April showers may bring May flowers as the famous saying goes but here at The Deli we say why not “make it rain” year-round like Lil Wayne and Fat Joe rolling up night after night to Atlanta exotic-dancing mecca Magic City with wads of dead presidents circa 2006 excerpt where the the only G-strings in evidence are those found on an electric guitar and where the only stream to be found is the one delivered by your streaming service of choice that is unless you’ve got your music collection stored in the cloud…
…and now we’ve run out of precipitation and/or strip club based metaphors but that’s ok cuz the salient point is that it *was* indeed a particularly fecund April (and if May’s even more profligate, holy cow!) with a great deal of great music raining down from the heavens, four examples of which are featured here (including one release-day debut!) with more golden musical showers soon to be featured in this space when our next “Deli Delivers” monthly playlist goes up a few days from now but for now check out our hot takes on the four bangers below all released in this the fourth month of 2023…
JessX — “Void Fill” (released today) –> LISTEN HERE
This song successfully puts across the thesis that “voids annoy” (with apologies to Buzzcocks) seeing as the "voids" in question are more than merely random unoccupied spaces, but rather spaces waiting (or more like aching) to be filled by someone or something whether it’s a person or an object or a cheap sensation doing the filling—capitalism, of course, depends upon the endless fomenting of scarcity with the resulting void only fillable by means of consumer-based gratification—and this doesn’t even account for being called upon to help fill the numerous voids experienced of others…
…which is what JessX’s single new single “Void Fill” seems to be about (I’m not your "void fill" / but I love the thrill / it’s pressure on my innocence / filled with guilt…I’m not the cheapest little item on your bill) saying "up yours" to bondage bolstered by a blur of manic energy that’ll surely fill the void in your life for punchy high-velocity melodies and piledriving riffs and chords and defiant lyrics plus there’s this cool part that comes in 15 seconds into the 90-second long track and re-appearing again later comprised of cascading, half-screamed high harmonies set against steadily building rat-a-tat rhythms…
…which is like micro-dosing a shot of sonic adrenaline so consider that particular void filled too and if there’s any one mass medium that’s all about putting people’s desperate desires to have their voids filled on display it’s "reality TV" so it’s logical the music video that’s in the works for JessX’s “Void Fill” is a take-off on competitive reality shows so stay tuned and in the meantime check out the trailer above…
Joudy — “Tail End” (released two weeks ago on Trash Casual)
Speaking of voids to be filled, Joudy’s third single from their upcoming Destroy All Monsters LP is an apocalyptic rock anthem that’s all about turning endings into new beginnings—something these three Venezuelan émigrés who also happen to be cousins are well aware of after having made their way to NYC by separate, circuitous routes—and with it’s ominous, lurching riff (played in a 5/8 time signature for all you aspiring Tool tribute band members) and vast, spacious ambience this single definitely lives up the album’s title as borrowed from the 1968 kaiju film…
…cuz one could easily see Godzilla laying waste to the iconic United Nations building as “Tail End” plays—or Rodan ravaging Moscow or Mothra massacring Peking so you’d better duck—and while the song works well as an epic alt-soundtrack to the original trailer for Destroy All Monsters (we’re talking Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz levels of synchronicity here) Tail End” has it’s own video already (dir. Gabriel Duque) and it’s also apocalyptic just like those old rubber-suited monster movies and likewise you’ll likely be cheering on the planet-smashing when it arrives more than lamenting it…
…and with Joudy’s new video garnering airplay on MTV’s “Spankin’ New” broadcast (spanking not included) it’s a good thing it’s 2023 and not 2001 cuz if Carson Daily and the rest of America got freaked out by Mariah Carey and her ice cream cart on the set of TRL back in the day who knows what the teenyboppers woulda made of this trio of face-melting South American shredders who walk a fine line between psych and doom and prog and grunge and shoegaze…
Powerviolets — “Furrowed Brow” (released one week ago)
Speaking of being haunted by monsters, Powerviolets are a band led by singer/writer/guitarist/music video actor Violet Hetson. Violet likes Matzo Ball soup and hates Radiohead. Her favorite song about New York City is “I’m Gonna Move To New York” by Lumpy and the Dumpers (I’m gonna go out and score / I’ll be just like Thurston Moore) and her father is bald and Jewish.
All of the information above was gleaned second-hand and quoted near verbatim from a live podcast taping the Deli attended last summer featuring funnyman David Cross and a panel of local musicians responding to deliberately arbitrary questions and it was a pretty odd experience and speaking of pretty odd experiences you’re likely to have one listening to Powerviolet’s music cuz Violet is self-confessedly into all things witch-adjacent and haunting-related especially haunted DIY spaces…
…and that’s exactly the energy that comes across on their new single “Furrowed Brow” which relates the story of joining a cult where you have to “choose one child to leave behind” which in this case is an “egg worm son [who] steals and lies” or something along those lines but we’re hey not here for lyrical exegesis tho’ I’ll take a crack at musical exegesis and say “Furrowed Brow” is something like a mashup of the previous two songs covered above…
…with a punk-adjacent intensity and ethereal melodies wedded to an witchy mid-tempo psych-pop groove with some nice feedback-laden textural tones adding to the overall ghostly vibe (lead guitar: Beau Dega; d: Daniel Miliambro; b: Caesar Concha) tho’ there’s a couple more “rockin’ out” parts too and the overall vibe is like Real Ramona-era Throwing Muses meets early Breeders meets Belly so in other words Tanya fuckin’ Donnelly but maybe I’m just projecting my desire for all music to sound like Tanya D. was involved with it somehow or for a more modern comparison you could go with the Paranoyds…
…but really Powerviolets just sound like Powerviolets which is exactly why you should check ‘em out, or if you’re really “with it” you already did so and already heard “Furrowed Brow” a couple weeks ago when Violet set up a dedicated phone number you could call and listen to the song before its official release cuz apparently she’s a switchboard operator for the phone company (?!?) and then we recommend you go and listen to “Ribbit” which is Poweviolets’ contribution to the excellent Warriors comp recorded at and released by Holy Fang Studios last summer as a fundraiser for endometriosis research, awareness, and advocacy…
Stallion Dunquis — “Sunday’s Gone” (released one week ago)
And at last after three examples of strum-and-twang Sturm und Drang we figure it’ll be good to go out on Stallion Dunquis’ “Sunday’s Gone” which could be described as a “stripped-down, piano-driven track with lyrical and emotional delicacy drawing comparisons to Tobias Jesso Jr. and John Lennon” if the song’s official press release is to believed which after some consideration we’re willing to sign off on even though we don’t know who Tobias Jesso Jr. is (but now we do, thanks Stallion!)…
…and if you’re gonna go the stark, stripped-down, one-man-and-a-piano route you’d better have a strong concept and strong execution and Mr. Dunquis pulls it off by laying out the song’s central conceit in the first few lines (“You don’t have to make it right / some tears are not meant to dry / I don’t wanna live that lie”) over a similarly no-nonsense, nakedly emotive blocky chord progression a la “Imagine” or “Stay” or “Without You” (Tobias!) and then throw in a couple small variations like the overdubbed vocal harmonies that appear about half-way through and voilà you’ll have listeners crying in the shower stall…
…which is well-earned seeing as the song was written “for someone experiencing a profound loss. Basically, the message is saying that it’s all okay—the sadness, the madness, the tears, the guilt. Just embrace it all today as best you can because there is happiness awaiting you tomorrow. Imeant the song to feel like an arm around your shoulder” and if punk rock is all about stripping rock music back down to its three-chords-and-the-truth ethos then "Sunday’s Gone" could easily be viewed as a piano bar punk rock equilvalent… (Jason Lee)