) which leads us to the perfect outro as witnessed in the video above, Trace Amount’s rather awesome cover of a rather awesome Cure track originally off that very album. (Jason Lee)

There’s a certain frisson that happens when a talented collage artist juxtaposes a number of disparate elements and makes you see all the individual parts anew as a result, which serves as a kind of an expressway to the center of your skull aka the unconscious mind. 

On their fifth full-length unveiled today by Wharf Cat Records titled Palberta5000, Palberta has installed a system upgrade to the art-damaged post-punk haikus heard on previous releases. Self-reportedly digging into a buffet of Gen X alt rock and Millennial Disney pop ranging from Liz Phair to Avril Lavigne for inspiration, this instrument-rotating three-piece has written a bunch of punchdrunk new numbers that occasionally break their usual one-to-two-minute time limit and that place a new emphasis on their exquisitely shaggy girl group harmonies. 

The result is an album full of misshapen pearls of avant-rock-pop that fills the void of there being no existing No Wave Meghan Trainor or Justin Beefheart or Taylor Shaggs (please stop me before someone gets hurt) in the world up until now. Take a listen and consider your void filled.

In this blogger’s modest appraisal other standout tracks include album-opener “No Way,” “Summer Sun,” and the Arthur Russell/Loose Joints quoting “All Over My Face” which is nearly five minutes (!) long. (Jason Lee)