To be honest we hardly know a damn thing about Aux Blood except they’ve put out some cool songs lately (that’s enough!) plus they have a cool name that that makes us think of plugging in digital peripherals (auxiliary ports a.k.a. aux ports) directly into one’s body and bloodstream and Aux Blood most definitely make music to get jacked up to and jacked up by…
…music described on the band’s own Bandcamp as “hardcore shoegaze noise” so that’s a whole spectrum of noise right there with a cryptic addendum that “collaboration is essential” and they do have as knack for sounding doom-laden/depressed one minute and enraged/infuriated the next in a seeming bid to be deemed the Auguste Rodin of sculpted noise…
…a title Aux Blood makes some progress in earning on their three latest singles—"Carcrash” (shoegazery á la Jesus and Mary Chain), “No Marks” (distorted melodic postpunk), and “Graveyard” (punky-grungy primal scream therapy) the latter of which dropped just a few days ago—not to mention their eponymous 2021 LP and a couple cool numbers found only on their Bandcamp page…
…and when it comes to doomy and infuriating world events of late requiring massive infusions of auxiliary energy and resources to attempt to counteract the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake surely tops the list which we realize must come off as a flippant transition to make but we’re making it because Aux Blood is headlining a benefit show tonight at Brooklyn’s Gold Sounds Bar with 100% of door and bar proceeds going to charities working on relief efforts in the region…
…an effort that will require a span of who knows how many years with the death toll now having crossed 50,000 not to mention widespread loss of shelter and livelihood for many survivors in a region already beset by challenges and calamities now looking at a whole new level of sustained hardship and lingering trauma to a degree impossible for most reading this to comprehend and if there’s a moment when collaboration is essential this is one of them so come on out to the show if you’re inclined or look for other waysto chipin… (Jason Lee)
A native to the Bronx NYC, OOMAN (they/she), is a Kittitian-American songwriter, producer, MC and DJ whose music sits at the intersection of electro house and alternative Hip-Hop.
To skip straight to the Deli’s exclusive interview with OOMAN—conducted on the occasion of their brand new single "NEW PURSE" released just today—scroll down past the jump below just after the video for "MISS GOT ROCKS" or by all means continue reading directly below if you’re interested in purses and handbags in addition to OOMAN…
Whether serving as an accessory to an outfit, an accessory to self-empowerment, or even an accessory to crime, purses are powerful symbolic totems in our society. Purely in terms of fashion, the right handbag can make or break an outfit while also making or breaking one’s image—just ask Young Jeezy who once made it known that “all I ever want’s a bad b*tch in a Chanel bag” or LL Cool J who loves ladies known as “around the way girls” prone to carrying “a Fendi bag and a bad attitude” with purses on the whole, and certain brands of purses in particular, serving as shorthand for specific personality types, overall attitude and power as in rap/dance/pop songs where something or someone is deemed “Gucci” meaning that the entity in question is good or even great (or chill, or dope, or illin‘) just ask Gucci Mane…
…with the power of the purse only being enhanced by so readily crossing and blurring all kinds of lines and social boundaries with handbags being in essence the ultimate luxuryitem of thestreet whether found at upscale boutiques or hawked right off from city sidewalks, a portable status symbol that’s at once exclusive and accessible and highly functional as well, used to carry money and cosmetics and other can’t-do-without personal items especially when wearing an outfit too sleek or too chic to have pockets (no wonder purses are closely associated with nightlife and club culture) and while the earliest handbags were the sole province of men (it’s true!) once women started carrying them they came to be seen as a marker of liberation, part and parcel with expanding freedom of movement outside the domestic sphere…
…not to mention how purses and handbags have established connotations within hip hop culture (many a handbag brand has been made mythic thru hip hop lyrics) and in dragculture and on the dancefloor too—for one example of the latter consider the genre of EDM known simply as handbag house (aka “diva house”) defined on Wikipedia as an “anthemic sub-genre of house music that became most popular in gay clubs during the second half of the 1990s”—and when it comes to queer hip hop Purse First is the name of preeminent podcast covering queer rap artists with a name taken from the expression “purse first, ass last,” a Black queer colloquialism referring to taking care of business before pleasure, a key life hack for marginalized populations in particular, which all goes to show the power of the purse with purse here used as a double signifier for handbags and for socio-economic power…
…and if there’s one notion that queer-identifying Kittitian–American songwriter/producer/emcee/deejay/electronic artist OOMAN gets across clearly on their brand new track “NEW PURSE” debuting right here and right now on the Deli Mag it’s the power of the purse in all of the various respects discussed above with “NEW PURSE” likewise serving as the perfect sonic accessory to introduce a talented young artist with a brand new bag who rightfully demands respect for “putting in this work” over “a beat that’s hot and wet” declared in a voice dripping with attitude all over this down ’n’ dirty bop designed for dancefloors and headphones alike (whatever your bag may be!) because “NEW PURSE” is a straight-up club banger whose two-minute duration is stuffed with enough sonic nuance to be appreciated by shut-in audiophiles as well…
…but that’s quite enough from me, your dedicated musical correspondent, seeing as The Deli was lucky enough to converse telephonically with OOMAN just the other day and you’ll be better off hearing all about what their bag is straight from the source so let’s get to it with no further ado with some comments from OOMAN excerpted from our highly captivating conversation. (Jason Lee)
My father is a musician. It’s his lifestyle. We share this in common. He’s been in bands for 40 years, playing bass and steel drum for different genres, calypso and afro jazz to name a few. At a young age I started going into my dad’s home recording studio, I wanted to be a singer. He let me record my voice. I also studied piano into my late teens. In school I always wanted to be aligned with music, I’ve always had a deep desire to be a recording artist and performer.
Another early influence was the trips we took to Saint Kitts. My family would visit there every other year. I’ve been there a bunch of times. There’s a carnival every year and a big annual music festival.I’ve been to Carnival a couple times, once in SK, many times in Brooklyn and once in Boston. The way Caribbean people go hard for music at Carnival -It’s adjacent to punk in a way—people "jump and wave” in the street together. Parallel to the hype at any function. It’s in my blood.
On developing as an artist…
As a teenager I was obsessed with MCs and singers.
I always wanted to be a popstar when I was little, but it evolved into a desire to write songs. I didn’t realize how much goes into following this path. In my teens, I started rapping and writing songs with the idea of being a ghostwriter for other artists. By 18 I was learning to record on my own. At first I was more writing slower ballads, synth bass ballads. It took a few years to find my own sound but I would write songs all the time. My first release across platforms was “On 10.” It’s a low tempo synth-based song. By that time I was using GarageBand and taught myself to produce by experimenting, playing around and seeing what would come out, until I was happy with the sound. I’m still working on developing my craft as a producer and writer.
At the same time I was getting more and more into deejaying, going to sets and teaching myself how to mix. I was looking up to DJs like Tygapaw, LSDXOXO and Byrell the Great, to name a few. I love their styles. I played a few gigs at a couple venues, which exposed me to so much music and I really just loved all the separate elements that made the song. I never stuck with DJing but it definitely had an impact on the way I was teaching myself how to produce, create and think about songs. I have a few of my early mixes on Soundcloud. Maybe I’ll return to it.
On bridging the DJ/songwriter gap…
In trying to achieve that goal I started making songs to create the same feeling you get from being at a party, at the pinnacle of the night, when everyone’s dancing and it feels like the whole room’s moving in sync. It was a process of figuring out how to match the two things I was doing, DJing and songwriting. The experience of going to the club was so important to me, especially at that time. Those DJ sets were the only place I could go to be in a predominantly black and queer space. I’d come back home inspired, ready to write and respond to what I’d experienced and how true it felt.
On emceeing/MISS GOT ROCKS
I’m drawn to MCs and the power in their words. It’s an affirmation practice. And there’s a connection between dancehall MCs and MCs in hiphop. As I’d listen to Caribbean DJs speak on the track, I’d feel inspired to tap into that same power when experimenting on the early demos I’d make. [most accounts of hip hop trace its beginnings back to Jamaican-American DJ Kool Herc, with hip hop/rap music sharing a similar emphasis on verbal dexterity, mastery of rhythmic flow on vocals, use of linguistic wordplay, humorous double entendre, and strategic use of signifyin’ speech–remarkably like various genres heard across the Caribbean from calypso to dancehall]. I produced MISS GOT ROCKS with the intention of stating an affirmation over a high energy synth bass. And I feel like the conception of that track challenged me to step into my truth as an MC. Like yes I’m vers, I can go between ballads and bops.
On Performing..
Last year I did my first string of live performances as an MC, performing a lot of unreleased music that will be coming out this year. It was like a workshop to me, to see how my music affects people at a live set. That kind of emotional experience on stage, the intimacy, it’s so real. Seeing people experience my music for the first time, seeing people go crazy over it, it’s exciting and inspiring. I’m a new artist and performing feels like its own practice within this universe that I’m creating through my sound.
On “New Purse” and other new material…
I created the demo for “New Purse”
last year using GarageBand, put the stems down and everything, then tapped my co-producer and friend Max Rewak and asked him to work on an arrangement of the stems. I wanted him to take my demo and make it more dimensional. We sat in the studio together with it— he played around a lot with delay to give it dimension, to where my voice is morphing all the way through the track. I feel like I’m listening to an entity rather than myself when I hear it. It’s OOMAN on the track. I’m excited to release it.
On making music videos…
The video for “Miss Got Rocks” [the follow-up to “On 10”] was shot right around my neighborhood. I’m based in Brooklyn now but went back to that street where I grew up [in the Bronx]. It was my debut video so I thought go big or or go home and actually did both! It was self-funded.
The director Sokhna Samb was super open to my ideas and visions. Her own creative direction is what took it all the way there.
She’s from the Bronx too, so she really understood what I was trying to convey. I told her this is for Bronx b*tches, and that was our mantra. The Bronx gets hate but it’s a hub of the best NYC talent and that’s fact. Everything about it stands on my experience in my hometown – the video reminds me of a time in my life when I’d jump on the train from my parents house in the Bronx to parties in Brooklyn all dressed up for the function, like a picture of my life.
My next music video will be for “Berlin” [the follow-up to “Miss Got Rocks”] after “New Purse” is released.
If you’re at all familiar with the parties involved you’ll understand why it makes good sense for Scout Gillett to record an acoustic cover version of Beach House’s “Take Care” seeing as Scout’s own music likewise occupies a liminal space between elegiac and ecstatic like a loud whisper emanating from outer space—all hazy, lush atmospherics and mystical slow-motion melodies building to slow crescendos over weeping lap steel guitars and stately, undulating rhythms that bloom suddenly into walls-of-pollenated-sound—except that Gillett & Co. take the dream pop template and port it over to a postpunk-meets-Americana format (a.k.a. metronomic-austerity-and-hypnotically droney-textures meets tenor-banjo pickin’-and-high -lonesome-yodelin’) which is a new genre they seemingly invented themselves in a shotgun marriage between Sturm-und-Drang and strum-and-twang…
…which is something she did recently and posted on her Patreon account not to mention a rendition of Lieber and Stoller’s “Kansas City” as made famous by Wilbert Harrison and later by The Beatles posted even more recently on the page and wouldn’t it be a nice birthday surprise to subscribe to Scout’s Patreon account (it was yesterday but I’m sure she accepts late gifts!) and you get a present too cuz you get access to a bunch of “cool content” (as the kids say!) all for nothing more than 5 bones per month if you get a “bottom” subscription or if you’re more of a dom type you can splurge for a “top” account and get a free zine alongside intimate journal entries and a treasure map all for a mere double sawbuck per month…
…which is a fitting choice of cover repertoire for someone who once lived in Kansas City like Gillett did, that is, after departing the Badlands of rural Missouri whereupon she immersed herself in KC’s punk scene and chief among the reasons for appreciating this lovely lo-fi bluesy hootenanny version of the song recorded live to four-track with some of Scout’s regular co-conspirators is how clearly her lover comes through for the thick-and-tangy, sauce-stained jazz and blues Mecca—not to mention the city that brought us Puddle of Mudd—or as she put it a few days ago in a highly exclusive online forum: “I have so much love and respect for Kansas City. As I’ve grown older and continued finding myself, I’ve realized and appreciated how my hometown and friends there have shaped & defined me” even after some years spent in the Badlands of Brooklyn…
…a city-boosting sentiment that extends to Gillett’s inaugural LP no roof no floor (Captured Tracks)—an album recorded at the Chicken Shack in Stanfordville, New York in a barn with Scout gazing up at the stars on clear nights as she laid down her vocal parts—which she’s stated was inspired in part by being “homesick for a home that no longer seem[s] to exist” with Kansas City and Missouri having been ravaged in the intervening years by economic hardship and the opioid crisisin particular and it’s not too hard to imagine a 21st-century variation on Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen driving in the dead of night from Lincoln, Nebraska to Kansas City, Missouri with no roof no floor playing on the tape deck of their beat up Ford after killing her dad and going on the lamb which is not to romanticize mass murder of course not the horrors perpetrated by Charles Starkweather but Malick’s lyricalBadlands is still one hell of a movie…
…and whether Scout’s singing about the hardships of her home town or the necessity of finding her way out of the darkness or going skinny dipping in the Atlantic Ocean during lockdown or the trials and tribulations of romantic entanglements or checking out a hottie on the M train and it making her feel alive again (check out this helpful song-by-song breakdown by S.G. herself) it’s near impossible not to be sucked into the slowly swirling eye of the raging hurricane of Scout’s voice which is both the still eye and its the surrounding storm-bands in this scenario painting in timbral hues ranging from a whisper to a whimper to a yowl to a howl to a swooping scream…
…and lucky for you Scout Gillett’s about to go on tour so you should probably check out SG and her Chicken Shakers if she makes it to your town or ‘burg and even luckier if you happen to catch a date in April on the last leg of the tour—eight shows in nine nights—when they’re touring with fellow twangy rock ’n’ roll band fronted by an artful, soulful singer-songwriter and Deli favorite Sarah Shook & the Disarmers straight outta North Carolina so lucky for you Baltimore and Pittsburg and Queens (hell yeah!) but I’m sure there’s great opening bands in other cities too. (Jason Lee)
cover photo: Tits Dick Ass Listen to the PLAYLIST HERE
If ever there was a time to ritually watch a music video by trio known as the Cedar Street Sluts—who once served as GG Allin’s backup singers and then spun off into their own act just like Vanity 6 did with Prince—perform GG Allin’s original composition “Sluts in the City” on an cramped “sketchy alleyway” soundstage complete with a blatantly fake “bum” (the newsboy cap being his most bummy feature) eyeing the girls nervously as they bump and grind and pose like three office workers from New Hampshire who decided to dress up like Sheena Easton and go out to karaoke and sing “Sugar Walls” as they sing in nasal-toned unison about how “I’m a bitch, I’m a sleazy whore” and “We’re the Cedar Street Sluts! We hate everyone!” then Valentine’s Day is probably the day to do that cuz you best believe I’m in luv, L-U-V…
C
…and you will be too if you watch the video above but that’s not the only reason we’re brought you here today cuz this song is but one of 69 utterly filthy, irreverent, anatomically obsessed and totally awesome paeans to love and hope and sex and dreams brought together via the magic of music streaming in an original Deli playlist that we’re calling DELIntines Day: Lewd, Rude & in the Mood featuring no less than 68 additional viral hits (there’s a whole mini-set of songs contained within on the subject of venereal diseases) such as “You Fingered Me Weird” by DickLord, “Sit On My Face Stevie Nicks” by the Rotters, and “Oral Sex With A Caterpillar” by Jerry Jamrag & The Afterbirths so you see the level of depravity we’re dealing with here…
…and speaking of depravity there’s two count ‘em two NYC bands that lead off the playlist with two brand-spankin’-new songs about tainted love RELEASED TODAY with the two acts in question being Homade and Tits Dick Ass and I don’t believe it’s hyperbole to say both these songs are the Zen perfection ideal of what a Valentine’s Day song should be, i.e., full of snotty disregard for the heteronormative, Hallmark-card pieties of a holiday that telling erases the already fine line between coupledom and consumerism to which the best forms of protest are the practice of either total debauchery or willful withdrawal (both well represented on the playlist!) and by the way when it comes to the latter Happy International Quirkyalone Day to those who celebrate…
…and who better than slutty-and-proud-of-it “bad girlfriends” to lead us out of the wilderness which happens to be the primary subject of both songs as made clear by the mere title of Tits Dick Ass’s “GF from Hell” and in case you were curious about the province of the band’s name TDA are named after the old parlour game where someone names three celebrities and then everyone pretends they’re Ed Gein who’s just murdered the three celebrities in question and now must decide which of them has the best Tits, Dick, and Ass (respectively) since he’ll be using their body parts to finish assembling the Frankenstein’s monster he’s been working on in the basement so you can see why the game is sometimes called Fuck, Marry, Kill for psychopaths…
….but anyway back to TDA—known in some circles as the Hardest Working Trans-Fronted Feminist Punk Rock Band in Show Business—this tranarchy-endorsing power trio fronted by Julia Pierce sound like a million hollars by scholars of squalor on this their sonic-steamroller of a debut single (plus they don’t look too shabby either, I mean, who doesn’t love a drummer in bondage gear?) and really I can’t recall a punk rock combo who were both this doomy and this dancey since 45 Grave first haunted the shabby storefront clubs and gritty dens of iniquity of Eighties LA/Hollywood with TDA coming off on the whole like an amped up/turned on/pissed off version of Joy Division covering “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” with detectible filaments of Birthday Party, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and early Hole also to be found in their sound…
…and now lastly but not leastly and only moderately yeastily, this brings us to the officially designated Bratz of the Lower East Side, a four-piece collective known as Homade who’ve been featured in these pages before in both full-band and side-project form and truly the Homaders have outdone themselves once again with thire new single released just today called “Broken Hearts” (a longtime live fave) with lead singer Lola D. fully embodying the photo found under the word “tongue-in-cheekily superciliously bad girlfriend” in the dictionary with a stirring sung-spoken monologue that starts off all David Johansen/Mary Weiss like with Lola declaiming “Boys never wanna just kiss / they wanna cuff me” and then once the music kicks in “you dick-game is aight / but I’m scared that you love me” soon admiringly that “I get off to broken hearts and broken things”…
…which totally embodies the Sluts in the City/Quirkyalone ethos described above as the song builds and builds like a boulder careening down a mountaintop in an electrifying blur of schadenfreude sorcery and lucky for New Yorkers everywhere if you feel like getting felled by TDA’s steamrolling sonic attack and Homade’s careening Heartbreak Express then you can do just that tonight at The Broadway as the bands celebrate V-Day with a double single-release party alongside local faves Pons and Theophobia which is but one of the numerous VD-celebrating-and-eviscerating performances planned for tonight so be sure to check your local listings (in any city or burg!) or simply visit the Deli’s Instagram page and check the feed for the relevant flyers… (Jason Lee)
From left: bassist Tui Jordan; drummer Gabby Borges; lead vocalist, lyricist and guitarist Lily Mao, and guitarist/producer Nate Jesensky
I’ve got a theory (surprise!) about Lily Mao & the Resonators’ new EP Human Being Animal that it’s split between two halves (or “sides” for those privy to such lingo) with “side one” focused on the theme of animals (not a stretch!) and “side two” on addiction and dysfunctional dependency in general, and this is the nice thing about being a music writer is just making stuff like this up seeing as it’s a subjective art form and sure other types of writers and “reporters” make things up all the time too (political pundits, etc.) but at least with music no one gets hurt…
…which speaks to one crucial difference between humans and other animals and that’s how the latter are incapable of lying (some may disagree!) which leads us to track one (“Wolves”) a song about “what it means to be a human within a society overrun by disinformation” and how “the ruling class cyclically take away the working class’ rights using deception” which are both quotes from Lily Mao that I didn’t make up myself or to quote from its lyrics: “no one listened when I cried but […] the wolves are here tonight and you best believe they bite” which is not only a clever play on “crying wolf” but also speaks to our own animal natures…
…cuz it’s not like us humans are so special or anything, we do all those things other animals do like eat and drink and piss and poop and screw and reproduce it’s just we’re figured out some especially convoluted ways to fulfill our desires which often end up hurting us in the long run and it’s exactly these animal urges that make up the theme of song two “Tiger” which is about “that feeling of carnal excitement towards a commanding being” while still being aware of “power structures in nature and society” (again, direct quotes from LM!) with track 3 “Catman’s Song” being more about the nurturing and tolerant side of animals/human beings…
…so as you can see things get pretty nuanced on this EP even by the end of side one which comes across in the music too, exuding a feline grace one moment and getting its claws out the next—equal parts tasteful strumming and tasty licks and fiber-rich shredding and thissame spectrum applies to the singing too and to the other instruments—and maybe I’m biased or maybe just aging but Lily’s songs hit me right in the ‘90s feels so let’s say FFO Joan Osbourne/Alanis Morissette/Meredith Brooks/Tracy Bonham and if “Wolves” or “Tiger” showed up on season 2 of Yellowjackets I wouldn’t bat an eyelash…
…and now we turn over the record to Side 2 and it’s “addiction” songs with track 4 (“Chewed Food”) being about being so enamored of another person that you let them chew you up like a wolf would (then she pulled me aside / pulled out my insides) but finally coming to your senses just in time (spit me out / of your mouth!) set against a riff so groovy and upbeat that you can totally see how the narrator gets sucked into an interpersonal addiction which isn’t all bad cuz as Lily points out, “it’s actually punk rock to be vulnerable and feel things”…
…meanwhile “Addictions” is all mellow, sultry vibes especially at the opening while describing a relationship where the “heart didn’t break / but it bent” (note the melismatic pitch-bending on the word “bend”, clever!) which really puts you in headspace being seduced almost imperceptibly (until it’s too late) of a romantic addiction and then “Pills” brings drives the point home with an even more enticing groove—really I can’t help thinking about “About A Girl” in the verses and how approprite is that?—with Lily Mao at the top of her form vocally (all those rapid-fire twisty melodies and register jumps and vocal hiccups) and lyrically (the pills make me interesting / guard is a puddle / if you were here right now / I’d probably get off if we cuddled) not to mention that sweet string section…
…so there you have it and all apologies to all involved if I’ve made this EP sound a little too highbrow cuz in reality Lily Mao & the Resonators are one of the most straight-up fun, energetic and unpretentious bands out there even when they’re taking on some pretty serious themes (always with humor and humanity!) and Human Being Animal is no exception to the rule so by all means hire ‘em to play you next backyard barbecue or bat mitzva or quinceañera and you certainly won’t regret it… (Jason Lee)
********************************************
Credits:
Vocals, rhythm and solo guitar- Lily Mao
Second Guitar- Nate Jasensky
Bass- Tui Jordan
Drums- Gabby Borges
Written by Lily Mao
Produced by Nate Jasensky at Greenpoint Recording Collective
Mastered by Vanessa Silberman
Via A Diamond Heart Productions
About “A Diamond Heart Productions”: A Diamond Heart Productions is an Artist Development Label, Recording, Music & Publishing Company created by singer, songwriter, & Record Producer Vanessa Silberman. With over 60 releases under its catalog, the label also offers a very community driven home and spirit on the label side as well as distribution (Symphonic Distribution). The label prides itself on being an Artist Friendly Music Company with Old School Record Label Traits and a New School State of Mind in the digital age.
The other night I had the pleasure of chatting via cellular phone ‘round about midnight (night owls unite!) with Andrew "Deli" Dell Isola a.k.a. Good Deli which I guess makes me the “Bad Deli” in this equation, but I’m ok with it seeing as we live in the age of the anti-hero anyway so my Q score could conceivably be even higher than the good deli‘s, but hey we’re here to build the man up not tear him down and besides when it’s 3 in the morning and you’re jonesing hard for a chopped cheese—or even just a simple chicken cutlet on a roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, and honey mustard—the whole distinction between “good” and “bad” pretty much flies out the window which is why our new motto is Delis Unite and that’s exactly what we’re doing here…
…with a Bad Deli-exclusive premiere of Good Deli’s debut single “Before My Day” and it’s groovy music video too (see directly above!) so how ‘bout them apples (reader’s note: don’t buy apples at the deli unless you like bad apples plus delis rarely stock fresh produce anyway) and so it’s fitting that one of the key takeaways of “Before My Day” is that we should all stop trying to live up to some other person’s idea of what a good deli should be and instead look within rather than looking without, or to paraphrase George Harrison of Traveling Wilburys fame, just be the deli, and that’s how you get to be a “good deli” in the long run…
…and here we were just about to pledge not to use the word “deli” any more seeing as we’ve used it about ten times already but since this article is about Good Deli (eleven!) that’s gonna be difficult so you’ll have to just bear with us and first things first you should know that Deli plays bass in a band called Deep Sea Peach Tree and has been for the past five years or so and they’re quite good too in their own way even if the word "good" doesn’t actually appear in their name (at least it’s food-based tho’) and fyi DSPT self-describe as “sleepy surf rock” and “aquatic sleep rock”…
…and then about 10 months ago Deli put out his first solo release under the Good Deli moniker, namely, a series of 18 short instrumentals played solo with overdubs, ranging from loose, laid-back jams to little psychedelic doodles so it’s kinda like his Wonderwall Music (minus the sitars) with a hint of Electronic Soundthrown in in it’s more ambient moments (see: “Moldy Loaf”)…
…but with the new single “Before My Day“ and the other 11 songs slated to make up his upcoming Delivision album (Spring 2023) we’re talking about proper songs, played by a full band no less, so it’ll maybe be more like Good Deli’s All Things Must Pass but slimmed down to a single LP (no pressure there!) and indeed the song under consideration today does indeed have a pretty strong early solo Beatles’ vibe to it imho and if you read on you’ll see that I’m not just pulling all these George Harrison comparisons out of thin air… (Jason Lee)
Deli’s thoughts on good delis found in NYC/Brooklyn…
I actually just recently moved to a new neighborhood without too many delis. But my old deli was Nevada Subs [in Bushwick, Brooklyn]. That was my favorite cornerside deli. It’s a walkup place, just a storefront and a window, but with the best sandwiches. There were two guys I became good friends with there but they moved to another deli.
I’d also recommend the Firehouse Deli on DeKalb Ave. and Wilson [one block away from Nevada Subs]. It’s 9 bucks for a sandwich but it’s worth it. The chef there, the Deliman, is excellent. My go-to sandwich for any deli, the best way to test their stuff, is a chicken cutlet on a roll with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and honey mustard.
And it’s the honey mustard is really what I’m testing, that’s the true test. It has to be just the right balance—not too mayo-y, not too mustardy—the perfect honey mustard balance. The other thing if they have to have a good cutlet. You don’t want a foam patty, you want a real chicken breast.
On acquiring the name “Good Deli”…
There was a kid in 4th grade who called me “Deli Salami” based on my name. Then there were select people in my childhood who called me Deli. When I joined Deep Sea Peach Tree the drummer at the time was named Andrew. So I went by “Deli.” Then it kind of became this character of Deli, like an alter-ego, my public image. It became like a duality of personalities. I’m Andrew at home, but “Deli” in the band and in public.
On playing with Deep Sea Peach Tree…
They were a four-piece at the time I joined. I first auditioned for drums. The bass player at the time was a guitar player too and he wanted to play guitar for a minute. So I took the bass and played the Seinfeld theme. The lead singer [Kristof Denis]was like, “holy shit, you’re the bass player!” “Xanzibar” was my first contribution to the band. [a song based around Deli’s funky slap bass part]
On his musical background…
My dad, growing up in his teens and early 20s, was in bands and a songwriter. He didn’t do anything “big” but played in local bands and always had a passion for music. Then he had kids and had to be a dad. And he was a wonderful father, the best. He inspired me, always had instruments all around the house, encouraging us to mess around and see what we like.
I started on piano, took lessons, played piano recitals, learned the black and white keys and the basics of music theory, understanding how music works. Once I got a little older I decided that the piano’s lame and wanted to play guitar and shred instead, to be a badass.
I started writing my own songs at about 11 or 12 and recording on GarageBand. I’d always been a big fan of the Beatles. They inspired me to be creative in how I recorded things—from blowing bubbles throughs straws, playing combs—but I’m glad I started with piano. It’s the building block of all instruments.
On the “Before My Day” music video…
Samantha Ruby Blieden directed the video. She played a very strong part working out my ideas into a video, plus she shot and edited the whole thing. The concept was inspired in part by the movie Wonderwall [best known today for its George Harrison soundtrack, and for lending it’s name to the Oasis song] about a guy who spies on a woman through the peephole of his apartment door.
[Plot synopsis: Absent-minded professor Oscar Collins (Jack MacGowran), studying in his charmless apartment, is bothered by loud music from the flat next door. Peeking through a tiny crack in the wall, he discovers a gorgeous young model, Penny Lane (Jane Birkin), and becomes obsessed with her and her swinging hippie lifestyle. In surreal fantasy sequences, he imagines doing battle with Penny’s gauche photographer boyfriend (Iain Quarrier) for her hand.]
But in our version it’s about me watching my life go by as this creepy entity taking pictures of myself through the door.
On the vinyl LPs that make cameos in the music video:
Ah the beginning of the video “interior man” puts George Harrison’s Wonderwall Music on the turntable. All Things Must Pass is probably one of my favorite albums. Another one of my biggest influences is Jonathan Richman [The Modern Lovers’ 1976 debut album appears in the video]. The other LPs you see are ones by J.W. Francis and by Yankee Power who are some Boston-based friends of mine. The album is Zoo Traffic. Its album cover was awarded “worst album cover of the year” in 2010 by some Boston publication.
On symbolism in the music video and in the lyrics…
In the video the “interior man” is me, that is, the man inside the apartment is “Andrew” which isn’t revealed until the end. The exterior man is the other me, “Deli," or all the different versions of the public me. [Andrew/Deli plays all the parts in the video, including the cavalcade of flamboyant characters who pass by outside the interior man’s door.] All the outfits I wear in the video were things I wore at certain times in my life and in certain bands I played in. There’s references to significant events and people, easter eggs for anyone who knows me or knew me in the past, like an homage.
“Before My Day” is sort of a love song to myself. “My prescription read, more of you.” It like taking on the role of my own therapist who says “get back to yourself. Don’t forget who you are.” It’s a person waiting for their old self to come back, seeing if they can make it back, buried under the ways you present yourself to the world, all the masks you wear.
On Good Deli’s debut album, Rob Rockley and the Vegetables Present: I Found My Love In A Lunchbox…
Ninety percent of the songs on the album were written pre-Deep Sea Peach Tree as demos on a cassette machine. When I joined Deep Sea I joined gung-ho and kind of dropped everything else to be a part of this band, and let my own songs and own career slip for a bit. But this past 2021-22 a lot of significant events happened in my life. Plus I’m getting older, 26, getting balder [we don’t see this but take his word for it!] I need to do my stuff before I’m old and fiddy. So I whipped myself together and whipped up the songs.
It took listening through 10 hours of cassette tapes to put it together. The album is all the things I found in between “the songs” proper on these tapes. I’d find something and think “that’s cool, let me rip that off and throw it into the mix.” The idea was to release something first [before Delivision] and build up a little steam. The album’s all the stuff between the “good stuff."
On making the upcoming Delivision album…
For this album, once I got the songs all together, I reached out to friends at Hot Take Recording Co. in Brighton, Mass [a neighborhood in Boston; Deli lived in Boston before moving to NYC]. My whole recording career I’ve always done everything myself, but never been totally happy with the result, and never put anything out.
I wanted to have a soul band and to get back to my musical roots, play live in the studio then throw overdubs over it. Aaron Brown played bass and Ryan Katz drums [the two founders of Hot Take]. I went in and said, “here’s the demos, now do your own thing with it.” The drum and bass parts are for the most part their creations, morphed off my own ideas.
On musical collaboration…
Working this way gives the feel of have different brains involved. When you’re doing a whole multi-instrumental, overdubbing thing on your own, all the instruments have one brain with the same person doing it all. Now, I’ve got multiple perspectives, a dialogue instead of a monologue. Sam Paek plays saxophone on several tracks. He lived in the house where we recorded the album. It’s mixed and mastered by Ryan and Aaron, and turned out exactly as I wanted it. They did an amazing job.
The Hot Take studio is in a 10 or 12 bedroom house in Brighton with this big giant basement that’s split in two. One side is a full-on legit recording studio and the other side is a live venue, Pasta Planet. Once we finished the album, we had a show with all the people who played on the record. In five years, I was the first person to incorporate pasta into their set. I had a plant stationed in the audience who threw wet spaghetti at me during the last song.
On how Deli describes his music when people ask him to describe Good Deli’s music…
I call it “sponge rock.” It’s saturated rock ’n ‘roll. I like to describe it as something like if Jonathan Richman and the Kinks ate mushrooms and watched an episode of SpongeBob together and wrote a song based on the background music in the episode. It’s also very clown-themed. The whole Delivision album has a clown theme running through it, including the album cover. Some of the lyrics are clown-themed too. Even the music video has a couple clown references. The album as a whole is very concept-y. More generally, when it comes to clowns, it’s all about the theme of the double personality, of hiding behind this character of the clown.
If you’ve ever been to a party where a rakish young man sporting a tousled shag coif says “meet me in the bathroom” and proceeds to offer you a six pack of Pepsi and 6 bags of Pop Rocks and you say hey why not, we only live once and proceed to ingest all six bags and down all six sodas which after a brief period of intestinaldistress sets off an chemical acidic reaction of an intensity not seen since Mount Vesuvius buried all those pervy pagan Pompeians in hot lava and rips your stomach wide open from the inside out just like happened to that cute, moon-faced tousle-headed kid from the old breakfast cereal TV advertisements your parents made you watch on youtube or so the legend goes then you’ve got some idea of what’s in store for you if you go see Big Girl and Tetchy on tour together just CLICK HERE for a full list of dates and venues…
…with the salient-if-somewhat-labored point here being that here ya got two gender-subversive bands who just like Pepsi & Pop Rocks blur the distinction between sugary sweet (melodically, vocally, temperamentally) and aggressively in-your-face-ily pungent which granted may not make make your stomach explode but it will make your heart grow by three sizes at least all while gleefully melting your face off with frenzied acid-rock-ifed shreadin’ and yellin’ in the midst of pop-songs-that-rock and rock-songs-that-pop and one can only imagine what a combustible combination it’ll be with the two of ‘em put together with fully activated wonder twin powers (it doesn’t hurt they share a member too) and oh by the way the live video clip found up top should give you some idea of what it’ll be like seeing Tetchy live (filmed at the very wicked Our Wicked Lady) so best gird your loins and say your Hell Yeah Marys…
…in preparation for Tetchy and Big Girl coming to your local VFW Hall or Elk’s Lodge as they make their way from their native stomping groups of Brooklyn (Elsewhere, The Broadway) on down to a scrappy little music fest called South By Southwest to play a full slate of gigs in and around Austin (keep it weird!) and then finally back again for a homecoming show at Brooklyn’s Alphaville but not before hitting six Southernfried cities on the way to SXSW (if you don’t live in any of those cities well here’s a good excuse to visit!) and oh by the way this is a good time to mention how the live montage of Tetchy seen above is an original Deli Mag FilmsProductio (you heard it here first!) brought to you by our very own newly minted videographer Daniel Moore (Dimo Films) who first made his debut on this site back in December with a cool montage of Moon Kissed playing the first of their Heaven-Purgatory-Hell-themed shows at Baby’s All Right…
…but hey if you prefer florid prose to professionally shot video (or if you enjoy both!) be sure to check out these two Deli pieces on Tetchy and on Big Girl posted to this site and either way you’ll no doubt wanna keep an eye out for exciting new releases coming up from both bands in the weeks and months to come (note: before the tour proper starts Tetchy play in Philly at Kung Fu Necktie on 2/15 and here in NYC with Crazy and the Brains at Saint Vitus on 2/16) and truly the South Will Rise Again when these soul-baring-big-hearted-hard-rockin’ Brooklynite babes drop in on their backyard barbecues so better lock up your sons and daughters cuz the Tetchy-Big Girl caravan is comin’ to your town (alongside lots of other great acts on each bill) so catch ‘em while you can before they blow up big like that poor little kid’s stomach. (Jason Lee)
3/3 — The Broadway (Brooklyn, Tetchy only) with TVOD and Bats Bats Bats Ghost Ghost Ghost 3/4 — Elsewhere (Brooklyn, Big Girl only) with Castle Rat and Lord Friday the 13th 3/6 — The Runaway (Washington D.C., Tetchy only) 3/7 — Arson House (Richmond, VA) 3/8 — Static Age (Asheville, NC) 3/9 — MOTR Pub (Cincinnati, OH) 3/10 — Portal (Louisville, KY) 3/12 — DRKMTTR (Nashville, TN) 3/14 thru 3/17 — SXSW (Austin, TX) 3/30 — Alphaville (Brooklyn, NY)
Hot off the griddle in 2023 we bring to you and yours a big ol’ heapin’ helping of piping hot new music in the form of Monthly Mega-Playlists (TM) posted right here at the start of each and every month from here until eternity so be sure to pay us a visit every time you turn that calendar page for a DELI platter piled high with high-carb, protein-rich musical meats and cheeses prepared only for the most discerning of tastes and as a bonus in celebration of our new product launch we’re throwing at no extra cost to you the customer not one but two complimentary palate-cleansing playlists of "2022 In Review" retrospectives so best load up on Maalox and Tums cuz we’re gonna stuff you so full of musical nourishment that you’ll be begging for mercy and then begging for more more more…
If any of the above are on your bingo card for “things that share a spiritual bond with the musical duo known as Shallowhalo according to some random guy who writes for the Deli magazine” then you’re in luck because the sounds and the imagery created by Allyson Camitta and Ezra Tenenbaum working together as Shallowhalo share a certain off-kilter “something beautiful but a bit unsettling” quality with the aforementioned off-kilter cover versions, genre films, and misfit fashion plates as seen on TV…
…and if you wanna hear something beautiful but a bit unsettling may we recommend Shallowhalo’s latest single “Crystal Ball” (Dinosaur City Records) which opens with a wash of shimmering synth, a machine-tooled Moroder-esque bass line and a pulsating 808 kick drum and already in the intro you’ve got the makings of a dreamy dark-hued dance-pop gem which "Crystal Ball" definitely is, but Ezra and Allyson mix things up almost immediately with the first verse switching lanes into a slinky, somewhat boppy/synthpoppy groove like something you’d expect to hear in a vintage Euro-pop or J-pop track along the lines of Kraftwerk, Mecano, or YMO…
…but then before long there’s a short pre-chorus part that builds the tension up again with Allyson’s airy upper register hovering over a descending melody leading into the first chorus that brings back elements from the intro and introduces the titular hook (make the call / stare into your crystal ball / things you hide / and try to find / which way to go) and by the time it’s all over just over two minutes later you’ll likely be fully mesmerized…
..all of which serves to underline the fleeting, elusive quality of “Crystal Ball” whose lyrics concern an irresolute, emotionally unavailable lover who “never know[s] which way to go” to the point of being seemingly “caught in a kaleidoscope,” a fractured perspective that rubs off on the narrator as well it seems with her “head and heart so far apart” the midst of an urban existence made up of “mirrored nights [and] diamond days” all enhanced by Ezra’s use of vintage analogue synths which evoke a retro-futuristic sense of otherness in a digital world…
…and here’s where I’m reminded of Perfect Blue, the late-90s cinematic masterwork by Satoshi Kon, an animated film set in Tokyo full of recurring images of mirrors and other reflective surfaces—reflective surfaces gazed into repeatedly by the film’s protagonist, pop-idol-turned-aspiring-actress Mima Kirigoe—imagery clearly meant to mirror the blurring of any clear distinction between illusion and reality for the traumatized Mima as her psyche (and the film) shatters into a kaleidoscopic array of clashing perceptions and memories and dream logic imagery with the viewer left to figure out how the pieces fit together if they even fit at all…
…so when “Crystal Ball” starts off with the lines “paint the walls red / then brush them blue," well, surely it’s a coincidence but who says coincidence is always coincidental cuz these two lines and the rest of the song are a perfect fit for a bloody anime about the fracturing of identity, plus the J-pop setting of Perfect Blue is highly apropos for a musical combo who mention the influence of “Yen Records-inspired synth pop” in their bio…
…with Yen Records being the imprint run by Yukihiro Takahashi and Haruomi Hosono, both of Yellow Magic Orchestra, between 1982 to 1985, and with Yukihiro Takahashi having passedawayjustlastweek—right around when “Crystal Ball” was released in fact—I’m sure Shallowhalo will be ok with me dedicating part of this piece to the drummer/vocalist/songwriter/producer who had such an outsized influence on electropop/EDM from its very beginnings not to mention other genres like hip hop…
…and returning to that list that opened this whole article: no matter how head-scratching YMO’s cover of Archie Bell & The Drells “Tighten Up” may be there’s still something magical and subversive (especially for its time) about a Japanese electropop group (before “electropop” was even a thing) performing a mutated R&B classic to an all-Black audience (except for the Japanese businessman type dancing up a storm while holding a sign that simply says “Wow!”) on one of the most iconic African-American TV shows of all time and all involved having such a great time with it from the dancers to Don Cornelius to YMO themselves…
…and while Shallowhalo may not have invented any new genres (yet!) they do seem to have a knack for taking old sounds and doing something new with them, often distilling them down to a fine minimalist point, kinda like Yellow Magic Orchestra did with "Tighten Up, Pt. 1" on Soul Train back in 1980, which isn’t to say SH don’t have more relatively modern influences too ranging from Ladytron to Justice and Glass Candy to the Dare—plus the various Spanish-language pop Allyson’s Guatemalan mom played for her growing up—so check out Shallowhalo’s 2022 LP No Fun if you wanna judge for yourself or just enjoy some off-kilter synthpop songs about haunted porcelain dolls and edible jewelry and Internet celebrities and that’s just the first two songs…
..and at last I’d be remiss not to mention the Kelli McGuire-directed video for “Crystal Ball” that’s cool ’n’ strange in its own right plus it’s the reason why I cited Doris Wishman and the fembots above given the video’s lovingly handmade aesthetic that manages to be woozy and vivid and lurid and suffused with wide-eyed innocence all at the same time (see: Doris Wishman) not to mention the hyper-saturated colors and spritzes of glitter and dry ice and tarot cards and double-vision-to-the-N’th-degree and yes even an actual crystal ball and then lastly (but not leastly!) there’s the Madame-Zara-meets-Fifth-Element-meets-electrode-sporting-fembot-on-the-moon fashion sense…
…but enough of my yakkin’, it’s only right for Allyson Camitta to have the last word with some BTS insights on the "Crystal Ball" music video: "I was introduced to Kelli Mcguire through our mutual musician friend Pynkie and was instantly drawn to her aesthetic. It’s bright and lush while also feeling creepy and unsettling. We wanted to work together on a Ghost in the Shell sci-fi meets 80’s horror boudoir shoot, which my friend Caroline Mills also helped on prosthetics for. Kelli happened to shoot some BTS footage on her camera and it naturally evolved into a video concept…The video helps to reinforce that kaleidoscopic feeling of being lost in your own head about something, when the answer is right in front of you." (Jason Lee)
And here it is: the long-promised/threatened second installment of the 2022 record roundup (read installment one here) cuz as far as we’re concerned 2023 won’t truly start until February at least…
PRETTY SiCK — MAKES ME SICK MAKES ME SMILE (September 30)
Pretty Sick’s debut full-length Makes Me Sick Makes Me Smileis all about “teetering on the precipice” and being “tether[ed] to one’s own self-destruction” so in other words Tuesday, plus all those other thing that “still keep me up at night” this according to Pretty Sick’s singer-songwriter-bassist Sabrina Fuentes and MMS/MMS’s vacillation between states of queasy ecstasy and exquisite agony will most likely keep you up late as well should you choose to listen…
…an ideal soundtrack to confront your demons by during a dark night of the soul but equally ideal for freeing your demons to dance with the Devil in the pale moonlight (speaking of dark knights!) with Pretty Sick’s triple-threat musical attack—a tempestuous troika rounded out by guitarist Orazio Argentero and drummer Ava Kaufman—throwing off sparks like a downed power line at a fireworks factory…
…and for a native New York City-bred, Gen-Z digital native raised in a city where kids roam the streets like feralcats decked out in digital fur who started a rock band at age 13 and a modeling career not too long after before getting so jaded by the city, the hedonism, and the industry that they packed it in and relocated to London after being accepted to Goldsmith’s Contemporary Music Program but who now splits time between NYC and London I’d have to say that Sabrina’s songs are surprising relatable…
…casting her lot with the maladjusted and the maladroit no matter where they live and who can’t relate to a song like “Human Condition” that’s about how even in a world full of enablers and exploiters the biggest enemy of all is still found within (sorry, Whitney!) whether due to addiction, ambition, or whatever (at least that’s what we think it’s about) and the music video (dir: Frank Lebon) takes this message to the next level with its literally-mind-blowing parable of the psychosis of living in a hermetically-sealed screen culture not to mention the coolest car-crash aftermath sequence this side of “Allen Street”…
…and, finally, since you asked Makes Me Sick Makes Me Smile was produced by Paul Q. Kolderie who’s known for his work on career-making records by the likes of Radiohead, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and Hole and speaking of Hole most coverage of Pretty Sick is all like blah blah blah Hole and blah blah blah Smashing Pumpkins and sure “The Grunge is strong in this One”
but on MMSMMS there’s also strong echoes of T. Rex meets Suzi Quatro in full-on junk-shop glam mode on the song “Bound” and of Cheap Trick’s ‘70s-era power pop perfection on the song “Heaven” and of the sparkling alt-rock melodicism of Tanya Donnelly’s Belly on the song “Dirty” so give it a spin and draw your own conclusions before tipping over the precipice and into the chasm of your own imminent self-destruction…
“I like to daydream. I’m like Ferdinand the Bull. My teachers would always get angry because I would just stare out the window all day, completely shutting them out, and I didn’t even realize I was doing it.” — Charlotte Rose Benjamin
If Makes Me Sick Makes Me Smile is a record about losing sleep then Dreamtina is about taking refuge in dreams—Dreamtina being the coming out long-player by Charlotte Rose Benjamin—dreams about, for instance, feeling truly alive on a perfect New Year’s Eve (“Heatstroke Summer”) or going to the Mall of America and never coming home again (“Deep Cut”) or posing for a scandalous Internet pictorial in a convenience store parking lot (“Cumbie’s Parking Lot”) or simply spending the day making up stories in your head (“Slot Machine”)…
…all of which Mick Jagger understood inherently and so did Devo too, namely, how modern love and economics and politics are driven by a culture-wide, pervasive sense of dissatisfaction amongst its lovers/suitors and consumers and citizens alike—it’s life the lifeblood of society in other words—meaning that any singer-songwriter worth their salt in societal relevance is always going to preface the word “satisfaction” with the phrase “I can’t get no”…
…and Charlotte is plenty salty on Dreamtina or as she puts it on her TikTok-endorsed hit “Slot Machine,” “I like martinis dirty and tequila dry / I’ve been unsatisfied since junior high” and it’s telling that even her song called “Satisfied” is actually about just the opposite with the Notorious C.R.B. tongue-in-cheekilly wishing a world-be paramour the “satisfaction” of seeing her rock out with her band at a house party, winning the deep admiration of all in attendance thus causing the would-be paramour to realize the error of his ways in passing up such a talented hottie but instead she gets flustered by this dud-of-a-dude being at the party and plays “Cumbie’s Parking Lot” in the wrong key…
…it’s a story as old as time itself and therein lies the charm of Dreamtina or one of its charms anyway in introducing a strong songwriting voice that goes all in with stark immediacy/vulnerability but with a leavening sense of bratty humor or “irreverent/insouciant wit” if you prefer, a balancing act that’s reflected in the music itself—equal parts folksy rock and frothy pop…
and even if Charlotte Rose Benjamin is far from a Southerner (which also applies to a certain country-turned-pop-singer-songwriter who’s name starts off the same as Taylor Dayne’s) it’s still surprising that Nashville hasn’t come calling (yet?) for CRB cuz who else is writing relatable but clever, hook-laden, acoustic-guitar-based folkish-countryish-but-still-rock-n-roll story songs on this level who can also pull off pink cowboy hats and fringed western wear fashions quite so convincingly so seriously you best get to it Music Row and in the meantime let’s hope this Sweet Charlotte never feels the need to hush hush…
And speaking of people who can’t be silenced, percussionist/improvisor/sound sculptor Matt Evans definitely falls under this category which I would not have known if not for the hardest-working woman in show-booking-business Laura Regan (Footlight Presents) who presented a bill featuring M. Evans at Ridgewood, Queens’s long-time anchor-of-the-community bar The Windjammer (est. 1982, and where else can you still find a $5 beer & whiskey combo in this city and not just at happy hours) alongside Issei Herr and WSABI which as the fates would have it ended up being co-presented by the Deli and how damn cool is that…
…which turned out to be fortuitous cuz not only were WSABI and Issei Herr awesome but the show culminated in one of those magic moments that even at the time you know you’ll never experience again in the same way and it started when Matt Evans was getting set up to play his headlining set celebrating the release of his new LP Soft Sciencebut his sampler (crucial to the new material) chose that moment to crap out which would no doubt freak out your average human being with a roomful of people waiting to hear them play…
…but not Matt whose gentle smile and demeanor never wavered as he explained the situation and his intention to instead play an improvised set starting with solo explorations on synth-and-trigger-pad-assisted drums followed some group explorations with the guitarist, bassist and the flautist there to help him realize the Soft Science numbers (or not!) and with that he launched into his first “drum solo”…
…which was a long way from Peter Criss sweating under his stage makeup pounding out variations on the Bo Diddley beat (all due respect to the Catman!) with Mr. Evans instead taking the audience on a subtle yet sublime sonic journey jumping from tension to release, from introspection to exorcism, like a pirouetting ballet dancer performing an off-the-cuff-but-all-the-more-magical-for-it-tour-de-force…
…and this is even before Matt had the entire audience close their eyes and launched into a percussion-assisted story from the point-of-view of a caterpillar or was it an earthworm (can’t remember for sure) burrowing up the surface of Earth for the first time encountering a series of strange and potentially injurious if not outright fatal occurrences having left its familiar warn, brown bosom with every moment of the adventure brilliantly acted out in sound on the drumset and synth as Matt described the scene, for instance, a giant foot nearly crushing the caterpillar etc…
…and then once the aforementioned musicians joined Matt—likewise playing their instruments in a very non-rock manner—the bar was raised yet again as hinted at in the video above (nothing stands in for being there tho’) and even if you’re not hearing any of it here you should still go check out Soft Science which is it’s own delightful journey from the skittering beats and wobbly synths of “Saprotrophia” to the crystalline dreamscape of “Alocasia” and I’m just now realizing that this album’s basically like a plant-based version of the caterpillar story, i.e., all about the “inner life of plants” and here’s what Matt has to say about it on his Bandcamp page…
…“Soft Science” is like reading through a biology textbook as if it were a collection of poetry and watching the letters slowly re-arrange until it reads more like science fiction. The album is a “mostly-not-chill” collection of brightly-hued maximalist miniatures, combining squiggly free drumming and alien synthesizers. The album sews together equal parts millennial iconography (mushrooms / house plants / anime) and retro-futurist sci-fi (Sam Delaney, THX 1138, Ursula Le Guin) in an expression of waning utopic yearning. The sound varies widely, from the breathing synth intro of ‘Saprotrophia’ to the lush breezes of ‘Alocasia’ and crunchy chaos of ‘Scump’ featuring (respectively) like-minded off-world sonic travelers David Lackner and Ka Baird…
…which at last brings us to the record that’s so hardcore we had to save it for last and that’s RAXIS, the debut mosh-pit-filling full-length by Venus Twins who unlike the Cocteau Twins or the Thompson Twins are made up of an actual pair of twins—identical twins at that and no one else—who may actually be from Venus which is believable cuz their blistering music sounds like it’s from the hottest and brightest planet in the solar system even if these days they split their time between Denton, Texas and Brooklyn, New York…
…both locales being well-known hot spots for undocumented Venusians like Matt Derting who has a bassline game as unrelenting and powerful as Serena Williams while being vocally aggressive too while Jake Derting draws on speed, grace, and an expansive wingspan to serve up a volley of ferocious strokes much like Venus Williams so you can see why they’re called “Venus Twins”…
…I am going to crack open your skull and scoop out the brains and eat a bowl of Fruit Loops out of it like I’m freakin’ Euronymous from Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem and then I’ll take your skull to that weirdly fancy blowing alley in the basement of the Port Authority Bus Terminal where maybe a few other human skulls have been deposited before over the years and use it to bowl a perfect game full of back-to-back Turkeys…
…or something roughly along those lines and by the time this song Cuisinarts your eardrums you won’t even mind because the Venus Twins fed your grey matter to their cats seeing as Jake and Matt are strict vegans and would never even remotely consider eating brains even the brains of a primitive Earthling…
..and what makes these ten tracks all the more brain-scraping is having them delivered by a dynamic duo who look like they could’ve pretty recently got work as body doubles for Danny Bonaduce on the classic ABC ‘70s sitcom The Partridge Family if you zapped them back in time to the show’s hardcore 1970s shag-carpeted set plus it’s amazing to think about the twins giving David Cassidy and Susan Day a heart attack when they started pounding out the Zappa-meets-Slipknot demented majesty of “Don’t Take Fix (You Are A Skelton)” or the Melvins/Mudhoney/Tad-adjacent demented majesty of “Angry Sludge Infinite” that is until it turns into a Brian Eno track near its end…
…and as someone who grew up in North Dallas (near Denton!)m and who lives in Brooklyn now I can verify for a fact that Venus Twins are the most Denton-meets-Brooklyn-Zen-diagram-of-aweso me-weirdness ever–a DNA double helix formed from one strand UNT-spawned avant-garde jazzbo, proggy avant-rock experimentalism and one strand straight-up Brooklyn-spawneddown ’n’ dirty, gritty ’n’ grungy, garage-y noise-punk like if the Cramps invited the Residents and Bad Brains to a tea party and I can’t think of a better way to end this column… (Jason Lee)
Well, it’s another year again. This column features six records I didn’t get around to reviewing in 2022 but wish that I would’ve. There’s a lot more where this came from so expect a couple more installments of "Record Roundup" at least.
My mom died a few months ago. This is for surely way too TMI for a year-end record roundup I realize but f*k it. I discovered this record by the Sadies, a band I’d barely listened to before, just days after it happened and it’s been a lifeline ever since. I mean, no doubt I’d still be into it even if my mom wasn’t dead cuz it’s that good. But being grief-striken took it to another level (RIP Mother).
The Sadies are from Toronto. They released their first album in 1998 and in the intervening years they’ve collaborated with the likes of Neil Young, Neko Case, and Gord Downie (among many others) which makes sense cuz as I’ve belatedly learned they’re the best psych-damaged, surf-inflected garage-rock-alt-country-No-Depression-that-shreds Americana bands to come out of Canada since, well, Neil Young with or without Crazy Horse.
Months before Colder Streams was released the Sadies’ lead singer and guitarist Dallas Good died unexpectedly (he co-founded the Sadies with his brother Travis) a week or so after finding out he had a coronary illness, and it’s flat out eerie how a song like “You Should Be Worried”—the gentlest, most pastoral track on the album whose lyrics in their entirety consists of two lines: “I’m not worried about you / well you should be worried about me”—was so goddamned prescient…
…to the point where I’d first assumed Dallas knew of his terminal condition much sooner given the album’s pervasive, downright apocalyptic at times sense of foreboding both in personal (it hurts me to think about what could have been / and anything that won’t ever be) and societal (in this day and age / rage has become all the rage / we choose to behave / like wolves left to starve in a cage) terms, quoting from “More Alone” but I could as easily quote any of the other song on the album…
…which kind of makes it sound like drudgery but not to worry in reality Colder Streams oozes resiliance and vibrance and stark beauty and ragged glory from every pore of its musical membrane which is why it’s been so important to me. It’s a strangly uplifting record while still being utterly, unapologetically fatalistic. I’m glad it exists. RIP Dallas Good. Five stars.
With apologies to the remaining artists, I can’t keep writing five paragraph reviews or I’ll never get through all these records not to mention the danger of “tl;dr” responses from readers so moving forward I’m self-imposing a strict 2 paragraph limit per record so hey ho let’s go…
Speaking of uplifting depression this is a phrase that also fits Colatura’s debut LP to a tee. With lead-singing and songwriting duties split between its three non-skin-pounding members—but with plenty of heavenly harmonies heard throughout—this record is an embarrassment of “beauty is sadness, sadness beauty” riches with apologies to John Keats…
…whether floating atop the Ambien-enhanced fluffy clouds of “King Kalm” (Digo) or digging up the dirt of alienated “Kids Like Us” (Meredith) or being ravished by the tremulous swoon of “Scars” (Jennica) this album puts the mellow back in melancholia just as God and/or GlaxoSmithKline intended and I’d submit it’s not a stretch to call Colartura this generation’s indie rock Carpenters especially given their knack for earworm hooks and “Rainy Days and Monday”-worthy esquisite melancholy.
Here’s another record by a trio of singers (Piya Malik, Sabrina Mileo Cunningham, Nya Gazelle Brown) that floats atop a cloud of breathy vocal harmonizing and gossamer-winged arrangements except for considerably more sanguine and with a funk/soul/R&B/orchestral disco foundation that hearkens back to 1970s/‘80s divas such as Chaka Khan (esp her post-Rufus, pre-“I Feel For You” solo work) and short-lived Australian phenom Samantha Sang with emotion takin’ her over.
For a taste of what to expect just give “Pink Roses” a spin with its tasty wah-wah-laden, tastefully fuzzed out guitar and its loose-limbed skittering rhythm section and its Secret Life of Plantsstyle keys with vocals capturing the not-so-secret sweet aroma of pink roses and ya gotta admire any group with the sheer confidence not to include the clutchofkillersingles they put out in 2022 on their maiden long-playing voyage, in particular “Forget Me Not” with its shimmying, smooth-as-silk, hustle-readyvamp that woulda shot straight to #1 if this were still 1975 (if only) leaving Van McCoy’s own mid-tempo, flute-featuring, floor-filler stranded at number two…
On their sophomore EP Laurel Canyon tip their hand early on, on the eponymous opening track with its lyrical mentions of “The Family” and “ceas[ing] to exist” so clearly we’re talkin’ less about the late-‘60s peace ‘n’ luv folkies who inhabited the LA neighborhood that lent this NYC trio its name ane more the post-Manson paranoia that took hold there and elsewhere by the early ‘70s—a mindset reinforced by the song’s serrated guitars and the gnarly harmonies that happen when two guys singing in unison veer in and out of tune with punk rock abandon and is it any suprise this record was recorded by a guy named Steve Albini?
And just in case you were wondering if Laurel Canyon the band could sustain the mood, the next track “Tangiers” opens by quoting the riff from the Kinks’ “Destroyer” (par-a-noia / the des-troy-er) or at least that’s how I hear it which ably lays the foundation for a Burroughs-in-exile, Interzone-dwelling repudation of hippie frippery (we’ll let figure out the last track “Suck and Fuck” for yourself) and having seen these guys play live at Arlenes Grocery a couple or a few months ago they came across something like The Birthday Party (Nick Cave’s career-launching, unhinged, discordant postpunk band) meets The Blues Brothers (dark shades and dark jackets, intense tunes played with a studied cool) which is an impressive flex.
And speaking of impressive flexes, Ukraine-born, Brooklyn-bred rapper Your Old Droog is fast becoming the king of the pop-culture-riffing-concept-album-in-minature noteworthy for grimy, head-bobbing, boom-bap beats and cunning, head-spinning, bailiwick-spanning virtuosic wordplay atop Dilla-indebted dusty productions having released YOD Presents: The Shining (December), The Yodfather(October), and Yodney Dangerfield (August) during the back half of 2022 alone.
The latter smartly plays off the multiple parallels between rap and stand-up—both all about the mastery of timing, wordplay, and off-the-dome improv after all. Not to mention that Rodney Dangerfield’s entire nervous-tic-laden shtick (and a good shtick it was) was him riffing on not getting the respect he deserves and what’s more hip hop than that. Your Old Droog likewiwise brings on a machine-gun flow of setups and punchlines hot ‘n’ heavy on tracks like the Jonwayne-produced, Andy Kaurfman-themed “The Man on the Moon”:
And I’m not some boom-bop apologist / I ain’t no emcee, more like an anthropologist / sociologist / knocks on the block and get studied in colleges / my latest project checks more boxes / than gynocologists
A project fronted by Gavin Dunaway in various incarnations since 2009, Imposter was inspired by Gavin’s leveling up to a new stage in life (husband, father, supposedly responsible adult) and the imposter complex he sometimes experienced in these new roles which is not uncommon but what’s uncommon is how he can shred/skronk/groove on the elektric geetar though these days his ax-weilding shares equal space with electronic textures that span from abrasive to atmospheric and if you’re into bands like oh let’s say Lower Dens, Moon Duo, and Automatic, or even latter-day Portishead (Third is very nearly 15 years old, holy crap!) or Beak if you prefer, you’ll likely appreciate this new direction…
…and I do appreciate how the squelchy electro-funk of the album-opening “No Shame” actually sounds fairly shameless—or less than trustworthy at the least but slick like a used snake oil salesmen—topped off by David Bowie-esque vocal intonations (Berlin era, totes) and hey imposter syndrome or not I’m totally buying what he’s selling wirh their new Krautrock-inflected-coldwave-meets-electro-funk-meets-goth-rocky-dirges direction (Joy Division cover, check!)…
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…and speaking of imposter syndrome I’ll close by noting how this past year I had an actual imposter which is kind of exciting but pretty weird too who posted a job notice on ZipRecruiter claiming to be yours truly (fake picture and all) seeking to hire a new contributor to the Deli and offering up to $60K annual salary (hahahahaha) and while it’s not my fault I apologize to anyone reading this who got suckered…
…and all one had to do to apply was attend a live showcase (I’m being discrete and not naming names since I could get sued for libel) and write a review on spec which all seems like an terribly elaborate scheme just to get a few dupes to pay for a show but hey it’s like they say “don’t hate the hustle, hate the game” and anyways maybe I’m the fake “Jason Lee” living in a parallel universe cuz who says I’m even qualified to do this job and now I see where Gavin is coming from.
Enfolding its beholders in a spun sugar web of gossamer guitar lines, suspended synth drones, and crystalline chimes, the opening moments of French-Canadian-sometimes-Brooklynite-chanteuse-guitarist-songwriter-producer Sara Sue Vallee’s debut EP Skin & Bones is enigmatic enough to make one wonder at the significance of its titular date ("July 19") and its mantra-like opening lines (July 19 / July ending / July waiting / July dreaming)…
…a song that could very well be about the Great Fire of Rome ignited on the night of on July 19th, 64 AD at Circus Maximus with tens of thousands fleeing for their lives (nowhere to run…escaping the confining space) and many more when the conflagration spread (oh God, wait, there’s no escape) which ultimately led to the decimation of over half the city and no small number of its residents (disintegrating, pieces of flesh are falling off my skin) as Nero infamously fiddled away and surveyed the damage from afar (spying on the people all around)…
…then again it could just as easily be about the so-called Chappaquiddick incident that happened on the night of July 19, 1969 when Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car over the edge of a dark, narrow bridge and into the Nantucket Sound after departing a nearby party resulting in the drowning death of his female passenger from the soireé (political aide Mary Jo Kopechne) and when it was discovered that Ted fled the scene it all but ended his presidential ambitions…
…and indeed “July 19” does have an underwater, submerged quality with its shimmering guitar and sepulchral bass and hovering-overhead keys with Ms. Vallee confirming she intended the song to have a “sense of feeling trapped underwater” (see full interview below!) and could it be mere coincidence that its music video features a bridge (the Williamsburg Bridge that is) with Sara Sue gliding across its pedestrian walkway like a woman who’s possessed by the ghost of an idealistic young boiler room girl unaware of her own tragic fate…
…and if we’re gonna go full-on spirit-possession crazed onspiracy theory here it’d be worth observing how in the clip above Sara Sue adamantly states she’s changed her ways "since the accident" (hmmm)and sure the clip is taken from a fiction film but one written/produced by and staring Ms. Vallee and, oh yeah, besides being a singer-songwriter you may have gathered that she’s an actress, screenwriter and director too who moved to NYC to attend the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts and the Lee Strasberg Institute…
…which is maybe why a song like "July 19" is more actorly than historical, like an indie film focused more on day-to-day situations and ruminations whose very significance is their insignificance (“We always remember the big moments in life but what about the rest?") which is why Sara Sue chose a date that doesn’t mean anything to her and speaking of actorly Skin & Bones wasconceived as four cinematic-style tableaus, a tetrology of stand-alone short-films-in-sound like Four Rooms or Tales From The Hood except better (sorry Quintin and Spike!) showcasing a range of musical personae like a slick acting reel meant to show off an actor’s best assets…
…across four elemental mood pieces with an emphasis on elemental seeing as its songs are easily mapped onto the matrix of earth/water/fire/air or they are in my mind at least just take "Meadow Avenue": its verses are down ‘n’ dirty earthy in a Serge Gainsbourg/Brigitte Bardot Gallic-funk-with-a-cocksure-strut kinda way, but then the pre-chorus (0:27) goes all wavy/watery with its swirling, circling melodies and roundabout 6/4 time and then when the chorus proper comes in it’s got a fiery heart-baring hook and finally toward the end there’s an airy, etherial bridge section (1:43) so yeah you get the gist…
…sounds made to match Skin &Bones‘ equally elemental, raw-boned lyrical content assembled cut-and-paste-style from fragments of Sara Sue’s own diary entries, voice memos and random thoughts scrawled on the backs of envelopes and chocolate wrappers with a recurring thematic motif of being driven “over the edge” not by a sitting US Senator but by emotionally unavailable lovers more concerned with ripping bong hits than with long-term commitments and the like and other topics like loneliness and overthinking, social media addiction, and corrosive lifestyle choices so in other words we are totally relating to this and you probably will too…
…and while I’m no Marlon Brando I’d venture that method acting is relevant here where the idea is to build up a mental rolodex of intense memories, emotions, and experiences to be called upon later for actorly inspiration—mixed and matched where appropriate for a specific scene or role which is pretty much exactly like what Sara Sue idd with this record, raiding a decade’s worth of diaries and the like, distilled down into the four sketches on Skin & Bones which is undeniably good value for your dollar…
…call it “method songwriting” if you must with the EP serving as an ideal case study with a key finding being how much it’s the music on its own that really takes you to those places—from the submerged emotional Atlantis of “July 19” to the fiery yearning of “Meadow Avenue," from the airy come-hither funk of “My Sweet Mary Jane” to the earthbound stock-taking of “Before It Ends”…
…and with enough subtle little sonic touches scattered throughout to keep you coming back for more which, personally, I’m a sucker for the asymmetric metrics and odd-numbered stanzas that pop up here and there but if you’re looking for a good, non-technical pull quote for the whole thing I’d go with “permanently-sun-dappled-Quebecqois-by-way-of-Gotham-singer-songwriter Sara Sue Vallee produces a winning anglophone amalgamation of Vanessa Paradis and Liz Phair and Avril Lavigne on her debut EP Skin & Bones” and in closing we’d be remiss not to shout out Sara Sue’s collaborators who helped with realizing her vision, namely, guitarist/co-producer Antoine Bensoussan, drummer Emmanuel Trottier-Marcotte, sound mixer Tim Buron, and Jean-Patrice Remillard aka “Pheek” on mastering duties and please keep reading after the jump to hear from the auteur herself.. (Jason Lee)
Sara Sue Vallee: When I was young I wanted to become a singer. But there were no classes to take in the town where I’m from. So my mom enrolled me in acting classes.
But I always had this voice telling me in the back of my head that I wanted to make music. Over the years, even when I was younger, I was always writing lyrics and recording stuff whenever I could.
I remember when I was 14, I received a guitar. But then something happened that I stopped playing. Then I moved to New York and studied acting…was really focused on acting but then COVID happened. And I was like, “I have all this material. This is it, I’m using this chance to make my jump into music. OK, let’s do an EP.”
On the genesis of Skin & Bones…
SSV: I picked four songs out, worked them into their current form, and was planning to move back to the US. But then there were visa issues and with COVID still happening I decided to finish school here [in Montreal] before moving back to NYC.
Which turned out for the best but it was strange how it all happened. Without COVID, music would have never happened. Not the EP either.
I produced the EP with my guitar teacher Antoine Bensoussan who’s also the guitarist on the record. And It wasn’t like renting some place. I’d go to his home studio. He has the whole setup and we would do everything there, and not have to be on the clock all the time.
We worked on the four songs and hired a drummer—Emmanuel Trottier-Marcotte, one of his friends—and I knew someone who we approached about the mixing. I met Tim Buron about 8 years ago while I was working as a waitress. He’s a well-knoen, high-level mixer. So I approached him, “I know you work for really big artists, but are you willing to mix my EP?”
So he gave me a special rate and I hired him. I’m really glad I did, really grateful. He’s one of the top audio mixers in Montreal. It was the culmination of a dream for me.
On the creative process…
SSV: I don’t write in French, because I consume much of my music in English, and I’m inspired by English language musicians.
Some parts of the EP were written when I was living in New York. I remember where I was sitting, on the promenade, looking at the view with the bridge and everything.
And it’s so strange—one section is from this part of my life, and another section is from much later on. And it kind of worked out in a way to make the structure work. I remember where I wrote each individual section.
A lot of the record is inspired by destructive relationships, people that I met over the years. So it’s a mix-and-match in that way too.
On coloring outside the lines…
SSV: We worked on each song separately. The goal was not to make a unified whole out of it. Each piece was unique. Since this is my first entry into music it was really important for me to explore each song individually and to see what they could bring to the table on their own.
Sometimes we would sit down and I was like, “I hear city sounds,” or “I feel under the water.” Like for “July 19” I had this sense of feeling trapped under the water, so I wanted to hear this really low bass, hmmmm, or to hear street sounds in the city. So we took our time to really buildanimage for each song and to work from there.
I think, since it’s the first time for me, I wrote [the songs] a certain way. And I wasn’t ready to change them to fit a certain style. I was like, “No!” Why should I accomodate, just because this is supposed to be a certain type of song?”
So I was like, “Let’s put the chorus first and then the post-chorus, mix things up, and let’s have nine lines instead of eight. Because that’s how I heard the song and I wasn’t prepared to make any changes. It was produced independently and the vision was mine.
On influences…
SSV: When it comes to acting, I think it’s influence is more in the writing. Because when I write, I visualize a music video. Automatically.
And it’s like I’m acting in the music video, doing all the action, and I write down what I see. This becomes part of the lyrics. It’s like I’m acting the song and that’s how I visualize it.
For musical influences, when I was young, definitely the Spice Girls. They were the first. And then there was Avril Lavigne. And Beyoncé. Pink. Fergie. All of those. And then Amy Winehouse changed things for sure, the deepness of her songs. Lana Del Rey too. The writing is just poetic.
As for the sound, I’ve really been liking Suki Waterhouse. Gracie Abrams. Miley Cyrus. Lyrics may be relatively simple but I like the sound and the emotion behind it. For me, I really like when I can hear a story. And feel it.
On the songs…
SSV: Skin and Bones. Raw. I’m exposing myself, my real self, behind the actor self.
July 19: The date came out of nowhere. And that was important because it’s a random date, and it’s all about those…we always remember the big moments in life, but what about the rest? And that made me wonder what about this random date, what could happen? It made me realize those dates that I don’t have anything happening, a lot of time, I waste my time comparing myself to others who do have big things on those dates.
What if I’m lonely? What am I doing? How am I using my time? And it was more this sense of “what am I doing when I’m alone?”
Meadow Lane: It’s not a real place! It’s me peeking through my window and waiting for my boyfriend to come home. And he’s walking down the street, and I see him bump into a girl on Meadow Lane.
And seeing him fall in love with this girl. At the window, seeing everything, happening in front of my eyes. That’s the story.
Mary Jane: It’s about addiction. It’s about a guy who loves drugs more than his girlfriend—to have the drug by his side. And it came out naturally, almost aggressively pop. But that’s how I heard it.
Before It Ends: It was written half and half. Part of it was in New York, when I fell in love with this guy who didn’t care about me. And then he got back in touch a couple of years ago. It was confusing, because I was now in a relationship.
So I was like, “maybe he’s the one.” But I was really young and the inexperienced. There is no the one. It’s more like you connect with this person, and you make it work or you don’t.
And then, to finish writing this song, I used my imagination to see my current relationship if we were going through the long distance thing.
On music videos…
The video for “July 19” was shot on my last trip in New York, in spring. It was fun. I’d met this photographer and we really bonded. And I asked him, “Are you down to shoot a music video?” I had the demo with me, and we took his phone and played the song.
It was funny, I was lip-synching just walking down the street in Brooklyn. It felt so awkward at first, just walking down the street and singing. And on the bridge. I was like, “oh, this is so strange!” But people don’t care.
It was also strange for me looking at the camera. As an actor you usually avoid eye contact with the camera. But I had to look at the camera and lip-synch. It’s breaking the fourth wall.
