Still frame from "Rosas" music video directed by Ana Maria Hernandez. If you prefer to skip straight to the interview with Valley Latini (and who can blame you!) scroll down past the music videos to the jump.

If you’ve never been to a cloud forest before you should add it to your bucket list asap and no I’m not taking about the forest moon of Endor because who needs a bunch of tribal teddy bears dry humping your leg especially when you can visit a cloud forest right here on Planet Earth namely in Colombia—located less than an hour due west from Bogota and due south-by-southeast from Medellin—where you’ll find a vast expanse of rolling peaks and valleys nestled in the West Andes known as Valle de Cocora named after an ancient Quimbayan princess whose name literally meaning “star of water”…

…a fittingly uncanny image for the uncanny landscapes of Valle de Cocora where Heaven and Earth seem to collide with vaporous clouds rolling down from the heavens and blanketing the valley’s cliffsides and majestic wax palms soaring into the sky as far as 200 feet (by way of comparison LA or Miami palm trees top out at around 50 feet) like magic beanstalks sprouting up from valley clearings with the trees’ solitary nature only underscoring their towering profiles and truly it’s the most magnificent, surrealist natural scenery I’ve ever laid eyes on something like a Fernando Botero landscape come to life…

…and yeah I know what you’re probably thinking but don’t worry The Deli isn’t about to switch over to becoming a travel blog even if that’d no doubt be more lucrative, i.e. lucrative at all, but instead I’m sharing this recollection of Valle de Cocora as a useful point of comparison to the music of Bogota-born-and-raised-up-until-her-early-teens singer-songwriter-guitarist-keyboarist-programmer-producer Valley Latini who subsequently did stints in Texas and Tennessee before settling in New York City and who just released her first full-length record Attention Lover last Friday…

…seeing as the album gives me a similar “uncanny valley” vibe as those Colombian cloud forests about 2,500 miles from where I sit now with Valley’s etherial-oft-upper-upper-register vocals floating across the songs’ sonic landscapes like a sheer gossamer veil but delivered with a vertiginous, sensuous assurance not heard perhaps since Jane Birkin paid breathy homage to “La Décadanse” while grinding her hips against her forever-dishelveled twenty-years-her-senior songwriting-genius-lover Serge Gainsbourg’s, erm, serge…

…except her vocal delivery is less “Gallic cool” than “Tropical heat” trapped in an urban heat bubble and much like the cloud forest’s enveloping fog that forms when high pressure and low pressure masses of air come into contact with one other in perfect equilibrium and likewise there’s a simlar alchemy when Valley’s airy vocals come in contact with the earthy "dark pop" side of her music—e.g., close-mic’ed vivid guitar strumming and buzzing pulsating synths and programmed “Dembow” type beats slowed down and blunted out to the point where they sound like dancehall riddims on promethazine—which you can hear in distilled form on track four “Black River” to take but one good example…

…or check out the next track “Romona Dolly” to sample the other side of Valley Latini’s musical spectrum, a waltz-time acoustic guitar ballad that comes across like a campfire-side psych-folk revisionist-feminist Spaghetti Western title song and it’s never quite clear whether the listener is meant to feel melancholy or sensuality or hallucinatory dislocation from her music but heck why not jump into all three states of being at once if not more…

…and maybe that’s why Colombia’s Valle de Cocora represents a sixth of the world’s biodiversity (!) with its rich array of tree sloths, llamas, peacocks, pumas, roosters, mountain tapers, and hummingbirds making themselves at home alongside the other species (including the endangered spectacled bear that is the only remaining bear species native to South America) seeing as how meteorological extremes (or emotional extremes) often result in a certain biological fecundity…

…and speaking of fecundity Valley Latini’s music is, by nearly any metric, sensual as heck (promise that’s the last time I’ll use that word in this review and I mean ‘sensual’ not ‘heck’!) in an inclusive, body–positive sense, an impression only heightened by Valley’s self-directed and co-directed music videos whether it’s the pole-dancing skills on display in “Ask Me Why” and “Rosas” (joining forces on the latter track with her fellow Colombian-born, New York based compatriot Slic who was profiled here a couple months ago) or the playful, satirical stop-motion animation of “Tu Y Yo”…

…which draws upon a collage of Valley’s own heaven-and-hell-themed artwork—with animation assistance from Tara R. Sampson and Mo Go—which culminates with an ascent to the heavens via a dancer’s pole that leads to the entrance of a “Haux House” above the clouds, or the Tarantino-esque grainy grindhouse throwback vibes of “Blonde” with its rooftop hot tub and other exotic settings that capture "the feeling of having a sordid love affair" (opening dialogue: “Did you get the money shot yet?” “This whole shot is the money shot.”) which taken together feature dozens of beguiling fashions and locales for your best entertainment value….

…and suddenly I’ve got a mental image of wax palm trees once again except now their slender pole-like trunks have been transformed into (wait for it…) giant dancer poles for larger-than-life Incan deities like Mama Quilla/Kilya/Killa or Blunderbore if he ever went the way of Magic Mike and btw all the aforementioned videos were made for singles not included on Attention Lover (German title: Achtung Liebhaber!) which just goes to show the fecundity of Valley’s songwriting output, singles which I’ve comped up for your/my listening pleasure on a Spot-I-Fried playlist…

..but hey that’s enough from me cuz no doubt you’ve had your fill of my ramblings about the biodiversity of Colombian cloud forests and pole dancing Incan deities and would be grateful to get some insights from the source itself so it’s lucky for us Valley shared a capsule bio with The Deli and then we had a nice convo on the phone too so continue reading after jump to learn more about Valley Latini’s background and what she had to say about her music and about some of the individual songs on Attention Lover. (Jason Lee)

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THE INTERVIEW:

I’m from everywhere. I call everywhere home. The only place I ever moved to was New York City. Other places I ended up by circumstance or moving with my family.

I never know what genre to call my music. I don’t f—ing know. After several people who listened to the record told me it’s got a country and western vibe and I was good with that. I always wanted to do a record with a “sad cowgirl” vibe. Dolly Parton is such a big inspiration. I was standing so close to it that I couldn’t see the whole thing. I’m so inspired by her guitar playing and songwriting. The queen of rhinestones. She inspired me to start bedazzling my guitars.

Attention Lover is inspired by the melancholy in my life. The realness. The whole album is a love story from beginning to end with a tragic ending. It tells a story. I may be a familiar story, but the songs are chronological in terms of the relationship and I wrote and worked on a lot of them with the person I was dating at the time which is the overall subject of the songs too so there’s a Fleetwood Mac vibe. It goes to show how life changes, how you can go from being with this person and writing 2 or 3 songs per day to not talking to them on their birthday.

I generally write so much that I don’t have the time in the year to release all the songs I’ve written. I’d never thought about putting an album together. Songwriting was just something to do everyday. Why not write amazing songs and make amazing records? 

Being artistic runs in the family. My grandmother was a painter and my uncle played in an orchestra in Germany. My grandfather was a music critic for a Colombian newspaper covering practical music concerts. My mom put me in piano lessons since I was five years old. Ever since then had a feeling this is what I wanted to do. There was else I wanted to do. I’m not the type of person to have a job orhave anyone boss me around. I was bad at homework in school because it was someone else giving me an assignment.

I’ve got a recording setup in my Brooklyn apartment. A digital interface, guitars, keyboard. I used Logic Pro to collaborate with co-writers like Avi Snow (“Serpiente”), Ben Cina (“Ask Me Why”) and Mike Dextro (“Tu Y Yo”) on all the songs except “Ramona Dolly.” Slic wrote with me on “Rosas” and “Illicit” and a production team helped with working on “Caravan.”

And I’m grateful to mixing engineer Rachel Alina who had her students mix all of my songs and I got to pick the best mixes. That’s her business. She’s such a supportive friend. I direct or co-direct all the music videos—come up with concepts, direct and edit all of them. I’m in charge of every area of my art including the production of the songs, putting every single element out there myself.

THE SONGS

“Black River”: Just more like a state of mind. It talks about depression. Sometimes it’s important to sit with your sadness and you can learn so much from that.

“Ramona Dolly”: About not being somebody’s everything—trying to be their best friend, lover, everything. Expectations in relationships are so highly romantic so that when people start not fulfilling expectations that are already too high it causes problems.

“Shadow”: A song about being blinded by love and not seeing somebody for who they are. Not seeing all sides because you’re fixated on the idea of being with them. The bad side or the shadow side. Not realizing this person is not for me, ignoring all the signs.

“Labios De Juul” (“Lips of Juul”): About a relationship with a girlfriend where was always smoking the Juul and now I always am, The appreciation of her, so inspiring to me.

“How Do I?” is about boundaries and learning to find them. L

“Let You Go” is about coming to the ealization, the awareness that you have to let go.

Today we are honoured to premiere November Girl’s new single “Keychain” alongside an accompanying short film just be forewarned that if consumed together in one sitting the song and video could potentially melt your face clean off so maybe wear one of those full-protection virus visor thingies at the very least…

…a short film we’ve been informed is “a Car Stuck Girls-inspired music video directed by Lola Daehler” who’s also known as Death Recruiter but don’t let that or the closeness of her last name to “Dahmer” fool you because Lola only slays on stage (to our knowledge anyway!) as the frontperson/bassist for Homade and seeing as we’re entirely unfamiliar with “Car Stuck Girl” videos (*cough cough*) we reached out to November Girl’s front girl Willa Beck and she was kind enough to explain it’s “a genre of pornography in which girls get their cars stuck” and you can probably guess the rest from there (insert chosen car pun here, or see below) or perhaps you can’t which is okay cuz we find it’s best not to make too many assumptions about the kids these days…

…which as it turns out was the right call to make because November Girl and Ms. Daehler don’t take genre conventions for granted either seeing as by their own account the “Keychain” video flips the script on all those vehicle-based dirty (literally!) movies and instead to the contrary “ends up actually being quite wholesome” which is in keeping with how “everything November Girl does plays with this virgin / whore dichotomy” and now I’m beginning to see the light…

…but nonetheless having never been a November Girl nor a girl period virgin or whore or otherwise it’ll always be a stretch for me to fully understand so I reached out to Willa B. once again for further exegesis and she kindly spilled the beans when it comes to the “key” for unlocking “Keychain” so ya see it never hurts to ask:

“Keychain” is a song about sisterhood and the day-to-day mundanity of your teen-years and young adulthood actually becoming quite special and profound when you’re with your girls. There’s a certain admiration with which you look at your sisters, and “Keychain” captures this.

…all of which makes total sense now listening again tho’ admittedly the statement above makes it sound like the song is something like an update of Spice Girls’ “Wannabe” and hey maybe it is but “Keychain” is more fittingly slotted under “indie rock” than “girly pop” even tho’ you’ve still you’ve got elements of the latter with a sweet dream-poppy vibe overall and some pretty wispy backing vocals but also some harsher, more aggressive tones too not to mention a nicely buoyant-yet-down-in-it grungy chorus that’s got a whiff of Japanese Breakfast to it with extra wasabi…

…tho’ you could make just as strong a case for Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders just be aware this is all pure conjuncture on our part no doubt you’ll pick out your own musical touchstones and did you know it’s coming up on the 25th anniversary of Spice World which in this reviewer’s view is vastly underrated (both the film and the soundtrack!) not to mention quintessentially late ‘90s with cameos by Elvis Costello and Bob Geldof and Jennifer Saunders of Ab Fab fame alongside many more which just goes to show the Spice Girls were always way cooler than anyone gave them credit for at the time…

…and then as if that’s not enough toward the end of “Keychain” there’s a guitar solo that’s downright Robert Quine-like with its slashing angularity and fuzzy-headed tonality (see below!) an influential journeyman post-punk guitarist that I wouldn’t expect the kids today to know (I mean, sheesh, even the Spice Girls are a full generation removed from Gen Z today which is a little shocking for a Gen X’er to realize) but then again it’s best to take nothing for granted cuz the kids today are pretty damn savvy and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that November Girl is into Richard Hell or Lou Reed not to mention Marianne Faithfull or Tom Waits or heck even Fred Maher…

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…but we’ll have to investigate further on such matters and in the meantime we can tell you without hesitation November Girl has some very cool band-branded garments over at their online shop (which upon further examination looks like they’re all sold out but oh well the pictures themselves are pretty choice) and also one of more of its members are Scorpios which means they’re unsparing but also fiercely loyal with their friends which just brings home the whole “sisterhood” angle unlike those stubborn, uptight September Gurls haha just kidding all you Virgos and Libras we love ya…

…and finally don’t forget to head on over to the Deli Instagram page at your earliest convenience to view a bunch of exclusive behind-the-scenes photos from the “Keychain” music video shoot—a shoot that in part took place upstate at the music studio/animal farm/heavy petting sanctuary known as Holy Fang with BTS stills generously provided by Alexis K—shots all but guaranteed to get your goat but in a good way or we’ll refund your money assuming those upstate goats didn’t eat all those dead presidents already… (Jason Lee)

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RIP Christine McVie

From the golden age of Tin Pan Alley about a century ago to the golden showers age of Meet Me in the Bathroom-era indie sleaze and beyond, songwriters do seem to love writing songs about New York City or at least many of them do and while one could easily make a case for there being more memorable and outright iconic songs about NYC than pretty much anywhere else in the world it’s equally true tho’ not as widely noted that there’s lots and lots of crappy songs about NYC too…

…one example being Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s “Island Girl,” a song largely forgotten today despite topping the charts back in 1975 and for good reason too seeing as it’s a cringe-worthy condescending ode to a six-foot-three “Jamaican honey so sweet / down where Lexington cross 47th Street […] turning tricks for the dudes in the big city” with lyrics that reinforce at least one hoary racist or whorey trope for every bump of coke Elton and Bernie must’ve done when they were writing the thing (allegedly!) not to mention some faux West Indian articulations and a bizarre kazoo/keyboard/marimba solo section I sh*t you not…

…and then jumping ahead 40 years you got Taylor Swift and Ryan Tedder’s “Welcome to New York City,” a song lambasted for being “the worst ode to NYC ever” and for being a “gentrification anthem…[written] for its transient oligarch class” with T-Swizz pimping her new hometown via a string of tourism brochure platitudes and bland “poptimist“ electro-pop uplift although at least it includes a couple pro-LGBTQ+ lines fit for mass consumption that even if perfunctory (or not!) who cares in the end cuz who can know what mysteries lie deep within Miss Tay Tay’s heart…

…and when it comes to songs about NYC it’s a matter not only of quality but also of quantity cuz there’s soooo many songs about NYC already in existence which has gotta make it pretty tough to come up with a non-hackneyed angle on the city and really how many ways are there to say “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” or to praise “streets [that] make you feel brand new [with] big lights to inspire you”…

…and even if you’re looking to write more of an outlier song with NYC-related lyrical content it’s a safe bet almost every random piece of NYC marginalia you can imagine has been addressed at least once or twice before in song like how back in the ‘70s there were not just one but two songs by major artists named for the notorious “Coney Island Whitefish” which I would not recommend ordering from your local fish market even if you are running low on tartar sauce…

…which is all a moot point to the likes of Hiro, Dima, Johnny and John seeing as the musical foursome “fucking hate songs about New York”—and isn’t this the most “New York” take one could take on songs about New York possible—as explored further on “Songs About New York” which is the title track twice iterated appearing on both sides of the split seven-inch recently released by The Black Black and Kissed By An Animal (EWEL Records) two bands with an overlapping keep-it-in-the-family membership while remaining almost entirely non-incentuous in sonic terms seeing as how “KBAA move through tight, clean punk into melodic power pop, while TBB bring their unique brand of bass-driven post punk groove” according to the EWEL’s official press release…

…and it’s a clever conceit to be sure having both bands record their own versions of the title song (alongside one bonus cut each) because not only do they cleverly bypass the whole “another stupid song about New York” quandary with a song about stupid songs about New York sharing a set of lyrics and a main vocal hook between them but otherwise we’re talking two totally different bags of apples…

…a conceit that (arguably) acts as a critique of the Big Apple’s oft-vainglorious sense of self-regard because as usual the mirror has two faces—the one shown to the outside world and the one more hidden away which is not to imply those two sides are always clearly distinguishable—and whether we’re talking about a split-single or a split-personality the two sides reflect and refract one another while standing along in their own right too like a double-helix strand of DNA where neither side is considered the “A Side” or the “B Side” it’s far more dialectical than that…

…or to put it more in layman’s terms the new KBAA/TBB split-single totally rips while simultaneously ripping a new one for all those clichéd songs about New York and ripping at the very fabric of ontological/representational self-certainty ideal for fans of bands like The Hives, The Vines, The Seeds, Oh Sees, Parquet Courts, Television, Radiohead, TV On The Radio, TVOD, Cinemax After Dark, Red Shoe Diaries, Midnight Blue, New Wave Theater, The Corey Hotline and Freddie Freaker and the single comes in numerous hues and shades such as periwinkle putrid pink, grape Shasta, and ‘70s shag avocado but the color is chosen at random so order at least 10 copies (out of a limited run of 200!) to increase your chances of getting a cool one… (Jason Lee)

If Elvis Costello’s Attractions or The Clash were primarily into world music, perhaps they would sound something like Pleasure Island—an unorthodox and quirky band that combines touches of new wave-ish rock with a variety of Latin styles. These guys are hardly purists, and therein lies the thing that makes Faux Porteño so much fun. Showing an adventurous spirit, Pleasure Island are consistently unpredictable and draw on everything from Afro-Cuban salsa to Mexican ranchero/polka to Brazilian choro. On the tango “Imagination”, P.I. rejects the suit-and-tie sophistication that characterizes much Argentinean music in favor of a tougher, harder-edged approach. And on “Intentaré" they successfully take a Tex-Mex approach to traditional Italian songs…

…all of which is complete bullshit of course, but not entirely necessarily, and either way you should know that I copied the paragraph above nearly verbatim from an allmusic.com review of Brave New Combo’s classic 1990 LP A Night On Earth (classic in my mind at least!) and especially songs like "Hey There" and "Do Something Different", a band that Paste magazine once called “the Grand Pooh-Bah of Denton bands…in many ways the template from which all the rest are cut: eclectic and artistically ambitious, with a high degree of musicianship and a strong DIY aesthetic” which is a statement I can vouch for having seen Brave Combo multiple times back in the day and having been raised in North Texas not too far from Denton which is home to the University of North Texas which is known for its prestigious jazz-leaning music program but I digress…

…and so hearing the new EP by the musically adroit veterans of Pleasure Island (*emerging* veterans!) who self-describe as “surf-deprecating loungecore from Ridgewood, Queens” made me harken back to those perennial purveyors of worldbeat rhythms for the denizens of Denton and beyond (if only Pleasure Island had a polka number or two up their sleeves they could maybe win a Grammy!) equally amenable to lounge lizards and ethnomusicologists alike and when I looked up the above-quoted review it was like wow this fits Faux Porteño like a glove except for a couple missing fingers like the bits about “Brazilian choro” and “Tex-Mex approach[es] to traditional Italian songs”…

…except as it turns out there *is* an Italian connection as we’ll soon see and even more so an Argentinean connection seeing as how Faux Porteño was recorded in Buenos Aires last spring and sounds like it too with the code switching of the record’s title (in French and Spanish, and it rhymes!) that’s apropos to the record’s code switching across multiple dimensions (musical, ontological, etc.) not to mention the revealing titular contrast between faux (fake) and porteño which is a word used to describe the realest-of-the-real authentic denizens of Buenos Aires a.k.a. “the Paris of South America” and here again I’ll quote at length and really it’s too bad I don’t get paid by the word count…

…a term that according to therealargentina.com is “used to refer to the citizens of Buenos Aires where porteño literally means “person of the port”, and harks back to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Spanish and Italian immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. So while the porteños might share the same country as their compadres from, say, Salta or Rio Gallegos, they look and act more like Italians. Buenos Aires is proud of its identity, so you’ll see and hear the word “porteño” (or ‘porteña’ in the feminine) all around, to describe restaurants, taxi firms, football teams and tango. But porteño is more than just a geographical indicator, it’s a way of being. Porteños have their own slang (‘Lunfardo’), their own fashion, their own complex psyche and their own attitude” revolving according to this website around big shoes and big hair, potent beverages, football (the kind that’s actually played with one’s feet) and machismo so there’s a North Texas connection here too in a sense…

…and right from the EP’s opening track entitled “Imagination” the porteño vibes comes across thick and strong as a really strong, thick cup of yerba mate opening with a rhapsodic solo accordion intro that segues into a laid-back tango groove but honestly I’d have to consult a musicologist to know if the underlying rhythm of the tango is more marcato or síncopa or tres-tres-y-dos which not too many gringos such as myself could even differentiate anyway even though real porteños may set their clocks to tango’s rhythms…

…but it’s not so concerning for our purposes here cuz the record is called *Faux* Porteño after all meaning that a little bit of inauthenticity and/or pure imagination is fully expected and to quote from the lyrics of “Imagination” at some length: “I like colorful clothes / the redder the rose / and the wonderful city lights / but I’d much rather kiss you, my lady / in black and white // with my foot on the gas / the things we pass / the breeze in your hair you’d feel / but I’d much rather run with you, my lady / in slow motion through a field // I’m in love again / I’m in love again / at least in my imagination” all building to a stated preference for Hollywood fantasies over the more mundane fulfillment of real friends…

…all of which reminds me of when Courtney Love first informed the public that “I fake it so real I am beyond fake” which was a startling statement at the time but today the better part of the body politic lives by these very words cuz really who even knows what the hell’s real anymore and what’s fake and speaking of fake did you know that none of The Beach Boys even surfed except for Dennis and he ended up drowning for his troubles but still they’re among the most iconic of surf bands to ever exist and also among the realest purveyors of the collective California imaginary that’s like essentially the skeleton key to the entire bigger American Dream and it’s in this spirit of “true lies” that Pleasure Island addresses their listeners on the EP’s subsequent track “Kokomo 2” which is most definitely the most impressive musical homage to Mike Love to be composed this side of The Fall’s “Mike’s Love Xexagon” from back in 2003 and one of my favorite Fall songs to boot but I digress…

…and returning to “Kokomo 2” here’s a song that pays homage to The Beach Boys’ left-field late-career #1 hit song “Kokomo 1” released back in 1988 which itself paid homage to The Beach Boys’ glory days but which in reality had little to do with the real Beach Boys apart from Mike Love’s co-writing credit and tepid vocalizing (Carl’s vocals are totally majestic as always even when in service to trite material such as this and even without his brother Brian present) plus “Kokomo” isn’t even a real place but rather an imaginary “tropical paradise” invented just for the song and despite going to the top of the Billboard charts it also routinely charts on critics’ “worst songs of all time” lists and so it’s undeniably perverse for a band like Pleasure Island to write their own sequel to what is likely The Beach Boys’ most widely despised song…

…but here at The Deli we’re totes on board with “undeniably perverse“ and we’re also on board with novelty songs that take a nearly-35-year-old novelty song taken from a nostalgia-infused soundtrack to a movie that features Tom Cruise at his most Tom Cruisiest with lyrics about a locale that’s nothing more than a mirage in reality but which in the hands of Pleasure Island is transformed from the realm of idealized “pure imagination” subtext into a less-than-idealized supertext that at once actualizes and then deconstructs the mirage in question…

…starting with the song’s admission that “I hate chores / so I got divorced / I wanted more / than Zsa Zsa Gabor / my future’s waiting for me / at the shore” where the narrator is intent on “havin’ a Kokomo party” even if it’s somewhere in the vicinity of the Jersey Shore in reality that is until the song’s end where the facade briefly slips in hopes that “whatever happened before / we’ll like each other again” but it’s a difficult to swallow last ditch bit of sentimentalism given the song’s smarmy lounge lizard tone up to that point and the synthetic sounding but still butt-shaking ‘80s-esque tropical grooves that link the song directly to it’s predecessor…

…which get at just what I dig about this little record and that’s how it works on multiple levels at once but without being showy about it like how it’s simultaneously lo-fi and DIY-sounding but sonically ambitious at the same time with songs about the stark reality of having to fake it ’til you make it (or, worse yet, don’t make it) with a lyrical POV that’s equal parts entitled and ineffectual, carefree and neurotic, and a musical POV that’s equal parts laid-back and uptight and while one could write a passable thesis on these and other dialectical oppositions in the works of Pleasure Island it’s also true that when I first heard these songs performed live at a mellow tree-shrouded backyard bar during a pleasant late summer evening all I remember thinking is how these gently humorous, gently propulsive tunes were the perfect straight-forward antidote to the worries and stressors of the day. (Jason Lee)

From the looks of it Honeyyycrush either owns a keyboard with a sticky ‘Y’ key or maybe she’s just a big fan of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs tho I’d guess more “Maps” than “Y Control” (ironic!) but who knows (we don’t!) and come to think of it Honeyyycrush’s new single “Belly Empty” wouldn’t sound too out of place on the new YYY’s album Cool It Down…

…and as evidence allow me to quote from Pitchfork’s review of that very album’s lead-off single “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” where Ryan Dombal writes that SOtEotW is “set off by the kind of horizon-expanding synths you’d expect to find on an opus by M83 or Vangelis. Karen’s delivery is painfully vulnerable one moment and strident the next, pinging between existential hopelessness and mighty resistance”…

 
…a quote that pretty well sums up “Belly Empty” as well even if it’s more of a slow-burn type of number (closer to “Lovebomb” in fact!) and the “horizon-expanding keyboards” in question are also guitars and just in case the YYY’s aren’t your thing I’d say you could also fruitfully compare Honeyyyycrush’s repertoire so far to Mazzy Star or Marissa Nadler or Chelsea Wolf and I’m hoping quoting almost two full sentences from a Pitchfork review isn’t considered plagiarism even when attributed…

…and what the hell I may as well double down and steal directly from Honeyyyyyycrush herself who posts blogger-friendly word clouds for her songs on TikTok like “Belly Empty” for instance geta broken down as “glittering grungy….big drum…slinky bass line…haunting…alt-indie rock" and in another post as a song for all those who enjoy “drowning in reverb…gritty guitars…airy vocals…warm Jazzmaster tones…uniques voices…’90s alt rock/indie folk” (see the ripped video above!) which perfectly summarizes the overall musical vibe so thanks for that (!) and then over on the offical IG acccount there’s the following summary of “Belly Empty” more from a lyrical standpoint…

.…a song about embracing your flaws without shame and maybe reveling in them. It’s about being down in the muck of yourself and not taking the moral high ground. It’s not an anthem about evolving or improving. When you’re down in the shit, you don’t want to come out. Sometimes you’re down in the shit and it’s all your fault, but it feels good to own it, it feels empowering…

…which is great cuz now I don’t feel quite as bad for cribbing from other sources so let’s hear it for anti-aspirational-better-to-own-your-own-shiz-and-accept-it (and maybe other people’s shiz too!) alt-rock power ballads steeped in ghostly reverb and moral ambiguity because there’s more than enough aspirational pop songs out there already as if you have any control over your life getting better but there’s never nearly enough moodyyy, broodyyy chanteuses crooning grooovy, grungyyy, gothyyy dream-pop inflected ditties embracing “the ugliness in me / disconnecting limbs / and lovers that don’t serve me” and not apologizing for it…

…and granted I was a bit puzzled at first by the refrain of “you don’t know me like I do” because, well, it seems pretty self-evident doesn’t it, but then again it’s all about how those words are put across like for instance if you just read the words “they don’t you like I love you” on the page you’d think "hmmm, interesting" but as presented in the context of “Maps” it’s an emotionally devastating statement which is something Honeyyyyycrush obviously takes to heart which isn’t too surprising seeing as she’s a published poet too writing under the the pen name "Alexandra Antonopoulos" which no doubt means she gets the complexities at play more than we do…

…plus the line in question really got me thinking about how contemporary society routinely tells us (or at least strongly implies!) that no you don’t know yourself like I do just consider for instance how algorithms seek to foresee and satisfy our every impulse and inchoate desire before we’re even aware they exist (if they existed at all before! implanted memories!) or how social media in particular has made it easier for outside forces to reorient our very preconceptions of reality and identity by supercharging time-tested methods of emotional manipulation against us…

…which isn’t to say, social media or no social media, that there aren’t creeps out there waiting to try and gaslight you no matter what (especially women, natch, who too often fall victim to "mansplaining" music bloggers ummmm…) so “you don’t know me like I do” is actually more nuanced that I realized at first it just takes a voice like Alexandra’s to drive home all the implications and speaking of emotional manipulation it’s not always entirely a bad thing like with the part of "Belly Empty" starting around 2:11 known as “the bridge section” for all you budding Max Martin”s out there….

…which is where all the submerged tension from the preceding two-plus minutes rises to the surface in a swirling torrent of dizzy delicious dreaming slack-jawed release of pent-up energies and desires (“I take what I want and I take what I want and I take what I want and…”) and for 20-something seconds that feels like a mini-eternity it’s like the song is rubbing your nose in icing sugar (thanks to Robert Smith for the vivid imagery I’ve stolen here because that’s my running theme!) before subsiding back into the sonic ether which is frankly and blatantly manipulative in making you want to listen to “Belly Empty” over and over again to get another hit of that bridge section dopamine to which Honeyyyyyyyycrush would maybe reply “why oh why control yourself at all just go ahead and listen obsessively again and again and again and help me build up my streaming numbers” and that’s a win-win for all involved… (Jason Lee)

Real Love (Totally Real Records) is the sixth LP by Beat Radio—a musical delivery mechanism for the “heartfelt, literate pop songs" of vocalist/guitarist Brian Sendrowitz with founding member Philip A. Jimenez returning to the fold to hold down drums/percussion in addition to synths, second guitar, backing vocals, banjo and a little bass guitar which I’m just gonna go ahead and assume he played all at once because overdubs are for wimps and then lastly-but-not-leastly Kathryn Froggatt brings some sweet vocal harmonies and bass lines and tambourine rattling to the musical table…

…painting an expansive canvas full of fog-shrouded chamber pop landscapes opening onto vistas of anthemic-yet-not-too-bombastic indie rock classique heavy on the churning mid-tempo rhythmic momentum and stately, stalwart melodies garnished with a dim sum banquet’s worth of musical condiments ranging from burbling, buzzy keyboards to backward-masked guitar to reedy saxophone drones to folksy fiddle interludes with the help of a guest player here and there which taken together reinforces the “downtrodden uplift” found in the lyrics…

 …not to mention how “Lowlands” and the title track rescue the banjo from its besmirchment by the likes of Dumbford & Sons and Matchbox Twenty-One, nimbly integrating the instrument into indie-Americana settings without it sounding like Taylor Swift crashing a Yo La Tango concert and perhaps not since the opening strains of Grandaddy’s Sophtware Slump has the banjo (erm, fake “banjo” but still..) been so perfectly incorporated into sad-dad-rock except with Beat Radio there’s no robots drinking themselves to death or interstellar space-colony miners placing long distance calls home to no avail with B. Sendrowitz & Co. keeping their emotive, plain-spoken songs more strictly earthbound…

 …which makes sense given that a chunk of Real Love was written in a “fever dream” state during early peak-period pandemic lockdown and indeed the songs read as “locked down” physically and temperamentally flipping between states of emotional devastation and emotional resignation and emotional disassociation which dovetails nicely with the juxtaposition of placid sonic surfaces and stormy musical microbursts with Brian clarifying that on this album “there was nothing to hold back anymore…I went all in emotionally in a deeper way than I was capable of before”…

…like on “Disassociation Blues" a song that confronts some pretty harsh realities head on (“I was hiding since I was child / and the storm was coming all the while […] golden age that never came / dreams that we let slip away”) while seeking to evade and avoid these harsh realities at the same time (“dissociation blues / I don’t even know what’s true […] emotionally detached / hiding all the evidence”) and here as elsewhere Beat Radio straddles the fine line between huddled-in-a-fetal-position-in-the-bathtub lamentations and cold-shower catharsis…

 …and besides it being a “serious relationship gone seriously wrong” record one could also read Real Love as an extended political allegory especially with it being released near the midterms and especially with all the nature-of-reality-up-for-grabs lyrical moments on Real Love (“I made my own creation myth / trying to prove that I exist” — “Solid Ground”) and in these election denying days but I digress…

…and ok maybe I’m overreaching seeing as the record could as easily be about your grandma’s lasagna as about the life of Brian especially in this post-death-of-the-author moment but either way if this sounds at all up your chimney chute and/or if you tend to enjoy the tremulous-yet-tempestuous poptones of The Tragically Hip, Los Campesinos!, Nada Surf, Fountains of Wayne, Waxahatchee and Sebadoh then you may very well enjoy Beat Radio too and finally here’s hoping “We Rise From Fire” in the days and weeks and years ahead… (Jason Lee)

–> LISTEN TO "THIS IS NOT A ROM-COM" ON SPOTIFY <–

Drive-In is a musical duo who in their own words “have come together to create a sonic experience that makes listeners want to dance and reflect on their life choices” and while their music provokes more the latter than the former response for this listener I’m not about to tell anyone they can’t dance to Drive-In because that’s a highly personal choice (plus their song "Impact" is indisputably danceable, see below) and heck if people can dance to the Grateful Dead’s music they can dance to anything even off their tits on hashish, acid, and/or shrooms all of which have proven conducive to noodle dancing at the very least…

…but rest assured multiple tabs of blotter acid aren’t required to enjoy Drive-In’s new EP This Is Not A Rom-Com with lead singer/lyricist Ally Rincon having penned “a collection of stories that narrate her experiences with relationships, with people and with herself, with a specific focus on how those relationships have effected her mental health” according to the official press release, a record that "shamelessly wears its heart on its sleeve."

This Is Not A Rom-Com was produced by Ryan Erwin (Particle Devotion, Nice Dog) and on the musical side of things the EP is similarly introspective and emotionally direct or as guitarist/songwriting partner Mitch Meyer puts it: “I wanted this album to be a bit more reflective and a more grown-up way of looking at Ally’s lyrical themes, so rather than going full angst, we opted to bring in some folk and Americana elements [plus] a lot of strange guitar intervals and bends that kind of twist with the emotion. Quinn Devlin was a big help in realizing this aspect" all of which sounds pretty Dead-like actually…

…but what’s maybe a little less-than-direct with This Is Not A Rom-Com is how any one of these four songs could fit quite nicely on an actual rom-com soundtrack imho like how “The One Before” would be a great fit with Albert Brooks’ classic rom-com Modern Romance or how “Impact” sounds like it’s sung from the perspective of the Biscuit Woman in Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster (“I am falling / and landing on concrete”)…

…or how “Overwhelmed” mirrors the self-delusion and mutual deception at the heart of The One I Love starring Elizabeth Moss or how “Narcissist” could soundtrack the, um, narcissism at the heart of Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story a movie that “brings rom-com energy to the agony of divorce” but still I had to turn it off after about 15 minutes due to the insufferability of the main characters not to mention the stilted acting, apologies to Adam and Scarlett because I know they’re reading this…

…so anyway you may have noticed the aforementioned films are all very much dark romantic comedies which no doubt is down in part to your humble reviewer’s twisted cinematic tastes but they do fit the Drive-In EP to a "T" with its songs essentially rooted in the hopes and expectations formed around normative heteronormative couplings and the various varieties of misery and insecurity potentially stemming from these normative hopes and expectations which falls outside your typical happy ending rom-com territory…

…but then again your typical rom-com depicts plenty of misery leading up to its happy ending cuz you gotta ratchet up the dramatic-comedic-romantic tension somehow so maybe the songs on This Is Not A Rom-Com could be rom-com soundtrack fodder after all (plus that’s where the big bucks are!) not to mention Drive-In have a knack for combining despairing sentiments with pleasant “gentle folksy indie rock” musical stylings which may likewise help land those movie placements—an amalgamation mastered by the likes of Snail Mail, Lucy Dacas, and Phoebe Bridgers among others—so if you like your rom-coms both sweet and sour then head to the Drive-In and get your groove on… (Jason Lee)

Yesterday I very nearly lost my credit card, my glasses, and my phone but there were “forces at work” that somehow saved me in each case and no I wasn’t hungover or anything along those lines in fact the night before I’d stayed in and even gone to the gym (!) and no I don’t think I’m going senile yet but still I left my credit card at a lunch spot but luckily discovered it was missing almost right away when I went to buy a coconut donut and a coffee at a well-known chain establishment and then later that evening I left my glasses on the seat of a subway car but thank the heavens realized it seconds later, jumped back into the subway car and grabbed them off the seat and jumped back off only a split second before the doors closed all Indiana Jones-style…

…and then most embarrassing of all I when I was coming back from the show I went to last night I jumped the turnstile at an unattended entrance (hey I figure if the MTA is gonna lay off booth workers and leave stations unattended then when should I pay to ride and how’s that for a justification?!) which really didn’t make sense since there was a homeless guy holding open the service door as a public service (and soliciting tips, naturally!) but instead I went the DIY route in skipping the fair but apparently when I leapt over the turnstile it caused my phone to likewise leap out of my pocket and onto the ground totally unbeknownst to me…

…which the aforementioned man not only retrieved but then he chased me down a couple flight of stairs and was probably calling after me but I had my noise-cancelling headphone on full blast of course and didn’t hear but still he managed to catch up to me on the platform and returned my phone at which point I felt like a complete idiot but also incredibly grateful to this most excellent Samaritan and gave him 20 bucks and sure I coulda saved nearly $20 if I’d simply gone through the door he was holding open and thrown him a little change in the first place but in the end it was worth the expenditure to feel the sense of immense relief I felt at that moment plus to see a rare glimpse of the best in humanity when a total stranger, and one who doesn’t have it easy to boot, saves you from your own stupidity…

..and yes I realize this is supposed to be a record review but here’s the clincher of it all because guess what I was listening to on my headphones when I jumped the turnstile and briefly lost my phone—and that’d be new EP by THESE PEOPLE titled In Place of Time (Green Witch Recordings / Parallel Division) and specifically its opening number “Forces At Work,” a song (and an EP) that in my reading is very much concerned with unseen forces at work in the universe even and especially when it appears that the universe (or planet Earth at least) is spinning wildly out of control or to quote directly from the song “a universe of empty space” that despite this emptiness “love[s] to get [a] reaction to test the Will of Man” and hey I’m not sure how I earned the good karma but I’ll take it…

…and THESE PEOPLE further drive the point home musically on the song and the entire EP which opens in medias res sounding like a music box winding down but soon a skittering beat kicks in over which waves of dissonant guitar guitar and textural keyboard ebb and flow like waves breaking on the shore and then pretty quickly the song establishes a more familiar shape but still with the lapping waves of sound underneath the surface and then about half way through there’s a breakdown part that goes on for a full minute with congas and tom tom fills and more waves of textural sounds and angular guitar…

…and overall I’m digging the crystalline, ‘80s-reminiscent production work on this EP and when I say “‘80s-reminiscent” I’m thinking specifically of records by people like Peter Gabriel, Todd Rundgren, and Adrian Belew at their most art-damaged and most off-kilter-pop inclined simultaneously and along these lines “Forces At Work” and the rest of the EP are full of crystalline chiming guitars and all sorts of other timbral sound-painting not to mention a logic-defying combination of head-bobbing funk and chin-stroking art rock and not to mention the philosophical yet semi-abstract lyrics at hand…

…and not to mention how the EP is both a bit chaotic sonically but also how air-tight controlled it comes across as when you really pay attention like a there’s a steady, invisible hand behind the seeming messiness on the surface which only gets amplified on the following tracks, the first of which truly does have “Levels” especially when it comes to the crazy rhythms unpinning the whole thing which slip almost imperceptibly (warning: basic music theory ahead!) between duple to triple time…

…and then next “Mind Reading” opens with some brief textural noise before a loping groove enters alternating between 5/4 and 4/4 and when the gently keening vocals enter it shifts into your basic triple time (3/4 or compound 6/8 meter if you prefer!) and finally on “Past Tense” we get treated to a chorus (mostly) in 7/4—for those who don’t know “time signatures” this is why it sounds off-kilter/left-of-center/angular—plus the vocal line is consistently sung ahead of or perhaps behind the beat (either way it’s “just out of time” but in which sense?!) so that the whole thing feels like a spinning top careening precariously, but somehow never tipping over, or maybe more like a hapless guy who keeps losing all his sh*t but having it handed back to him by the universe thanks to unseen forces at work and if it’s all “a great cosmic joke” then at least it’s a good one. (Jason Lee)

And here’s a little insider insight into the band should you want it…!

Official short Bio: These People is the solo project of Long Beach, NY producer and songwriter TJ Penzone. The project began after his former band Men, Women & Children (Warner Bros / Reprise Records) disbanded. These People has a constant rotation of musicians with the songs primarily written, recorded, and produced by Penzone, with additional instrumentation, production, and artwork by his brother Rick Penzone (Color Film, Richard Flesh). Soundscapes, and additional guitar by James Usher (Edison Glass, Heavy duty super Ego).

Quote from the Artist: I made the structure for "Levels" while I was trying to learn George Harrison’s “I’d Have You Anytime”. I just kept playing the first two chords over and over, changing rhythms, and adding more chords until it just evolved into its own thing. This one was incredibly fun / tedious to record and mix. -Tj Penzone

With spooky season culminating tonight it’s fitting to feature Dead Leaf Echo’s latest single “Boo” a song that’s equivalent to an audible shudder and thus highly Halloween-friendly—which let’s face it everyday is Halloween these days so you can keep listening to it after tonight—with lyrics about fear and loathing in a modern-day surveillance state and/or in the current state of modern-day relationships (“I know / they know / a thing or two / about boo / but I know they’re / gonna get to you”) with front-ghoul LG Galleon & Co. proving themselves adept once again at alchemizing Sensurround sounds bounced off multiple walls of reverb and digital delay, flange and chorus, tremolo and who knows what other forms of sorcery into headphone-hospitable majestic sonic sculptures that somehow don’t crumble to pieces…

…all of which makes "Boo" sound pretty serious but unless you’re a member of the undead army it should have you shimmying as much as shuddering since when you peel back the MK-Ultra-ready swirling psychedelic surface there’s an ass-shaking Madchester groove underneath driving the whole thing forward not to mention a galvanizing gospel-infused vocal hook written to satisfy a dare issued to LG to make a Hacienda-friendly Manchester type song that got transmutated over time into a tribute to the late, great Denise Johnson (RIP) who herself lent many a galvanizing, gospel-infused vocal hook to songs by Primal Scream, A Certain Ratio, New Order, and The Charlatans UK to name but a few…

…which isn’t to say that dread and dance are mutually exclusive cuz there’s nothing like a shiver up the spine to make you wanna cast your demons out onto the dance floor and I haven’t heard it done like it’s done on "Boo" since circa the Cure’s unveiling of Wish in 1992 which saw the Batcave-dwelling Backcombed Boys in Black augment their late-to-mid-80s goth-pop mastery with an infusion of baggy beats (think Happy Mondays or Stone Roses), Britpop whimsy (resulting in a future karaoke staple) and disassociative “Wall of Haze” shoegazery all of which was ascendent at the time and if you were to refer to the resulting hybrid style as “boo-gaze” we wouldn’t hate you for it…

 …but rest assured you need not be into Clinton-era deep-cuts by the Cure to be into DLE’s “Boo” by any means—for instance one could draw a closer contemporary parallel with Dirk Knight’s Hamburg-based SEASURFER project not to mention Dark Orange—but either way if you’re sympathetic to “atmospheric guitars, distinct percussive momentum, cathedral inspired vocal harmonies and dramatic build-ups” (quoting directly from a Deli writeup on DLE some years ago) then you should be into their new one too as long as you don’t mind some new wrinkles, or if you don’t know old from new you may wanna peruse this deep historical dive or read brief pieces on a couple of albums here…

…and here at the Deli we don’t mind wrinkles new or old which we feel bodes well for the upcoming Boo EP slated for release in early 2023 and speaking of new wrinkles DLE’s most recent EP Milk.Blue.Kisses.And.Whalebone.Wishes from earlier this year had plenty of them too but less in terms of race-ready grooves and more in terms of free-floating-blissed-out-but-with-underlying-animating-anxiety ambient soundscapes…

…with lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter LG noting that the previous EP was a by-product of the extended peak-period COVID isolation with tracks laid down in LG’s home studio with remote contributions by bassist Steve S and drummer Kevin K and if you wanna check out a track-by-track listeners’ guide why not consult with our good friends over at a rival blog by clicking on the preceding link…

…but sticking with my self-regarding frame of reference I’d lay claim that if “Boo” is akin to a Wish album track then the six tracks that make up (five of them instruments0 M.B.K.A.W.W. is more akin to a collection of Wish-era B-sides widely mythologized by fans as specimens of etherial otherworldly beauty hidden away from all but b-side fanatics—check out “Twilight Garden" and “Play” for starters—and could it be mere coincidence that the Cure are releasing a 3-CD expanded edition of Wish this November including all four tracks from their fanclub-only Lost Wishes cassette in digital remastered form for the first time I think not…

…and while it’s possible I’ve devoted too many of my brain cells to Cure b-sides there could be a larger point to be made here about how dreampop and shoegaze are all about exploring interior mental-psychological states in sonic form (consider how both genre names are meant to evoke a dreamy disposition) spaces that are strongly shaped by memory and imagination…

…and just to take it one more level the name Dead Leaf Echo itself steeped in long and memory being taken from a passage near the end of Nabokov’s Lolita with Humbert-Humbert professing his fondness for a distant but yet still vivid memory, a memory that can’t be recreated but only recalled, but which reverberates all the stronger now even if it’s original animating force no longer exists…

 

…but enough of my blah blah blah. Rather than straining to make out distant echoes kinda like it feels like I’m doing now why not instead hear directly from the source with “the source” in this case being LG and what he has to say about Dead Leaf Echo and creativity and lockdown and the tribute to Jinsen Liu (RIP) from 28 degrees taurus that he helped put together a little over a week ago and luckily I got to speak with LG a little before the show in question and here’s some of what he had to say rendered to the best of my abilities. (Jason Lee)

****************************************************************************

LG from Dead Leaf Echo: In 2008 or so we were booked for the first time ever in Boston on a show with 28 Degrees Taurus and they were very friendly. We ended up doing three of the Deep Heaven Now festivals that Jinsen Liu (from 28 Degrees Taurus) put together. They super fun with a bunch of good bands. Brief Candles from Milwaukee are now dear friends.

The festival started in the ‘90s under different producers until Jinsen revived it. It features psychedelic, shoegaze and indie rock bands from all over the Northeastern Cast and Midwest. We’re made a lot of friends from different scenes and played more shows as a result.

We never got to do a Deep Heaven in New York City so as a tribute to Jinsen we set up a show with Footlight Presents at the Windjammer with both Brief Candles and Ceremony (Ceremony East Coast) on the bill. Ceremony are a two-piece who both just joined A Place To Bury Strangers last year. The next night we’re playing a Deep Heaven Now bill in Boston with a couple other local bands on the bill. Anna Karina [from 28 Degrees Taurus] booked that show and I organized the one here.

Me and Jinsen shared a love for music and for finding exciting new bands that we may went to tour with and thanks to knowing him and to Deep Heaven we’ve been able to network with bands from Boston and to see those bands and set up shows.

Right now I’m finishing up a record that was originally supposed to come out 2020. Everything’s just now getting back up to speed. I’ve got a new song [“Boo”] and music video coming up, and then hitting the West Coast in December. Lockdown was tough but on the other hand it helped a lot of artists and creative people even if it hurt in other ways.

I saw how it damage a lot of relationships around me. Saw other people suffer for it. Me personally, I thrived. Being a creative person—devastated by not touring, album being dropped by label—but I could at least use the extra time to create more. Any creative type found it useful in some way. It put me on a very set schedule. New York City is a very busy place and your time’s so valuable. And not having anywhere to be is a privilege.

That’s when the last EP [Milk.Blue.Kisses.And.Whalebone.Wishes] was made. It’s a concept album. All the albums are concept album. And collective—working with outside designers, musicians who come into the band, creating a total package of art. Milk.Blue.Kisses is built around themes of winter, isolationism, and the basic idea of not selling yourself short of your full potential. I have a more minimal setup at home compared to a professional studio, but it made me up my game. I used pandemic relief money to save up and get equipment, a much better mic for vocals and a new interface.

“Boo” is a bit more dealing with surveillance, paranoia. Coming out of the pandemic, the residual effects of it on the psyche.

It’s like a weight being lifted off our chests, after over two years. Playing live is a big part of it. Working in the studio and playing live and like the two sides of the brain musically, left and right brain.

Speaking of touring we got to tour Latin America for the first time this summer—visiting Mexico for second time but then to Guatemala, El Salvador, and back to Mexico City. We’ve been to Europe four times, it’s a whole different scene. Latin America isn’t saturated with this type of music. It’s a whole new style and people are really excited for it, It’s like an event with something new coming into town. You could feel it at every show. It also helped with upping my very basic Spanish a bit, and we got to meet lot of bands we’ve never heard of before.

The Deli: And finally, also speaking of touring, come December you can check out Dead Leaf Echo touring the West Coast (including a date in Vancouver, BC) plus a 11/12 blowout at the Polish Club in Phoenixville, PA and an early January 2023 date ushering in the New Year at TV Eye in Ridgewood, Queens…

 

photo by Vincent Schaffer

It may be a controversial position to hold especially amongst all the One Directioners out there watching with growing dismay as Harry Styles racks up number-one hit songs and Grammy noms (and to think he was expected to be the next AJ McLean!) thus making a 1D reunion ever more unlikely by the day…

…but boy band stans be damned The Deli Inc. fully endorses the efforts of band-affiliated musicians who choose to explore side projects and/or solo projects seeing as how we can’t imagine a world without the Tom Tom Club or the Breeders or Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes’s criminally underrated solo album or George Harrison’s early solo work or the Postal Service or Run the Jewels (hell, even Dee Dee Ramone’s rap album had it’s moments!) and besides the more musical seeds sown the better the odds of a good musical harvest…

…and I’m guessing Maya Ruth concurs because despite playing guitar in the up-and-coming NYC outfit known as Homade (a band already featured in the Deli no less!) she recently put out her debut solo single “bell jar” (well, ok, she’s already released a short vibey instrumental “ditmars blvd” named after the Astoria thruway but this is her first full-on song) and whereas if “bell jar” were a Homade song I’d expect to be a whimsically-satirical-sing-songy-Seussian tale of a high-school classroom science experiment gone awry…

…but Maya Ruth instead goes full on possessed-by-the-ghost-of-Sylvia-Plath with lyrics about how “in our minds we scream alone” seeing as “ this is life and not a song / in life nobody sings along”…

and instead of Homade’s Au Pairs meets Slits meets Flipper meets Josie Cotten on a blind date with Avril Lavigne kinda vibe, Maya Ruth goes for more of a Superunknown-era Soundgarden meets Julie Cruise meets Dum Dum Girls meets Broadcast meets Elliott Smith out on a date with Alice In Chains in "Nutshell" mode vibe and I hope you’ll excuse my when-X-meets-Y-meets-Z Tourettes syndrome…

…so in other words we’re talking a heavy-psych-laced-melancholic-etherial-slow-jam with a pretty sweet outro solo that’ll have you doing your best face-grimacing air guitar routine and should Homade as an entity decide to go all in on the side projects I’m hoping they’ll “pull a KISS” and put out one solo album a piece all to be released on the same day (except with far less filler!) because if it produces even one “New York Groove” or heck even a head-scratching, left-field Disney cover it’ll all have been worth it. (Jason Lee)

Readers’ note: If you’re inclined to skip straight ahead to the interview with Ana Karina Dacosta from 28 Degrees Taurus then by all means scroll down a few pages and you can’t miss it. Otherwise, The Deli invites you to enjoy the following misty-eyed reminiscences… 
********
Glasslands. Death By Audio. Cameo located behind the Lovin’ Cup Cafe. Cake Shop. Goodbye Blue Audio. Trash Bar. If the names above ring a bell it probably means that you were a live music junkie 10-to-20-years ago forever looking for a fix on the mean streets of turn-of-the-millennium Williamsburg and Bushwick and maybe even Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village…

…and while your average schmuck on the street today may have very well read Meet Me In The Bathroom and be able to tell the Strokes from the Interpols, Vampire Weekends from Moldy Peaches, it still doesn’t mean they’re experts on that particular chapter in New York City music history and I’d ask the nameless schmuck a couple questions like these as a litmus test: Did you see 28 Degrees Taurus when they played with You Aren’t My Mother and The Soundscapes at the Trash Bar on 11/19/2006? Or did you see them when they played with June Moris and Quiet Loudly on 10/28/2007 also at the Trash Bar?  

I’m guessing the answer’s "no" and not to humble-brag too much but I was at both of those gigs and that’s why I’m paid the big bucks to write for the Deli instead of some schmuck on the street who probably doesn’t even have a real name but I digress…

…with the larger point being that the bedrock of New York City’s indie-rock aughts salad days was less rooted in familiar names that anyone would know and more so rooted in names that are long forgotten or never on the radar. I mean, just consider the hundreds upon hundreds of bands and other musical artists who play NYC venues week after week, month after month, at glorified dive bars like the aptly named Trash Bar…

…a bar known for its adventurous and/or simply anarchic booking practices and its ratty basement couches and its glistening tater tots served up fresh out of the deep fryer from behind the bar and…suddenly I’m flasing back to the time I watched a highly inebriated woman assume a reverse cowboy position over a men’s room urinal at the Trash Bar and take a long, no-doubt satisfying piss without a single drop hitting the floor and that’s about as "indie sleaze" as it gets isn’t it…

…and while I don’t pretend to be any better at remembering names than the next functional alcoholic—somehow or other I’ve managed to retain a few of them despite partaking in a few too many "5 Jägermeister shots for 10 dollars" drink special at the Continental (talk about your trashy bars!) back around that same time—I do clearly remember Strange Things Done In The Midnight Sun and Coyote Eyes and 28 Degrees Taurus with 28dt being a personal fave around the years 2006-09, a Boston-based duo with rotating drummer and occcasional additional collaborators, that played up and down the Eastern Seaboard on a regular basis…

…not to mention how 28dt played on bills with one or two bands that my own band "back in the day" also played with which is pretty cool and all (apologies for all the not-so-humble bragging) but the point here is that I’d be willing to wager five Jäger shot that a few of you or more are less than "six degrees of separation" away from 28 Degrees Taurus too…

…seeing as how the band’s main songwriter/guitarist/multi-instrumentalist/backing vocalist/record producer Jinsen Liu is someone who knew lots and lots of people and who was positioned as a central node attached to some of coolest of musical entities and events across New England and beyond but he was never one to brag or even to humble brag about it…

…and when it comes to the actual music 28 Degrees Taurus has been described as “explosive, intense, dreamy, ultra romantic neo-psychedelic/ambient/indie rock walking the thin line between darkness and light” with live shows described as “loud, ultra high energy, psychedelic, chaotic freak out session usually done on mass quantities of alcohol” but whose recorded output occilates to the other end of the shoegaze spectrum with “dreamy, intimate and romantic influences including 60s pop, Japanese noise, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, Slowdive, and The Bee Gees” as described in what I’m guessing may have been their old MySpace band bio… 

…but plagiarism aside if I had to guess how 28 Degrees Taurus got their name I’d say "Taurus" reflects their Taurus-like embrace of warmth and earthiness and sensuality, but then there’s often an underlying chill, or even a haunted quality, that also frequently present what with all the woozy near-ASMR vocals and the eerily chiming guitars…

…not to mention 28dt’s frequent use of Eastern scales and Medieval-like parallel intervals, basslines that chase the guitar’s shadow and lyrics that are tap into a guile-free immediacy, so with all this in mind I figure the “28 Degrees” part of their name could be a reference to the body temperature (measured in Celsius) that’s the lowest you can go without catching hypothermia so in other words it’s chilly…

…but a little chill never deterred the Taurus-like perseverance of 28 Degrees Taurus who released five full-lengths plus a remix EP over the course of a dozen years culminating with 2019’s Lost & Found singles compilation but then in March 2020 Jinsen Liu tragically passed away at 42 years of age which besides being an unfathomably terrible loss for his friends and family and for longtime bestie-bandmate Ana Karina Dacosta, is also a terrible loss for the the Boston music scene and beyond…

…in light of his unyielding work (though I doubt he ever thought of as "work") supporting emerging artists, booking shows, and generally acting as a hub of Boston’s local music scene, and I haven’t even mentioned Deep Heaven Now yet, a a multi-venue festival and meetup that Jinsen instigated and curated in 2010 (and also in subsequent years with later editions) catering to psych/shoegaze/ambient/experimental artists not only from Boston and Massachusetts but also from across the Northeast and Midwest regions and the whole thing was a tribute of sorts to similar gatherings held in ’90s Boston that helped shape Jinsen’s own musical tastes and his hyper-local perspective…

…but on Friday 10/21 it’s Jinsen Liu’s turn to be on the receiving end of a musical tribute taking place at the Windjammer in  Ridgewood, Queens as presented by The Footlight Presents, and despite the tragic circumstances that led to the show it’s sure to be a barnburner because that’s how Jinsen would have wanted it…

…with producers and participants looking to put on a raucous celebration of Jinsen’s life, because rumor has it that his life was pretty raucous at times but in the best possible sense, and it’ll feature the music of 28 Degrees Taurus as performed by Ana Karina with special guests (in keeping with the band’s collaborative ethos) plus a stacked lineup with sets by Dead Leaf Echo, Ceremony (the East Coast Ceremony) and Brief Candles visiting all the way from Milwaukee so here’s your perfect chance to get caught up on what was happening at the Trash Bar in 2006 and ’07…

…and one last piece of sliver lining to this dark cloud is that I got a chance to speak to Ana Karina, Jinsen’s partner and collaborator in 28dt across its entire lifespan, so check out the transcription below where A.K. was kind enough to share some compelling memories of Jinsen and 28dt…

…and in closing The Deli offers our deepest condolences to Jinsen Liu’s loved ones, and raises a glass for all the great music he created and facilitated, not to mention all the lives he touched and enriched, and we hope that at this very moment he’s looking up some old contacts who’ve likewise passed over and planning his next musical blowout in that great DIY space in the sky, but until you get a chance to check one of his Deep Heaven Afterlife shows we say "get thee to the Windjammer" for a sneak preview… (Jason Lee)

 

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Ana Karina Dacosta: I have the best memories of driving around in Jinsen’s shimmering pastel green Honda Civic listening to the Bee Gees , and a lot of other music he loved or was currently working on. A lot of his friends remember doing the same thing with him as well, it was a real era! It was definitely some of our personal best times, Without fail it always built up to us driving aimlessly listening to "Alone." We shared this deep and ridiculous respect for how undeniably cool Barry Gibb sounded in the opening lines to that song and all of the songs he sang….."I was a midnight rider on a cloud of smoke, I could make a woman hang on every single stroke"—like, what kind of badass says that?? A lot of our bonding came from overanalyzing Bee Gee’s lyrics.

That era was also spent at a lot of house shows and open mics, consistently and possibly the most fruitful was the All Asia (RIP) on Wednesday nights, where he made so many true friends, it’s hard to describe how many but a huge core of his life were friends he made there.

In our first iteration we were called Red Skies, Let’s Die with me on cello playing through a reverb/delay pedal. They were all instrumental songs. Eventually we had a keyboard player named Dan, who was brilliant on keys, and Alyson on drums. She was and still is an amazing drummer and percussionist,and a lot of our later songs carried over that sound. 

We could only get shows with the local Goth community, who were all of these amazing people and bands Jinsen had followed or knew from some place or another. We made a lot of meaningful friendships during that time, such as Kris Thompson who is an anchor and beloved scene captain and musician in Boston with so many bands I would need to make a loooong list!! We played all over the place as Red Skies. I’d nearly forgotten but we were pretty active. 

When 28dt was forming, Jinsen had recruited his "Gemini friend" from High School in Andover, MA, Erika, to play bass with him. He said astrologically it was perfect and that she was maximum rock’n’roll which she really is. I just happened to be at his parents house on the first day they were supposed to practice. The night before though, at a 28 Degrees Taurus show, she’d met a guy named Dan who later became her husband. So for obvious reasons she blew off the rehearsal! I said I would try to play along since I had played the cello and it had four strings, how bad could it be?!

When we transitioned to 28 Degrees Taurus I’d never been the singer in a band before so he would play the demos and I naturally altered my singing voice to mimic his. He loved to sing, but also just wanted to play guitar and come in and out of singing. It’s funny how truly haphazard it was in the beginning. He didn’t really set expectations and as far as I remember–never gave much advice or directives on how I or anyone should play anything, EVER! 

I really loved doubling his guitar parts on bass which made me feel very heavy metal, and Jinsen loved Black Sabbath and lots of multi-metal genres which is probably why he never said anything. The band was never just the two of us because we always worked together with drummers and with other collaborators sometimes, although I would say it was all him running the show. But he would always say it was me. The truth is it was really whoever was drumming for us at the time. 

It was always the drummers who kept the band functioning, shaped the sound and kept things moving in all ways. Every single one of them. Barry, Kyle, Greg, Ian….Max. Who else? Has to be more! I only wanted to take over drumming for Lost & Found, since Jinsen used a drum machine to record all of the drum parts and there was no bass on it. Chrissy Prisco, aka Chris Face, is legendary in our history as well. She went everywhere with us for years and was a huge part of the band dynamic. Our sister for sure. It was always her and the drummers who kept the band moving forward. We were so lucky 

And the words you hear in a lot of lyrics were just things that Jinsen would say like “ “I wanna party! I wanna drink! I wanna feel like this forever. I don’t wanna fuckin’ think!” but with a big hint of humor. These were just his thoughts rolling off his tongue. Another person may’ve said “we need to rework these lyrics,” but we would just laugh at the thought and keep going with it. 

Jinsen was such a social butterfly, so it was easy for him writing from experience. He loved being out at night. He loved to pretend he was a werewolf! He loved meeting new people. He was a local nightlife icon, he called himself the Paris Hilton of Allston, MA for a long time, it was funny!

There are a lot of endearing and wild stories with Jinsen. One night he stayed out for the entire night in New York City and when he finally came back to where we were staying he’d lost his glasses and told us this whole story aboutI hanging out with some new friends and losing his glasses, getting lost and feeling his way along the curb and finally passing out and getting bitten by a rat which elated him, like it was “a great night out in New York” by anyone’s standards!! 

And then he revived the ‘90s Boston psych-rock fest Deep Heaven, with the name tweaked to Deep Heaven Now. He Jinsen was always inspired by watching and observing other people and how they, went about supporting the scene. And he was nostalgic for the people who had guided him along when he got into playing. Jinsen was very sponge-like, always taking in information and inspiration from others, with a mind like a trap for retaining information and remembering people. He must have had a mental Rolodex the way he could keep so many people’s names in his brain. 

It was really impressive and admirable how many people he communicated with in his life and how he could instantly remember the name of an old online friend he made on GeoCities Chat in 1996.It was a valuable skill to have when a lot of music was being shared between people on physical media all over the place, sending CD’s through the post office to each other. Remarkable!

He organized all of our tours and lots of other tours. He made all our records. There’s all these Midwestern bands that I am sure would give him credit for the group of likeminded bands and a whole scene that came out of meeting at Deep Heaven Now. Speaking of which, Brief Candles from Milwaukie will be playing the Brooklyn show.

It’s hard for me to say it, because I feel so close to him still and I know his many many friends do as well. I feel in my heart that he would not live a life with any guard rails. He always told me that we have to accept people for who they are and how they live. He was not afraid of dark waters. He worked hard to be a spiritual warrior despite any demons, and he was exceptional at his core essence. He was quite magical.It was the only way for him. Jinsen had a lot of seasons in his life and that will be visible at these shows. But it won’t even do him justice because no one else could possibly be another Jinsen and I love him for that. Even when we weren’t getting along, we loved each other and the music too much to consider ending 28dt.

If he didn’t have demons, and didn’t confront his demons head on, Jinsen probably wouldn’t have made the music he did. And we all wouldn’t have had the intense relationship we had with him and with each other as friends. A lot of folks call me when they’re thinking about him. I love that. I feel lucky that I knew him. I didn’t even mention how metaphysical Jinsen was. He read people’s charts all the time. You can hear it in the music. He thought we were all here to teach each other and to learn from each other. 

At his memorial in 2020, the bar tab for his wake came to $666. He would have loved that!

photo by Tasha Lutek

The piano isn’t exactly the coolest instrument in the public imagination these days and it hasn’t been for a good while which yeah of course there’s plenty of cool piano music out there but not like back in the day like say 19th-century Europe up to its armpits in mad genius sex-crazed pianist-composers roaming the continent like the polonaise-playing rock stars of their day…

…wantonly indulging in sex, drugs, and Rachmaninoff and not even the most shameful STD of the century could stop Byronic fops like Robert "Mad Bob" Schumann from writing some truly sick tunes (wordplay!) made only sicker by the syphilis-induced “hallucinations and horrors and psychological conflicts reflected in [their’] music” this according to an article entitled “Syphilis’ Impact on Late Works of Classical Music Composers” published in the July 2021 issue of International Journal of Urologic History which makes for great bathroom reading…YEAH I JUST WENT THERE SO F*CKING WHAT!

…and heck even well into the 20th century the piano was still pretty damn hip, take for instance the early-century rise of stride, ragtime, and boogie-woogie piano styles or the decades-long dominance of Tin Pan Alley which birthed the modern day hit parade by selling millions of copies of piano-based sheet music to the All-American masses ultimately displaced by the piano-pounding R&B shouters and early rock ’n’ rollers of the mid-20th-century…

…but this all changed somewhere between then and now and personally I’m inclined to hold Giorgio Moroder and Peter Criss of KISS responsible cuz in the first case when the Italian synth wizard teamed up with disco queen Donna Summer for “I Feel Love” in 1977 the synthesizer was transformed overnight—once the primary province of pretentious prog rock profligacy—into a booty-shaking, floor-filling miracle machine and why would anyone wanna play a dumb ol’ piano ever again…

…meanwhile a year earlier the fire breathing, blood spewing, all-night partiers known as KISS scored their first top ten hit with a piano-driven ballad called “Beth” featuring the band’s raspy-voiced, pussy-faced drummer apologizing (apologizing!) to his titular lady friend for staying out too late rockin’ out with the boys and at precisely this moment the piano became the antithesis of cool… 

…and don’t even get me started on Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” (an easy target, I realize, but still!) with its self-regarding, pseudo-Dylanesque portrait of a “piano man” who despite being lucky enough to be gainfully employed at a local watering hole and to be much loved by its regular clientele (“it’s me they’ve been comin’ to see”) nonetheless looks down his nose at all the pathetic, self-deluded saps (“they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness”) who hang out at the piano bar…

…but never mind Billy Joel or Peter Criss or Donna Summer because this article is about SEAN SPADA (obviously!) and SEAN SPADA is the real deal, a hard-working, consummate-pro piano everyman who would never dream of insultingly patronizing the sad sacks at the bar because clearly he identifies with and counts himself among the sad sacks at the bar (“the world is too much, I’m not enough”) facing down life’s dead-ends and cul-de-sacs with steely resolve, fatalistic wit, and a clutch of jazz-laced seven- and nine-chords on his new album The Wild Ride…

…a record that’s not lacking for Leonard Cohen/Tom Waits type vibes like when Sean wonders aloud “am I lost? / am I found?” before conceding that “sometimes I just prefer to be / spaaaaacing oooout” which is a theme explored at length on numbers like “Spacing Out, Pt. 1” and “Spacing Out, Pt,. 2,” songs that are fittingly full of stereo-panned mindfuckery (theremins and vocoders and vibraslaps, oh my!) so pass the bong, yo…

…but it’s “Doppelgänger Jungle” that’s the biggest head trip of all, a six-and-a-half-minute epic tale of “shadow selves escaping from my dreams” glanced by our narrator on every other street corner, a paranoic but pretty rad fantasy matched to a soundtrack of planetarium-ready percolating synths and a whole entire part that sounds like a Steely Dan/ELO/Boz Skaggs mashup and finally an extended breakdown coda section with “breakdown” being the operative word that slowly-but-surely builds back up to a swirling vortex of sound before trailing off again with some airy vocal harmonies floating off into the ether like a puff of fog machine smoke in the corner of a run down piano bar…

…so needless to say it’s a wild ride akin to “Pablo Cruise in purgatory” (pull quote!) or if you prefer a cross "between Randy Newman and Huey Lewis" but either way it’s a ride that never flies off the rails thanks to the ever-present guard rails of Sean’s sensitive, skillful piano playing to the point where I’m moved to proclaim The Wild Ride the world’s first psychedelic piano lounge yacht-rock-run-aground rock operetta, a character study of a piano man who may be “Set Up To Self Destruct” but who’s nonetheless “Getting on the Highway” with predictable results perhaps but all the more stirring for seeing it coming…

…so in closing we recommend you pour yourself a double on the rocks and don’t forget the swizzle stick (because…stirring!) before dropping the digital needle on Sean Spada’s The Wild Ride and when he observes in the album-opening “When You’re Crazy” that “the only sane way to truly be yourself” is to embrace your own craziness you’ll no doubt slowly and sagely nod your head and raise your glass to toast the bittersweet poignancy of it all. (Jason Lee)