There’s a self-described “creative salad” take-out joint where I go to grab lunch sometimes when I’m working my day gig in midtown Manhattan (yes “The Deli” has a desk jockey job…so much for 24 hour rock ‘n’ roll hedonism!) and when I visited the other day and ordered my go-to order with spicy shredded chicken, warm grains, black beans, cotija cheese, avocado, scallions, tortilla chips, and marinated kale topped off with a drizzle of Mexican Goddess dressing I informed the “salad artisan” that while their menu is solid overall, this particular menu item is my fave and he sagely offered, “yeah, it just hits different” and I thought “wow, what an apt phrase for that certain je ne sais quoi that sets certain things apart in some difficult-to-articulate but undeniable manner whether it’s a salad or a sandwich or a song.”
And so when I listen to the band Parlor Walls they remind me of this salad because their music just hits different in a way that’s hard to pin down—at once dread-inducing and ravishing—with pungent flavor notes like musically-marinated kale with cotija cheese and scallions as heard on their most recent EP Belly Up—an evocative title phrase that can mean either the act of sidling up to something appealing (“let’s belly up to the bar and enjoy a cold brewski”) or being in a state where one is hopelessly ruined or defeated (“my stock portfolio went belly up after the pork belly future market collapsed”) and it’s a paradoxical dynamic that’s perfectly apt for the band.
Belly Up opens up with a tune called “In Knots” (shot off, limb for limb / just another day when / belly up, belly up / eyes are peeking, through your hands / it is in knots, it is in knots) that sounds like a sweater or a mental state or a lifetime of accumulated inhibitions just about to unravel but somehow remaining precariously intact for the durations of three minutes at least, a song that opens (and closes) with a few seconds of mellifluous vocal harmonies before launching into a buzzy sub-bass drone backed by tribal tom-toms and the sound of a smoke alarm with low batteries overlaid with thick gelatinous guitar chords smeared across the song’s surfaces.
So maybe you see what I mean by just hitting differently but if you don’t just keep listening. The next track “Work!” combines an undulating melody line with woozy, seasick textures and the titular exclamation to create an upside-down rewrite of “Whistle While You Work” updated for the neoliberalworkplace while “The Lock” is chill-out music for paranoiacs and “Hour After Hour” is the perfect dance soundtrack for those same paranoiacs after ingesting a decent dose of electrolytes and vitamin C and who knows what else. Which are all just my own subjective song interpretations of course because Parlor Walls are likely to hit everyone a little differently you see… (Jason Lee)
OK, quick question. Do you ever find yourself becoming so chemically imbalanced that you kind of accidentally push through to the other side and start role-playing and acting and presenting yourself kind of like an everyday, rational human being making everyday, rational human being decisions?
****** As a pithy thesis statement for Debbie Dopamine’s debut single “Eat Cake” (released today!) the quote above really does take the cake, as it should since Katie Ortiz happens to be vocalist, guitarist, lyricist, and real world doppelgänger for Debbie Dopamine—both the persona and the band—which is exactly why I’ve opened with this quote and also quoted directly from Katie/Debbie throughout this piece (of cake!) taken from an interview provided exclusively to the Deli so “eat it!” other music blogs! (just joking, we love you other music blogs!)
KO/DD: Debbie has been a figment of my imagination for years. She is the part of me that embraces a cynical outlook on existence. She drags me down, but she does it so good. She’s your depressive episode personified in the internet age, sweet and sharply sour, wrapped in a dirty-bubblegum aesthetic.
DELI: Much like Codeine, Morphine, and Viagra Boys, Debbie Dopamine perfectly embodies her/their chosen nom de drug on “Eat Cake” with its prowling palm-muted guitar and spectral piano and chiming arpeggios and tremulous single-note sustains, producing a frisson that’s not unlike the musical equivalent of goose bumps whether produced by pleasure or by anxiety or by both at the same time as reflected in the song’s lyrics which describe “making out with all the empty in my bed” and “making out with all the empty in my head” (hey, we’ve all been there!) not to mention “I’m not gonna pinch on my thighs anymore / I’m gonna eat the damn cake!” so there’s your pleasure/anxiety right there…
****** KO/DD: I wrote the track in the midst of lockdown [lyrics quote: “I don’t even go outside anymore / what if I never come back] when I was discovering how much of my life until that point I had spent trying to avoid being alone with my thoughts. Depression can have this negative feedback loop where you feel so completely disconnected from the world that being around anyone feels uncomfortable, so you isolate yourself to get away from that feeling. But when you’re trapped alone with your most cynical thoughts, they play tricks on you.
DELI: And here’s the funny thing about dopamine is that even thought it’s a neurotransmitter known to produce a euphoric “natural high” that can be triggered by anything from a vigorous jog to vigorous nookie to, well, vigorous amounts of cake, it’s also a prime culprit in provoking the opposite of pleasure because, well, euphoria makes a person wanna come back for more and if mommy doesn’t get her medicine it can lead to all kinds of emotional issues (e.g., anxiety, insomnia, addiction, irritable bowel syndrome, etc.) and this is what’s know as “ironic” (pleasure = pain) so talk about yr mind playing tricks on ya…
******* KO/DD: Zach [drummer Zach Rescignano] and I started workshopping and playing music together out of necessity. We were stuck at home unable to practice with our various bands or get any kind of catharsis or release through performing. It started as just that, an expression, and we slowly realized that we had something really special going.
These songs had moments of aching fragility and cutting bleakness unlike either of us were exploring in our other projects. We knew we wanted to bring someone else in who was sensitive to that. I thought of Dylan [bassist Dylan LaPointe] because of his dynamic range with his other band, Tetchy. He was the perfect fit front he get-go, helping us tease out these nuances in the music. The three of us collaborated a great deal in the arrangement and development of these songs. I may have written them, but our collective fingerprints are all over them.
******* DELI: Like all neurotransmitters, which are basically chemical messengers, the whole point of dopamine is to “get the balance right” (take it from me, I’m a doctor!) so when those little buggers aren’t working right you get a chemical imbalance in the brain which is what happens when your grey matter has either excessive or insufficient chemical transmitters. Likewise, assembling a new band is all about getting the balance right which is exactly what Katie describes above.
And here’s a little more info about the musical ingredients: Zach is the drummer for a band called Awful Din who self-describes as being “for fans of Lemuria, Saves The Day, Sebadoh, Remo Drive, The Get Up Kids, Prince Daddy & The Hyena” so we’re talking indie/alt rock with dashes of emo, pop-punk, and post-hardcore. (plus, Zach is a live sound engineer about town!) And as mentioned above, Dylan lends his snaky bass guitar lines to Tetchy—a band that self-describes as “very very loud and very very quiet” and of course you already know all about them already because you’ve memorized my review of their single “Backyard” from last December. (another Deli premiere!)
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And as for Katie, well, she plays in a band under the pithy moniker of Bats Bats Bats Ghost Ghost Ghost (formerly Mean Siders) whose live performances are like a torrid, mind-altering ritual along the lines of a snake-handling ceremony without the snake, performed by three very, very lapsed nuns and I’m looking forward to when these ladies put out a record cuz I’d love to debut that one too. And as if that’s not enough, Ms. Ortiz also keeps herself busy with her band booking/promotional collective Booked By Grandma alongside her partner Shannon Minor who’s also in B3G3.
Got it? Phew! So anyways put all these ingredients together and you’ve got the musical soufflé known as Debbie Dopamine.
******* KO/DD: My mind is this unstable and magical place that I return to sequester myself in again and again. There’s something liberating (even relieving) about giving into its pull, but once I’m there, I’m terrified that I’ll never get out again. Because that’s what it tells me: this is the real you. That’s what the video is about. You might feel that it’s safest to stay inside, only to find that all your most persistent monsters are inside your own candy-colored mind.
As regards the rather cool music video for “Eat Cake” (dir. Jeanette D. Moses) I’ve just give a capsule listing of elements to expect if you haven’t watched it yet (warning: spoilers ahead!): whimsical domestic confinement anxiety, rolling across the floor, fainting couch, bunny ears, straight-jacket sleeves and a prescription pill-bottle crown (kinda surprised no googly eyes tho!) all culminating in a fun-looking house party show timed to the song’s climax as Katie sings: “If I’m going under that just fine / it’s my birthright I’m a water sign.” So from one water sign to another…The Deli says check it out! (Jason Lee)
A confession: There are some nights where I’m forced awake with a start in the wee small hours by urgent question that sits helplessly in my cerebellum until the sleep paralysis lifts just enough for me to force the words from my tremulous, perspiring lips: “WHERE IS THIS GENERATION’S GREAT PUNK POETESS?!?!” and specifically a New York punk poetess (though the “New York part" is practically taken for granted) because, I mean, we can’t expect modern-day Romantic punk poetesses like Patti Smith and Lydia Lunch to live forever even though it’d be nice of course and true both of these esteemed poetesses are still out there recording and “kickin’ it with the kids” at live shows but nonetheless I can’t help but ceaselessly prowl this city’s dark streets and its dens of musical iniquity like a tortured Byronic hero seeking out the perfect Romantic punk poetess ideal like a vampire searching New York City’s back alleys for sources new blood with a frustrated but unrequited desire to settle the matter once and for all.
And that’s why I’m so delighted that my atheistic/aesthetic prayers have been answered because there’s a young artist out there who gives off more than a strong whiff of “punk poetess” and that’s Leah Hennessey (ok there’s at least a few others too but please I’m trying to stick with my original conceit here!) otherwise known as (in classic single moniker form!) “Hennessey” who’s also frontperson of the musical collective known as Hennessey and leave it to a punk poetess to mess around with ontological boundaries in this manner but hey I’m grateful because I’m terrible with names. And without a doubt Hennessey’s most recent release “Byron Is Dead” (a-ha!) certainly fits the Romantic punk poetess bill, an artist who self-admittedly writes songs about “the feeling of being a freak or a failure for holding on Romantic dreams of a poetic sort of life” and who admires the work of ’80s NYC punk poetess Cristina…jackpot!
“Byron Is Dead” (see the video at the top of this page and/or better yet LISTEN HERE) opens with a low, humming throb provided by bandmate/producer E.J. O’Hara over which Hennessey growls in a mesmerizing half-whisper:
What are doing now? / sighing ensuant now / rhyming and wooing / half dirt, half demon / harlequin in uniform / masking and humming / guitaring and strumming / sound of the sleepless
And I’m hoping that I got at least 90% of the words right above but either way you get the idea. [n.b. I’ve since been informed that the one line is "signing and suing" but Hennessey complimented "ensuant" as "beautiful and archaic" and hey I know how to take a compliment and put it into my blog!!] Anyway it’s pretty heady stuff but equally visceral too—describing what sounds like Lord Byron himself rising from the grave and getting his seductive anti-hero groove on, all delivered with an implacable insouciance but 110% entrancing and alluring all the same and I think you’ve got most of your basic “punk poetess” boxes check off right there and that’s why Hennessey gives me hope for curing my night terrors or at the least providing a perfect soundtrack for them. Plus, apparently, she’s currently working on a dramatic presentation called “"Byron & Shelley: Illuminati Detectives" so there you go.
What’s more, the song “Byron Is Dead” was composed for, and in close conjunction with, Hedi Slimane who’s a big time fashion designer (according to GQ magazine “no other designer inspires this [much] ire, or excitement” which sounds pretty punk rock to me) in order to musically accompany the debut of his 2022 CELINE collection when it was unveiled in ol’ Gay Paree earlier this year (ergo the prowling models in the video above) and Hennessey had this to say about Slimane’s collection: “I love the billowing Byronic cloaks and the juxtaposition of the aggressively casual denim with the 18th-century environment and aristocratic detachment” and who in the world would say such a things except for a punk poetess, not to mention once who’s mastered the extremes of Romantic-style self-expression with vocals that range from a whisper to a scream and at least 50 shades in between, and plus Patti Smith is into high fashion too and both her and Lydia Lunch are indisputable fashion icons so there’s another box checked off I tell ya!
But don’t these take haut monde associations at face value either because, much like those other two aforementioned punk poetesses, Hennessey’s music has a strong component of social critique (final check box!) that ranges from astringent to subtle to playful, like on her single “Eight Men (Still Have All The Money)” (the former) as compared with the opening track of her HENNESSEY EP.01 extended-play from 2020 titled “Let’s Pretend (It’s the 80s)” as in “let’s act like we’ve got money” (the latter).
And really you should check out the entire EP with its four mini-symphonies of Romantic fervour—songs that range from being about being a user (“Use”) and about being used (“ No Transformation”) all culminating in the final track, an epic cover version of “We Will Not Be Lovers” which crosses the Waterboys with Donna Summer and Diamanda Galás, this being the track that led the fashion designer to dial up Leah and say “hey wanna fly out to Paris?” a meeting that must’ve been something like Lord Byron hanging out with Mary Shelly and we all know how that meetup resulted in nothing less than everyone’s favorite novel about “The Modern Prometheus” i.e. the destroyer (and potential preserver) of worlds with bolts in her neck. (Jason Lee)
P.E. doesn’t sound a whole heck of a lot like Public Enemy but they do make music “designed to fill your mind” with a unique assemblage of far-out sounds for in the in-crowd and deep grooves in heavy syrup, equal parts Chuck D cerebral and Flavor Flav flamboyant. In other words, this five-piece makes contemplative head music that still knows how to get your booty moving, mashing up dub, funk, ambient music, new wave and No Wave, into the musical equivalent of a potent 50-50 blend of indica and sativa strains of sonic reefer madness.
And if you don’t believe me you can just check out their sophomore LP, The Leather Lemon, released on the always-compelling Greenpoint, Brooklyn-based Wharf Cat label, or check them out playing live tonight (06/05/22) at the also always-compelling Sultan Room appearing with Gold Dime and Personal Space, the latter of whom are celebrating the release of their Still LifeEP (Good Eye Records).
And just in case you were wondering PE is made up of Jonathan Schenke (synths, beats, bass, percussion, voice, production), Veronica Torres (voice, lyrics), Jonny Campolo (piano, synths, bass, percussion, voice, artwork), Bob Jones (beats, samples, synths, bass, voice), and Benjamin Jaffe (saxophone, synths, voice), three of whom will be familiar to eagle-eyed readers as members of Pill and two of whom comprise the band Eaters (Pill + Eaters = Pill Eaters, hmmmm) ergo the snappy P.E. moniker and so The Deli says check it out, yo. (Jason Lee)
01. The title BROKENEQUIPMENT refers to the notion that “things that are broken reveal” (SOURCE) such as, for instance, physical pain revealing the need for bodily healing, civic upheavals revealing the widening fault lines of society, or glitching tech revealing the hidden SCHEMES behind their own SCHEMATICS, but where such “breakages” may lead one to “break away” from outmoded MODES OF BEING AND KNOWINGalongside transformations in personal and collective consciousness. You can listen to BROKENEQUIPMENTin its entiretyon BANDCAMPorSPOTIFYor wherever records and tapes are sold.
02. On an episode of “Carpool Karaoke” that aired several year back hosted by late night funnyman JAMES GORDEN, the members of BODEGA addressed their long-running feud with TAYLOR SWIFT alongside allegations that BODEGA had poached several members of TAYLOR’s backup dancer troupe (MS. SWIFTif you’re nasty!) from her LAS VEGAS residency dates, which led to the band penning the hit song "HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!" as heard on their debut LP ENDLESS SCROLL.
03. The first track on BODEGA’s BROKEN EQUIPMENT opens by name-checking KANYE WESTand JAY-Z’s WATCH THE THRONEbutin homonym form (i.e., “watch the thrown!” as in watch out for all the s*** that gets thrown your way in today’s accelerated culture) in a song (“Thrown”) that’s basically about achieving self-actualization via consumer choice among other topics.
And the similarities don’t end there either because Broken Equipment justlike Watch the Throne addresses themes of power and paranoia, disaster capitalism, entrepreneurial ambition (“Doers” equals “HAM”?), religion (“Statuette on the Console” equals “No Church in the Wild”?), and sexual politics (“Territorial Call of the Female” equals “She’s My Bitch”?) all put across with a TWITCHY MUSICAL INTENSITYand EJACULATORY SPRECHSTIMME VOCALStraded between two frontpersons.
05. BODEGA grew out of an earlier band called BODEGA BAYthat likewise featured co-frontpersons BEN HOZIE and the aforementionedNIKKI that released one full-length record titled OUR BRAND COULD BE YOUR LIFE (2017) whose title is a pretty great pisstake on indie rock piety while not denying its charms.
What’s more, Bodega Bay is aREALPLACEbest known as the setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s THEBIRDS, which is fitting since both BODEGA BAY and BODEGA were/are fixated on the porous boundaries between fact and fiction, reality and virtuality, art and commerce. Also, in addition to being a musician and songwriter BEN is also a real-world filmmaker and his films—such as 2020’s PVT CHAT starring JULIA FOX of Uncut Gems fame and guess what we have a second KANYE WESTCONNECTION—deal with many of the same themes as his songs.
06. The shortening of BODEGA BAY to BODEGA(alongside a lineup change that established a new creative approach based around a set of twelve musical commandments with one rule being “no references to garage rock”) is equally fitting because another of BODEGA’s major fixations is NEWYORK CITYitself.
Just listen to “NYC (DISAMBIGUATION)” if you don’t believe me with its nuanced depiction of the city’s past and present in all its dialectical complexity—both the land of immigrants and of craven opportunists—and truly there’s nothing more QUINTESSENTIALLYNYC than the CORNER BODEGA STORE. Thus BODEGA’s Broken Equipment provides a perfect soundtrack for picking up a package of Swishers, a dusty tin of cat food, a package of UTZ PICKLE CHIPS and maybe even some unregulated SEXUAL SUPPLEMENTS at 2:30 in the morning.
07. Anyone who’s seen BODEGA play liveknows that they’re a juggernaut on stageand knows it’s impossible to pry one’s eyes from the interplay between “stand up percussionist” TAI LEE and NIKKI BELFIGLIO’s ferocious assaults on a hi-hat cymbal (no one in this band sits down!) tho’ it should be noted former percussionist Montana Simone is featured in the video below. When I caught BODEGA at MARKET HOTEL a few months before The Great Lockdown began (with SURFBORT and WEEPING ICON no less!) TAIsomehow bloodied her nose early on and spent the rest of the set with the red stuff pouring down her face and turning her white tank top crimson whilst still pounding on her drums like a bloody banshee so that by the end of the show she resembled the female protagonist of I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE and it was a glorious thing.
The penultimate song on Broken Equipment is called “Seneca the Stoic” which applies the teachings of its namesake Roman philosopher to the life of a touring musician and truly if this song doesn’t make you wanna bop around your bedroom during its anything-but-stoic buildling-but-never-releasing cascading chord progression then I don’t know what will. And finally, after all the high-wire musical tension and philosophical ruminations of the preceding eleven tracks, Broken Equipment‘s album closer “After Jane” is a startlingly stripped-down, emotionally direct and quite touching tribute to BEN’s late mother.
09. Broken Equipment was co-produced between the band and live mixer/producer/songwriter/friendly neighbor BOBBY LEWIS(formerly of TEENAGE OCTOPUS and MUSTARDMIND) who also has a recent production credit on KID LE CHAT‘s Hey Sunny. This is likewise the first BODEGA record to feature noted Baltimore-based “guitar maestro” DANIEL RYAN although he’s been playing with BODEGA live since 2019.
10. On June 10th and 11th Bodega opens for THE KILLS at BROOKLYN STEEL. And not for nothingTHE KILLS formed in 2001 which is the very same year that THE KILLERS also formed but admittedly this writer prefers THE KILLS to that other band (sorry, BRANDON!) and I couldn’t really see BODEGA opening for THE KILLERS so let’s just hope BODEGA don’t get their wires crossed and end up opening for the wrong band.
11. The final “jaw-dropping fact which may surprise you” has more to do with your humble blogging correspondent than with BODEGA specifically but it’s still a "jaw-dropping fact which may surprise you" and hey I’m the one writing this damn listicle so I’m including it anyway. The first number of times I listened to the advance single “Doers” it totally sounded to me like BEN was singing, “This city’s made for the doers / the movers, shakers / helpful reviewers,” and I was so happy to be indirectly referenced in a cool BODEGA song that I was originally going to write about their new album the day it came out.
But then it turned out that the last line of the lyric above is actually “health food reviewers” and not “helpful reviewers” and ain’t that a kick in the head (guess I shoulda consulted theLYRIC SHEET!) so me being a typically petty, small-minded music blogger I waited a couple months to write about Broken Equipment despite its considerable qualityand did it in the form of a FuzzBead piece like you have befeore you here even though I’m not a HEALTHFOOD REVIEWER. (JASONLEE)
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And now, with no further ado, here are the FIVE SIGNS THAT YOUR CAT MAY BE A WIZARD:
1)YOUR CAT keeps several HOUSE-ELVES as servants; 2)YOUR CAT fervently believes that OZZY OSBOURNE’s HARMONICA SKILLSare vastly underrated; 3)YOUR CAT advocates a SYSTEM OF GOVERNANCE based around WATERY TARTS DISTRIBUTING SWORDS to future absolute rulers; 4)YOUR CAT is to this day upset that SELENA GOMEZ “wrecked her career” by breaking up with THE SCENE and donning a NEON-HUED BIKINI for HARMONY KORINE’s indie sleaze cinematic sensation SPRING BREAKERS; 5)YOUR CAT plays bass in a WIZARDROCKBAND
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 veryexplicitly 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 queerdebut 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)
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.
Dotia · <Singles> May 202And 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.
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)
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 Worldmagazines 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.
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.
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)
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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)
