New Music, Emerging from your Local Scene
New York singer-songwriter Melanie Penn‘s songs are a charming exercise in simpleness and gentleness. Her new album "Wake Up Love" is a collection of delicately arranged, sparse pop-folk treats that perfectly complement Melanie’s pristine soprano. No shows scheduled at this time.
What do Baltimore’s Future Islands have in common with Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, and Ben Affleck? The film The Company Men, where the Future Islands have some heavily featured tracks! It’ll be released nationally in theaters on Jan. 21 (though press release had stated Dec. 10), so keep your ears alert if you catch the film.
Future Islands have recently wrapped up a marathon year of touring on top of a hefty release schedule. One full-length, an EP, and two singles later, the band is taking a brief break this holiday season to relax and start working on next year’s forthcoming LP. Expect the band to hit the road again in February!
Deli-rious readership,
We gave bands a week to apply for free to our Year End Best of LA 2010 Poll, but submissions aren’t closed – we are now still accepting them until 12.31 HERE, through SonicBids, with a $5 submission fee. It’s the first time we charge musicians for anything, but these polls take so much of our time that we needed to find a way to offset some of the personal effort we put in them, we hope you understand.
The Deli’s Polls’ mission is to highlight the best local bands that emerged in 2010 in the 10 scenes we cover – the full list of cities we cover can be found here.
Our polling system (based on the votes of a local jury of scene makers and partially on our readers vote) has rewarded in the past artists like Local Natives, Yeasayer, Girls, Chairlift, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Freelance Whales, Sleigh Bells and Neon Indian (among others) before they hit it big.
The summary of last year’s polls (each city’s top 3 + readers poll winner) can be found here. A full explanation of the polling system can be found here.
We hope you’ll submit your music, because the more bands submit, the more accurate our poll is – we will consider any band!
Good luck, and… we swear that we will listen to your music!
The Deli’s Staff
Deli-rious readership,
We gave bands a week to apply for free to our Year End Best of Chicago 2010 Poll, but submissions aren’t closed – we are now still accepting them until 12.31 HERE, through SonicBids, with a $5 submission fee. It’s the first time we charge musicians for anything, but these polls take so much of our time that we needed to find a way to offset some of the personal effort we put in them, we hope you understand.
The Deli’s Polls’ mission is to highlight the best local bands that emerged in 2010 in the 10 scenes we cover – the full list of cities we cover can be found here.
Our polling system (based on the votes of a local jury of scene makers and partially on our readers vote) has rewarded in the past artists like Local Natives, Yeasayer, Girls, Chairlift, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Freelance Whales, Sleigh Bells and Neon Indian (among others) before they hit it big.
The summary of last year’s polls (each city’s top 3 + readers poll winner) can be found here.
A full explanation of the polling system can be found here.
We hope you’ll submit your music, because the more bands submit, the more accurate our poll is – we will consider any band!
Good luck, and… we swear that we will listen to your music!
The Deli’s Staff
Deli-rious readership,
We gave bands a week to apply for free to our Year End Best of New England 2010 Poll, but submissions aren’t closed – we are now still accepting them until 12.31 HERE, through SonicBids, with a $5 submission fee. It’s the first time we charge musicians for anything, but these polls take so much of our time that we needed to find a way to offset some of the personal effort we put in them, we hope you understand.
The Deli’s Polls’ mission is to highlight the best local bands that emerged in 2010 in the 10 scenes we cover – the full list of cities we cover can be found here.
Our polling system (based on the votes of a local jury of scene makers and partially on our readers vote) has rewarded in the past artists like Local Natives, Yeasayer, Girls, Chairlift, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Freelance Whales, Sleigh Bells and Neon Indian (among others) before they hit it big.
The summary of last year’s polls (each city’s top 3 + readers poll winner) can be found here.
A full explanation of the polling system can be found here.
We hope you’ll submit your music, because the more bands submit, the more accurate our poll is – we will consider any band!
Good luck, and… we swear that we will listen to your music!
The Deli’s Staff
Deli-rious readership,
We gave bands a week to apply for free to our Year End Best of Austin 2010 Poll, but submissions aren’t closed – we are now still accepting them until 12.31 HERE, through SonicBids, with a $5 submission fee. It’s the first time we charge musicians for anything, but these polls take so much of our time that we needed to find a way to offset some of the personal effort we put in them, we hope you understand.
The Deli’s Polls’ mission is to highlight the best local bands that emerged in 2010 in the 10 scenes we cover – the full list of cities we cover can be found here.
Our polling system (based on the votes of a local jury of scene makers and partially on our readers vote) has rewarded in the past artists like Local Natives, Yeasayer, Girls, Chairlift, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Freelance Whales, Sleigh Bells and Neon Indian (among others) before they hit it big.
The summary of last year’s polls (each city’s top 3 + readers poll winner) can be found here.
A full explanation of the polling system can be found here.
We hope you’ll submit your music, because the more bands submit, the more accurate our poll is… good luck, and… we swear that we will listen to your music!
The Deli’s Staff
Lia Ices‘ "Grown Unknown" reminds us that you don’t really need weird samples or odd time signatures or a knack for bizarre song structure to make great, unique music. What you really need is stellar songwriting, confidence, character, a great voice, and a scary amount of talent. The uniqueness of the sound will come naturally.
With the help of a piano and a few other traditional instruments, Lia Ices manages to create music that stops time, pierces the veil of Maya of our daily all-absorbing routine, and gets us to listen, and I would go as far as saying to enjoy, and reconnect to, the sad hemisphere of our emotions. In a world that seems to function in synch with up-tempo pop hits, this music could represent the only true rebellion we have left.
Don’t miss Lia Ices’ show at Mercury Lounge on 12.14. The album will be released in January on Jagjaguar. The video below is from a song featured in Lia’s 2008 debut album "Necima"
Husband and wife Nathan and Becky Bliss – aka Barnaby Bright – sure had an exciting end of 2010 – the duo won the NYC’s own SongCirlce 5th Annual Songwriting Contest, and therefore took home $10k in cash plus recording, publishing and full label services agreement with SongCircle Music/EMI, and various other prizes. We’ll have a chance to witness their moody, melancholic folk live at The Living Room on 01.20.
Lavalier is the brainchild of Dave Horowitz and Steve Milton, former members of NYC indie pop band The Cloud Room – a group The Deli covered extensively a few years ago, and which seems to have been rather dormant as of late. Besides a melodic approach to songwriting, Lavalier’s melancholic, dreamy atmospheres and mid tempo, sparse tunes don’t share much with the members’ previous band’s uptempo pop. The arrangements and instrumentation of choice (left to a remarkably high revolving cast of musicians, including a choir) create a surreal, circusy atmosphere that can be placed somewhere between the Beatles’ "A Day in The Life" and Tom Waits’ darker and slower ballads, forging a sound that stands out from current NYC indie trends – which is something we always appreciate here at The Deli. Director Kendra Eliot did a good job in giving a visual representation of Lavalier’s Lynchian sonic imagery in the video below. Check out these guys live at Pianos on Friday 12.10.
What’s the deal with these small emerging NYC bands playing 3 shows within a week in the same neighborhood?? I mean not even The Yeah Yeah Yeahs do that… Web Dating is a noise pop band from Brooklyn. The band’s lead singer Tucker Rountree also plays in Total Slacker and formed Wed Dating as an impromptu filler when Total Slacker couldn’t make a scheduled appearance at Death By Audio in Brooklyn. Web Dating produces pop songs whose lyrics straddle the nebulous divider between painfully sincere and tongue-in-cheek. Despite the saccharine words, Web Dating packs a power chord filled high volume sound. The group plans to release a four song EP in January, check them out at Death By Audio on 12.08, Glasslands on 12.10 and/or Shea Stadium on 12.16. – Nick Haycock
I would imagine that Dead Mechanical would cringe to hear me describe their newest album, Addict Rhythms, as a "throwback" to 1990’s era underground pop-punk. But, when you first play this record, that’s exactly what you think. And, for me, that made me instantly excited. However, as I listened to Addict Ryhthms a few more times, it began to take on a life outside of The Jawbreaker Era from which it may have been born. It began to sound like this record had been crafted as if the pop-punk anthems of the 1990’s had never really gone away, leaving these songs as a natural progression of the genre into the cultural realities of today. Dead Mechanical manages to convey this feeling on a record that is well crafted and arranged, but produced low-fi enough to still carry the energy of a live show. Their songs are catchy and melodic, but with edges that are just rough enough to let you know that they mean business.
Their song, "Last show," depicts the final show of a band that may or may not be fictional from the perspective of an adoring fan. The feeling of loss is expressed openly, but the song doesn’t sound like a lamentation, it sounds like a celebration. You can’t help but feel like this is somehow a metaphor for an entire genre or scene of music, ending and beginning, but always filled with vigor and life.
Addict Rhythms is at its best during anthemic choruses that challenge a generation at risk of losing its identity to re-take control of their lives. You can really feel this on "Sidewalks," a song that surrounds a lyrical portrait of voiceless and unappreciated youth with a resoundingly optimistic refrain: "You can hit the sidewalks early," a call to arms for the weary to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and start going somewhere.
If you’re in need of picking up, the first place you should head is to Traffic Street Records to pick up Addict Rhythms. –Jarrett
2010 was a great year for Screaming Females, and it’s not over just yet. The New Brunswick, NJ based band has just released a new free song ("Wild", embedded here) and a brand new video of the track "I don’t mind it" (you can find it here). They also announced 3 shows in early 2011, including one in NYC on 02.12 at the Music Hall of Williamsburg.