“A control group [is] a comparison group in a study whose members receive either no intervention at all or some established intervention. The responses of those in the control group are compared with the responses of participants in one or more experimental groups that are given the new treatment being evaluated.” — APA Dictionary of Psychology

Engineered by @connorpriest — Mixed by @corner_soul — Mastered by @robin.schmidt.mastering — Photo by @juliatarantino

In 1961 psychologist Albert Bandura conducted the first of his famous “Bobo Doll” experiments with kids in experimental Group 1 witnessing an adult beating the sh*t out of a punching-bag style inflatable clown doll without repercussion, whereas kids in Group 2 saw adults playing nice with the doll and a third “control group” not being predisposed in any way…

…and when kids from all 3 groups were set loose on a Bobo doll, the first group not only imitated the aggro behavior but ran with it—employing a toy gun for instance—whereas the other kids treated the doll more gently, thus proving that clown-beating isn’t genetically ingrained even when the clown is a creepy bowling-pin shaped doll that springs back up after being struck ready to be hit again…

…but it ain’t easy finding a nice neutral control group these days seeing as we’re all bombarded by digital streams of behavior-modifying reinforcement online already including constant monitoring of others’ likes and shares, laudatory comments and aggro-style flaming and trolling not to mention good ol’ fashioned passive-aggressive ignoring of the perceived dweebs, all projected into the giant echo chamber of the Internet…

…so no wonder The Down & Outs new single “Cntrl Group” sees vocalist/bassist Ray Young repeating “I wish you were my control group” in mantra-like fashion with steady building frenzy over a pounding, echo-chamber-laden dub-inflected, spaced-out, techno-on-guitars beat to the point where if “Cntrl Group” were played in an empty room with a clown doll nearby it’d probably start off as a nice fun groovy dance party but by the song’s end you’ll likely be slam dancing up against good ol’ Bobo…

…none of which is meant to say the song is “about” osocial learning theory—we honestly don’t know what the lyrics are supposedly to mean—but a recent convo with Ray the other day (see below!) did focus some on these topics, not to mention The D&O’s control-group like tendency to strip all unnecessary variables from their music…

…in order to make it as stripped down and streamlined as possible as ably assisted by the lean, mean, trancey-hard-techno-played-in-a-rock-band-format-machine-tooled playing of guitarist Benji Watson (Struck Me Like A Chord, Abstract Voicings) and drummer Tom O’Donnell (Corner Soul, Couch Prints)…

…with one major takeaway being how tough it is today to remain authentic in the face of a music industry reliant on automation and algorithms, streaming stats & social media impressions which in part inspired The D&O’s to scrap (for now) several tracks recorded with a name producer that depleted their finances more than igniting their passions even if they’ll later make for solid album tracks, eading to a renewed resolution to work organically within their means and to stay engaged by disengaging…

…so don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe! (Jason Lee)

*******

Edited excerpts from a conversation with RAY YOUNG on June 21, 2023:

The Down & Outs haven’t put out new music since late 2021. The band went into the studio last year. I thought if I just worked with a good, known producer they’d hear something I didn’t hear. But it ended up ruining us financially—me and my roommate are broke for the foreseeable future. The lesson learned was to work within your means and don’t bite off more than you can chew. Or it’ll lead to a lot of bad stuff.

We went back to the drawing board, working with some new people and learning how to get it done quickly. And on “Cntrl Group” it happened. It felt like the song we’ve been threatening to write for a while. We wanted to make this song painfully honest. It’s more of a techno song with guitar than a post-punk song with a dance beat. It’s the sound of us growing as a band, and me as a songwriter. We felt we needed to clear new ground, make it pay off and really be worth it.

To be clear, all those songs we left on the shelf are going to come out. They have their merits. The one we really like will probably be the next single, coming out next month. The other two songs will be released when we’re putting together a larger project later this year, or next year. They just weren’t singles, more album cuts. One of them is totally different than anything we’ve ever done before.

The ethos of the band—I wanna see how little I can do and still make a song work. Like writing what’s essentially a single-note, four-on-the-floor song. We tried other variations but this is the one that clicked. The song came out of a jam , playing together in real time and not out of the box. When you’re a band band you have to have that chemistry, the ability to communicate, that’s what a real band does.

This is the first recording our drummer Tom plays on. He’s been doing our mixing and our artistic production for a while. He mixes off headphones and a Bluetooth Bose speaker, and this shit definitely sound better than what a lot of people do with more typical studio gear.

Connor helped us with some of the production and cleaned it up. We kept the whole process “in house” as much as possible. I don’t need someone to tell me “this is how it should be.” And if we can keep it more insular and work with the right people, and do it with some of our friends, with the “scene” which is basically you and your friends who do some of the same artistic tasks, it means it’s all coming from the same ethos…

********

We all known New York City is ripe as fuck right now for a new scene to break through. All eyes are on us as a musical community and we are 100% looking looking to exist at the epicenter as part of it. But not as one of the faux-rock bands ‘cause a lot of them aren’t even real bands. They just want to straight up play TikTok music that sounds like something you’d hear an orthodontic office—like a standard four-piece of white boys who get hyped and signed to a label but don’t know what they’re doing.

We’re into crossing Manhattan rock with the techno/electro scene in Brooklyn. I wanna make something that a journalist has to come up with a new name for. Indie sleaze is a good example. It’s kinda cool and gets people good press and helps legitimate artists, but it doesn’t have anything to do with anything. It’s not even really a musical style. But still that “Girls” song by The Dare fucking rocks and helps continue on a certain legacy. I only wish them all the best of success.

Today “indie rock” is more a state of mind than anything, more about fashion than a certain sound. But if “sleaze” is really part of the equation you shouldn’t be drinking White Claws at a party more like tallboys. Debauchery and hedonism are sleazy if we’re gonna use this word. I think a better, more descriptive label would be the NYC Lorem scene or Pollen scene, since it’s all intertwined with digital culture anyway. That to me is more descriptive, while indie sleaze is more harkening back to the past.

And speaking of digital culture I also like how some people now are making music that’s “unreferential” to the past, like hyperpop, totally divorced from precedence. But still I’d like to see The Down & Outs be part of a new “NYC sound” or scene that’s inspired by the past, but not derivative or limited by it.

Whatever style you’re part of, when it comes down to it, nothing is sicker than having under 1000 listeners on Spotify or whatever other social media. What could be a more legitimizing project than to continue making music in a vacuum? That to me is cool. You have 17 listeners but yet you persevere and keep going. Low stakes means that you can exist in complete freedom. You really can make whatever you want. And then if it goes viral, it’s better if it just happens out of nowhere.

Fcukers are a good example. They have two songs out [one being a Beck cover] no videos and no press. But they sold out Baby’s All Right. The music is enough, but a lot of artists don’t think that way. The question is whether you want to have a legacy, something you can stand by on your deathbed, or did you just follow the standard industry game.

Photo by Alexis Kleshik — click link for IG account to see uncropped version and more excellent photos plus Linktree…

The Deli is currently vacationing down in Dollywood Country (Miss Parton says “Happy Pride!”) where the other night we met a local resident who’d recently seen new wave icons Duran Duran at a Nashville concert which they described as being “Satanic” and sure we get how a strutting sexagenarian in white vinyl trousers singing “wild boys / never lose it” could be viewed as Luciferian but still we suspect this characterization had more to do with the current trend of maligning anything not designated as pablum for the masses as George Soros-sponsored, culture-war-provoking Satanic provocations designed to undermine the sanctity of God, Country, and Mud Wrestling In White Panties…

…and we’ll get back to mud wrestling here in a second but the salient point for now is how hearing the phrase "Duran Duran" made us long for a re-watch of 1968’s Roger Vadim-directed, sci-fi-romp Barbarella starring a pre-Hanoi Jane Fonda especially the scene where the film’s villain Durand Durand—a moniker corrupted by our fave Old New Romantics—pleasures/tortures our titular hero with a musical instrument-cum-weapon to the tune of “Sonata for Executioner and Various Young Women” designed to induce deadly orgasmic pleasure except that Barbarella’s "big O" short circuits the machine so she’s able to escape…

 …a movie fondly remembered to this day not only for Fonda’s allure but also for its acid-washed psychedelic visuals and Mod-style futuristic fashions along with its playfully transgressive comic book tone all of which derived from the actual comic book on which the film was based written and illustrated by French artist Jean-Claude Forest and if you’re looking for a cool new song that gives off some strong Barbarella vibes then look no further than “Metrocool” by fresh-faced Brooklyn pop-rockers Le Bang…

…cuz this bangin’ threesome have got the whole Mod-inflected-comic-book-inspired-pop-art-meets-proto-punk-garage-rock-meets-yé–yé-inspired-Gallic–cool thing down cold and they don’t even need guitars to pull it off cuz “guitars are lame”—just drums and vocals and dirty overdriven basslines, the latter acting as the group’s de facto orgasmatron—with French/Filipina front-heroine or is that front-villainess moonlighting as a fine artist and visual designer Lola Lancon cooing lyrical come-ons and bon mots en français with her guise partially disguised at all times by a black Zorro-style bandit mask…

…like Françoise Hardy in What’s New Pussycat meets Michelle Pfeiffer in Catwoman meets Maggie Cheung in Irma Vep meets Jane Fonda in Barbarella complete with a comic-book worthy backstory where “after swallowing a grenade during a Godzilla attack in New York City, Lola was transformed into an explosive maniac with a thirst for destruction and awesome music” which is at least as plausible as Catwoman’s origin story…

…backed by her dual sidekicks of Billy Hay and Stavros Lari of Gun who lock into one singularly slinky, sleekly danceable groove after another as if Julie Ruin/Le Tigre were being rendered in Ben-Day dots and of course any comic book protagonist needs at least one worthy antagonist and in this instance it’s another Lola (two sides of the same coin etc. etc.) in the form of fellow vocalist/writer/filmmaker Lola Daehler who fronts her own band of musical marauders known as Homade as covered previously in this space… 

…with the two Lolas facing off Lady Gladiator-style in a kiddie pool full of wet ‘n’ gushy mud two weekends ago at the Great American Mud Wrestling Show held in the backyard of the most highly valuated real estate property in Bed-Stuy which is supposedly owned by a shadowy Bruce Wayne type Tbilisi tycoon who makes the space available to Georgian artists (the Georgia more known for grapes than for peaches) and to rising-up-from-the-underground singer-songwriter-rockers like November Girl and Sofia Zarzuela i.e. the duo who organized the event and who rocked out on stage and tussled in the mudpit alongside Le Bang and Homade and lemme tell ya none of ’em were messing around when it came to getting messy…

 …and to bring things full circle wouldn’t ya know Duran Duran famously featured the ancient sport of mud wrestling in their “Girls on Film” videoclip from 1981 (view it uncut here and be aware the relevant scenario doesn’t come until the very end) which succeeded in making these feather-haired Brits the epitome of “metrocool” for American new wavers by tapping into the messy zeitgeist of the early Eighties (fun fact: the first American mud wrestling match was held in Akron, Ohio in 1938 with more than 2,500 in attendance) as featured in timeless cinematic classics such as Stripes (1981), The Beach Girls (1982), and the button-pushing Joysticks (1983)…

 …with the critical difference in wet hot 2023 being that the (I think it’s safe to say) feminist femme-domme combatants—and to be fair there were at least a couple male-identifying combatants as well—did more than just sling mud and sling each other around the inflatable ring cuz they also ran the show and produced the show like if Duran Duran’s models for hire had tied up the band and hijacked the "Girls on Film" video shoot reclaiming their primordial roles as goddesses of rhythm in a ritualistic return to humanity’s earthy, earthen roots…

…and seeing as ’80s style Satanic panic is back in style then why not mud wrestling too and thanks to the GAMWS crew it’s not only about playfully fighting in the mud but also fighting against the moral-panic-driven misogynistic/anti-LGBT tendencies of today’s weirdly repressive yet dangerously aggressive times so bring on the mud-filled kiddie pool we say cuz for one thing this is what a real battle of the bands should look like plus there’s nothing much better than a fun-filled festival of outdoor indie sleaze music and sport in the name of saving what’s left to save of our humanity… (Jason Lee)

photo by Nicole Miller

I came up with the name for the band when I first moved to New York about a decade ago. I’d see the thousand ways to die on every street corner; garbage truck, scaffolding collapsing, etc. and would think "Certain death" every time. Before the pandemic I decided to change the name of my band from my name (Henry Black) to Certain Death. They my dog died and the lockdown started a day later. I wrote the song "Certain Death" both about my dog Brook passing, and also the impending doom of it all in the face of a modern day plague. Fortuitous timing in a dark and horrible way.

 It’s pretty perverse when you think about it. The only certainty in life is the certainty of death. Self-awareness comes only with the awareness that one day the self will no longer be aware…

LISTEN TO CERTAIN DEATH’s "CERTAIN DEATH" (STUDIO VERSION)

…which is exactly why songs like “Certain Death” by Certain Death need to exist—the band’s debut single—and if it re-appears later as the opening track to their debut album also assumedly titled Certain Death the band will surely be a shoe in for the 2023 Black Sabbath Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Triple Identical Band/Song/Album Titles on a Doom Metal Debut Record award…

…a song which at 5 minutes and 51 seconds is only 26 second shorter than "Black Sabbath" by Black Sabbath and which likewise addresses death directly, not merely as an abstract idea/concept but rather as a manifested presence ever-present in daily existence as a matter of psychopomp and circumstance…

…and if you’re gonna look the Grim Reaper (an invention of plague-afflicted late Middle Ages Europe, a figure who reaps souls like a farmer harvesting souls with his scythe) directly in the eye under a musical guise, you’d better have some sick tritone-laden riffage at the ready—sick as the state of the world itself—and some blazing fretwork pyrotechnics with which to counter Death in the manifested rotting flesh…

…and “Certain Death” has got all of this to the n’th degree oscillating between passages of brooding wraith-like menace and outbursts of unbridled instrumental sound ‘n’ fury shredage—a death rattle more euphoric than morose like a Dia de los Muertos celebration—with vocalist/guitarist Henry Black leading the charge into the metal meltdown all guns blazing but "Certain Death" works equally well in it’s scaled-down, moody acoustic demo version as seen/heard above which should satisfy fans of Mark Kozelek’s covers of AC/DC tunes even if the demo version actually came first…

…and to experience more of Henry’s songwriting/arranging acumen just check out the playlist below which is more in the vein of Gordon Lightfoot or Harry Nilsson than Pagan Altar or Witchfinder General and we especially recommend "YGS" which flows fluidly from the intro’s pensive lyrics and strummed guitar into a rollicking rocker complete with barrelhouse piano and massed cumulous-cloud harmonies before passing over to another realm in a brief psychedelic/psychopompy outro… (Jason Lee)

 

 Flyer designed by Jewlee Trudden
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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 legendary 1988 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) 

Pictured: Shego is a Madrid-based dulce punk band

It’s a sad-but-true fact that by far most Americans are monolingual pendejos—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…

…who are but one of the players on in the vibrant Latinx punk scene as witnessed both at the recent annual Latin Punk Fest held at the Windjammer last month in Ridgewood, Queens featuring Sebastian Ortiz, Mau, Wakala, Microprismas, Depression Tropical, and Mal De Ojo, and also at the Abort the System showcase and fundraiser (“fund abortion, not police”) held at Bushwick’s May Day Community Center in March 2023… 

…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…

…like for instance artists like Margaritas Podridas (Hermosillo, México), Lorelle Meets The Obsolete (Baja California, México), Sonic Emerson (Ciudad de México), Generacion Suicida (SoCal), The Slashes (SoCal), shego (Madrid), Soleá Morente (Madrid), Sexores (Ciudad de México via Ecuador), El Shirota (Chiluca, México), Silvana Estrada (Veracruz, México),  Melenas (Pamplona, Spain) and Cala Vento (alt Empordá) to name but a handful…

…and hey here’s a "Rock En Español” playlist which is a work in progress being unveiled here for the first time for your listening pleasure and personal betterment and hey we haven’t even touched upon many of the many, many other artists of Latinx ancestry that are prominent on the NYC indie scene including Alexandra Blair (The Silk War), Katie Ortiz (Debbie Dopamine, batsbatsbats ghostghostghost), and Sofia Zarzuela who wowed the crowd at the recent Great American Mud Wrestling Show in Bed-Stuy but that’ll have to wait for another time…

…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)

HERE PLAYLIST HERE!

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…

MARCH 2023 DELI DELIVERS PLAYLIST

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” EP today 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 ghostghostghost locate 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 ghostghostghost plus many other tidbits besides… (Jason Lee)

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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.

Now there’s a good incentive to come to church…

 

 

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 Parader magazine 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 with two 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)