photo by Connor Rothstein

It’s really nice when an album title does at least half the heavy lifting for a reviewer such as myself and Le Big Zero’s A Proper Mess (released today on Know Hope Records –> LISTEN HERE <–) is one of those because not since TLC’s CrazySexyCool has an album title so succinctly captured the combination of elements at play which in this case is kind of like a finger painting by a precocious preschooler beset by ADHD and OCD at the same time (lucky kid!) with songs marrying garage rock manic energy and grit to intricate, unconventional song structures.

Which is to say what you’ve got here are nine songs combining the raw and the cooked in equal measure with jagged and cascading song structures, jittery post-punk rhythms and odd shifts in time but with some serious head-nodding grooves to be found too which, not to get too technical about it, it’s a neat trick how on a song like “Beach Seance” it’s the parts in asymmetric 5/4 time that’ll make you wanna get up and do the funky chicken whereas the 4/4 parts have a lurching, off-kilter quality, with the song culminating in a climactic instrumental squall that implodes in its final moments into stuttering inside-out sonics and all of this happens in just over two minutes (only one song on A Proper Mess breaks the three-minute mark, barely at that, but rest assured despite their name Le Big Zero know how to pack a lot of musical calories into their compact song snacks).

Math rock for English majors. There’s the pull quote. Or imagine if Rush had abandoned Ayn Rand early on and kept playing Buddy Holly covers but with crazy arrangements and minus the chipmunk vocals (love ya, Geddy) and speaking of vocals the not-so-secret secret ingredient in Le Big Zero’s musical consommé is undoubtably the sweet and sour male-female harmonies that suture together the ever-shifting musical surfaces with a Richard-and-Linda or better yet John-and-Exene level of dulcet-toned-yet-tension-laden harmoniousness (good luck getting “Horror Movie Pie Fight” out of your head once you’ve heard it a couple times!) adding a hint of sweetness even to lines like “keep your friends just close enough / to push them off the ledge / when the day comes” (from “Anthem,” see below for song analysis) which ok to be fair is one of the exception-to-the-rule lines on the album being sung by frontman/guitarist Michael Pasuit solo minus co-vocalist Carolina Aguilar but you get the idea.

As a working combo Le Big Zero is rounded out by bassist Ben Ross and new drummer Lukas Hirsch, with co-vocal duties currently handled by another new member (due to Carolina being with child) namely Katie Cooney who I can verify nails the harmonies, having seen them live recently, in addition to filling out LBZ’s sound with a second guitar and keyboard parts with resulting plans for the band to expand to a five piece in the future. And if you need any more deep background on the band I’d recommend that you head over here for an account of LBZ’s origins and history by Mr. Pasuit himself. 

Speaking of first-hand accounts, Michael was kind enough to share his thoughts on A Proper Mess with the Deli—providing some handy song-by-song liner notes which are reproduced in their entirety below—which is why you’re the lucky recipient of a special double-dip blog entry here.

In comparison to Le Big Zero’s debut album Ollie Oxen Free, Michael tells the Deli that “A Proper Mess feels more like a complete album, a statement with a beginning, middle, and end…I know we’re caught in a period of streaming content, sound-bytes, and instant gratification, but there’s still an undeniable romanticism about putting a whole album on and letting it play. Additionally, Ollie Oxen Free was aggressively lo-fi while there’s definitely more spit-and-polish with A Proper Mess…opening the album with "All Bark" (as opposed to something as frenetic as "Dryer Lint Trap" with our debut) we hope signals to listeners that something slightly different is happening here. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still the same attention-spastic band, but maybe we’re breathing out more than we’re breathing in this time, if that makes sense.”

******

A Proper Mess track by track:

All Bark

A scathing ode to the work-a-day lifestyle. "Real life will suck a day away/Reprise, anon." We began working on this one as we were recording the first album, and it definitely draws from that woe-is-me lyricism that defines the perspective of Ollie Oxen Free. In the middle of the song, there’s this laundry list of futile gestures that we take part in as a matter of course, without real thought to the pointlessness of it. Musically, it’s a bit more traditionally structured than our typical fare, a bit pop-punk forward, even if it switches between 5/4 and 4/4 and back a few times. The longer intro we felt was a nice table setting for the album. Starts a bit sparse and builds. The outro repeats the same, but almost has this "She’s So Heavy" feel about it.

Anthem

Sigh. Trump. The ridiculousness of politics when the one in charge thinks they’re literally infallible. Oddly enough, this one dates back to the George W. administration. It seemed even more fitting once we dusted off. If you think about what national anthems are, these declarations of who and what we stand for, in spite of what anyone else thinks, on the surface appear very positive and rah-rah, but if you step back they seem foolishly strident and even sociopathic.

Blink and you’ll miss it. This is the only time on the album we repeat a full chorus in its entirety. And the whole thing is in standard timing. We’re a bunch of sell-outs.

Sequel

Carolina came back from the movie Us thinking about doppelgangers, inequality, and the lottery of birth–all wrapped up in an emotional narrative. We open with a confused, second-guessing protagonist, move into triumphant, optimistic moments that track with a musical crescendo, followed by moments of reflection and desperation before an abrupt end. WIth this song, there’s probably the heaviest contrast between melodic singing and angular, raunchy chords. You catch your breath for a bit in the middle, but not for long before it ends where it began.

Horror Movie Pie Fight

The instrumental core of this one came together in the room. We don’t spontaneously jam all that often, with no initial germ of an idea, but that’s how this one came about. That verse part was so fun to play and we just kept repeating and repeating it. I filed it under "hmpf" on my phone to listen back to. After we toyed around with it again and got no further, I again named it HMPF. Then I started wondering what would happen if that actually stood for something. It was completely random that "Horror Movie Pie Fight" emerged. Just sounded like a silly concept. So the lyrics were written about a person that writes a great independent horror film, gets bought by a studio that ruins it, who then all get murdered by real monsters/vampires/etc. during the wrap party. It’s 100% absurd.

Since we were already leaning sillier with this one, and we knew some sort of "Part B" was needed to break-up the verses, I actually took inspiration from the video game Mega Man 2. I was down a YouTube rabbit hole where the intro music to that game came on. 

Unique to the song is that Carolina and I don’t harmonize. It’s the only song that’s sung in parallel octaves instead. I had been listening to a lot of Better Oblivion Community Center, that project with Connor Oberst and Phoebe Bridgers. It struck me odd that throughout the duration of the album, they’re just singing in unison. Very sparing harmony parts. But their two voices together were the identity of the album. When we didn’t come upon a decent harmony for HMPF, we decided to go that route as an experiment, and we really liked the result.

Beach Seance

The guitar riff is essentially just syncopated noise. And hella fun to play. Someone told me it reminded them of Sleater-Kinney, which I was thrilled by. As the rhythm section, Tim and Ben did most of the heavy lifting in creating the vibe of the song. The main hits on the chorus are on the "one and" beat, which gives it a nice off-kilter feel. After a rehearsal or two of working on it, Carolina said the song sounded "beachy" while I thought it sounded a little eerie. So, like HMPF, we went the way of abstraction, married the two ideas and explored what that could possibly look like. It’s probably the most ridiculous of our songs conceptually. 

Dumb Summer

There’s something irresistibly cheesy about a he-said/she-said relationship song. Few get it right. There will always be defenders of Grease or "Don’t You Want Me" but "Sometimes Always" by the Jesus and Mary Chain is the one that got it perfect. "Dumb Summer" is exactly what it sounds like. Two people who are clearly no longer a match but sticking it out for one more season even though they know they’re doomed. Then they realize they wasted a perfectly good summer. Ain’t that a stinker?

From a songwriting standpoint, it’s four songs for the price of one. They weren’t even developed as separate ideas, they just naturally flowed into each other. Some more melodic, some more angular, some louder, some softer. Probably the way the end of a relationship might feel anyway. 

Music City

Like everyone else, we weren’t immune to obsessing over the 2019 election season. This is about politicians doing whatever it takes to get supporters, even performative inauthentic gestures. A bit cynical, but who wasn’t feeling a bit cynical in late 2019? There’s this David Bowie song "Candidate" that’s nestled in the middle of "Sweet Thing" on the Diamond Dogs album that’s sounds like an ominous chat between a backer and a contender. That’s kinda the tone. And things like "chow down a sacred cow" are just fun to sing. Hey look at Michael, it’s an actual guitar hook, too.

You Don’t Say

I don’t know who it is specifically, but the person in this song is the absolute worst. They probably work for the bosses in All Bark. Someone who thinks they’re important but all they really do is leech off of others. I always think I’m singing the wrong lyrics when the song starts "You’re in my will." How did we get here so fast? This asshole found their way into your will?

This one started as a pure country tune. There are acoustic recordings of it as a waltz-y song in 3/4. We retrofitted it to have a more garage rock feel.

Coda

Pieced together from a discarded track by my previous band X-Ray Press. It was a song that we wrote earlier in our existence as a band, but never found a home on an album or even in a live set. Yet to me, it always had such potential. I changed the meter from 7/8 to 4/4 at the start of the song so the vocal harmonies could take a more commanding presence. The punkier middle section was written specifically for Le Big Zero as to ground it in the type of rock we do (as opposed to my former band’s aggressive, super-weird math rock approach). I’d like to lay claim to that ending guitar riff, but it was written by X-Ray Press’ guitarist Paurl Walsh. All members of X-Ray Press have song writing credits on that one.

Lyrically, the song is about the band breaking-up a la famous blow-ups like Fleetwood Mac or Oasis. What if we were successful but couldn’t stand each other? Signing autographs at a mall while begrudging each other seems like a torturous fate.

(Jason Lee)

I can totally get where Flycatcher is coming from with their new single ”Sodas in the Freezer” released earlier today and you probably can too because who amongst us hasn’t thrown a soda in the freezer out of sheer indolence and impatience eager for that damn Shasta to be ice freakin’ cold in a matter of minutes but then after a bong hit or six you totally forget about it with explosive consequences and now you’ve got a big mess to clean up but soon after you think to yourself “fuhgeddaboudit, accidents will happen!” and spark up a bowl and toss another Shasta into the icebox which is roughly equivalent to playing an April Fools’ joke on yourself over and over again which just goes to show how some of us never learn. 

And in case you think I’m just talking out my orifice again rest assured the band themselves have confirmed the theory above describing the song as being about “people’s tendencies to acknowledge their shortcomings and poor behavior” while exhibiting a total “inaction to fix them” and when things escalate in the lyrics from a soda left in the freezer to our protagonist carelessly leaving a gas appliance on and seeing double from the fumes then the stakes of kitchen-based disaster are raised considerably along with the song’s metaphorical resonance in terms of humanity’s endless capacity for self-sabotage.

As far as a band bio goes Flycatcher are a four-piece rock combo hailing from New Brunswick, New Jersey, three of whom have immaculately sculpted facial hair (well ok one of them has a bushy beard but still it’s neatly trimmed and shaped) and come to think of it ever since residing in Jersey City a few year back I’ve had sculpted facial hair too so go figure. On the musical side of things Flycatcher carry on in the fine tradition of immaculately sculpted extremely catchy power-pop-that-rocks made in the Tristate Area with oft-witty lyrics and a distinctly que será, será attitude as established by such legendary acts as Fountains of Wayne, The Feelies, The Smithereens, and the ripe–for–revival Cucumbers.

Or as Flycatcher’s official bio puts it their music has a “driving, angular melancholy” which is a phrase I may have to steal and use elsewhere because that’s some high quality music crit-speak and certainly applicable in this case (check the melancholy in that floating-in-space bridge section yo) and maybe even more so for their previous single “Games” (see above plus you may wanna check out the band’s 2019 full-length Songs for Strangers too) and thank goodness because let’s be real no one really enjoys flaccid, perpendicular melancholy too much even if it’s omnipresent in today’s world. And finally, for all you true musos out there, here’s how lead singer/songwriter/guitarist Greg Pease describes the genesis of “Sodas in the Freezer”: 

The idea for the song was initially conceived back in 2017 when we performed it a handful of times during that summer. However, the only aspect of the song that truly remained unchanged was the intro/outro chromatic riff. As I was looking for new song ideas I kept playing that riff over and over and eventually found additional chord progressions that complemented it much better than the original composition. I spent the following months composing the lyrics and melodies while driving to and from work in an attempt to make use of time that was otherwise going to be lost to me. 

So let’s all follow Greg’s example and stop slacking during those long work commutes and start using the time to write songs about some of the terrible dangers that face us around every corner! (Jason Lee)

Death to the remix album. Long live the remix album. 

I mean, sure, an entire album of remixes can be nothing more than a cash grab or career holding pattern or or third-party opportunism. But at their best remix albums can add fascinating new facets to an existing artistic expression as filtered through others’ musical imaginations and predilections. Plus it ain’t exactly 2002 anymore so no one’s selling millions of CDs anymore, remixes or otherwise, I’m lookin’ at you Linkin Park! (RIP Chester B.)

Anyway you can bet French literary theorist Roland Barthes woulda loved how remix albums subvert the very notion that a given work of art has a singular point-of-view or a single decipherable meaning, instead existing in "a space of many dimensions" with each "original" artwork "made out of a tissue of citations." (I’m quoting directly from "The Death of the Author" here, obviously!) Or, to put it another way, the art of the remix "resist[s] the ways that genres normatively operate as straight lines of descent from musical forebears, instead engaging in a queer kind of reproduction, a joyful excess of proliferating versions" which is exactly how Lil Nas X would put it no doubt.

What’s more, remixes subvert the strict dividing line between "originals" and "covers" because they’re some of both and not entirely either and that’s pretty dang "queer" too in the non-pejorative sense.

And if this all sounds a bit highbrow, don’t worry, it’s not really because "remix culture" is totally commonplace these days (no French literary theory required!) whether applying filters to photos, rearranging music into playlists, throwing memes into everyday conversation, making chroeographed Billie Eilish response videos, or taking the latest viral challenge on TikTok (yeah don’t even pretend you didn’t nearly bite the bullet from tripping on nugmeg back in 2020) and thus "remixing" has become smaller and more scaled down as it’s become a common feature of our mundane daily lives.

And when it comes to this "scaling down" maybe that’s why remix EPs seem to be all the rage these days, pretty much overtaking the full-on remix album, with three recent examples being Adeline’s Adi Oasis (Remixes) and Beau’s Forever (and more) and Lapeche’s Spirit Bunnies (Remixes) each comprised of 3 or 4 remixed songs. And with this in mind could it be a mere coincidence that the EP format itself, much like the remix, occupies a vaguely defined middle ground, half-way between stand-alone singles (A-side plus B-side) vs. long-paying full-on-artistic-statements album? (well OK it could be mere coincidence, but I prefer conspiracy theories!)

Anyway, speaking of going outside the constraints of black-and-white either/or categories, Adeline a.k.a. Adeline Michèle is a French-Caribbean bass-playing record-producing multi-instrumentalist-and-vocalist wunderkind who moved to NYC from Paris when she was only 18 to make it as a musician and then did just that—first by playing in the house band for NBC’s Meredith Vieira Show which led to her touring with CeeLo Green, later taking on bass and vocal duties for nü-disco party starters Escort and then releasing of her debut solo LP plus two EPs, the first of which being INTÉRIMES—"it’s title a mashup of the French words "intérim" (the time in between) and "rime" (French for rhyme)…with each track captur[ing] a specific mood as a days turns into night"—an EP which already received its own remix treatment and truly who’s better qualifitied to be releasing remix EPs left-and-right because Adeline is fascinatingly betwixt-and-between in so many ways—seemingly covering all the bases and all the stages in her musical journey at once.

And wouldn’t you know it a song called “Stages” is the first track on the original unremixed version of Adi Oasis and it’s a groovy, deceptively laid back sounding song about getting your groove back during not at all laid back times. And it gets the remix treatment not once but twice on the four-track Adi Oasis (Remixes) and how fitting for a song that’s all about transformation with its lyrics touching on the transcendence of playing music live on stage, and the stage shen went through (along with many others) of not being able to play live on stage but retreating to the studio instead with a music video that features Adeline overcoming these conditions, doing push-ups on the Brooklyn pavement and pull-ups on corner lampposts all while decked out in a leopard-print catsuit.

And then there’s the (not so) little matter of overcoming systemic bias in the music industry that "Stages" also deals with ultimately arriving at a final thereapuetic stage of self-reliance (just gonna do me / don’t need nobody […] to tell me / how to lay my bass down) but not without transcending this state of isolation with the support of allies like guest vocalist KAMAUU (treat her like your Muva or she’ll have to beat / your ass like she’s your Daddy) who returns the favor for Adeline’s production work and vocal feature on his 2020 mega-hit “Mango" and damn, so many levels! (and speaking of levels don’t ask me what happened with the crazy block of random characters above, but I’m just gonna roll with it because they don’t seem to be erasable and this is a pretty crazy blog entry anyway…)

Both the remixers of “Stages” wisely keep the emphasis on Adeline’s Bootsy-worthy bass part but otherwise they go in two opposite directions. First, the British four-piece Yakul strips away just about everything but the bass and vocals which are baked into a musical brownie of gooey, woozy keyboards and a shuffling beat that only amplifies the Zen self-contained contentment of a line like “just gonna do me, don’t need nobody” as a spacey exploration into inner space. Meanwhile the remix by Natasha Diggs is the extroverted version, jacking up the tempo considerably with a thumping house beat that gives a boost to the self-empowerment theme not to mention being a gift to aerobics instructors everywhere.

This leaves two more remixes on the EP—one being the lead-off track, a remix of "Maintain" by Australian-Germanic DJ/producer Jafunk who plays up the blunted out housebound escapism depicted in the lyrics (gotta meditate / gotta wash my face / gotta get out this place / gotta smoke a J / can’t go out anyway) with Adeline’s rubbery bass pushed up in the mix alongside a new four-on-the-floor beat and syncopated guitar vamping and a keyboard solo with a phat funky Moog sound that should get your funky fatty shaking. And then finally there’s the penultimate track, a remix by Soul Clap that puts an electro-house-acid-jazz-cocktail-hour spin on the Barry White-worthy “Mystic Lover” complete with newly introduced horn charts and flute solo.

But whatever your feelings may be on remixes and/or EPs in the end these are all just useful delivery mechanisms for a bunch of nice, smooth tunes so my final piece of advice to you, dear reader, is that you "butter" check out these three EPs because they’ll get you "churnt up" for sure [end scene, curtain and bow]. (Jason Lee)

((photo above and cover image below by Shelby K))

You’d be forgiven for assuming a band called Birthday Girl would write songs mostly about what they want what they really really want seeing as birthdays are all about making a wish and having it come true whether a nice hot bath or nookie or cake cake cake cake cake. 

But instead, their recent single “anymore” is all about what the Birthday Girl really really doesn’t want as in “I don’t want you anymore” repeated about 13-and-a-half times culminating in a bloody altercation outside somebody’s party (they’ll all think / I killed somebody) seemingly inspired by a serious case of amour fou a/k/a “crazy love” (you’re fucking crazy / but I love you all the same) in the midst of a relationship notable for its extreme and erratic power dynamics (I know you get mad when I treat you like a person / you wanna be a dog and get your heeeeead scratched-uh) and contradictory desires (you want a Mommy and a whore / I could be both of them but / I don’t want to anymore / I don’t want to anymore) which yeah I quoted that last line as “I don’t want you anymore” above but hey it’s only fair rock critics also get to be contradictory sometimes.

On the musical side of things “anymore” is a straight up pop-punk banger (who says the Deli ain’t hip in 2022?!) which over the span of its few minutes moves from stripped-down confessional to anthemic singalong to cage-rattling rage with an infectious hook to boot and a snotty ‘tude again with emphasis on “I don’t wanna” over “I wanna” so what more do you want really?

Admittedly I don’t know a thing about these people. But what I can tell you for sure—if their Bandcamp page is to be believed—is that “Birthday Girl is a six-piece rock band living in Brooklyn comprised of singer/songwriter Eva Smittle, bass/songwriter Layla Passman, rhythm guitarist Max Bush, lead guitarist/producer Avinoam “Avi” Henig, drummer Akiva Henig, and keyboard/synth Alex DeSimine [that] spans experiments with different genres, often taking inspiration from 90s alternative rock, riotgrrrl, emo, and pop." It’s also been said that "anymore" was the first song the group wrote as a full combo and what’s more both Avi and Eva are in another groovy band called JessX that’s been described elsewhere as “a DIY project for gay punks” so there you go!

And finally, one last thing I can say with some certainty is that if you’re into “anymore” you’ll probably dig Birthday Girl’s 2020 EP Roxy too not to mention the CrazySexyCool (TLC™) music videos for two of their songs off the EP (both viewable above!) with “Hollywood Girl” strongly evoking AOL-era dial-up-modem pop-up-window slow-loading Web 1.0 PG-13 erotica a/k/a “glitchrotica” (prospective new genre name!) whereas “MAN UP!” is something like if Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette was reenacted by two members of The Cockettes so now you know what to do clearly. (Jason Lee)

Dead Tooth’s EP Pig Pile (Trash Casual / Academy Fight Songs) lives up to its title and then some featuring not only “pig piles” but also the aforementioned swine piled onto piles of sheep (an image from the EP’s title song and cover art!) not to mention the packs of white wild wolves eyeing your coop and soft white doves conspiring with savage baboons to make a man out of you and then of course there’s the hawks and fury’d doves flying off white horses bucking hard and spitting blood knee high in crude oil and that’s just to paraphrase a few of the animal-related lyrics on the record. 

So clearly we’re talking less “docile petting zoo” and more “insurrectionary animal farm” because the beasts on Pig Pile are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore which is more than justified and I wouldn’t be surprised if they invited Orca, Cujo, and Willard’s rodent friends over for later.

In the interim since Dead Tooth put out their debut EP Still Beats the DT’s spent their Plague Years pretty productively by putting out a clutch of compelling stand-alone singles including a summer beach party jam (see below) plus two collaborations with Darius VanSluytman from electro-soul rockers No Surrender and a cover version of a well-known disco anthem transformed into a yearning dirge about trying to survive, and thus they could have easily put out a full LP’s worth of material if they’d just thrown all these other songs onto the "Pig Pile" but there’s a reason "EP" rhymes with "integrity" I suppose.

Pig Pile sees Dead Tooth up the ante on their already nervy and dirty post-punk with six gnarly, gnarled songs full of intertwining guitar and no shortage of shredding (shredded guitar is rich in fiber!) ably anchored by the roustabout rhythms of drummer Dylan DePice and bassist Jason Smith who provide ballast for the vocal musings of head songwriter Zach Ellis aka Zach James aka The Adventures of the Silver Spaceman as he pivots between ranting-and-raving-street-preacher-who-may-actually-be-a-derelict-prophet mode (“Hell Shack,” “Pig Pile,” "Hollow Skin") and slapback-echo-laden-Lux-Interior-in-baritone-tones mode (“Nightmare America") and full-on-crooning-slow-burn-building-to-a-head-and-heart-clutching-climax mode (“Blind,” “Riverboat”).

To the ears of this listener all this rampant Pig Piling resonates strongly with the contemporary moment in all its weird-mixed-up dread and euphoria glory whilst spinning around on a planet playing chicken with its own fate at least until all those chickens come home to roost. And “Blind” is a prime example building up gradually like a suspense movie soundtrack equal parts ominous and intoxicating (that chorus tho!) and the same goes for the eerily beautiful feral-fever-dream postindustrial walkabout music video featuring the animal graces of dancer/choreographer Nola Sporn Smith and maybe all this is tied to Zach’s skateboarding past too and the Platonic ideal of living forever in-the-moment whilst teetering on the edge but who knows.

If you wanna "read more about it" re: the history of Dead Tooth and about their creative process and all that sorta stuff then you could start by watching the interview above and then by clicking on some of the hyperlinks found in this piece but the quick version is that the band was borne out of a chance encounter between our man Zach and one Andrew Bailey while both employed at a vegan diner near Brooklyn’s fabled Sweatshop Rehearsal Studios (RIP) and at the time the former didn’t even know the latter played (and still plays) guitar in a scrappy little band called DIIV who likewise know a thing or two about joining together tension, bliss, and catharsis.

And finally just to make sure you’re all up to date (that’s our job!) the Dead Toothers spent the past week down in Tejas playing SXSW culminating with the Austin EastCiders X BdBK X Our Wicked Lady showcase, and not too long before that they were victorious in the OWL Winter Madness Battle of the Bands (who needs "March Madness" sports yuck!) which led to an officially designated sponsorship by CHEETOS® brand Crunchy FLAMIN’ HOT® Cheese Flavored Snacks so here’s hoping some of that hot processed cheese-puffery fairy dust rubs off on the rest of us because we’re animals like that. (Jason Lee)

Repping NYC at SXSW this coming Wednesday…

I’m not sure which benign deity brought the twin-sister dark electronica duo known as MOTHERMARY into our plane of existence (Lilith? Kali? Ishtar? Cher? Dolly?) but we owe them a debt of gratitude because not since the heyday of Prince and Madonna have there been two such solid proponents for eroticizing religious dogma which is great for Christianity in particular with its central conceit of “original sin” where being tempted to enjoy a piece of deciduous by a sexy wifey made from your own rib is grounds for the eternal damnation of humankind not to mention eternal shame at our own nakedness. 

And then it doesn’t help matters when a few millennia later these same humans somehow managed to murder God’s only son in a particularly gruesome fashion and all this is without doubt deeply guilt-inducing and deeply unsexy. Or is it?

MOTHERMARY offer strong evidence to the contrary on their debut full-length I Am Your God released in late January and they know what they’re talking about because Elyse Winn and Larena Winn were raised in a devout Mormon household in Missoula, Montana (where a deep love for music was self-reportedly instilled alongside the Mormonism) and both attended BYU before moving to Salt Lake City and eventually NYC (first Elyse and later Larena) and recording their debut single “Catch Fire” which caught the attention of their friend Alex Frankel who’s also one-half of synthpop duo Holy Ghost! (how appropriate!) who passed it along to Megan Louise at Italians Do It Better which is basically the go-to label for cooly restrained yet highly and sublimely dramatic electro music—kind of like Italo-disco on steroids and tranquilizers at the same time—a perfect fit for the duo and their own melding of kewl and hawt, sinful and angelic.

And speaking of hotness “Catch Fire” is smoking hot—all swelling organs and throbbing bass and pulsating rhythms accompanied by Johnny Jewel-style synth-tom fills (RIP Chromatics and the fabled Dear Tommy LP) with lyrics from the POV of the sneaky snake in the Garden of Eden (see the truth when / it’s in the nude / taste the fruit / put the blame on me) and geez if Tipper Gore ever heard this song she’d likely have an aneurysm on the spot nevermind if she saw the music video we’re talking heart attack (brief synopsis: Bible study group/faith healing ceremony transforms into a polymorphously perverse strip club complete with crucifix tossing and leather-studded-slow-motion gyrating by Elyse and Larena).

But it’s not all “hotness for hotness’s sake” as MOTHERMARY point out I Am Your God “isn’t about a god complex, it is an invitation to ponder what you worship. It’s about women reclaiming their holiness and inviting you to acknowledge your own…it is a mirror to religion both reflecting the bad and salvaging the good” with the very name MOTHERMARY being “the ultimate symbol of religi[ous] hypocrisy & the insane expectations placed on women…These two extremes. Have children to procreate, but don’t be sexual beings.” The Madonna/Whore complex is an impossible needle to thread for sure but on the album’s most recent single and music video (title track “I Am Your God”) the Winn twins come pretty darn close with a song that floats by on ethereal clouds of airy heavenly electronic oscillations, but it’s equally voluptuous and lusty (and a bit creepy with that pitch-shifted vocal) with the repeated line “I can come again” straddling the same line between holy and horny.

I guess guilt is complicated that way when you think about it—it’s an age-old tool for subjugation (especially used against women natch) but keeping people form what they want and need only builds desire upon desire and before long they’re developing some pretty elaborate fantasies and fetishes to redirect some of that energy not to mention making cool art and beautiful music to express their frustrations and longing not to mention how it makes being bad feel so good so guilt is a volatile thing to say the least. 

But enough of this music blogger’s theological thoughts! In closing it should be mentioned that some of I Am Your God was created together with compatriot/co-producer Chris McLaughlin with whom Elyse Winn likewise collaborates on the Cigar Cigarette project fronted by Chris where she takes on the role of co-composer, art director and music video director, and by the way MOTHERMARY direct or at least co-direct all their own music videos which makes sense given their backgrounds in art and theater alongside music plus “sacrilegious spectacle” of course and if the “Pray” video below doesn’t deliberately riff on Garbage’s glorious video for “Queer” I’ll eat my hat!

And so let’s pray all these beneficent forces keep working together and spawning more (un)holy ravishing music because the world really needs it and I’d even be willing to try and guilt them into it. (Jason Lee)

ultranyc.com/legacy-artists-tiktok/

Between October 1982 and September 1983 Michael Jackson released seven count em seven singles off his paradigm-shifting sixth solo album Thriller with each of the singles in question charting in the Top Ten which set a record that wouldn’t be broken until Drake put out Certified Lover Boy (also his sixth studio album) late last year. This is a turn of events that obviously sticks in the craw of Savak, nearly as much as in mine, because the band have released five advance singles to date off their upcoming LP Human Error / Human Delight to be released on everyone’s favorite day of the year April 15 (via Savak’s own Peculiar Works label in partnership with Ernest Jenning Record Co. and btw note how the album’s title is a clever nod to Thriller’s “Human Nature”) no doubt in an obvious bid to knock the Digrassi High School grad off his high horse and while none of their singles has cracked the top 10 as of yet I’m sure this blog entry will turn the tide because I mean could it be mere coincidence that this will likewise be Savak’s sixth full-length release having put out four LPs and one EP between 2016 and 2020.

What makes this singles-going-steadily-along strategy all the more impressive is that the three gentlemen who make up Savak are what’s known in the music biz as “veterans” or as “legacy artists” in the latest parlance, but they sure as heck don’t act like it because they keep popping off one razor sharp single after another like clockwork at the start of each month—at least they we they’re not pregnant!—songs that are overstuffed with garage rock grit and power pop glint and with hooks a’ plenty at the ready to the point where honestly I’m concerned the trio may be taking a few too many gas station pep pills but hey whatever works. 

In core you were wondering the core of Savak is made up of Michael “Jaws” Jaworski (Fifth of May, The Cops, Virgin Islands), Sohrab Habibion (Kid$ For Ca$h, Edsel, Obits) and Matt Schulz (Holy Fuck, Enon, Lake Ruth) accompanied on their soon-to-come album by six count em six individual bass guitarists and at least two saxophonists and overall this is a band that’s got more punk rock cred than a warehouse full of Subaru Imprezas (if you thought you’re punk as f*ck you’d better think again my friend) I mean heck Sohrab even has a Youtube page full of digitized Betamax tapes of DC hardcore punk shows that he filmed back in the day during the scene’s salad days.

So anyway on the heels of their last LP Rotting Teeth in the Horse’s Mouth by almost exactly two years which was a lyrically downcast politically-minded record about “fallacies, narcissism, and slime” (the perfect slogan for 2020!) Human Error / Human Delight takes a more varied light-and-shade approach as indicated by the record’s title, kind of like a melding of Rotting Teeth and the overall brighter Mirror Maker EP, it makes sense that the album-opening “No Blues No Jazz” explicitly makes reference to no arbitrary boundaries / no districts…no lines to redraw” in its pro-overturning-of-geopolitical-and-musical-boundaries-and-pledges-of-allegiance-of-all-kinds stance.

In a sense this makes the Savak album-opener the equivalent to the MJ/Paul McCartney duet “The Girl Is Mine” off from Thriller which is also a song rooted in dialectical materialism and the struggle between contradictory forces. And then I’d have to say “Cold Ocean” is the “Billie Jean” of Savak’s Human Error / Human Delight because it opens with a propulsive/plodding repetitive riff which later goes into a killer-hook refrain (can you feel the sand / slipping through your fingers / do you feel the tide / pulling you in) and similarity as you can tell by those lyrics it’s also a song about the pull of paranoia and dark romantic intrigue (the music video captures this as well in both instances). 

And hey I don’t wanna give away which Savak song is the “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” of the album but my vote goes for the highly danceable and highly philosophical “My Book on Siblings” because obviously Mike, Matt and Sohrab totally gets the Foucauldian subtext of that MJ classic (seriously, read the lyrics again and tell me it’s not about the Panopticon) and I’d better end it here before the theories get totally out of hand but in the meantime listen to those five Savak singles (ten songs in all) and try to make your own correspondences. (Jason Lee)

photo by Nolan Zangas

The first time I heard the name Hello Mary I instantly assumed it must be the name of a Christian puppet show like the ones put on by the inimitable Tammy Faye back in the day (RIP) on her TV programs (PTL Club, The Tammy Faye Show) with the phrase “Hello, Mary!” being the first words out of the resurrected Jesus’s felt mouth after He has risen from the dead, waking with a start and one hell of a hangover, and then taking a stroll outside his tomb to see what’s up nevermind that pesky giant boulder in the way only to find Mary Magdalene and “Big Mama” Mother Mary right there outside waiting faithfully for Him to whom He speaks the aforementioned salutation.

Anyway, it’s a theory. Except in this case the reality is even better than the theory because in reality Hello Mary is a young and upcoming NYC-based-indie-alt-rock trio whose combined age is probably less than the age of Axl Rose’s oldest hair extensions and, I’ll just go ahead and say it, each one of Hello Mary’s songs to date rocks harder and more convincingly/compellingly than the entirety of Chinese Democracy.  

Take their latest single for instance released just days ago, “Stinge” backed by “Sink in,” or “Sink In” backed by “Stinge,” these things are difficult to parse in the streaming age. But anyway “Sting” comes first in the running order, a song addressed to a mercurial character who “may be the one for good” but who “leave[s] just as it gets fun” which is precisely why “they said I should run” and sometimes “they” know best and yes I realize there’s an unreasonably large gap between the Bandcamp embed above and this text which I blame on the new Spotify-people owners.

Meanwhile the music of “Stinge” (definition: a person or other entity who is stingy) ably captures the emotional whiplash of the narrator’s romantic longings and loser-induced frustrations flipping back and forth between the grinding riff of the song’s intro, the jangly shoegazy float of the verses with some nice off-kilter chords, and the bridge section that sounds something like an underwater waltz. 

“Sink In” comes next which is quite possibly a song about the stark reality of the previous song fully sinking in where “it starts to drift and fall away / mostly from saying all I had to say” which I gotta say jumping straight to the fifth stage of grief in the second song is an encouraging sign of psychological health and if this is what acceptance sounds like then sign me up because this song rips starting off with a James Iha-esque alternation between a contemplative riff and head-drubbing power chords (the “sink in” part) before bursting open like an overpollenated flower full of “oohs” and “ahhs” ascending to the heavens (one of my fave musical moments of the year so far) and oh yeah there’s a guitar solo too with heavy reverb and note bending and more oohs and ahhs over some altered chords and it’s a pretty exciting ride and a pretty one too.

Across these two songs Hello Mary continue to hone their appetizing mix of heavy musical dramatics spiked with an enticing sense of play (cuz dammit these young ladies know how to write a catchy hook that’s for sure just see "Ginger" below) and a trippy psychedelia-adjacent vibe (see “Take Something” above for another example) and when you put together this mix of heavy and light and just plain weird it’s not entirely unlike (wait for it…) a bizarro Christian puppet show or a close encounter with Axl Rose’s dreads. (Jason Lee)

When I first heard “Forget Me Not” on a radio show a couple weeks ago I immediately thought to myself “Wow, I never knew the Salsoul Orchestra cut a slinky, stripped-down, clavinet-led four minutes of funk with vocals by erotic thespian Andrea True and/or select members of Sister Sledge and/or select members of Silver Convention, with Johnny Pacheco from the Fania All Stars supplying some nice flutter tonguing on the flute (not a bad skill for any guy—or gal—to have ammirite ladies?) plus a groovy solo toward the end and really who doesn’t like a nice groovy flute solo and if you don’t like a nice groovy flute solo then I don’t want to know you until you seek therapy.” This is what I thought to myself.

So there where I thought I’d made quite the old school “deep cut” discovery it turns out, better yet, I’d discovered (random stumbled upon) an entirely new school of lush groovy funkitude that’s centered right here in the borough of Brooklyn NYC, with a significant assist by Loveland, Ohio-based Colemine Records, because “Forget Me Not” is the debut single by the Brooklyn-based-female-fronted-seven-piece-deep-friend-soul-combo-platter called Say She She—a group whose officially ensorsed alternate spelling is “C’est Chi-Chi” given that any perceived similarities between SSS and the disco era’s most legendary band or with the classic LP C’est Chic are probably not unwelcome, nor unfounded, as “Forget Me Not” amply checks off the elegant coquette box of that album’s “I Want Your Love” and next I’m eagerly awaiting SSS’s take on the “Le Freak” aesthetic.

Which isn’t to say that Say She She are mimics, more like the curators of a rich array of influences taken apart and reassembled. Along these lines “Forget Me Not” is what I’m guessing the “parallel universe ‘80s” would’ve sounded like if Jimmy Carter had been re-elected president and if a bunch of drunken meatheads hadn’t burned a pile of disco records on a baseball field and if the nation’s youth hadn’t been persuaded by Music Television to adopt synthesizers, parachute pants, and asymmetrical haircuts en masse. 

But enough about alternative realities who the heck are Say She She exactly in real life? The tripartite vocal front is made up of one-time Londonite Piya Malik (79.5, El Michels Affair) whose great uncle was a prominent Bollywood music producer and who met Sabrina Mileo Cunningham (Denny Love) because the two were living in the same Lower East Side apartment building and heard each other singing through the walls and then once they joined up with Nya Parker Gazelle the vocal chemistry was complete. 

On the instrumental side of things Say She She is comprised of the wah-wah stylings of electric guitarist Matty McDermott (Black Acid, Coyote, Nymph), the funky strutting keys of Mike Sarason (Combo Lulo), the finger-slapping phat bass tones of Preet Patel (The Frigtnrs, RIP Dan Klein), and the in-the-pocket drive of drummers Andy Bauer (Twin Shadow among many other projects) and Ben Borchers (The Shacks), and last but certainly not least the groovy flute of the multi-talented Mike Sarason (see above).

So if you’re feelin’ the vibe be sure to keep an eye peeled for Say She She’s next moves. And don’t be surprised if one of their next songs is in Hindi or if they come out with a debut album this summer full of more raw analogue slabs of sonically transmitted smooth funkitude which even though I’m trying is not quite as good a tongue-twister as the title of this piece. (Jason Lee) 

Photo by Aidan Zamiri, styled by Tati Cotliar

The mesmerizingly winding road of Caroline Polachek’s musical trajectory had spanned far and wide—from writing haunted house music in Boulder, Colorado to co-founding the indie combo Chairlift and bestriding the Great-Early-21st-Century-Brooklyn-Psych-Pop-Rock Renaissance alongside the likes of MGMT, Yeasayer, and Grizzly Bear; from songwriting collabs with such obscure niche artists as Beyoncé, Solange, and Blood Orange to putting out solo albums under two separate alter egos (the Dario Argento-adjacent dark synthpop soundtracks of Ramona Lisa, and the electro-instrumental ambient drift of CEP); and finally, from her 2019 debut LP released under her own name called Pang to her two latest singles which together demonstrate that Ms. Polachek still has plenty of new musical highways and byways left to explore somehow. 

The first of these two singles (“Bunny Is A Rider”) is a song about being “liberated by disappearance, about non-responding, about being unbeholden to anyone” which accounts for the refrain of Bunny is a rider / satellite can’t find her which is a fitting theme for our current Surveillance Age where freedom’s just another word for somewhere left to get lost—a theme mirrored sonically by the stark bassline-led Spaghetti Western musical textures, and their implied wide-open spaces, complete with pitter-pattering rhythms and high lonesome whistling and autotuned trilling and sampled infant cooing plus plenty of tape hiss and chicken scratch and synth swelling all of which makes going off the digital grid sound like escaping to a glitchy Wild West.

The second single, “Billions,” released earlier this month, likewise takes the listener to a place outside of normal experience or social surveillance—the title and the cosmic vibes of “Billions” can’t help but put this listener in a very Carl Sagan-esque headspace—a space comprised of delicately lurching reversed rhythms and skittering tablas that like raindrops dancing off rooftops plus celestial choirs and sub-bass and string arpeggiations and dramatic recitations and a breakdown section with what may possibly be a dilruba solo (but hey I’m no ethnomusicologist) not to mention Caroline’s majestically malleable voice swooping across multiple octave registers and multiple emotional registers and multiple digital manipulations across the song’s nearly five-minute kaleidoscopic arrangement.

In sum it’s a virtuosic arrangement and production and performance overall—with both singles co-written and co-produced by British producer/remixer/songwriter Danny L Harle, best known for his work with the pioneering PC Music collective and for his impressive resume of collaborations, including making Pang and seriously the collaborative work of Polachek & Harle so far is the closest upgraded-equivalent of Bjork and Nellee Hooper’s sublime mid-90s sides that I know of with “Billions” being their “Venus As A Boy” (extolling the virtues of a lover who lies like a sailor but…loves like a painter). The duo have a knack for not only crossing musical boundaries but also for pretty much melting them away entirely, with synthetic sounds rendered vivid and visceral and lifelike, while organic sounds often come off as extraterrestrial, in other words, a near-total meshing of human/physical and machine/technological that’s like “sexting sonnets / under the tables / tangled in cables” to quote Caroline herself.

Oh and the video for “Billions” is cool too just like most of Ms. Polachek’s video (see top of this page, co-directed by Matt Copson and Caroline herself) and after viewing it you’ll probably wanna go grape-picking-and-stomping and then order some cool crazy-straw-style wine glasses and an ornamental blown-glass funnel for bath-taking purposes but sorry no Paul Giamatti. (Jason Lee)

Pan Arcadia are a band with a very dog-like energy which is something that I appreciate because it seems like rock bands have become more and more cat-like over the years—aloof and elusive, venal and preening, prepared to scratch your eyes out at a moments notice, which to be sure are all admirable qualities in a rock band. But for the six gentlemen of Pan Arcadia (Brian on drums, Henry on bass, Dylan and Gabriel on guitars, Jimmy on trumpet, and Eamon on the mic) there’s an appealing throwback quality in their strong canine energy, an energy that’s especially evident live where they rock out in a manner that’s unassuming and ardent and impassioned, to the degree that if one of the Pan Arcadians were to jump off stage and eagerly lick your face for a full minute you probably wouldn’t even mind because it’d just make you think of Fleegle the Beagle and make you wish they were playing at an amusement park.

Tongue baths aside, with their resplendent manes there’s also the fact that many of the Pan Arcadians resemble Llasa Apsos (granted not so much as the Allman Brothers Band though) which is fitting to this writeup because did you know Llasa Apsos are believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be the breed of dog that the soul of a priest is most likely to inhabit in its final stage of reincarnation before being re-born as a human? Likewise, Pan Arcadia’s new single “You Are Who You Remain” has a mystical bent to it which you may have guessed from its title alone, a song that’s about “being here now” once the external world’s bells-and-whistles are all stripped away (stripped away by, let’s say for instance, a global pandemic) a theme presented through a series of lyrical aphorisms delivered here with such swooning conviction that even a familiar phrase like “where there’s smoke there’s fire” is turned into a Zen kōan, and a theme that’s further enhanced even further by the music video’s "still center point of the unverise" time-lapse visuals.

According to songwriter Eamon Rush, "YAWYR” started off as a Dylan-esque acoustic guitar number (written while he was quarantined over his birthday) which makes it all the more remarkable that the studio version is the best representation of Pan Arcadia’s live sound yet—the sound of six musicians who seem to be telepathically linked…an immersive sound that’s big but not overly busy (all the better for the melodic hooks to cut through) with a kind of stately rock elegance that’s less U2 and more INXS (“Don’t Change” most especially) assuming we’re forced to make 80s-era comparisons (we are, at gunpoint) a comparision that’s highly apropos for a brass-enhanced six-piece after all. 

Final thoughts: And so, for any aspiring bands out there in the same mold, it’s highly recommended you all live together in a small ramshackle house tucked behind an alley with a basement space perfect for practicing (see music video above) but which is oft-times lacking in cold water (yup you heard me right cold water!) thus necessitating 30-second-long scalding showers, in order to develop the strong sense of rapport and cohesion necessary for writing and performing songs like “You Are Who You Remain.” (Jason Lee)

On 2021’s Hot Sass, Brooklyn-via-Nashville-via-Baltimore-singer-songwriter-axe-wielder Liz Cooper conjures up a unique fusion/contusion of tight-as-a-tick’s-ass-Music-City-worthy songcraft (e.g.,”Shoot the Moon”) crossed with a Brooklyn-worthy tendency to drive finely honed songcraft straight over the edge of a cliff (or better yet off the side of the Williamsburg Bridge, that is, if it wasn’t all caged in) in the process exploding/imploding traditional song structures with excursions into (for instance) nearly eight-minute epic Krautrock-style locked grooves infused with acid-fried-psych and a cappella inserts as on “Lucky Charm” or (for another instance) sexy glam rock stomp outfitted with fits of pummeling hardcore feral-freakout riffage alongside fragments of floaty musique concrète soundscapery as on the eponymous “Hot Sass” (a song which totally captures what it feel like to have a freakout episode in a Kroger parking lot and I grew up in Dallas so I oughta know).

The end product of all this musical assembly/disassembly was a compellingly schizoid album that felt highly apropos to last year and still feels it today—equal parts dreamy pop reverie and jittery anxiety dream—so that perhaps it makes sense Ms. Cooper made the move to Crooklyn when she did because some of the tracks on Hot Sass may be just a little bit too sassy for Nashville these days and it’s not a city that’s generally short on sass either even if there’s a growing sass supply shortage (RIP Katy K’s).

And now to our main attraction: the five-song live set posted yesterday on Audiotree Live (Chitown in the house!) by Liz Cooper and her current band—and lemme tell ya she’s assembled a crack band to help realize her post-Liz-Cooper-And-The-Stampede musical vision (the Stampede was also a crack band to be sure, tho’ one I hasten to add a band that was never known to take crack, a drug that doesn’t lend itself to mellifluous steel guitar infused alt-country).

Take set opener “Je T’aime” for instance (see the top of this page) which features a flinty/flirty shaker-assisted groove that brings to mind some of Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra’s classic mid-to-late ‘60s sides (not to mention how Liz can shift her voice from coyly supine, to aggressively vulpine, on a dime, and back again, not unlike Frank’s favorite daughter) a parallel that’s further enhanced by the song’s pregnant pauses and these-boots-are-gonna-walk-all-over-you lyrical message if less so by its space-alien-summoning keyboard solo and final serrated guitar chord.

So check out the full live set in the video at the top of this page and/or in audio form at the streaming platform of your choice and don’t worry I won’t spoil the other four songs for ya cuz I ain’t sassy like that. (Jason Lee)