People scream for all sorts of different reasons. Out of fear. Ecstasy. Anger. Exultation. To lose control for a moment. To seize control of the moment. 

But when you hear someone actually let out a hair-raising scream for reals any potential ambiguity usually melts away. Is the screamer in question about to be murdered? Or to achieve orgasm? Fly into a rage? Visit the astral plane? You can usually tell because screams aren’t about being subtle. They don’t need words to communicate. 

But notice how I said “usually” and “usually” (critical readers are sensible readers!) because, for starters, some of the most memorable screams in musical history are impossible to pin down and classify. Like for instance take Little Richard’s scream before the sax solo in “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” Or Roger Daltry’s protracted wail at the end of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Or Kathleen Hanna demanding to know “HOW TO LOSE CONTROOOL!!!” with a shriek of defiance and ecstasy and dread all mixed together in one. These are primordial screams. Multiple emotional hues are contained within. 

JessX’s new single “Scream” (an exclusive premiere! for the next several hours!) is a song I’d venture to say falls squarely under the primordial scream heading to the point where it makes me wonder if the band have been studying the works of Arthur Janov or maybe Babes in Toyland. Either way, band-leading singer-screamer-songwriter Jess Rosa outlines some of the reasons they have for screaming in lyrics highlighting family stress, financial strain, romantic anguish, future uncertainty, existential doubt, general boredom and frustration, desire for liberation, and even good ol’ physical release and emotional exhilaration however induced (I’ve had my highs but fuck my lows) so yeah this song is very explicitly about the primordial scream that contains multitudes come to think of it.

But here’s the thing: for most of the “Scream” there’s no screaming at all. Instead, Jess sighs and whispers, whimpers, groans, growls, snarls, mewls, moans, murmurs and meows over a new wavey bass guitar driven groove that gradually builds in intensity with layers of wire-y guitar dissonance and intensifying volume building up a delicious tension that reminds me a little bit of Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia” and “Youth Against Fascism” (dated references, yes, but nothing’s dated about fascism these days!) so in other words this is a song that’s about the need to scream as much as screaming itself (I wanna fucking scream so loud…should I just do it?) and the need to release all the fragmentary, chaotic voices we all carry around within whether we admit it or not (I feel so trapped with my friends / I got two of them in my fucking head).

And it’s not just a conceptual thing either cuz you can actually hear the chorus of internal voices in “Scream” thanks to the magic of vocal overdubbing (headphones recommended!) first singing in near-unison but soon breaking off into dialogue and ultimately into babel as the voices becomes more insistent and clearly differentiated taking over entirely in the breakdown section (PMRC warning: subliminal messages!) until the much-anticipated scream finally arrives near the end of the song and it’s equally unsettling and cathartic when it does with the howling choir ping-ponging around inside your skull (again, headphones!) like a swarm of bats released from the belfry just like in the music video. (see top of page!)

But to be clear it’s not all down to the vocals (however powerful!) or digital bat graphics (however cool!) because JessX is a five-piece also featuring the musical talents of Avi Henig (guitar/production), Eva Smittle (bass), Matii Dunietz (drums, production) and multi-instrumentalist Bernardo Ochoa a.k.a. Panther Hollow all of whom make their presence strongly felt. And next the Deli recommend you check out their full-length LP Baby Faced (2021) because “Scream” merely makes explicit what that defiantly queer debut album is about and how good JessX are at taking elements of emo-adjacent pop-punk, avant-garde post-punk (Raincoats, LiLipUT/Kleenex, Slits, X-Ray Spex, you get the idea) and glitter-caked glam rock all poured into a Cuisinart and set on purée with the occasional ukulele thrown into the mix and incidentally Jess Rosa grew up in Hawaii before relocating to NYC a couple or few years back.

And ever since JessX has served as a sonic diary for Jess’s journeys not to mention the collective journey of its members. Or as Jess Rosa puts it when it comes to “Scream” specifically: “This song was more of a freestyle with some retakes. I remember recording this with my friends and just feeling safe enough to scream my head off. I feel like out of all the music I have put out, this one is definitely lyrically unfiltered and I had no problem saying what I was feeling in that exact moment. I spoke about everything that was built inside me during those months of 2021. Recording this was the most therapeutic thing to do during the mental state I was in.” And this is a great summation of why you should start a band immediately (send us your demo tape!) but until then you can always scream along vicariously to "Scream." (Jason Lee) 

By most accounts, including this one, Quelle Chris is a chameleonic, virtuosic veteran rapper-producer–writer who was born up in upstate New York and subsequently bounced around between California, Brooklyn, and various Midwest locales (such is the fate of shoe designer progeny) while calling Detroit home and gathering acclaim for his intricate, oft-satirical raps and sonically dense highbrow "lo-fi" productions. And if that’s not enough to win you over he also keeps good company being a longtime Motor City colleague of Danny Brown plus husband to New York City’s Wonder Woman of R.A.P. music, Jean Grae.

But if you check out Quelle’s latest long player, the self-produced DEATHFAME (with co-production by Chris Keys and Knxwledge on several tracks) released this last Friday by Mello Music Group, best be ready to get sucked into the album’s dark, dank vortex which is all but inevitable starting with the soul-gospel-infused-blunted-out-funk-crawl of “Alive Ain’t Always Living” which is like an ambivalent re-write of “Be Thankful For What You Got" (if everything happens for a reason / I ain’t really got shit else to do) through to the introspective piano ballad sung by a sad computer (“How Could They Love Something Like Me?”) right up to the final track declaring it "might spin off on a tangent when an answer’s needed” (don’t come to Quelle Chris looking for answers, but he’ll help you ask the right questions!) and I don’t feel entirely out of line calling DEATHFAME “a hip hop There’s A Riot Goin’ On” which is a good thing because it’s exactly what we need right now.

Another good thing is how the production on DEATHFAME feels like rifling through an old sonic junk drawer full of music boxes running on low batteries and fuzzed out organs and well worn-in upright basses. Plus there’s the assorted ghostly warblings and ranting diatribes and suspense-movie cues recorded straight off the TV. All of which lends the album a Post Millennial Tension tension with malformed pearls of wisdom interspersed between garbled CB transmissions in the midst of an alien visitation which only underscores Quelle’s body-snatching vocal shapeshifting from track-to-track sometimes even morphing in the middle of a song.

Not that it matters. But “So Tired You Can’t Stop Dreaming” is the first song I heard off this record and it made an immediate impression with its chopped-up-and-screwed avant-jazz-piano-loop set against a herky jerky beat that sounds like a car riding on rims after a blowout and oddly enough it’ll make you wanna move your body in several incompatible directions at once, all topped off by Quelle’s hypnotic, polyrhythmic bars dancing in and around the beat like Ali in his prime and same goes for Brooklyn’s own Navy Blue who goes hard in the paint on the song’s back half and tells us about going “one on one with myself and I been above the rim” and I believe him.

Another couple lines on "So Tired" describes how “deep cuts heal the listener / quicker than it heals the man bleedin’ when he wrote it” which is not just some witty record-nerd wordplay but also gets to the LP’s overriding theme which is the "fame game" and its discontents (I’m the GOAT, everybody knew it / but don’t nobody know us) and how these discontents speak to our lives more generally in the midst of a social-media age where image play and online beefs and 24-hour performativity have been normalized to a degree that used to be exclusive to celebrities. 

It’s something to think about. But here’s the line that really gets me: “if Heaven’s got a ghetto, Hell’s got a resort.” At first it just seemed like a cool phrase but as the horrifying and soon-to-be infuriating news unfolded over this past weekend the profundity of the line started to sink in. Because it not only speaks to celebrity and exclusivity, but also a key tenet of laissez-faire capitalism and White Supremacist propaganda among other things—and that’s the notion that divisions between races and genders and socio-economic groups etc. are born out of in-born, natural and normal difference between groups of human.

Ergo even paradise has gotta have a "ghetto" and what’s the good of living "the good life" if everybody’s got it good? Plus, ghettos help draw physical lines of demarcation between Us and Them. Likewise, Hell requires a resort for its rich inhabitants because they’re not as steely as many of the other residents who came from hell in the first place. Plus wha you think the Devil’s a commie?! Of course there’s exclusive resorts in Hell because the Devil understands the power of divide and conquer.

Ergo the conceptual basis of White Supremacy: drawing a strict line between Us and Them where They will always be a threat to Us, and therefore We must keep Them in Their Place literally and figuratively, and by force if necessary, but with the assurance that We are always fully justified in our actions. And that’s how you end up with bullshit so-called theories like “replacement theory" that only serves to prop up paranoid fantasies and to justify barbarity.

And then there’s the whole strategy of perverting Civil Rights discourse into “grievance politics” and subsequently playing the victim in every situation—even in seemingly "good" situations—like the anti-abortionists getting all up in arms about a Supreme Court leak nevermind having just gotten what they wanted for nearly 50 years. And hey, not sure exactly where I’m going with this but it’s downright disturbing how easily the foxes have taken over the henhouse.

In closing, I feel somewhat beholden to offer a small glimmer of hope in the midst of all this mess (and who better than a music blogger to give the people hope!) and so I’ll hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, the democratizing impulse of an artist like Quelle Chris—whose music contains multitudes—will one day become the norm. And that maybe some day off in the distant future we’ll no longer need ghettos or resorts. (Jason Lee)

Other recommended listening:

• Innocent Country 2, with Chris Keys (2020)
• Guns (2019)
• Everything’s Fine, with Jean Grae (2018)

The artist known as Dotia (aka Jamie McVicker) is what you could call a peripatetic artist, “peripatetic” being a term you may wanna learn for your SATs if you happen to fall in the younger end of the Deli demographic. Which is to say Dotia’s done a good deal of traveling in the span of her twenty-and-not-so-many-something years much like the traveling minstrels of yore. 

To wit: the now Brooklyn-based-singer-songwriter-pianist-guitarist first moved to NYC from her native Naples, Florida in Fall of 2016 to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Drama Division, before leaving in December 2017 to pursue music, moving to Detroit and forming a band and playing local gigs, then moving on to Vermont to live in an old family home, recording four singles and her first EP with Andrew Koss, and then back to Florida to ride out the pandemic where she ended up writing and playing music with musician/audio engineer/newfound friend Ian Horrocks who’d traveled East from Atlanta to do seasonal farm work and ended up being her bandmate and record producer, and after nearly decamping to Copenhagen to join her friend Emme in the City of Spires, Jamie instead made her way back to NYC with another friend who was also returning to Gotham. Got it? Good!

 So it’s no wonder that Dotia’s songs have a restless unwilling-to-be-hemmed-in quality. Or that on her new EP, titled Misery (out today!), the cover image depicts a cluster of brightly-colored balloons straining skyward but thwarted by a heavy lead weight attached to their dangly bits which pretty much explains the source of the misery in question.

 Or, if you still can’t figure it out from the cover image and the aforementioned details, the first song on the EP (“Lilith”) should do the trick because it’s named after the first woman on Earth who soon got tired of Adam hogging the TV remote and declared the Garden of Eden to be a crashing bore thus hitting the road for bigger and better things which made her beau Adam none too pleased (ergo, Eve) and ditto The Great Patriarch in the Sky who shape-shifted Lilith into a demon and an Eve-trolling Garden Snake (typical patriarchal move: pitting one woman against another even when only two of them exist on the entire planet!) but still she continued to outmaneuver the The Most High, fully owning her newfound “demonic” identity as the very embodiment of the Divine Feminine and a moon-lovin’ phase-shifting fertility goddess who was eventually written out of the Bible of course.

Or as Dotia puts it herself, “Lilith in this song represents the rebellious feminine spirit and has no desire to be contained or overlooked” and from its opening strains you can feel the otherworld atmospherics wash over you that you’d expect from a deity-defying moon goddess who looks over all the world’s “beatific consorts / creeping among living things” and who “chooses separation / over constraint any day” and hey I’m not trying to set the bar too impossibly high here but the song does make me think of “Sara”-era Stevie Nicks crossed with the modern day magical mystery psych folk of a group like Still Corners. 

And I haven’t even mentioned yet how “Lilith” contains a couple of my favorite couplets of late: 1) “Do not tempt her / she’s got long legs and a short temper”; and 2) “Blind dragon viper of the night / drinking all the dregs of the wine (yeah we’re the dregs of the wine)” so clearly you don’t wanna mess with Lilith unless you really mean it, imbued as she is with the serpentine intensity of your traditional film noir siren like equal parts Lana Turner and Lana Del Rey.

The next song on the EP is the title track “Misery” and basically it’s like the flip side to “Lilith” describing how a mortal woman deals with outside forces trying to hold her down (Dotia: “[it’s] a closure song written to reassure oneself that a previous lover was going to be nothing but miserable company and a black hole that takes everyone down with them”) and therefore it makes sense for its mystical vibes to be mixed with a more Sheryl Crow-ish kind of groove (“You laced my dreams with expired antihistamines”) building up a nice head of steam in the instrumental outro of the song. 

And hey before I forget lemme roll the not-quite-final-credits as provided by Dotia herself: the Misery EP was recorded in Naples and Atlanta with songs written and recorded by Jamie/Dotia and Ian Horrocks producing and contributing various instrumental parts. There’s also live drums played by Hunter Keslar and additional lead guitar by Darickson Gonzalez. The EP was mixed by Ezra Pounds and mastered by Danny Kalb.

And finally, spiritual assistance was provided by Shit Show Studios, a New York City multi–media creative collaborative co-founded by Jamie/Dotia and her friend Emme Kerj (see above, Copenhagen) under the guiding principle of “Come As You Are” designed to provide artists of various stripes the freedom to explore free of inhibitions: “By making room for spontaneity and open-mindedness…voices or subtle messages become legible; by allowing chaos and mess to come and go as they please, true beauty begins to stand out and oppose the non-important elements."

Which all segues nicely into the last two songs on Misery which allow for a more un-Lilith-like relinquishing of control. “Shy Fruit” is about a relationship “forbidden by present circumstances and hidden by an obstructed view,” a song of waiting in vain that floats wistfully by over its three-and-a-half-minute running time (“My shy fruit are you ripe yet?”) with “Exit 3” serving as a flip-side extension of the same theme, a “diary-like…angrier ending to the previous sweeter/softer song” that sees a potential paramour missing every exit to his destination, driving off into the night but never fully escaping. And how perfect is it for a record inspired by a peripatetic’s misery at being locked down—literally and metaphorically—to end on an endless highway to who knows where…? (Jason Lee)

photo by Ada Chen

 Junkyard dogs get a bad rap. Sure, they’re prone to being mean and vicious with a spooky demonic stare just like those Rottweiler hellhounds in the Omen movies (graveyard dogs and junkyard dogs share a close bond!) but it’s very likely more often the case that the “junkyard dogs” in question are in reality more agitated and anxious than they are mean just for mean’s sake, not to mention being afflicted with cataracts and living off whatever discarded scraps they can scrounge up whilst being deliberately mistreated by their owners as a means to turn them hostile and aggressive all the better to guard their master’s junkyard. 

Which just goes to show how we’re all products of our environment. The Brooklyn-based four-piece Edna clearly understand the complexities at play as they’ve just released an emotive, empathetic song about a “Junkyard Dog” (Favorite Friend Records, click above to listen) and really its about time somebody did. Edna is led by singer-songwriter-guitarist Michael Tarnofsky who is noted for his “imagistic songwriting [which] drifts through crowded bars and city streets…highlight[ing] conversations between couples at the end of their ropes and strangers learning what they have in common” and who better to write a song about the "junkyard dog" that lives within us all, mangy but unmalicious, just trying to get by to the best of our abilities. Or as Mr. Tarnofsky puts it in the climatic chorus, “Yeah, I’m nervous / yeah, all the time” which only makes one feel sympathy for the poor mutt.

But it’s not all down to lyrics because the shaggy dog story of Edna’s “Junkyard Dog” is just as ably conveyed though the sensitive musical strains of Nick LaFalce on bass and drums (recorded shortly before drummer Andrew Rahm joined up) with Justin Mayfield also on guitar. And you can just tell the song is going to hit you “right there” right from its opening moments with the boys in the band building an understated-yet-ornate citadel of sorrow constructed piece-by-piece from a mere electric piano drone, strummed acoustic chords, chiming guitar harmonics, woozy drums ‘n’ bass and an insistent bent-note guitar figure that’s less bark and more (emotional) bite that sounds for all the world like a dog’s mournful moan at the moon. 

And so when the lyrics enter declaring that “if God’s living in me / he’d better start paying rent” you already understand the mindset at play and anyway who wants the Almighty squatting in his or her head especially if He’s just gonna leave it all junked up with “Guitar World magazines and old cigarettes” and it’s no wonder when it comes to the song’s haunted subject “you can talk in your sleep, bark like a junkyard dog / tell a lie like Marvin Gaye sings a song” because let’s be frank who wouldn’t react this way under such difficult circumstances and check out that cool little fury-collapsing-in-on-itself-in-futile-form guitar line that literally depicts the “bark” in question which says it all really.

Final "fun fact" side note: The familiar image of the savage junkyard dog was in no small part popularized though Jim Croce’s 1973 #1 hit single “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” which depicts its title subject as an alpha male from the South Side of Chicago (“the baddest man in the whole damn town / badder than old King Kong / and meaner than a junkyard dog”) who nonetheless gets his comeuppance in the final stanza. And with no disrespected intended toward the deceased, or to another great songwriter to boot, we owe it to Edna for rehabilitating the image of the junkyard dog as more being akin to Old Yeller after getting bitten by a rabid wolf than to the devilish Cereberus standing guard at the gates of Hades. (Jason Lee)

N.B. Edna celebrates the release of "Junkyard Dog," the first in a series of singles to be released in the coming months, with a live show on Friday, May 13th (tickets HERE) alongside Atlas Engine, Matilde Heckler, and Kayla Silverman at The Broadway.

Photo by Alex Joseph

The artist known as Oceanator lives up to her moniker on Nothing’s Ever Fine (Polyvinyl Record Co.), the Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist’s second full-length release—co-produced with her brother/longtime bandmate Mike Okusami as well as Bartees Strange—an album that rolls in on a gentle tide of arpeggiated guitar and loping drums before a crashing wave of power chords and glistening melody disrupts the dewy vibe of the opening track “Morning,” a tidal dynamic that’s also at play on the album’s final track “Evening” which depicts the “sky fad[ing] from black to red” in a waltz-time arrangement utilizing acoustic guitar, Mellotron, a choir of cicadas, and a final burst of sonic fireworks akin to that great yellow-red orb of ours putting on a fiery light show just before it slips under the oceanic horizon.

In other words, this is an album that captures both the ocean’s shimmering translucent beauty (see: the outro to “Summer Rain”) and its sheer, unforgiving raw power (see: “Post Meridian”/“Stuck”) and you’d best keep an eye out for its dark emotional undertow too (e.g., “Bad Brain Daze”) which can suck you under at a moment’s notice.

And just in case you think I’m blowing smoke up your funnel (who me?!) the high tide/low tide oceanic theme is made explicit in more than a few of the record’s lyrics which contrast, for instance, the American Pastorale of driving out to the beach with a “cherry coke and crumpled bag of french fries lying on the passenger seat” with the more fatalistic admission that “by the ocean is where I wanna be / when this all comes to an end / crack a cold one and watch the tsunamis come / surrounded by my friends” sung over a buoyant power-pop arrangement. 

This arresting mix of escapism and fatalism fits neatly within Elise Okusami aka Oceanator’s self-professed love of science fiction writing, in particular as authored by Black female writers, a literary genre known for exploring the extremes of utopian/dystopian thinking—consider for instance Octavia Butler’s deft interweaving of humanism and hope with her prescient depiction of this century’s convergence of climate crisis and reactionary politics in her two Parable novels written in the ‘90s—and it’s not hard to see why various protagonists on Nothing’s Ever Fine express the desire to “strike out on our own / trying to find a new home” allowing that “all I wish, all I want / is to be on another planet with you.” (Jason Lee)

Oceanator kicks off a 22-date national tour in Phoenix on May 20th, and plays seven dates across the UK in late August and early September.

Opening salvo: For those in the NYC/Brooklyn region, My Son The Doctor performs live tomorrow night (5/7) at The Broadway with Blonde Otter and Toobin

My Son The Doctor (MSTD) surely have make their mothers proud because here’s a band that is both a spokesband for their generation (see “King of the Zoomers” below, track one) but that also caters to the tastes of Gen X critics such as myself (critics who can make or break a professional musical career at the drop of a blog post!) because for instance it’d be really easy for me to write something like “MSTD bring together the tightly-wound nervy energy of the pre-Brian Eno Talking Heads with Mission of Burma’s slashing guitar attack and Wire’s fragmented minimalism, but overlaid with Pavement’s laconic drawl and Guided By Voice’s bracing brevity, with the four young fresh fellow’s Zappa-esque sardonic sense of humor serving as the cherry on top.”

But thank goodness I’d never resort to such overheated, over-referential, word-salad rhetoric just to impress their mothers.

And it’s additionally impressive that Brian Hemmert (vocals), Joel Kalow (guitar), John Mason (drums), and Matt Nitzberg (bass) have applied their M.D.’s and Ph.D.’s to something so lowbrow as a set of literate rock songs masquerading as goodtime party jams as they did last year on their sophomore-but-not-sophomoric EP Taste Those Dreams because in truth it’s not easy straddling the line between thinking and rocking (and “rock” they certainly do, especially live, see the reader’s note above) not to mention the band’s sly sense of humor (even harder to carry off in this context) and when I actually listen to the lyrics it sounds like I’m hearing characters from Douglas Coupland or Michael Chabon or Bret Easton Ellis novels doing the talking (maybe less so the latter but there is a consistent enumeration of food and restaurants, clothing and style on the EP, though less so hard drugs, mutilation, and nihilism). 

And yeah I know I know even more Gen X references what can I say (hi, Moms!) but My Son The Doctor do excel at drawing enticingly fragmentary but no-less-evocative-for-it sketches of various (likely) overeducated slacker types, like those so often found in ‘90s novels and songs and films. But with the crucial difference being that MSTD’s slackers seem to be having a grand ol’ time, free of all that ‘90s angst/lack of affect which makes me think, “What’s the secret, Gen Z? Adderall? Snapchat? Buying Adderall on Snapchat?” (either way at least none of us are as insufferable as millennials…millennials sheesh!)

Or maybe it’s just their “Generation Zen” acceptance of life as it stands, having come of age during what increasingly seemingly looks like the end times and it’s right there in the generation’s name for chrissakes because what exactly comes after the letter “Z” so why not party like it’s 2029? (or hey maybe it’s just me inflicting imagined pain upon the next generation, and if so my apologies!)

Anywaze it’s not like I’ve got a Ph.D. in musicology or anything so I’ll leave it to the experts to figure these things out. And guess what, I’ve gone and buried the lead again because MSTD have released a brand new music video today (watch it again directly above so you don’t have to scroll to the top of the page!) which is the very thing we’re here to celebrate. And even better yet, alongside the video launch they’ve graciously shared some revealing song-by-song “liner notes” for Taste Those Dreams but don’t worry, they don’t give away the whole kit ‘n’ caboodle cuz you gotta retain a little mystery in this business of ours, obviously, so thank you very much gentlemen! (Jason Lee)

********

Some quotes from us on the video:

In the post-vaccinated blur of 2021 we played a million shows, but never got around to finally filming a music video for any of the Taste Those Dreams songs. Our first music video was made in late 2020 for “Dancing In Your Basement” (see above). We wanted to take the energy and personality of that video to the next level.

We had this concept for a video of having the band compete in a cake baking competition against each other. After workshopping the idea with video producer Sara Laufer, (Paper Moon Records) we realized the true gold was having Brian, John, and Matt working together in an attempt to impress Joel. It fits our existing roles both in life and within the band reasonably, so Joel became the critic.

“Rubber Hands” felt like the obvious choice for this premise—it’s one of our favorite songs from the EP and is both light-hearted and angsty. Plus it has a whole section listing spices, and we wanted to play into that. We’ve always felt like a great music video brings out the band’s personality. Unfortunately, this is truly who we are.

About the Taste Those Dreams EP:

Oh the winged angel of Time, how it does fly. Looking back on our seminal sophomore EP Taste Those Dreams has been a whirl. The EP was recorded almost entirely in a house named Beth’s Cottage in rural Pennsylvania with engineer and friend Ian McNally of Moon Hound. The EP was mixed by Jake Cheriff at Paper Moon Records (Moon Kissed, Dead Tooth, Brother Moses) and mastered at Peerless Mastering by Jeff Lipton (Superchunk, Spoon, Stephen Malkmus, Wilco, LCD Soundsystem).

“King of the Zoomers”:

Generational critiques? More like conversational antiques! This song is about Gen Z, which is our generation and millennials are p lame. It’s about those pesky little e-cigarettes. It’s about love.

“Zoomers” was the first single we released for Taste Those Dreams and we’ve played it live more than almost any other song. Sometimes weeks can feel like months, folks, and in that sitch you just gotta ‘shake it out with a zoomer king in a cloudy trance.

“Rubber Hands”:

Making the music video for Rubber was a blast, since we got to revisit this track. It’s a staple in our live set right now—but probably because people just like watching Brian scream out spices.

“Necro”:

The namesake of Taste Those Dreams right here folks. “Necro” was maybe the most fun to record cause Joel and Ian spent hours writing and recording backing guitar lines. The second verse in “Necro” is one of our favorite moments on the EP. Somehow it hasn’t become the anthem for dating in New York, but there’s still time.

“Hotel for Dogs”:

Oh man—who knows. This is a really old song of ours that doesn’t particularly make much sense. I still visualize the Hotel Pennsylvania for “Hotel for Dogs,” because that’s where a huge number of the show dogs for the Westminster Dog Show stay. It seems to accidentally be about the experience I had going on a date to the Westminster Dog Show, realizing that the dogs were way richer than me.

“Bethany”:

Bethany gets the most plays—it’s probably the most on-the-nose pop punk song we’ve made. Something for the groms to skate to. It’s also the only song on the EP with three actual choruses.

“You’re a Sailor (In a Sailor’s Hat)”

This song is….polarizing. It’s one of our favorites, but partially in that the song is basically unlistenable and because there’s a few fish puns in the second verse that nobody has ever really acknowledged. I believe it recently hit 100 plays in Canada. We used to play it live almost all the time but haven’t in probably 6 months. Maybe it’s time to bring it back…It’s the same length as “Rubber Hands” but feels about 3x as long.

John considered quitting drumming after recording "Sailor"—it took three times as many takes as every other song, for whatever reason.

Brief addendum by Jason Lee: “I witnessed MSTD perform “Sailor.” probably the last time they play it live, and the audience went nuts for this song. Which just goes to show never put a drummer in charge of your street team…

“Mean” is the latest single by the singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer known as ISY who’s name is pronounced “I see” but in reality the song and the artist are neither “mean” meaning cruel-hearted (more like open-hearted) nor “mean” meaning average (more like “who farted?”) just don’t get it twisted because ISY ain’t your standard issue Manic Pixie Dream Girl either—more like a girl who happens to like Manic Panic and the Pixies not to mention Nirvana, Joni Mitchell, John Denver, The Weeknd, Biggie, TLC, and Flatbush Zombies (most of whom she plays on her acoustic guitar named “Joni”) and while that’s a pretty dreamy list of influences it’s clearly not in service of anyone’s incel fantasies cuz it’s no accident ISY rhymes with “agency” and "self-sufficiency" (well, sort of!) and she’s perfectly happy hangin’ on her own in rural New York in an aluminum trailer reading, drinking coffee, and chillin’ with her coterie of inanimate friends so do you see what I mean? (if not watch the video below!)

Quoting from the song’s lyrics, “Mean” is about “trying to get that grace / from the bad days” while admitting that “I’m just another stupid human…they used to laugh at me” and acknowledging that the “demons chasing you [are the] same ones after me” and asserting that “I know how it feels, but you don’t have to be mean” which all sits ambiguously between being a kiss-off and a gesture of empathy. Overall it’s a good message for Mental Health Awareness Month or for any month really—we should all be “free to be you and me” and have freedom of choice without fear of bullying. And what takes this message to the next level is the way ISY’s nimble voice rides and amplifies the fluctuating waves of emotion in the lyrics and the music, culminating with the refrain “you don’t have to be me” 

On the sonic side of things “Mean” likewise rides a series of musical waves over its 3:33 duration (3:33 is the same exact duration of ISY’s past five singles!) opening on a Garden of Eden soundscape with chirping birds and airy keyboard chords before shifting to a vibey stripped down first verse and then building to an EDM type “drop” followed by a thumping house beat with ISY laying down a warn pillow of vocal overdubs over the beat, the equivalent of little fluffy clouds floating by overhead, which is a recurring sonic motif of ISY’s music in general (you’ll understand why when you listen) and then after building to another climax with the vocal lines crashing into one another the song ends back where it started with the peaceful Edenic soundscape and it’s like escaping back to a perfect private world. 

And speaking of private worlds, the self-directed music video for “Mean” (co-edited by JD Urban, shot by Jesse Turnquist) depicts ISY hanging out in an Upstate Eden in the vicinity of where she was raised. And speaking of non-private worlds, the video contains a trail of Easter eggs that’s sure to resonate with her online fans and followers in the form of various stuffed animals and doll parts and bewigged mannequins and assorted other items recognizable from her thrice-weekly Twitch stream that’s something like Alice in Wonderland transplanted “through the looking app” to her New York City apartment decked out with all kinds of cool stuff for viewers to look at (my personal fave is the neon-hued, fluffy cotton clouds crafted by ISY herself, sorry Long Furbies!) a setting that’s just as DIY magickal as her music.

But maybe I’d better back up in case and explain that this thing called "Twitch" which is a social media platform for live-streaming first designed for gamers but even before that it started as "justin.tv" with a guy "lifecasting" his existence 24/7 and now it’s come somewhat full circle with an ever-growing army of Twitchers who taken together cover the full panoply of life’s rich pageant with Twitch channels dedicated to everything from ASMR rubber-earlobe-licking-and-sucking streamers (don’t ask) to the many music-centric channels ranging from songwriting sessions and all-request streams to multi-tracking violinists and fast-fingered harpists to piano loungers and chilled-out Brazilian guitarists plus tons of live DJ’s of every shape and stripe broadcasting at all hours from all around the world.

And for me personally, the discovery of this new-to-me platform (with ISY being one of the first Twitchers I got hooked on) was a lifeline as I was then undergoing a serious case of live music withdrawal during Endless Lockdown 2020-21 and here was a platform that was great not only for streaming live music but that also gave a kind of "behind the scenes" peek into artists’ creative processes, and their personalities, with a culture based around interactivity and community-building (the chat section is more than just an appendage with streamers responding to comments in real time, plus lots of cross-talk between viewers) and also audience-performer intimacy (the homebound setting of most streamers only encourages this) and also on the development of what I’ll call “microfandoms," where it only takes a handful of followers to create an intensely-felt musical community (compare this to Tik-Tok with its emphasis on highly staged, semi-scripted videos and "challenges" which OK thank you very much but I’m challenged enough already!)

For her part, ISY first came across Twitch when she found out that one of her favorite musical artists, DJ/producer/emcee Erick the Architect of Flatbush Zombies fame, had a Twitch channel and was hosting a special birthday stream a couple years back. She logged on and before long was kicking back and cracking open a beer and talking back to the computer screen like she was there in person with Erick because it felt that relaxed and personal. And with having own channel on Twitch now for nearly as long, ISY says she’s never been so fulfilled as a musician, with friends/fans/followers showing their love through modest tips measured in “bits," and “custom emotes” earned from subscribing to her stream, but mostly through chat-section displays of encouragement and support (“your voice calms my bird down” being one of her faves) and the development of close-knit, long-distance friendships.

What’s more, ISY also points out that as a female musician, this kind of online environment has been good for avoiding the kinds of predation and condescension that she’s more likely to experience IRL or on a more anonymous, unregulated platform (the presence of a trusted, hand-picked moderator on Twitch is helpful too, yo Adriaeeeeeen!) thus allowing her to develop a circle of smart, funny, and kind people (as ISY herself describes them!) who enjoy hanging out together and share her sense of loopy humor and undaunted honesty and eclectic musical tastes.

And OK just to be clear I’m not a paid shill for Twitch though I’m not making any promises going forward (Twitch: call me, maybe (!) and yeah Twitch is an affiliate of Amazon Inc. boooooo but I wouldn’t mind getting that Bezos money!) and the focus is justified here as ISY says that “Mean” is a direct outgrowth of her online fam both in how the song was constructed (getting direct feedback from followers as she was writing, and being influenced by her fellow streamer pal LILYKAY to try out a house beat and the EDM drop) and also in terms of the song’s subject matter, but suffice to say you can no doubt find and explore the virtual platform of your choice for touching from a distance. Because in "this modern world" we’re always gotta be looking for new ways to reorient the very tools and technologies that will otherwise divide and even enslave us, using them instead to form human connections and to heal until the next upgrade comes along if you know what I mean. (Jason Lee)

Okay, it’s the middle of the night as I’m writing this and I’ve had a few glasses of cheap Malbec from a bottle acquired at my local hooch hut with the double-paned glass and I’m just trying to figure out what to say about this extremely intense, emotionally unprotected song by LEONE, and its accompanying video slated to debut on the Deli today (here it is! directed by Rosie Soko!) and for starters I’m gonna say first of all that you should probably help yourself to a glass or three of cheap wine (except for recovering alcoholics, we respect you!) to get in a fitting mindspace for “Talk To Me” because it’s not a sober song at all and I don’t even mean this in the alcohol-imbibing sense but rather in the sense of being “muted, sensible, or solemn” because as a musical artist LEONE is none of these things (and thank goodness for that!) being very much willing to “lay it on the line” to the extent that you’ll be “laying it on the line” just by listening and viewing the video below that is if you’re fearless and foolhardy enough to check out this EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE not available to the general public until tomorrow (those clueless suckas!) and I’m just warning you that you’ll soon be huddled in your shower in the fetal position just like LEONE is in the music video because there’s no double-paned glass to protect you when it comes to “Talk To Me.”

With assistance by Peter Savad (co-production, mixing and mastering) “Talk to Me” is the second single and second music video from LEONE’s upcoming solo EP slated to be released in early summer (title TBD) and according to LEONE—formerly knows as Richie Bee and formerly known as frontman for the queer glam (redundant, I know!) band DEITRE for those keeping score at home—“I made a choice to get very personal and literal with this upcoming EP both lyrically as well as visually. I really wanted to paint the picture of the actual events that took place." And personally I love it when glamsters and punk rockers write power ballads because power ballads are supposed to have power goddammit, not to mention serious drama, and this one certainly ticks off both boxes.

And if you’re going to go out on a confessional limb and write a song about “the feeling of desperation after experiencing a lost connection” and a “song [that] personifies the loneliness that can live within a relationship” then it helps if you already understand battling-demons-thru-disclosure, not to mention transcendence-thru-transgression and ecstasy-thru-abjection, like any good glammy-punky rocker should and seriously just go watch Phantom of the Paradise or Velvet Goldmine if you don’t believe me. 

And here’s one cool thing that LEONE does musically to capture this state of agonized longing and vulnerability, a state that would lead someone to declare “you’re giving me the same ol’ silly lies / wrap my arms around you tight / so you know that I’m here” and that’s having the confidence to spend three-plus minutes slowly-but-surely ratcheting up the tension starting with delicate acoustic guitar and gradually adding new musical layers before finally bursting open like an overripe plum and it’s certainly fulfilling when it happens.

And so it’s extra gutting when the song recedes back into itself in its final moments and you realize (as made even clearer by the music video) that this damn-bursting explosion of emotional release was only in LEONE’s head and that in reality he’s still trapped in a heartbreaking “lonely together” co-dependent relationship mired in a state of communication breakdown and I hope you’ll excuse me while I go and curl up in the shower.

But lest I end this review on a downer note, based on these two songs by LEONE, here’s a new musical artist who knows how to write shattering, ravishing songs which, let’s face it, play an important role in this world because who amongst us hasn’t suffered the loss of a loved one, whether on the physical plane (see “Monochrome Colors” above) or on the emotional plane. And how better to begin healing than with music that confronts trauma head on and turns it into something exquisite. (Jason Lee)

Readers note: If you wanna go straight to Bunny X’s very own song-by-song liner notes for their new album that’s under discussion here, please feel free to skip the think-piece-cum-rant and scroll down to near the end (below the jump) and hey I seriously won’t hold it against you but I am watching, always watching…

“If you wanna believe in something / then let be this one thing / Paradise
We could make it last forever / as long as we’re together / Paradise” — “Perfect Paradise”

“Young and in love / fast-forward to the past” — “Young & In Love”

Bunny X is a musical duo made up of Abigail “Abbi” Gordon and Mary "Mary" Hanley who self-identify as an “Italo disco/retrowave duo with influences ranging from early Madonna to FM Attack.” But I hope they’ll forgive me if I use the term “synthwave” rather than “retrowave” seeing as most people prone to discussing such things consider the terms interchangeable and also I’d venture that many punk rock bands, for instance, are “retrowave” just as much as any synthspop act, so let’s go with synthwave for clarity’s sake and if you disagree you can write an angry letter to the editor. 

The duo’s latest album is what’s known as a “remix album”, a term I unpacked in some detail a few weeks ago so I won’t repeat myself here. On their Bandcamp page they explain that “after releasing the hit album Young & In Love last year, New Yorkers Bunny X asked some of the hottest names in the international electronic scene to reimagine some of the highlights of the album and were truly thrilled with the response they received” and ergo the new album. (see below for one of the unremixed songs off from Young & In Love, and see above for the entire “remix album” and the original album and please try to keep up with me here!)

Listening to Bunny X’s Young & In Love (The Remixes) (Aztec Records) has been a learning experience for me because for one thing I’ve learnt is that the album’s 80s-throwback mix of percolating synths, gated drums, robo-funk baselines, Super Mario 64 worthy DX7’s, etherial and even vocoderized vocals, and omnipresent washes of airy ambient sound is virtually guaranteed to turn you into Molly Ringwald for at least long enough to dance frantically on a balcony for your new reprobate friends during detention.

What’s more, I’ve also learnt about the existence of a bunch of cool remixers and producers I’d never heard of before. (more on them below in the “liner notes” portion of this article!) And I’ve also learnt that I enjoy Bunny X’s music very much having not had much exposure to their music before, that is until I saw them perform live opening for Fuck You, Tammy a couple weeks ago, and subsequently getting lost in their hypnotic synthpop sorcery. And finally, I’ve also learnt and come to appreciate that Kim Wilde was one of the key architects of the genre today known as synthwave. Allow me to explain. (Warning: digressions ahead!)

The first track on Y&IL(TR) is a remix of the Bunny X song “Perfect Paradise” and the remix was made by Ricky Wilde with additional vocals contributed by Kim Wilde. And in case that latter sounds familiar it’s probably because she recorded two now-iconic hit singles in the ‘80s (actually 17 hit singles in her native UK, but only two that made the US Top 40) both of which are “80s Night” DJ staples to this day—namely “Kids In America” (1981) and her Hi-NRG style cover of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” in 1986.

And it turns out that Ricky Wilde is Kim’s brother (surprise!) and that the two Irish twins (“Irish twins” are siblings born less than a year apart and thanks to Wikipedia for perpetuating this ugly slander upon my ancestors) co-wrote many of Kim’s early hit singles together with their father Marty (an early UK rock ’n’ roller) and let’s hear it for family values. But here’s the kicker, I’m gonna go out on a limb and claim that the Wilde family basically invented synthwave (or at least helped!) decades before that term even existed, and well before “retro” even entered the picture, with Kim’s debut single “Kids In America.”

How, and why, you ask? Because “Kids” combines the musical DNA of Kraftwerk’s avant-artpop-techno (check out that single-note drone and weird atonality in the intro) with the electrified postpunk of Gary Numan, OMD, Ultravox, Thomas Dolby, et al., all topped off by the poppiest of pop tropes like Kim’s girl-group-esque vocal harmonies and the la-la-la bubblegum hook sung by Ricky I presume. 

And this combination of sunshine pop with a dark techno and/or postpunk undertow, however subtle, is the very epitome of “synthwave” in may book as are the lyrics, which come off like an A.I. computer-generated description of adolescent suburban longing (got to get a brand new experience, feeling right / outside suburbia’s sprawling everywhere…New York to East California / there’s a new wave coming, I warn ya) in a song written by precisely no one who was an actual kid in America (ergo the puzzling mention of “East California” screw you Angelinos!) in a fantasy-based depiction that’s all the more resonant for it. 

Overall there’s something about all these elements cut-and-pasted together that gives the song a hyperreal quality (in other words, an exaggerated or even simulated reality) which in my mind makes it a harbinger of ‘80s music in general since hyper-reality was super big in the 80s ranging from Top 40 pop to 120 Minutes alternative rock, routinely utilizing everything from drum machines to Neo-psychedelic guitar pedals (whither goth music without the humble flange pedal?) and brand new digital synthesis technology all of which took “natural” sounds and pushed them into hyperreal exaggerations and simulations (I mean clearly the “brass” and “orchestral” sounds on 80s synths can be easily distinguished from what they’re imitating, but in the process they created a cool new retro-futuristic sonic vocabulary).

Synthwave is fixated on just these sorts of blatantly ersatz futuristic-but-now-nostalgic digital sounds which are the sonic equivalent to Patrick Nagel’s extreme ‘80s illustrations—a visual aesthetic that also set the template for synthwave’s own visuals with its own “nostalgic logic” where Nagel took 50s pinup art and 60s/70s Playboy centerfolds and pushed them into pastel-and-neon-hued hyperreality portraits so exaggerated and ultra-vivid that they’re like half photograph and half cartoon. And could it be mere coincidence that both the music video for “Kids in America” and the cover art to Young & In Love (The Remixes) have a strong Nagel vibe (the latter refracted through modern day manga art) I’m thinking not!

The sublime Black Mirror episode “San Junipero” perhaps sums up synthwave aesthetics best (not to mention being a beautiful queer love story) where time-travel back to the 1980s acts as a form of spiritual salvation, with an ending that poses the question of whether living in an idealized and sanitized simulation of existence would be superior to the living in the messy real thing, not to mention the existential quandary of having an actual choice between the two. And come to think of it “Perfect Paradise” sounds like it could’ve been directly inspired by the episode hmmmmmm……

Either way, “San Junipero” has something insightful to say about the nostalgia value of 80s music and synthwave’s ritualistic recreation of such which seems to have a surprisingly cross-generational appeal. And I’m thinking this may have something to do with how a synthesizer is clearly a “synth” i.e. synthetic in this music, while a drum machine is clearly a machine and so on. Because today technology has come to be implanted deep inside of our bodies and our minds, with our phones and other electronic and virtual devices acting as a extension of our physical beings, and a component part of our mental functioning, to where really who can even tell the difference anymore. But synthwave takes our current state of social and physical unreality (alternative facts, anyone?!) rewinding and re-mixing it back into good ol’ fashioned hyperreality…

And on that optimistic note (!) here’s the real star of the show–the song-by-song liner notes provided by Abbi from Bunny X, providing some background and insights on the seven songs remixed on Young & In Love (The Remixes) and their multiple remixed-ified renditions. (Jason Lee) 

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"Perfect Paradise"

Originally released as an instrumental track by Swedish retrowave artist Don Dellpiero in January 2021, Bunny X and Don Dellpiero collaborated and released the track with a vocal arrangement in June 2021 and ended up receiving quite a nice response from the community. Fast forward to 2022 and a true stroke of luck when Bunny X befriended UK music blogger Lee Bennett who happens to be well acquainted with the brother and sister dream team that is Ricky and Kim Wilde. It was a remix match made in heaven when Ricky Wilde offered to take a stab at a remix of "Perfect Paradise" and Kim Wilde ended up gracing the track with her iconic vocals. After so much isolation and separation during the pandemic, "Perfect Paradise" speaks to the simple yet profound joy of just physically being in the same space as your friend or lover. This track was also remixed nu jack swing style by Syst3m Glitch and with Bryan Adams’ “Summer of 69” vibes by GeoVoc.

"Can’t Wait" 

When you’re in the last year, month or week of graduating, quitting your job, moving out, breaking up, etc. The list goes on but this track goes out to all those that are just on the cusp of and getting “so close to the finish line” that they just might burst. This track, written with LA-based artist SelloRekt/LA Dreams, and recently remixed by Italian producer Le Cast, was truly inspired by a Brat Pack type of montage (you can picture it) when you’re studying for that last exam and then you finally make it through to the other side…

"Head Rush"

In keeping with the teen angst theme of Young & In Love, "Head Rush," remixed by Sferro, Fulvio Colasanto and Uncover, is about that pure adrenaline rush that comes with first (real) crushes when you are positively intoxicated by being around that certain someone. When you feel like “there’s just something different” about them because they see you as no one else ever has and “when you’re all alone together” you “can finally” be yourself. 

"Diamonds"

Pure and utter nostalgia. "Diamonds" is about remembering how you felt when you saw your crush in the hallway or watched them from afar wondering if they even knew you were alive. This track, remixed with care by Mike Haunted, is a look back through time, albeit with a much different lens, since “those old high school days are long in the past now” but sometimes it’s okay if you prefer to remember that particular person the same way they were back then. It’s probably – definitely – a suspension of reality but is that such a bad thing? 

"Back to You"

We’ve all been there. The push-pull and the complicated feelings around just not being able to get over someone. About wanting to go back and try again because “there’s such passion every time” you’re together and so you want to just "keep coming back.” Swedish-based artist, The Secret Chord, stays true to the original sentiment of the track while simultaneously breathing new life into it with some excellent Laurie Anderson-esque vocoder effects throughout. 

"Lost Without You" 

UK-based producer Maxx Parker’s remix of "Lost Without You," written by Bunny X and Don Dellpiero, brings a tropical, romantic and even vaporwave twist to the original track. True to the theme of the original album, the track is full-on Sixteen Candles style romantic lust and delusion – “when you called me up I was speechless, why would someone like you talk to me in the first place?” Those same hopes and dreams are quickly dashed because “when the last bell rang” the object of your affection “grabbed their friends” and “just walked away.” Ouch.

"Go Back"

France’s Sight Telma Club gives "Go Back," originally released as an instrumental by SelloRekt/LA Dreams, a darker spin with the vocal pitch bending effect throughout and it works because the theme of Go Back is a somber one – again in keeping with the overall nostalgia wave that is Young & In Love. When you just wish you could go back and do it all over again. Maybe it would be different this time and maybe it would “just turn out to be the same.”

Grand Army Reapers are a five-piece band who make music that weaves and careens like a cheap wobbly spinning top or an extremely revved-up hamster wheel or a tipsy Midwestern sailor on shore leave for the first time in Times Square and you just know there’s going to be trouble but which doesn’t collapse in on itself despite the mix of chaotic energy and woozy insouciance, or maybe exactly because of the mix of chaotic energy and woozy insouciance which produces a sort of centripetal force that keeps the whole contraption from jumping the track. 

It’s a theory anyway. But one based on first-hand observation because a couple weeks ago I got a chance to see the Grand Army Reaper gang play live which inspired the overstimulated mixed metaphors above, although not right there in the moment because the band were too transporting with their blissed out unhinged energy to be verbalized upon first encounter, and plus there were drinks and conversations to be had after.

And here’s another thing. The band recently put out an EP called Alive, Alive (from King Killer) made up of six self-recorded songs laid down over a mere couple days in the band’s own practice space, recorded live in large part ("a semi-live, DIY studio album") with no more than a few takes allowed for any one song, thusly giving the listener a good taste of GAR’s visceral impact in the flesh (reader’s note: you should still see them live) opening with a downright groovy garage rockin’ Strokes-meets-Cramps-meets-Clash singalong (granted one about police brutality) called “Black Tape” and culminating 18 minutes later with a Stoogey sax-assisted howl into the abyss called “Bug Hunt” and yeah Kiss Alive or Alive II this ain’t, it’s more along the lines of Naked Lunch.

Other cited musical influences range from Oingo Boingo to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to classic surf rock and on GAR’s very own Bandcamp page Ben (sticks and skins), Chuck (strings), Erik (mouth stuff), Krish (strings), and MK (low end) describe their sound as “occult rock inspired by the energy and weirdness of early-70’s NY and warped cassettes found under the passenger seat of your sister’s 1984 Volvo 240 DL” and while I’ve never been in a 1984 Volvo 240 DL before (or had a sister, I think!) the Seventies New York comparison rings true seeing as how when the city was careening out of control and nearing a state of total societal breakdown its inhabitants somehow managed to invent punk, disco, and hip hop.

And this teetering-on-the-edge-between-chaos-and-control musical quality bleeds over into Grand Army Reapers’ lyrics as well on Alive, Alive overflowing as they are with extreme emotional states, fury at state-sponsored violence, and personal reckonings with addition, disease, and mental health issues, all while managing to be purging and affirming too (that’s the magic of music!) a realization I had thanks to generous track-by-track liner notes provided by GAR’s lead songwriter Erik Reaper who was kind enough to share some revealing insights into both the EP’s lyrics and music and he really laid it all out (respect, sir!) liner notes which can be read in full after the jump… (Jason Lee)

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Black Tape

          This is a protest song, written around the anniversary of Breonna Taylor’s murder. Cops are here to maintain the status quo and punch down on behalf of property owners. That’s it. “NYPD, murder with impunity. NYPD, a theater of security. NYPD, white ego, white fragility. NYPD, a menace to communities.”

          Musically it’s very much inspired by The Clash. I wasn’t trying to overthink this one. It snowballed from a riff idea into a fully formed song within one afternoon. I usually torture myself for days to weeks, finalizing the structure and lyrics before committing to a demo that I send to my bandmates. With this song, there was an immediate momentum that I wanted to maintain throughout the process. 

Distraction from Sadness

          This was originally 3 different songs that I kinda forced together: an intro/refrain that was really hooky and angular like a Buzzcocks or Nick Lowe song, a morose chorus that’s basically Johnny Thunders’ “Society Makes Me Sad,” and an outro that veers hard into a Buddy Holly dreamscape. Lyrically, it’s about being paralyzed by self-doubt, so you make excuses and distract yourself with bullshit. There isn’t really a conclusion, it just ends with a complete detour, kind of like the concept behind the lyrics I guess.

Long-Covid Blues

          I actually despise songs that are overtly topical, but I felt like torturing myself a little on this one. This is basically a Richard Hell song about long-hauler covid symptoms, insomnia, delirium, and shapeshifting into some kind of werewolf while exchanging coded messages with some outside entity in the personal ads section of the NY Post.

Screenplay 1979

          Joy Division (referenced at the mid-point of the intro) becomes The Damned covering “Jet Boy, Jet Girl”. This song is about a girl and a boy. Big whoop. While recording this song, I had just learned that my cousin had overdosed on fentanyl, that plays a weirder role in “Snowed Out,” but it definitely affected my mood and vocal delivery in a way that felt pretty terrible. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to keep recording that day, but I really wanted to push forward. We weren’t necessarily on a tight schedule with this album, but I had a set of rules in mind about maintaining a “live” feel, even if performance get a little weird.

Snowed Out
         I just couldn’t go on with vocals for this one. I had to call it a day after the first take. Lyrically it was too on-the-nose considering the news I got that morning. I called my aunt. I didn’t really have anything to say. She cried a lot. I haven’t seen my family in 3 years. I finished vocals the next day.
        This is a song about substance abuse and functional junky-ism among us over-educated, over-worked, and underpaid. It’s also about poor management of mood disorders, oscillating between depression and grandiosity, with substance abuse and pseudo-spirituality thrown in.

            I’m not sure why I went that route lyrically. I think there’s a sense of get-up and hustle to the verse that pulled me in that direction. The chorus feels like melodic despair.
         I also struggle with mood swings and ADHD to the point that it affects my relationships, my work, and my sense of self. A lot of it is how I manage the content of my thoughts as well.
         There’s a really ugly trend on the internets these days that romanticizes mental health and mood disorders. Maybe it’s not new, but I see content pop up on my feed that makes me cringe. This song is meant to be an indictment of that sort of content.

I should also clarify that I don’t mess around with opioids, and I don’t want this song to be taken as anything less than extremely critical of using drugs as self-medication for self-diagnosed problems, especially when it hurts the people around you and eventually yourself.

Bug Hunt

            This is an east Texas bug-stomper of a song. CCR meets the dropship scene from Aliens. Lots of Captain Beefheart and Willy DeVille inspiration on this one. Not much else to say about it.
 

photo by Andrew Bisdale

People tend to think of Hawaii as this idyllic laid-back paradise full of hula dancers in grass skirts and coconut bras where everyone get sloshed on Mai Tais nightly at sunset lūʻaus on beaches full of chiseled surfers and letting-it-all-hang-out ukulele strummers where the worst thing you’re likely to face is a cursed Tiki idol that’ll cause you to smash your souvenir ukulele and throw out your back hula dancing before being attacked by a big hairy spider and a spear-wielding Vincent Price archeologist—impressions formed by decades of deliriously kitschy Hawaii-themed pop-culture exotica ranging from Brady Bunch family vacations to Elvis playing the girl-happy scion to a Hawaiian pineapple fortune to Tom Selleck’s garish private dick wardrobe and magnum-sized mustache to an alarming number of cheese-laden rom-coms set on Hawaii half of which star Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston. 

But hey, don’t get us wrong, we here at The Deli are hardly averse to kitsch (this writer proudly owns an autographed photo with Don Ho!) and could listen to twee-pop ukulele covers of the Misfits’ “Last Caress” for hours on end. Still, it’s perhaps telling that no musical instrument has been so relentlessly kitsch-ified as the ukulele has been in the USA—which is why the Misfits covers are so pleasing, playing off the contrast between the lyrics about baby-murdering-and-mommy-violating and the cutesy associations of the "uke" kinda like if Glenn Danzig’s kitty litter meme came to life. 

So it’s a nice change of pace to hear a ukulele-based song that dispenses with these associations, instead going for a haunted, hauntingly celestial vibe—the song in question being “The Haunted Mask of Lono” by the artist/entity known as Phranque. And it totally works, alternating between apprehensive pinprick arpeggiations and cresting-wave-of-nervous-tension choruses—the latter helped along by the spectral cello of Jane Scarpantoni (who makes all manner of spooky, shuddering atmospheric sounds) and the steadily churning rhythm section of Josh Davis on drums and Jason Smith on bass (see the top of this page for the video) all of which enhanced by the crystalline production work.

Lyrically, the song opens with the line “stranded here under starring skies” going on to describe a mask that once you “put it on, can’t take it off” culminating with yearning vocal overdubs in the uneasy, etherial choruses. And wouldn’t you know it, singer-songwriter-ukulelist Frank Gallo (better known as the longstanding frontman for Karabas Barabas, a hard-rocking Zappa-esque band known for its songs about “Connecticut” and “Brighton Beach”) not only wrote this song while “on vacation” in Hawaii (not the “scare quotes”!) but he wrote it about literally being masked and stranded—because after a few days of long scenic runs (fun fact: Frank runs triple-marathons in his downtime!) he developed a persistent cough and sure enough tested positive for Covid.

As a result he spent the rest of his Hawaiian trip in self-imposed “tropical prison” in his hotel room overlooking the beach. But hey, when life gives you rotten avocados why not make Rolie Polie Guacamole which is the name of Frank’s children’s music project. So he called up the local musical instrument store and had them leave a ukulele on the hood of his car and resolved to work on kids’ songs but his creative impulses struck out in other directions (as they will!) composing an entire LP’s worth of music inspired in part by a recent read of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson’s The Curse of Lono and its “bad trip” (in multiple senses!) illustrations by frequent artistic collaborator Ralph Steadman, a book that relates the pair’s trip to Hawaii to cover the 1980 Honolulu marathon for a runner’s magazine and then proceeding to have one of the worst vacations ever.”

Which is fitting on multiple levels because if you dig a little deeper, far from being “laid back” or “kitschy,” this tropical archipelago has had a pretty gonzo history itself. For instance, when English explorer Captain Cook first landed on the Hawaiian Islands at the end of the 18th century, he was assumed to be the fertility deity Lono in human form (also the god of music, and he’s into surfing and rainbows!) due to some lucky happenstance. But after his naval crew spread tuberculosis and venereal diseases among the native population, and after Cook shot and killed a local chief, his luck unsurprisingly ran out, soon after being attacked and dismembered and with his ass literally delivering on a platter back to his countrymen (but still the name he gave to the islands stuck for over 50 years, i.e. “The Sandwich Islands” named after the actual guy who invented the sandwich).

Anyway, by the time six days passed in the hotel Frank had written ten new songs inspired by his unusual circumstances that, after being recorded months later at Steve Albini’s Electrical Audio studio in Chicago, with finishing touches applied at Moon Studios in Brooklyn, will be made available to the general public on 5/27 under the title Mahalo Chicago (available for pre-order now, fool!) an album that according Frank/Phranque "reimagines what a ukulele album sounds like and falls somewhere in the realm of Pinkerton, Plastic Ono Band, The Eraser, Morning Phase, with a dash of Blood Sugar Sex Magic" and I would tend to agree.

Beyond its uniqueness in the present day, I would submit that Mahalo Chicago is actually a throwback of sorts that implicitly calls back to the more radical, experimental roots of Hawaiian uke music such as, for instance, the first big hit in Hawaii’s ukulele repertoire (also its first big “crossover hit” in the US) which is a song called “Aloha ‘Oe” (“Farewell To Thee”). "Aloha ‘Oe" was written in 1878 by no less than the reigning monarch of Hawaii at the time who also happened to be a prolific songwriter, namely Queen Liliʻuokalani, who was both the first female to rule the territory and its final monarch. 

Placed under house arrest in 1893, Liliʻuokalani was dethroned by a coup d’état engineered by colonial interests that resulted in US annexation of the archipelago five years later (full statehood wasn’t granted until 1959). Ironically, it was while under house arrest in the royal palace that the queen transcribed “Aloha ‘Oe," with the notation sent to Chicago for publication in sheet music form and ergo its subsequent crossover popularity was born.

According to sociologist Evelyn Chow, while "Aloha ‘Oe" was "initially composed…as a mele ho’oipoipo (love song) between a man and a woman, over the years it has been socially, politically, and culturally redefined by Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) into a song of melancholic farewell between the Queen and her realm." And with Hawaiian cultural practices in general—from hula to the Hawaiian language itself—all but banned from the islands after the U.S. overthrow, to even perform "Aloha ‘Oe" on the island was viewed as a form of protest. And likewise for other music where “the ‘sweet’ local songs, unintelligible to most visitors, often were anthems of protest against the new rulers.”

It was only with the rise of the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance and the parallel civil rights movement of the late 1960s and ‘70s that these cultural taboos were removed, leading to a new resurgence of slack-key uke music (a key part of the movement itself) along with the revival of other indigenous practices and, concurrently, new musical fusions (Hawaiian psychedelic folk music, anyone?) and a new wave of overseas Hawaiian exotica (full circle) with the Hawaiian struggle for self-determination persisting to this day so keep it in mind next time you hear to that cool ukulele cover of “Skulls” cuz it gives the song a whole new resonance! 

For more on some of the key musical artists of the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance you can check out names like Eddie Kamae, Gabby Pahinui, Palani Vaughan, Leah & Malia, and Edith Kanaka-ole. And when you’re done with that you can check out the sister EP to Mahalo Chicago comprised of three straight up rock songs recorded by Phraque at the same Electrical Audio sessions called 101.3 Krock New York and it’s embedded for your convenience below. (Jason Lee)

As befitting their moniker, Night Sins make music that could easily and equally serve as the perfect soundtrack to a very good night out or a very bad night out depending on how and when the drugs kick in and by “drugs” I mean “hugs” of course (stay off the drugs, fool!) and if you’re a sucker like I am for highly-emotive-yet-emotionally-distant death disco that makes you wanna dance into the abyss and to never, never ever come back down again (as Jarvis Cocker once opined “at four o’clock [in the morning] the normal world seems very, very, very far away”) then you should take a listen to their new single “Kill Like I Do” (Born Losers), a euphoric eulogy that puts across this vibe to the extreme.

Night Sins is a project helmed by Kyle Kimball and “Kill Like I Do” is the second advance single off their upcoming fifth album Violet Age due out this summer, a single that proves you can teach an old goth band new tricks with Kimball honing his “Sisters Of Xymox meets Clan Of Mercy as fronted by Dave ‘Marty Gore’ Gahan” aesthetic and pushing it into new territory while still hitting all the sweet spots—like the driving gated-reverb drumbeat and menacing synth-bass hook, the serpentine guitar line that doesn’t skimp on the shuddering flange or the dirty distortion, and the infectious little sing-songy toy keyboard melody similar to those featured in an least half of the Cure’s song intros and some New Order ones too.

And all this before the vocals even kick in (come inside and burn this all down / spread my ashes on the ground) vocals alternating between a creepily seductive stage whisper (a crucial vocal technique for any self-respecting dark wave singer!) and a double-tracked Peter Murphy-esque baritone that sounds like Bela Lugosi’s not feeling at all well. And you may ask yourself, "Where did such a potent doomy-yet-danceable fatalism originate from?” Well, according to Night Sins’ official bio, the project emerged “around 2010 under the oppressive skies of Philadelphia…fitly connected to a city engrossed in shadow-soaked vices and dilapidated architecture” which makes me think “hmm is Philly actually the North American version of Manchester?” and I’m willing to believe it. So look out for Grand Theft Auto VI: The City of Brotherly Vehicular Manslaughter coming soon.

And when it comes to “shadow-soaked vices” Mr. Kimball has described “Kill Like I Do” as being a “metaphor for having zero self control…about not being able to stop until you’ve hit the floor” and hey I don’t wanna make too many assumptions here but it’s my guess that in his other life pounding the skins for the Philly-based shoegaze mainstay Nothing for over a decade must have taught Kyle a thing or two about this type of subject matter. Just take a gander at Nothing’s Wikipedia page or Spotify bio etc. after which you’ll likely come away saying “here is a band that has seen, and somehow survived, some seriously f*cked up dark times” which fortunately-for-us-all Nothing’s frontman Domenic "Nicky" is expert at trans-mutating into eviscerating, ethereal art…

…which Night Sins does too, but in their own form and fashion, shining an icy cold cold-wavey neon light into the darkness that, far from obliterating the gathering gloom, instead makes it sound newly romantic. (Jason Lee)