There are bands out there that are willing to form a human pyramid for the sake of their art and others that aren’t. For one example of the former take Radiohead for instance—no human pyramids happening there there. And they’ve even got a song called “Pyramid Song” but even with the help of Weird Al and Adele they couldn’t make it happen or couldn’t produce photographic evidence of it anyway.
Dirty Fences are clearly a band who are staunchly pro pyramid and they’ve got the esprit de corp and the overall musical moxie to pull it off convincingly too, with a sound falling in the Venn Diagram sweet spot between Bay City Rollers, Misfits, and Motörhead with some junk-shop glam a la Sweet and Slade thrown into the mix as well to sweeten the pot.
The band’s latest singles is called “Pony On” and it’s a power-popping toe tapper that could easily be a long forgotten ‘90s sitcom theme song and also you could do the pony to it pretty easily if you can do the pony. Plus it’s got a catchy b-side about a “Heartache Parade” where “high is fine and I can’t complain.lhAnd then there’s the single they put out earlier this year where both sides (“Pepper Ann / “One In Ten”) lean into the Misfits side of things, while their late 2020 single “Garbage Man”/“Sometimes Sunshine” is even more on the punkier side of things but still super melodic and if you need more musical examples they also put out a retrospective comp recently called Hand Pickled Melodies. Seriously these guys could be full time jingle writers if they didn’t already have too much integrity to go in such a crassly commercial direction.
But if you’re one of these people who subscribes to the theory that bands are best judged by how well they can pull off a Public Access TV live gig then check out the video above to make a fully informed verdict. (Jason Lee)
The small fuzzy fruit known to English-speakers as a peach, with its sweet rainbow-hued juicy flesh and its alarmingly large seeds, has an interesting history when it comes to its use as a symbol in literature and elsewhere. For J. Alfred Prufrock, the question of whether to eat a peach leads to an existential crisis in one the most famous poems ever written. In Chinese mythology, peaches are the literal “fruit of the gods” bestowing longevity to immortals thanks to their mystical virtue. And on Instagram, peach emojis are a concise way of saying to someone that they have a nice ass.
But enough about the teaches of peaches. We’re here to discuss Bad Static’s debut single, simply called “Peach.” In this song, Bad Static tap into the oft-implied association of the peach with both femininity and vulnerability, which are not associated but are often assumed to be. But rest assured you won’t make that mistake here because Bad Static is clearly anything but vulnerable.
The cover image of “Peach” depicts a peach (no surprise there) that appears to be bleeding. with a large bloodied butcher knife directly behind it sitting in a pool of blood. And while PJ Harvey once described being “Happy and Bleeding” it seems like here any potential happiness is being impeded by some dude (assumed) who’s looking for a “kitten” and a “baby doll” to whom Bad Static reply: “Don’t fuck with me / I’ll bruise you like a peach.”
This is a compelling turnabout from traditional peach imagery where it’s usually the woman identified as the vulnerable “peach” and even in PJ Harvey’s “Happy and Bleeding” there a few lines describing how “the fruit was bruised / dropped off and blue / out of season / happy I’m bleeding long overdue.” And while we’re probably talking about two different forms of bleeding here, it’s still notable how Bad Static turn the tables on their attempted oppressors (and on the standard symbology) where they are the ones “waiting to attack / scratching down your back.”
On the musical side of things, Bad Static create a peachy compliment to their message with a musical vibe that’s basically like Pleasure Seekers meets X-Ray Spex (the vocals are especially Poly Styrene-ish) with a dash of Runaways for good measure that builds to a climactic sonic vortex over a chant of “thrill me, kill me / on your knees please. And they do it all in a tidy two minutes and five seconds, and truly nothing says punk rawk more than a two minute long song about fruit and blood and "don’t fuck with me" and empowerment. (Jason Lee)
The four members of Bad Static were kind enough to answer a few inane questions cooked up in the middle of the night when The Deli was admittedly maybe possibly a bit inebriated and here’s a selection of their responses to said questions:
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: What rock academy did you guys attend to learn how to rock so hard?
Kelsie Williams (bassist and singer): "The rock academy of your mom ( insert theme )”
Its My Rock and Im Ready to Roll Academy
The Anxious, Depressed and Overdressed Academy for the Elite Rockers of Rollers
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli: The song “Peach” ends with a refrain of “thrill me kill me / on your knees please.” By this we assume you mean to say that the addressee is the “bee’s knees” in so many words. Who do you consider to be the bee’s knees for yourself personally whether it’s a personal hero, or an admired musician, or whatever?
Nicol Maciejewska (singer and guitarist): That section of the song is about cheap thrills and asserting your dominance on those that try to dominate women.
I really like Patti Smith! She’s and great writer and musician. I inspire to do something along those lines. I also really like Kathleen Hanna and how she was one of the pioneers of the riot grrrl movement by creating her zine Bikini Kill and then later starting a kick ass band under that name.
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:What’s your favorite method for bruising oppressors (or just plain jerks) either physically or mentally or both?
Ryan Kevett (lead guitarist): Favorite method for bruising oppressors is nihilistic flatulence
Very intelligent question posed by The Deli:When your VH-1 “Behind the Music” episode premieres in 20 years or so from now, what will be the worst story that a roadie or other associate can tell on you?
In today’s fast-paced modern era of music streaming and profligate playlist making (not to mention Twitch DJing and all the other means of assembling original musical mixes) the notion of an old-school compilation album (or “comp”) may seem hopelessly out of date. But comps can still be wonderful things, and Subversive To Care (referred to as Sub2Care forthwith), which has been released to coincide with the launch of Paul Is Dead Records, checks off many of the boxes that make them good things.
For one thing, comps are often assembled to raise money for charitable/activist organizations and this one fits the bill with proceeds going to several AAPI organizations—The National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (www.NAPAWF.org), Asian Mental Health Collective (www.ASIANMHC.org) and The Tibet Fund (www.TIBETFUND.org)—in response to alarming levels of hate crimes and ongoing struggles against prejudice against Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.
What’s more, a good comp is a great way to discover new music and new artists without having to continually troll Spotify’s Teen Beats playlist (granted, SyKo’s “#BrooklynBloodPop!” has its pleasures). And with 60 original songs by the original artists Sub2Care should keep you occupied for a while as you make your way from the start (Wake Up’s “Hurricane” in exclusive demo form; the band is pictured above) to the finish (Squires’ “Tombstoning”) so you basically have got a conceptual theme here of moving from wakefulness to the Big Sleep—not that you can’t skip around within and between individual tracks which is another one of the nice things about comps. They’re basically sampler platters in musical form.
Sub2Care was put together by the new LA-based label Paul Is Dead Records (with satellite offices in New York and Wisconsin apparently) and is likely named either after the notorious Beatles urban legend, or the recent death of Paul Van Doren, patriarch of the Van’s sneaker empire. And while LA artists predominate on the comp (speaking of Vans some of these LA artists no doubt look a lot like Jeff Spicoli or perhaps Phoebe Cates) there’s also a decent number from other locales including New York/New Jersey like Frankie Rose,New Myths, Mevius, Dahl Haus, CITYGIRL, Skyler Skjelset (Fleet Foxes), The Natvral (Kip Berman from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart), and Shana Falana (featuring Shana Falana).
Across musical history, comps have occasionally played a key role in defining the sound of a nascent genre or a new record label—like the Lenny Kaye-compiled Nuggets (1972) that set an early template for punk rock, or the 1988 Sub Pop 200 comp that was a who’s who of future grunge all-stars—and while Sub2Care isn’t strictly speaking a “label comp” since it’s made up of tracks donated by “artists who are close friends and family members of our label” quoting label head and co-founder Evan Mui, it’s still got a certain vibe or aesthetic, if you will, while being pretty darn eclectic at the same time.
I would prospectively call this vibe or aesthetic Twilight Music. By Twilight Music I mean songs that’ve got a certain hazy/dreamy/slightly off-kilter quality whether they’re upbeat or downbeat or mid-beat. And in this way it’s good music for putting on around twilight say when you’re pregaming for a Saturday night out (tracks #13 and 14 are two good examples: Smirk’s “Do You?” and Eternal Summers’ “Belong”) or waking up Sunday morning trying to recall what happened the previous night (rewind to tracks #10-12: Four Dots’ “I Left My Heart Pump In San Francisco,” D.A. Stern’s “Funky Holocaust (Drunk Demo),” and Big Nitty’s “Chemical Plant”) or songs that fit equally well for either scenario (for example, tracks 32-34: Dahl Haus’ “Silhouettes and Alibis,” Black Needle Noise’s “And Nothing Remains,” Built Like Alaska’s “Ran Into A Coroner").
So throw a few bucks in the Bandcamp bin for Paul Is Dead Records if you like what you hear. And in return you may discover a new favorite artists or two–whether one of the ones mentioned/displayed here or some other deserving object of your musical admiration. (Jason Lee)
On their debut single released in 2016, Nation of Language asked “What Does the Normal Man Feel?” and it’s a question that’s become all the more relevant in the five years since, given, you know, the five years since–five years which has made our brains hurt a lot. But “normal” itself doesn’t feel so desirable anymore anyways (if it ever did) and N.O.L. already understood this when they distanced themselves from normal man feelings (“free from it…can not find it in myself”) backing up this sentiment with a neo-Devo meets Human League meets Howard Jones sound, a sound harking back to men (and women) who didn’t exactly scream normalcy either back in the day despite penning many hits between them.
In the interim Nation of Language put out a bunch of singles and one full length calledIntroduction, Presence, exploring a range of musical tributaries without deviating too far from their core sound. For instance, just listen to the band’s stark coldwave cover of “Gouge Away” which evokes the Pixies’ extreme dynamics but in a whole different fashion.
On their most recent single, N.O.L. acknowledge how we’ve crossed “Across That Fine Line” (see the video up top) and go full-on Motorik throb a la Krautrock/Kraftwerk which fits perfect with the notion of being in transit/transition from one state-of-being to another whether literally or figuratively or due to falling in L-U-V or whatever. And they manage to work in an anthemic chorus which is not really native to Krautrock so it makes for a cool push/pull dynamic which even comes across in the song’s opening lines, alternately comforting and disconcerting:
“Reach out, call my name
Whenever you want
Faced with the final convulsions
Contorting my tongue”
It’ll be interesting to hear what other new accents and dialects Nation of Language work into the mix on their next full-length, A Way Forward, scheduled for towards the end of this year, no doubt to be made available at your local record and tape outlet. (Jason Lee)
UV-TV’s Always Something opens with “Overcast Forever” which itself opens with two intertwined chiming guitars played in exuberantly Johnny Marr-ish fashion but with a jangly jagged dissonance between them and a quick single-note bass suspension adding more tension right before bassist-guitarist-vocalist Rose Vastola recalls calling up an unidentified “you” on a sunny day and being confronted with shadows and darkness as a result. This unnamed someone “went away so long ago” but maintains a presence that still lingers apparently which may account for the song’s title with its lingering stormcloud that never breaks but never passes over either leading to a state of perpetual grey skies or at least that’s my purely speculative reading.
What isn’t speculative is UV-TV’s mastery of taking hints of darkness and discord (with lyrical themes ranging from "the art of doing nothing" to "the inevitability of inconvenience and false hopes") and enveloping them in a sweet candy coating much like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup but made with bittersweet chocolate and extra crunchy JIF peanut butter straight from Iggy Pop’s personal stash (watch out for shards of glass) but with music that’s less Stooges-like and more along the lines The Muffs meets My Bloody Valentine in a dark alley and gets jumped by Joy Formidable—nervy guitar-based pop-rock balancing big pop hooks and big bright production with a simmering post-punk tension propelling the whole thing forward.
It’s a musical blueprint that never really goes out of style especially when it’s done well and UV-TV ups the ante by adding dashes of dreampop and shoegaze and modern indie vibes. Like on “Distant Lullaby” which opens with Ian Bernacett’s guitar pedals set to stun with a two-chord swirl of cacophony but ultimately culminating in a stupidly catchy ba-ba-ba-bum-ba-ba-bum-ba-ba-bum singalong refrain which is like going from Sonic Youth to a Saturday Morning Cartoon theme song in one fell swoop, and I didn’t even mention the cowbell heard faintly in the song’s bridge as if the band were just daring you to quote that one over-quoted Christopher Walken line.
Or like on “Plume” which starts off with a stark “Be My Baby” beat—or a Jesus and Mary Chain “Just Like Honey” beat if you prefer—like a plume of smoke rising off in the distance, before locking in with bass and strummed guitar and gradually building over several minutes to a swirling wall-of-sound miasma complete with machine gun snare drum fills by Ian Rose (who borrows a name from both his bandmates) before cresting and briefly resorting to its stripped down rhythmic pulse. The ending of “Plume” then leads right into the title track which could just about be mistaken for a Brian Jonestown Massacre number at first what with the tremolo guitar and groovy maraca and driving motorik pulse. But hey I don’t wanna give it all away so just go listen to the nine songs on Always Something if so inclined and savor all the flavors on your own. (Jason Lee)
Much like Jamie Lee Curtis ‘s fitness instructor and John Travolta’s investigative journalist in the movie Perfect from 1985, pm the EP recently released by Mannequin Pussy also called Perfect (Epitaph Records) thePhilly-based band likewise walk a fine line between outrageous provocation and romantic distress and Lycra-sheathed sensuality and moral confrontation and it’ll likely hit you just as hard as Ms. Curtis’s pelvic thrust routine hits in the movie whatever your thoughts on Travolta’s form-fitting shorts and his overall spotty ‘80s filmography (excepting Blow Out, the Philadelphia-set Brian De Palma classic) culminating with those talking baby movies and don’t even get me started on Battlefield Earth because that’s its own ball of wax.
Fortunately, in stark contrast to the big-budget bloat of Mr. Travolta’s L. Ron Hubbard Scientology-flogging space-opera dud, Mannequin Pussy’s Perfect is a far tighter affair. Which is also great news for anyone too lazy to digest their three existing full-length records since the EP successfully distills their most outstanding qualities down to an economical 13 minutes (almost 14 minutes!) with a running order that follows the age old pentatartite structure of extended play records:
Track 1) Melodic power-pop/alt-rock banger alternating between lighter waving and head banging parts; track 2) ferocious punk rock rave-up with verbal dressing down of the enables of oppressive social forces; track 3) melodic power-pop/alt-rock banger alternating between lighter waving and head banging parts; track 4) ferocious punk rock rave-up with verbal dressing down of the enablers of oppressive social forces; and track 5) the unexpectedly wistful, ethereal ballad closing number expressing undying devotion so believably and sweetly that even Karen O may be a little jealous.
To give one example of impactful brevity you can check out the title track above where the band maintain a face-melting musical escape velocity for a full two minutes as do the Real Punk Rock Housewives of Philadelphia who star in the accompanying music video. Brevity doesn’t equal boredom obviously.
And speaking of which if your band is called Mannequin Pussy you better not be boring or ever lose your sense of humor or provocation and the band hasn’t done any of these things by a long shot. It’s just that they’ve taken the prude-provoking attitude of early songs like "Clit Eastwood" and "Pissdrinker" and "Meat Slave 2" and filtered it through a hard won sense of maturity and cumulative life experience so that that now a line like “spit on my tits / tell me I’m perfect” registers with a newfound impact placed in the larger context of the insecurity and masochism encouraged by societal beauty standards and social media and high school class reunions. (Jason Lee)
For the Tripartite Challenge on this one (this one being Hello Mary’s new single "Take Something") I’m gonna go with shoegaze/dreampop pioneers Lush crossed with a pre-“These Dreams” Heart in psych-folk mode crossed with the fuzzed out garage rock of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. But whatever the mix it’s a heady one that’s why the kids like to call this “head music” it’s a known fact.
Imagine if Electric Mayhem sax man Floyd Pepper and bandmate/electric bassist Zoot took a break from Jim Henson’s house band and got a hold of some vintage drum machines and synths and an array of effects pedals and then fed their heads full of James Chance and the Contortions, Steve and Andy Mackay (no relation), the Sun Ra Arkestra, Kraftwerk, Lemmy-era Hawkwind, and The Comet Is Coming when it comes to their contemporaries, and then moved to South Philly to add more layers of grit and vigor to their sound and you’d probably end up with something like Writhing Squares and something like their third and latest LP Chart For The Solution.
In reality, Writhing Squares is comprised of Kevin Nickles and Daniel Provenzano who in addition to their respective sax and bass duties both play synths and contribute vocals, with Daniel pulling extra duty on percussion and programming, and Kevin filling in some flute and oboe parts. Chart For The Solution came out a couple months ago and it’s been in my rotation ever since so I can vouch for the album’s durability and its high quotient of electric mayhem.
The first track is called “Rogue Moon” and it picks up in a way from where the last track of their previous album left off, namely “A Whole New Jupiter” which took up the last 19 minutes of 2019’s Out of the Ether–a heavy psych rewrite of A Love Supreme transformed into triple time and with rhapsodic skronk saxophone played over overdriven bass it all comes off something like a No Wave Coltrane.
Likewise, “Rogue Moon” rides a loping riff into the psychedelic sunset except here the foundation is a burbling analog synth arpeggiation with NEU!ish interlocking rhythms that shift the downbeat around in your head and then right in the middle the song turns itself inside out and stays that way for the rest of its eleven-minute duration–a dreamy coda that’s like the soft underbelly to the first half’s gleaming steel exterior.
Aside from any overlaps, Chart For The Solution stakes out new terrain for the Squares with a newly cinematic production on some of the tracks and ever more adventurous playing and arrangements. But it never veers too far from their lo-fi ethos roots either–whether in the swirling sonic vortex of “Geisterwaltz” or the post-punky surf rock party of “Ganymede” or the back masked ambient interlude of “A Chorus of Electrons” or the Stooge-worthy rave-up of “NFU.” It all culminates in the 18-minute headtrip “The Pillars” which begins by sounding like a UFO landing and then turns into a bleep-bloopy coldwave number with Alan Vega verbal outbursts before taking a turn in the final part with the duo seemingly inhabited by the ghost of Lou Reed trying to get out of another record contract.
In the end it all speaks to the band’s enigmatic name, a name suggesting the cohabitation of opposite forces, such as rigid geometric “squares” that can somehow kinesthetically “writhe” because on one side you’re got regimentation and repetition and on the other side looseness and grooviness. It’s a dynamic heard in the Writhing Squares’ conjoining of trance-like repetition and wild sonic freeness, punk and prog in equal measure, maxed-out minimalistic music for the select masses. (Jason Lee)
Bobbie Gentry pops into my head occasoinally (and she’s always welcome there) while listening to Elizabeth Wyld’s Quiet Year, the seven-song debut album she released earlier this month, whether in terms of vocal cadence or country twang or plain-spoken storytelling. Except on this record instead of stories about living a hardscrabble life in Chickasaw County, Mississippi and bridge jumpers and familial indifference, you get songs about leaving behind rural Virginia for the big city and dealing with vocal paralysis and romantic infatuation. But still if any marketing person wants to use “Elizabeth Wyld is the indie Bobbie Gentry this world needs” as a pull quote I’m not going to stop them.
Falling under the general rubric of indie-folk and alt-Americana closely associated with artists like Phoebe Bridgers, Angel Olson, and Kacey Musgraves, Quiet Year spans the stylistic gamut from its open-hearted, full-throated opener “I Still Believe In Ghosts" which depicts a road trip in terms equally brash and vulnerable (“pull over I’m taking it in / how’d I get here and where have I been?”) to the closer “Hudson” that moves with a slow, steady flow like its namesake river in tandem with lyrics about lovelorn enervation and resignation to the extent that it could lead one to spurn the advances of a foxy artistic type at a Brooklyn apartment party for no other reason than to go back home and wait on one’s errant, absentee lover.
Bigger picture-wise this appears to be an album about losing and re-locating (and remaking) one’s own voice in various metaphorical and literal senses—whether by speaking up for sexual self-determination via a set of Sapphic-themed Southern Gothic-tinged love songs, or seeking one’s voice by moving from the country to New York City, or recovering and retraining the literal voice after a year long struggle with a rare vocal cord condition.
Soon after completing a six-month engagement in Europe with a touring company of the Broadway revival of Hair, Elizabeth Wyld lost the ability to speak above a whisper and was diagnosed with unilateral vocal fold paralysis. No longer able to sing in any capacity much less to belt out tunes on stage, the self-described theater kid refocused her energy onto writing poetry and playing guitar which culminated in the songs heard on this record–a solitary creation made public after vocal cord surgery and rehabilitation, and turned into a record at Greenpoint’s Studio G with the audio production/multi-instrumentalist assistance of Brooklyn-based Oscar Albis Rodriguez and Zach Jones who between them brought a range of experience reaching from extreme and nü-metal production to playing guitar in the pit band for the Spongebob Squarepants stage musical. So maybe change that pull quote to "Elizabeth Wyld is the new indie Squidward-meets-Degrader sonstress that this world needs". (Jason Lee)
When I recently got the chance to ask Johnny Dynamite¹ what old movie he’d like to see his new single “Bats in the Woods” magically and retroactively inserted into, he replied Lost Boys without hesitation (well, if an email can be sent “without hesitation”) and damn if isn’t an astute choice because A) there’s actual bats in the movie (not to mention actual bloodsuckiers) or at least they’re strongly implied and these teenage vampire bats like to party in the woods; B) the song would be a perfect fit sonically for the Lost Boys soundtrack and it’d fit seamlessly in between tracks by INXS, Echo & the Bunnymen, and Lou Graham of Foreigner fame; C) just like that scene in the movie featuring the ripped, oiled-up saxophone guy thrusting his hips while singing about how he “still believes” in front of a burning trash bin and a coterie of screaming fans, Johnny Dynamite is likewise willing to go shirtless and to sport a mullet for his art and also to sing a heartfelt appeal to casting aside negative forces and getting “so outta here, so f*cking out of here” like Bonnie and Clyde on a motorcycle built for two.
“Bats in the Woods” is the third single and the opening track from Mr. Dynamite’s soon to be released LP titled Sleeveless (Born Losers Records) and I can see why he’d choose it to open the album because it establishes a really vibey <vibe> right off the bat with chiming guitar harmonics and gated snare and an insistent single-note bass line followed by an equally vibey melodic hook and that’s all before Johnny declaims the opening line “your bath is warm / I want to step in” and fair warning you may find your own hair suddenly forming into a mullet just from listening to this song—though I’m guessing less a Fabio style mullet and more like a cool Ric Ocasek mullet that’ll have supermodels groveling at your feet and critics praising your musical creations.
Speaking of a fondness for warm baths you may be wondering about Johnny Dynamite’s other personal preferences and peccadillos and his personal history and fortunately this music journalist dug deep into the mystery and the results may surprise you. And so appearing here, for the very first time, we introduce to you our new “Vital Stats” column in which a profiled artist spills the beans on their favorite hobbies, turn-ons and turn-offs, and other intimate fun facts. And as you‘ll see below it turns out Mr. Dynamite is a pretty down to earth guy especially for someone named after an eyepatch-wearing, criminal-killing and ladykilling private detective who starred in his own series of hard-boiled, pre-code comic books from the early 1950s drawn and (in later issues) authored by Johnny’s own grandfather Pete Morisi.²
******
JOHNNY DYNAMITE"S VITAL STATS™
Current home: I live in a tiny bedroom in Ridgewood, Queens where I record all my tunes
Previous home: I grew up in Staten Island then lived in New Paltz for 5 years. After deciding to move back to the city, I lived in the East Village projects illegally for a year before my credit score was good enough to get a real apartment
Profession: I work in the art department for film when the jobs come in, otherwise I’m just a bike messenger who eats on food stamps
Hobbies: I love to ride my bike through the city really fast and I love to play Mario Kart & Sonic Racing. I think I have the need for speed
Last book read: kind of funny, but this past year my grandpa’s comic Johnny Dynamite came out as a graphic novel and my pops got it for me for Christmas, that’s what I’ve been reading lol
Place you’d like to visit most: Tokyo… I love anime, I love sushi, I love the music, and I love a big city
*****
¹ The Bloodsuckers were unavailable for comment.
² But unlike that other “Morrissey,” when Johnny Dynamite implores you to “take me out tonight” you can bet he won’t let you to get run over by a double-decker bus.
In keeping with their name, Bubble Tea and Cigarettes capture the enduring pleasures of the most fleeting of pleasures. On the two singles they released in 2020 the bedroom pop combo were just as likely to be found in the kitchen unpacking their latest comestibles with dreamy elegies dedicated to eating empanadas at 5am or about ordering fried chicken from the takeout joint downstairs in the middle of the night and the inevitable reflections upon one’s own mortality (“people all die soon”) provoked by such activities.
Newly signed to Madrid-based Elefant Records, the duo’s latest single ventures a bit further afield from their local bodega for inspiration, namely all the way to the Left Coast and ocean-adjacent “Santa Monica” in particular where the song and the sumptuous shot-on-location video (dir: Shicong Zhu) depict an amorous yet hesitant couple cruising down the “violet street” of a purple-hued Pacific Coast Highway shooting home movies and sucking on candy ring pops and smoking cigarettes while pondering the question “is this love ended or it never started?” before ending up at an sparsely populated amusement park straight out of Carnival of Soulsand cavorting together in slo-mo illuminated only by the lights of the ferris wheel and the colored flames of hand-held sparklers before our narrator is finally left “lost in love” waking up alone in a parking lot as her partner speeds off on a motorcycle.
The languid longing and overall slowcore/sadcore/dreampop vibes of "Santa Monica" are ably assisted by twangy “Duane Eddy on Xanax” guitar, lugubrious strings and mournful castanets (two words you won’t see together elsewhere) with vocals that sound as if they’re emanating from a wormhole to another dimension more than from a human body and it all exerts an appropriate gravitational pull. BT&C is comprised of Andi Wang and Ruinan Zhang and while I’m not sure which one of them is “Bubble Tea” and which one is “Cigarettes” it’s no matter because together they capture the sugar-and-nicotine rush and subsequent comedown inherent in the combo and I’m guessing that they only left “weed gummies” off from their name because it got to be too long. So grab a jumbo straw and suck down some taro covered tapioca globules in musical form in between drags on a Pall Mall assuming this is up your alley. (Jason Lee)
Sometimes a song rips but in a highly controlled way. LAPêCHE is good at writing those kinds of songs and “Elbow Grease” is one of them. Opening with a driving tom-tom rhythm a tight little guitar riff, the song exudes a dark coiled intensity from the start. And the entrance of yearning yet slowly metronomic vocals only adds to the sense of anticipation with the opening line “It’s not so easy to uncover without splitting the seams” confirming the impression of something that’s contained waiting to be released.
The song’s lyrics as a whole appear to revolve around control and efforts to maintain it, or at least to appear to even when failing. But at a couple points the moody vibe gets broken by a stomping half-time riff leading into a repeated refrain of “rusted anchor pull me down.” It could all be a metaphor for addiction or obsession or Fleet Week who knows. Or for throwing oneself over the edge of a figurative bridge with a figurative anchor tied around one’s foot.
Or a real bridge. Speaking of ripping in a controlled way, LAPêCHE just released an official music video for “Elbow Grease" this last week, and in the video lead singer/lyricist/co-guitarist/keyboardist/tiny dancer (not really that tiny) Krista Holly Diem shimmies and twists and struts across the Kosciuszko Bridge (which spans the mighty Newton Creek separating Brooklyn and Queens) like a rogue Jazzercise escapee and still mangers to get off some good moves even constrained to a walking lane on a somewhat heavily trafficked bridge. So again we got the theme of controlled chaos and it’s engaging to watch. It’s also engaging to watch because personally I’ve crossed this bridge a good number of times on foot and by bike but now I realize I was doing it all wrong. What you see above is a much more aerodynamic approach to the crossage, and plus people will get out of your way if you’re bopping around like Jack Lalanne on poppers (if only Ludacris had thought of this approach).
“Elbow Grease” is the final track on LAPêCHE’s recent sophomore full-length release Blood in the Water (New Granada) which had reportedly been in the can for about a year before release, originally slated to come out right around when things went to Hell In A Handbasket so the band and label wisely held off. In the meantime, they’ve reportedly almost finished their next album and I’m sure it helped they purchased a Band Pod™by Hasbro and hunkered down for months on end writing a new set of songs which means at least something good came of all this.
And finally, you may ask yourself, did I learn these facts by conducting an interview with the band? Hell no do I look crazy to you! Instead I leaned them by watching someone else conduct an interview with the band on FLTV—otherwise known as the Footlight Bar’s official Vimeo channel which is located in cyberspace right next to Ridgewood, Queens. Each episode of FLTV features a single band put under the microscope by host Kendra Saunders who asks penetrating questions while wearing a fashionable glitter encrusted mask, as well as live performances by the band in question. And you can watch all the episodes from the first season for a small fee on their Vimeo channel. Now where is my commission FLTV? (Jason Lee)
