A query: Here in these waning hours of Bandcamp Friday do you find yourself in need of a song that’ll simultaneously make you wanna slow dance with a stranger, drunk dial your ex and tell them you still love them, and smash up your room in a frenzied rage and not leave the apartment for a month? 

Then oh boy are you in luck because Sir Chloe’s “Michelle” fits the bill. And be sure to check out the sublimely demented video (see above) released earlier this year or late last year who’s really keeping track.

But one thing that definitely got released last year was the band’s debut LP Party Favors and it’s far from too late to sing its praises. I mean the last year didn’t even happen, right?

Taken as a whole it’s a nicely concise and tightly arranged album that walks much the same line as "Michelle" balanced precariously but deliciously between wistful reveries and take-no-prisoners intensity ("make me behave like an animal / I’m asking nicely give me what I want / I’m asking politely give me what I want / make me behave like an animal") though with songs leaning more toward mid-tempo numbers ideal for swaying and stomping in place more than slow dancing with strangers. 

And hey just in case you’re wanting to know more about this shadowy entity called Sir Chloe then by all means allow me to directly quote from their promotional materials because it’s Bandcamp Fried-day after all so let’s sell some records or streams or DAT tapes or whatever and I’m happy to help out when the music is this good…

"Sir Chloe is an American indie rock band from Bennington, Vermont now based in Brooklyn, New York. It’s members are Dana Foote (guitar, vocals) Teddy O’mara (guitar) Palmer Foote (drums) and Austin Holmes (bass). Starting as the solo act of Dana Foote, Sir Chloe first came together in 2017 as an academic project at Bennington College, recording their first four singles in the school’s music building. Their debut single “Animal” was released in February 2019. The band returned to the studio in October 2019 to record six new songs, among them being their latest single titled “July.”" And then came the album release and the rest is history that’s  still being written. (Jason Lee)
 

Red Sun Radio are good at writing drinking songs and thank goodness for that—ranging from boisterous sing alongs that’ll have you hoisting you mug in the air, to music seemingly made for staring pensively into your whisky tumbler and eventually laying your head down on the bar.

For a bunch of professional drinkers these guys are pretty prolific, having released new singles in January and February and debuting a new song on yesterday’s “Save The Scene” fundraising cyber-concert broadcast (see above).

On the first of the two singles, “Isotopes,” the Red Sun Radioers weave a tale of good chemistry gone bad that unspools under a warm blanket of fuzzed out organ, weeping guitar, and a rousing coda. 

And on last month’s “Dry Martini” they serve up a gently hungover ballad that follows up its opening riposte (“chasing skirts all night gets tiring / but baby you’re inspiring me to move”) with some gin-soaked metaphysical sweet nothings whispered into the addressee’s ear and damn if I’m not buying it.

And then finally just yesterday RSR debuted a new one called “Sound of Sleep” (see up top) which is a deceptively titled mid-tempo rocker that would be great to hear in person one day in the basement of the Bronx pizzeria where the band got their start playing on a stage made of plywood and cans of tomato paste. 

P.S. If you’re not the designated driver tonight, by all means don’t stop there because it’s also worth checking out Red Sun Radio’s 2019 full-length debut For All The Wrong Reasons whether over a bottle of good bourbon or a sixer of cheap domestic beer.

P.P.S. Today is Bandcamp Friday so you know what to do…

(Jason Lee)

Strict Tempo is a weekly Thursday night livestream originating out of Seattle featuring a world-spanning Whitman’s Sampler of live DJs and live electronic music acts in the musical veins of EBM/industrial, acid/electro/techno, minimal wave/darkwave, Italo-disco/hi-NRG and other equally cool sounding slashed and hyphenated genres. 

The shows kick off at 7PM PST/10PM EST opening with a DJ set from host and curator Vox Sinistra, followed by 3 or 4 featured performers made up of both live electro-based acts and DJs doing their thing in real time. The show goes out live on Twitch just CLICK HERE.

As reigning queen of dark & danceable and occasionally not so danceable beats, Ms. Sinistra introduces each show with a charmingly low-key informative overview of the acts about to perform backed by green-screened dancing skeletons or infinitely scrolling bondage chains or vintage nightclub footage or surreal film clips and with occasional cameos by her tuxedoed cat. Production values on the show are consistently compelling and sometimes appealing demented eye candy with each DJ/electronic artist bringing their own distinct look and vibe.

Tonight’s installment of Strict Tempo features the return of Xibling, a dynamic synth duo comprised of Moriah West and Julian Thieme. Paraphrasing from Vox Sinistra’s Facebook post for tonight: “I’m hosting the release for Xibling’s Maladjusted EP out tomorrow and if you haven’t listened to Xibling, the Portland ‘post-punk techno fever dream’ wrote/livestreamed new songs every week at the beginning of quarantine last year (!) and are also returning Strict Tempo guests, playing the second show I hosted online last April. Tonight they’re supported by coldwave-y synthesist STACIAN, new PDX dark synth-pop act Pleasure Victim and XOR, the new electronic alias from the bassist/synth player of acclaimed darkwave band Secret Shame.”

And if the lead-off title track single to Xibling’s new EP is any indication, with its stuttering beats and phat electro-bass and ethereal vocals, tonight looks to be a lot of fun. Plus for a further sneak preview you can check out the music vid for “Maladjusted” with its cool Tetsuo-style black-and-white engulfed-by-rampaging-technology visuals in which Julian and Moriah are attacked (or seduced?) by sentient unspooling VHS tapes. 

With a stylistic range across an electro-spectrum from the darker reaches of darkwave to the poppier side of New Order-esque electro pop, the upshot is that if Xibling’s electro-oscillations don’t get your body oscillating wildly then you may need to visit your local testing center and make sure your heart is still beating—an effect that’s only heightened when you see Xibling doing their thing live because high energy is too mild a term for their performative posture.

And speaking of high energy you’re also advised to check out two retrospective one-year anniversary broadcasts from Vox Sinistra—one compiling some of the best bits from the various Strict Tempo live acts over the past year, and the other a comp of featured DJ acts coming soon on 3/18. Plus holy Mother of Pearl the live show comp is nearly 10 hours long so settle in for the evening and hit play and I can guarantee you it’ll melt your f’ing face off if taken in one sitting so maybe put on that full plastic face mask before even attempting it.

Not unlike these epically scaled retrospective comps but on a smaller scale each Strict Tempo tends to be an eclectic affair, but overall Vox specializes in a style known as EBM (electronic body music) that’s something like a mutant mashup of industrial, cyberpunk, electropop, and synthwave—different artist highlight different elements of course and throw in their own twists—which is a style of music that’s equally effective whether you’re looking to mosh like a maniac in your bedroom late at night or bop in place equally maniacally like Molly Ringwald on Molly.

Anyways when it comes to the genre of EBM it’s name can be taken pretty literally given that we all inhabit more or less “electronic bodies” by this point living so much of our lives through phones and computers and old BlackBerry Storms (for the iconoclasts among us!) but at least watching a live-streamed set by Xibling or a Thursday night installment of Strict Tempo can make “device life” feel more utopian than dystopian for a few hours. (Jason Lee)

At first I thought Charismatic Megafauna must be the name of a rubber-suited mecha monster featured on an old episode of Super Sentai which would be pretty exciting. But instead it’s the name of the new Psymon Spine album which is nearly, if not equally exciting, depending on your feelings about the hyperkenetic Japanese teen superhero live action TV drama versus the Brooklyn-based band that co-founded the Secret Friend immersive art and music party series alongside POND magazine.

Anyhow the album in question strikes me as sounding just like the cool airport lounge music of the future we were all promised as children. But instead we got phone charging stations and Cinnabon franchises rather than having sleekly-funky space-age psych-pop bands paid to serenade harried travelers and to maybe even make them dance.

But going to airports isn’t too appealing these days so it’s all good. We’re all far better off sitting at home in front of our computers and luckily that’s just where Psymon Spine is playing an album release party to be livestreamed tonight at 8PM EST as the most recent installment of BABY TV alongside openers Dream Chambers and Hypoluxo, the latter of whom were featured not so long ago on this very blog. (Jason Lee)

 The release of new music from the Wild Pink is cause for mellowed-out celebration and so today we’re in luck because the band (but not that band) just yesterday released their third full-length LP (yes I realize that’s redundant) and it’s called A Billion Little Lights. From the first bars of "The Wind Was Like A Train" an auditory spell is cast by John Ross & Co. as a warm-hued synth melody is joined by chiming guitars and marching band snare and weeping steel guitar woven together like a comfy quilt and finally Ross himself as he gently intones a Zen koan about what sounds like a game of horseshoes played on a frozen lake and how he’s got your back despite the seeming recklessness of this scenario with the song culminating in a string section flourish all clocking in at an economical 2 minutes and 37 seconds.

Listening to the opening track I can’t help but think of Jason Lytle and Grandaddy during that group’s heyday, or at least their gentler material, but Wild Pink provides an Americana spin on the indie aesthetic that sets them apart, and on the whole, A Billion Little Lights finds many beautiful wrinkles to explore in the veins of blissed out folk and alt-country and roots rock reveries all while contemplating subjects such as the inevitability of time’s passage and the violent settlement of the West and social media oversharing and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Florida retirement homes (Ross grew up in Central Florida before relocating to NYC years ago) with the latter two of these enumerated subjects acting as inspiration for the song below whose video features one of the stars of Schitt’s Creek and also features backing vocals (just like "The Wind" above) from Julia Steiner who fronts the Chicago-based band Ratboys. (Jason Lee)

Quoting a Deli blogger from a few years back, Oceanator is "the Brooklyn-based grunge project of Elise Okusami, one bore in equal parts from the its [sic] crunch-heavy guitars as well as Okusami’s no-holds barred lyricism." I’m opening with this quote since there’s nothing to indicate the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has departed from her no-holds and crunch-heavy ways in the interim (but what do I know she could be working on a pirate-metal chiptune opera as we speak) and when it comes to Brooklyn-based grunge well there’s still some of that around too–despite the best efforts of real estate developers who are attempting to entirely wall off Greenpoint with high-rise condos, clearly a plot to turn the neighborhood into a penal colony inspired by John Carpenter’s Escape From New York so the joke’s on the condo buyers and renters–and did you know Brooklyn actually invented grunge. Not the music. Actual grunge.

Oceanator released her debut full-length LP Things I Never Said last summer and reviewers at the time tended to dwell for understandable reasons on the album’s recurring themes of cataclysm and apocalypse. Even though it was written and recorded well before the actual apocalypse arrived (the opening act of the apocalypse anyway) Okusami managed to channel the upcoming zeitgeist as demonstrated in the opening one-two crunchy-grungy punch of "Goodbye, Goodnight" and "A Crack In The World." But what’s striking in listening to the album now is how little Okusami dwells on disaster itself, and how instead her lyrics so ably depict and dissect all the ways people react to disaster whether interpersonal or societal or both: Hiding away or diving straight into it. Looking to be alone or seeking human contact. Thinking too much or pursuing oblivion. Viewing disaster as an end point or a starting point for renewal. This album lays it all out and it’s cheaper than therapy.

Much the same goes for the music too considering how Oceanator conjures an array of psychological mood state. Sure there’s the aforementioned crunchy grunge but there’s also the poppy bop of "Heartbeat", the new wave sheen of "I Would Find You" (new video alert!) and the classic girl group sway of "Walk With You" (RIP Mary Wilson) which back-to-back make up the middle portion of the album. Things I Never Said climaxes with the penultimate track "The Sky Is Falling" with its dramatic stop-start verses, soaring guitar breaks, and majestic outro that adds layers of additional guitar, keyboard, and ghostly background vocals to the mix before a final breakdown at the end. And finally the closer "Sunrise" is not at all ironically named but instead ends on a ray of hope: "I’m going outside today / I’m feeling like things might be okay." This album takes the listener on an actual journey.

And speaking of journeys if you journey over to Polyvinyl Records they’ve just re-released the album, now available on vinyl for the first time so you can show off your Hi-Fi system to your pet rock. And who wants plain ol’ black vinyl (BOR-ing) so you get a choice between Orange Swirl vs. Funfetti aka "Clown Vomit" which suggests these records may be edible but I’d check with the manufacturer first. (Jason Lee)
 

Having lived all over this city and its vicinity for a good number of years (Jersey Cit-tay!) this blog writer finally ended up in the borough of Brooklyn in 2019 and felt a sense of unrestrained joy at being in the middle of a live music mecca and seeing tons of shows at tons of venues. And one of the most special of these venues has been Our Wicked Lady aka OWL.

Ever since the pandemic first hit, OWL done everything right. They’ve sold food and delivered beer and bottles of liquor and sold shirts and other merch and even held an online auction. They’ve supported their staff and their customers by opening OWL’s rooftop bar with safety precautions in place, and supported live music by hosting and livestreaming audience-less shows for anyone to stream, with optional donations, and even made those shows viewable in real time from the rooftop.

But despite their efforts there’s one major catch. New York’s regulatory laws for bars and nightclubs are famously complex and capricious–even under the best of circumstances–harder to discern and follow than it is to figure out what exactly is going on with Andrew Cuomo’s nipple rings or clamps or piercings or pasties or breast milk pumps under his form fitting polo shirts. So no big surprise then that a worldwide pandemic and the subsequent chaotic and disorganized response has only made things that much more difficult for small business owners, bars and clubs in particular.

Regrettably but understandably, the proprietors of Our Wicked Lady have recently come to the conclusion that they must shut down for the time being, and raise significant funds to continue on in the future. So please, if you can, OWL is a crucial venue to this borough and its inhabitants and its music, and all those who enjoy its music, and they deserve your support if you’re someone who reads this blog and if you have the wherewithal which, sadly and understandably, many don’t. But if you do, you can donate to the Our Wicked Lady go.fund.me HERE or buy sexy OWL merchandise HERE and also read more about the people behind OWL and their plight in a recent Reckless Magazine feature HERE.

And now for the personal testimonial part. Two shows in particular at Our Wicked Lady are extra vivid in my mind at this moment even in my quarantine addled state. The first was a packed rooftop show in late summer 2019 as part of Jonathan Toubin’s Sunday Soul Scream series. It was an interesting bill to say the least with its diametrical extremes between the two featured acts but they worked perfectly together, kind of like one of those McDLT sandwiches. Appearing on stage first was L.A.’s Warm Drag with their cool vibez and programmed beats and textured noise and waves of fuzzed-out psych guitar complete with reverb-laden male-female vocalizing kind of like a darkwave Cramps. 

And then next they were followed by the King Khan and BBQ Show which was just straight up god damn rock ‘n’ roll (referencing the Cramps again) something like watching a combination religious tent revival and illicit basement burlesque show led by a man inhabited simultaneously by both Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis but with less sense of restraint than either. (!) Truly it was one of those shows where it feels like the crowd turns into one big amorphous organism all moving and shouting and singing and dancing and jostling together–fully achieving a sense of pure ecstatic rock ‘n’ roll communion that’s sadly lacking in these covidly times. 

The other show that stands out at Our Wicked Lady was one of the last shows I saw period in March 2020, an indoor show that had more of an indoor feel to it–like a private party between friends, and indeed there were many friends and fellow musicians there, but with a vibe where anyone could join in and be comfortable. I won’t go into musical details on this one since there were four acts but I’ll list them off–Kino Kimino (see below), Vanessa Silberman, Catty, and Janet LaBelle–and this was another one of those “something kinda magical happening here” shows.

Thinking back on this Kino Kimino et al. show highlights something that’s only been reinforced by witnessing the recent outpouring of love and concern around the plight of Our Wicked Lady. And that’s how OWL in its four or five years of existence seems to have created and sustained an authentic community among its regulars, musicians, and employees (categories that easily overlap) which is not the kind of thing that can be easily replaced or replaced at all. Also, during the four or five months that I’ve been the blogger for this site, it’s become that much more apparent how much OWL is a central hub for Brooklyn’s music scene, and certainly for quite a few of the individual bands I’ve written about, some of which I’ve never even gotten to see live so I have my own selfish motives here.

And finally, for any aspiring filmmakers out there, here a little tip: there’s a Decline of Western Civilization Part IV just waiting to be made at OWL alongside other local venues (I’m sure Penelope Spheeris will license the franchise no problem) (LA is over) (jk) so we just need to get these venues around the last lap of this thing and get some bands up on stage like maybe OWL stalwarts like Ash Jesus and Bipolar and Spite FuXXX (see above) plus some others and this’ll be ready to happen. (Jason Lee)

If you’re at all retro-minded or if you’re J.G. Ballard-minded you’ve probably heard of a song called “Warm Leatherette” by a band called The Normal, or maybe you’ve heard the cover version by Grace Jones. It’s become pretty iconic over the years. But it was originally released as a mere B-side and The Normal was not really a band (probably fooled ya with that ’70s-looking-collective pictured above) being instead just this one British guy named Daniel Miller who founded a record label called Mute Records to put out the single, with the label soon becoming a pretty big deal and taking on a life of its own.

But back to our subject, the original A-side to "Warm Leatherette" was called “T.V.O.D.” which stands for Television Overdose and its entire lyric consisted of the song title’s repeated over and over broken only a single stanza: "I don’t need a screen / I just stick the aerial into my skin / Let the signal run through my veins / T.V.O.D."

Well what if we told you there’s also a contemporary Brooklyn-based band called T.V.O.D. and that the band (not entirely unlike the song "T.V.O.D.") addresses our posthuman future in song and in sound–a future that may have finally arrived in full blown form in 2020 and ’21–but with strong intimations of human longing and even intimacy hanging on for good measure. Fittingly for their name, Brooklyn’s T.V.O.D. are prone to making sounds that could make some listeners feel a bit jittery or twitchy (call it David Byrnitis) or have you feeling mildly sedated and mildly euphoric all at once all while being catchy and cool sounding, in support of lyrics on subjects like self-medicating in disco huts and sentient sexually-frustrated bank accounts.

Give a listen to the EP Daisy up top to see what you think, or listen to the song below which happens to be one of this writer’s faves from the EP. It’s their slinkiest song and apparently the band got some nice endorsement money for making banking options sound so sexy so good on them. And then below that you can check out an earlier single that gives a very different perspective (a more puke-splattered perspective!) on the world of high finance and the cultural logic of late capitalism.

Despite all my hopes based on their band name, T.V.O.D. are in fact not a collective of sad horny TV-addicted cyborgs who like to go out dancing to disco punk, but really just five human beings sitting on a couch in Queens–as I recently witnessed–humans who have played (or still play) in other NYC-based indie bands like THICK, Star 80, Low Mein, and Acid Dad. But on the couch they don’t bring these bands up instead sharing their thoughts on the moral culpability of Godzilla, and their desire to eat like Ryan Seacrest, and then they get up and walk over to a stage with instruments on it and play songs in real time including several songs that have yet to be been committed to digital circuits or streaming media which is pretty cool.

If you need proof of any of this there’s an app for that and it’s called FLTV (editor’s note: not technically an app but a dedicated webpage on Vimeo) where the letters stand for Footlight Television–another acronyms with TV in it which makes it easy to remember. In addition to the T.V.O.D. segment, the Vimeo page is full of other live-show-and-interview content provided by the good people at the Footlight Bar in Ridgewood, Queens and made available for a small fee. Just think, for the amount it would once take you to order a good-quality draft beer (non-happy-hour rates) at a bar or club, you can now order a band to sit down for an interview and play a live set all for your own pleasure. So maybe this whole post-human thing isn’t all bad after all. (Jason Lee)

It’s my working hypothesis that Becca and Miles are hands down the cutest drug-buddies-slash-couple since the dazed heydays of Juliana and Evan Lemonhead who once dueted on a song called "My Drug Buddy" about just this exact subject. And c’mon I mean being drug buddies with benefits, how much better can life possibly get? Well I’ll tell ya how it does, you could also be in a cool indie band together–a cool indie band that could’ve very plausibly scored a gig at the Peach Pit if this were ah say 1995 meaning you could hang out together with Brandon & Kelly and Brenda & Dylan in cute couple nirvana much like the Flaming Lips and the Cramps and the Cardigans before them. 

In celebration of this winning trifecta of lovin’ touchin’ and squeezin’ the previously mentioned Becca and Miles (have you forgotten the first paragraph already?! maybe slow down on those drugs bubby!) named their musical collaboration Drug Couple. Also not unlike Evan and Juliana before them and their various musical projects over the years, the Drug Couple couple have quite a knack for writing sugary sweet pop hooks backed up by musical textures that can veer from pleasantly jangly to pleasantly jagged at a moment’s notice (case in point being the opening track from their 2020 EP called Choose Your Own Apocalypse ((which really is the best any of us can hope for these days)) with said track being called "2027" which is a year that can’t get here soon enough). 

And dammit if Becca and Miles are not deceptively wholesome enough to take home to Mom and Dad should you choose to form a thruple with the couple and just in time for Valentine’s Day you lucky dog. With all of this in mind and given that Drug Couple are pretty easy on the eyes I don’t feel wrong in recommending that you watch them play a live set coming up here in a few hours at 8pm EST–streamed on one of the Deli’s very favorite virtual concert outlets known as BABY TV–after which you will no doubt be moved to exclaim, and here I quote the esteemed Steve Sanders after having witnessed the aforementioned Flaming Lips play "She Don’t Use Jelly" live at the Peach Pit: "You know, I’ve never been a big fans of alternative music but these guys rocked the house!"

And here’s a big bonus and added incentive. Drug Couple will be sharing the stage with Moon Kissed, an also very cute thruple (in the musical sense that is) who are likewise highly skilled at combining big melodic pop hooks with rocking the f*ck out and if you don’t believe me peep the song above which as far as I’m concerned should have been declared the "Song of the Summer" in 2019 when it came out and for every summer subsequently. Moon Kissed are also recent Deli Artists’ of the Month so rest assured you should keep an eye out for what these ladies have coming up soon… (Jason Lee)

photo credit: Allyson Pinon

If you live anywhere in this country’s northeastern regions you probably got walloped with a foot or two of snow last week and more since. With more of the white stuff and also frigid temps forecast all week it’s perfect weather for staying in–not that we weren’t doing that already, but hey added incentive–and watching live sets of electronic music performed by a wide array of live acts and DJs on the screen of your own choosing. 

Or if you’re NYC-based electronic musicmaker and painter/multimedia artist Nuxx Vomica, who recently released her debut EP A Different Place, it’s perfect weather for traveling a few hours upstate and performing a live set in the middle of a frozen lake to an audience of confused yet grateful freshwater fish. And lucky for us, said performance was filmed and broadcast (and now archived) as part of last Thursday’s installment of Strict Tempo—a weekly livestream originating out of Seattle featuring a world-spanning Whitman’s Sampler of live DJs and live acts in the veins of EBM/industrial, acid/electro/techno, minimal wave/darkwave, Italo-disco/hi-NRG and other equally cool-sounding slashed and hyphenated genres…

…and after watching this performance one thing I’d like to know is where one finds an extension cord long enough to reach all the way out to the middle of a frozen lake. Then again sometimes it’s best for the stagecraft to remain mysterious and what mysterious it is as a latex body-suited figure crawls across the snowy landscape to open the set and there’s some neat-o Chroma key & chemtrails effects added to the visual mix and also what a perfect setting for Ms. Vomica’s raw thrumming beats and burbling coldwave oscillations and icy ethereal vocal interjections. Plus SHE’S PERFORMING IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKIN’ FROZEN LAKE and I can’t help but flashing back to that one scene in Omen II but thank goodness that didn’t happen, instead the setting just ramps up the otherworldly urgency of the music even more.

And as if this wasn’t enough for one show this installment of Strict Tempo had/has lots going for it, which granted is pretty typical but this one went extra hard with additional sets by Asymptote from Arizona who creates haunted experimental industrial soundscapes, Crimental from Colombia who specializes in driving dystopic electro EBM (his latest full length The Human Plague is indeed pretty sick) and Hands of Providence–a project “rooted in dark psyche of the human mind” especially those of various politicians and televangelists and other undesirables–all kicked off by a DJ set from our host Vox Sinistra.

As reigning queen of dark & danceable and occasionally not so danceable beats, Ms. Sinistra introduces each show with a charmingly low-key, unassuming and always informative description of the acts about to perform while backed by green-screened backdrops of infinitely scrolling bondage chains or dancing skeletons or nightclub footage or surreal film clips with occasional cameos by her tuxedoed cat—the production values on the show are consistently aces with each DJ/EDM artist bringing their own distinct look and vibe and setting. 

And there’s more from where that came from so if you enjoyed these sounds and visions you’re in luck because there’s 43 previous episodes of Strict Tempo in existence as of this writing to be explored in part or in full on Vox’s Twitch channel and Youtube channel and Mixcloud and probably other portals I’m unaware of even existing. (Jason Lee)

Released exactly one minute before midnight on December 31, 2020, the opening moments of the opening track “Washed Out” on Meviu§’s latest EP, Washed Out, is the perfect soundtrack for the way I remember feeling at that precise time–sitting at home by myself with “hands tied behind my back / and face down on the floor.” Well, figuratively *ahem*. It’s been a strange couple of months or couple of years. Wait, what day is it? Oh yeah it’s Bandcamp Friday Day™ which means that it’ll not only cost you a mere pittance to buy the Meviu§ EP, but also that the entire pittance will go straight into the hot pockets of Meviu§ which’ll help him be able to buy an actual Hot Pocket™ and avoid starvation for another day. As of the time of writing you’ve got about five-and-a-half hours left so go buy it now!

OK back to those opening moments of “Washed Out” and the slowly-unfurling echoey guitar arpeggio whose notes fold back in on themselves and suck you, the listener, into a swirling sonic vortex that serves as the perfect launching pad for the rest of the song with its somehow both driving and turgid guitar work & rhythm section in the instrumental parts and stripped down verses and catchy melodic choruses. It’s a Cure-worthy opening, and song overall, especially if you’re into Disintegration and Wish era Cure back when the mascara-smudged Camus-quoting Friday-loving gothsters managed to have a couple bonafide pop-chart hits here in the US which is pretty crazy when you think about it now. And on this note it bears pointing out how Meviu§ has a similar grasp of combining catchy tunes with serious “in your feels” feels.

But, hey you, I wonder why Robert Smith & Friends loved Friday so much? I thought these boys were supposed to be sad. Well duh because it’s Bandcamp Friday™ in case you already forgot! I mean sure Bandcamp wasn’t even close to existing yet in 1992 but obviously The Cure had a premonition, which is pretty impressive considering how just about every GeoCities-induced psychedelic headtrip of a web site during those years looked as if the entire cast of Saved By The Bell had just projectile vomited on your monitor screen (RIP Dustin Diamond) creating a big mess of neon backdrops and spinning icons and animated-and-sometimes-flaming text. and how in this world could you ever order something so pragmatic as vinyl records, or these new things called em-pee-threes, on these strange primitive machines but I digress.

 
Anyway I didn’t mean to imply that the entire Meviu§ EP sounds like the Cure because it doesn’t. In fact it’s got a pretty wide stylistic range for just four songs. Track number two “Find You” features Edith Pop on co-vocals and it’s a nice downbeat acoustic ballad that’ll have you weeping in your kombucha with its aching harmonies and doleful sentiments. Up next is “Ghost of Memory (Ghost Stories Remix)” which at times reminds me of Moon Safari era Air but just when you think Kelly Better Keep Watching Those Stars there’s suddenly an Aphex Twin-y breakdown so hey you never know. And then on track number four the EP wraps up with “Maybe Next Year (featuring Searmanas)” but specifically in the form of the “Jeremy Bastard Remix” although I hear that really he’s just misunderstood. This closer features an immersive darkwave groove and some more female-to-male harmonizing from the aforementioned Searmanas and it’s truly an apropos song title and musical vibe to go out on. But maybe just maybe if we’re all lucky next year will come before next year. (Jason Lee)

The good folk over at Bands Do BK premiered the The Oracle of Marcy EP exactly a week ago and far be it for me to try and steal their thunder not that I could anyway. But hey it’s Bandcamp Friday Day™ and I wanted to give this fine EP by the Planes a little extra shine and encourage you to download it within the next six-and-a-half hours so that Stephen, Matt, and Carlo will have enough money to go and buy two slices of pizza between them and then try to figure out how the hell to split two slices of pizza between three bandmates. (note: most bands have been in this situation before at some point)

So if you wanna get the full skinny on The Planes’ latest check out the aforementioned BDBK post with Sam Sumpter interviewing frontman Stephen Perry who breaks down the EP’s four songs one-by-one and tells how the band wrote and recorded the album in a single week flat. One thing I’ll add is that while the band definitely have their own thing and their own sound–witness for instance Perry’s uniquely and endearingly unguarded sotto voce vocal style and his willingness to color outside the lines with it–when it comes to the music itself The Planes are all about the music itself, proudly making good meat ‘n’ potatoes indie rock for the indie rock meat lover. And at Tad’s Steaks prices.

Or as they state it on their very own Bandcamp page™ The Planes “stand up for the things that are, refreshingly, always cool and relevant and fun. Three-minute pop songs. Analog recording equipment. The unmistakable sound, and the visceral pleasures, of banging on a Fender guitar hooked up to a tube amp.” And sure enough none of the songs on Oracle stray far from the three-minute mark but that’s not to say you don’t get some pleasing musical variety between or even within individual tracks like on the opener “The Oracle” which veers between Chronic Town-ish chiming guitar work and reticent vocals and other parts that feature delicious Daydream Nation dissonance with alternate guitar tuning in full effect. 

The Oracle of Marcy (as well as The Planes’ past work) is very likely to land solidly for fans of oh let’s say Sebadoh or for those who enjoy the gentler stylings of Dinosaur Jr. and J Mascis but not only. And finally, one other thing for when this becomes a thing again, I’ve seen The Planes perform live a few times now and they really bring it so you’d be smart to check them out too. Stephen’s stage wear often includes a Bruce Springsteen style bandana wrapped around his forehead and while I’ve yet to see the band play ten encores in a row, they do bring a Bruce-level energy level so keep an eye out for Courteney Cox dancing in the crowd next to you. (Jason Lee)