THE DELI

Making engaging music from nothing but vocals, guitar, and piano is not easy. It requires skill to be able to give a convincing performance despite the absence of a real rhythm section. To this end, Charlottesville, Virginia brother/sister duo Lowland Hum succeeds wonderfully. Lovely vocals, good arranging, and excellent production values help carry their sound over the hurdles on their new album, Thin.

Here’s “In Flight” from Lowland Hum’s new album, Thin, which drops today.

-Written by Michael Dranove

The Deli’s Best of Folk/Americana Poll for emerging Chicago artists ended yesterday and elected a single winner for both the Readers’ Poll and the overall chart, which aggregates both readers votes and the votes of our jury of scene experts.

Belonging to the "less is more" school of thought, Jessie Winslow employs a very sparse instrumentation but aims directly at the earth. In her 2016 EP, appropriately titled "Bare," she even rejects the flattering effects of artificial reverberation on the vocals, an effect so common in recorded music that, by itself, its absence forges an original sound.

Kudos also to Furious Frank and Todd Kesler, who placed 2nd and third in the readers’ poll and also, respectively, 2nd and 4th in the overall charts, separated by Robbie Fulks who snatched the 3rd place in the latter.

Find all the finalist of the Folk//Americana category under the streaming track.

	Al Scorch		3%	7 votes
	Furious Frank		18%	35 votes
	glyders		0%	1 vote
	Homme		2%	4 votes
	Jessie Winslow		35%	65 votes
	Parent		1%	2 votes
	Rebecca Rego & The Trainmen		11%	22 votes
	Robbie Fulks		1%	3 votes
	Robert Rolfe Fedderson		1%	3 votes
	Tara Terra		4%	9 votes
	The Belvederes		0%	1 vote
	Trevor Sensor		0%	0 votes
	Todd Kesler		17%	33 votes

Those who are wondering what the state of synthpop in NYC is, should head to Bowery Ballroom on Saturday February 11. Three of the best emerging local bands dedicated to the most joyous of electronic genres (VHS Collection, Paperwhite and Corbu) will share the stage of that venerable stage – on a Saturday night! Check out their tunes, streaming below.

Female-fronted, five-piece indie pop band The Gingerlys began when guitarist Matt Richards started sharing acoustic demos of his pop songs with his fellow bandmates in his Valley Stream, New York basement. Matt’s dreamy/shoegazy songwriting inclinations found the perfect match in Jackie M.’s ethereal vocals. The band then recorded their first EP, “Jumprope” with Oliver Ignatius at Mama Coco’s Funky Kitchen in Brooklyn and soon started gigging in and around the city. Describing themselves as "pure ear candy," Gingerlys provide catchy and hazy dream pop tunes. So, this year, for St. Valentine’s day, at Baby’s All Right, instead of getting your sweetheart a boring box of candy, you have the option of taking him/her out to hear some candy. If you do so, make sure to let us know how that plays out! – Lea Phillips 

Here’s a pretty little album we just discvovered, released earlier this year. Its title is "Princess Plum," and the band that recorded goes under the moniker Absolutely Yours. It’s dream pop at its most ethereal, in particular on opening track "Best I Got," streaming below. The quartet is performing at Alphaville tongiht, February 9th, 2017.

Western MA-based GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES!  is one of those bands crafting deliciously head-spinning math-rock licks so labyrinthine, that you’d imagine it’d be tough for even a full four or five piece band to execute. So, when you hear that their music is the work of solely Joseph Andreoli (guitar) and Kenneth Topham (drums), it’s more than a little dizzying to think about how the duo manages to pull it off. Luckily for us, Joesph was kind enough to give our sister blog Delicious Audio a behind-the-scenes look at the pedals he uses to create GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! expansive sound. You can find the interview at the link below. – Olivia Sisinni

Giraffes? Giraffes! Q&A about pedals on Delicious Audio.