THE DELI

That sketchy looking dude on the corner asking if you like Hunky Dory era Bowie or Black Box Recorder or St Etienne is most likely selling bootlegs of the new CD by Midnight Sister that just came out this Friday and he’s got his target marketing game on point. Too bad tho’ he didn’t get the memo about the whole streaming thing, but it works out nicely for you cuz you just saved a few bones and can listen to Painting the Roses (Jagjaguwar) through various types of devices at your convenience.

And get this Midnight Sister isn’t even British. Instead they’re Angelinos but it makes sense when you find out that the duo of Juliana Giraffe and Ari Balouzian are, respectively, a music video/short film director and a film scorer in their other lives. So all those finely honed and orchestrated arrangements and glam antics and dark disco dramatics arise organically from their residing in the Town of Tinsel.

Plus their film backgrounds pay off when it comes to making music videos natch as dispayed in the trippy videos on display here. (Jason Lee)

In 1973 a local news report on the "social phenomenon" of "New York street bands" centered around the nightclub Max’s Kansas City–where Debbie Harry could very well be your waitress and William Burroughs passed out at the bar–zeroed in on an exotic group of young men called the New York Dolls. In somber tones the newscaster described their music as "rough not polished" with "lyrics [that] are shouted, not sung" and live shows that are "always belligerent, hostile and deafeningly loud." Now there’s a sales pitch!

And while the New York Dolls’ guitarist Sylvain Sylvain (he also played piano/keyboard) was by all accounts neither particularly belligerent or hostile or loud in person–just the opposite, in fact, he was credited with holding the highly-volatile group together both personally and musically during their initial five-year run from 1971 to 1976–his guitar playing sure as hell was all three of those things. What’s more Sylvain has been credited for coming up with the band’s name and their (for the times) highly provocative look and for being their musical anchor with his slashing, rock solid and memorable guitar lines.

Rather than trying to tell Sylvain’s story here or making a case for his significance, I’ll simply point out that Sylvain and his guitar playing are very likely buried deep in your DNA. In other words if you’re someone who listens to and/or creates what is referred to "indie" or "alternative" music, the New York Dolls were one of the central bands/central strands in the musical DNA of so-called proto-punk music (alongside the Stooges and MC5 and Death) leading directly to punk rock, obviously, and then to post-punk and alternative and indie rock. 

Here’s a few good obits that were published today if you wanna know more about the man, the Dolls, and Sylvain Sylvain’s post-Dolls career.

A British perspective from The Guardian (without the New York Dolls there’d been no Sex Pistols): 
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/jan/15/sylvain-sylvain-the-new-york-dolls

And here’s what some obscure old hippie rag has to say about Sylvain Sylvain:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/sylvain-sylvain-new-york-dolls-dead-1114962

Versus a more punk rock perspective from Alternative Press:
https://www.altpress.com/news/sylvain-sylvain-obituary-the-new-york-dolls

Last but definitely not least, Sylvain’s memoir published in 2018:
https://omnibuspress.com/products/theres-no-bones-in-ice-cream-sylvain-sylvains-autobiography

Now for some sounds and visuals cuz that’s what matters. Exhibit A: If th song "Frankenstein" with its glorious twin guitar assault by Sylvain Sylvain and Johnny Thunders, taken from the Dolls’ 1973 eponymous debut LP, doesn’t send chills up your spine then maybe you should pay a visit to your local cardiologist and have her check to see if you still have a pulse:

This is probably the New York Dolls’ best known song, though there’s a case to be made for "Personality Crisis," in which David Johansen (aka Buster Poindexter) kicks things off by quoting the Shangri-Las’ "Give Him A Great Big Kiss":

And this is probably the best known filmed performance by the Dolls–appearing live on the German pop music show Musikladen, with two more songs taken from New York Dolls (1973):

Footage of the Dolls performing live in 1974 following the release of their oft-overlooked sophomore LP Too Much Too Soon. Rock entrepreneur and announcer Don Kirshner poses the $64,000 question: Are the Dolls "outrageous and bizarre" or "incredibly talented"? But Don, why they can’t be both!

Excellent instrumental B-side from a band called Criminals, one of Sylvain’s post-Dolls projects, 1978’s "The Cops Are Coming" is a rocked-out rewrite of the iconic "Peter Gunn Theme."

Slyvain Sylvain’s first solo album in 1979 contained this very cool track which could easily be passed off as an overlooked gem from the Goffin & King catalogue ("King" as in Carole King).

Nice live set here from Sylvain Sylvain & the Teardrops, again from German TV, a musical project whose one one and only album came out in 1981. Note the retro-rockabilly vibe and note that this was the same year of the Stray Cats’ debut album. Sylvain was often on the cutting edge but often not getting due credit. Bonus content: you get to see Sylvain talking a bit about the Dolls during the wonderfully awkward interview segment.

And finally here’s a song off One Day It Will Please Us To Remember Even This (2006), the first of several well-received New York Dolls’ reunion albums co-written by surviving members Sylvain Sylvain and David Johansen. 

When it comes to the rest of the Dolls: Johnny Thunders passed away in 1991; drummer Billy Murcia died in 1972 on tour in the UK before the first album was even recorded, and subsequent drummer Jerry Nolan died in 1992; bassist Arthur Kane held out until the next decade and played the first Dolls reunion show in London in 2004 but died shortly thereafter before the Dolls had started work on their mid-aughts album. This excellent article from Classic Rock magazine traces the band’s path of self-destruction and their salvation of rock ‘n’ roll. Today, only Buster Poindexter survives to carry the torch. (Jason Lee)

One good thing about playing in a one-man shoegaze band is that you always know whose shoes you’re gazing at. And for a style of music that’s the aural equivalent of cocooning, this sense of isolation isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On Sunflares EP, which you guessed it, is the coming-out EP by Sunflares, a project said to be inspired by the isolation of quarantine (wait, better make that the “staying in EP”) the alone time appears to have paid dividends.

And the same goes for listening to the EP for those of us under our fifth or sixth lockdown. When lines like “Are you out there?” and “I wanna know your secrets” emerge from the layers of fuzz and flange they sound eerily familiar as they’re questions I’ve been asking myself after sitting at home for the whole night, drinking an entire case of Bud Light that was planned to last for the rest of the week or longer, but at least existential crises keep things interesting. Shoegazer, know thyself.

Sunflares’ opening track “Numb” kicks things off with some nice Lush-like swirly guitars, but any trace of Sweetness and Light is quickly interrupted when the song shifts into Superblast mode with distortion turned up to 13, but with a cool little Cure-like melody over the top and some satisfying tom-tom fills, before settling into the first verse with this enterprise’s Kevin Shields fully engaged and phaser pedals set to stun, all ready to swoop in and take out the Ringo Deathstarr. And here’s a couple music videos for those two very subtle Lush references I made because I’m always looking for a good excuse to post Lush videos.

In other words, Mr. Sunflare hits the major signposts you’d hope to hear on a 2021 shoegaze album (or shoegaze EP let’s not be pedantic here) with satisfying walls of sound and layers of effects-laden guitar smeared across this EP like strawberries and cream. But at the same time there’s some enticing twists and things are mixed up nicely overall, between and within the four tracks on offer, with shifting tempos and textures and heavy-devy parts and dreamy ambient parts. And finally here’s a video for the even more artfully subtle Cure reference contained in this paragraph. (Jason Lee)