“You bought yourself a gun, you think it makes you safer / And stop telling me what to do with my body, it’s my fucking body” Michelle Birsky sings on Birch’s synth-pop slow dancer “Pick Sides.” It can be difficult to confront large societal issues while maintaining the accessibility of pop music, but Birch pulls it off with tact, tucking the personal effects of political and social divisions into buoyant pop filled with sweeping synths and hip-hop inspired beats. Perhaps the duo’s music is all the more reletable because it acknowledges how these issues seep into our ordinary lives. Birch’s next performance will be at Baby’s All Right on January 27th opening for Cape Francis. – Cameron Carr

Near Northeast‘s latest single “Clusters” functions as a sort of response to the current craze for musical wallpaper. Demanding attention with a meditative and creeping intro, “Clusters” requires the listener to shut off distraction for its entirety. In return, the song conjures up the feelings one might get from a sudden realization about the meaning of life made on a quiet Saturday night spent at home. Decidedly proggy, the song avoids any sort of verse/chorus structure, keeping the music enticing and staying true to its theme of meditative contemplation throughout.

After listening I had some questions for the group, who were nice enough to answer.  Here’s what they had to say. 

If you imagine folk music to be a spectrum, with the Mountain Goats on one side and klezmer music on the other, where do you think you guys fit?

AB: If the term folk music originated to describe groups of people all sharing the same culture and making music, then we make folk music. We were all growing up and starting to make music around the time of Napster, Limewire, etc. I would download anything that caught my fancy, share burned CD-Rs with friends (you can fit a lot of mp3s in 700 megabytes), rip as many CDs from the library as I could get my hands on. We all grew up under different geographies and cultures, but we share a voracious appetite for all types of music and like to steal whatever speaks to us. Folk as a genre is an entry point for us – there’s nothing like a simple acoustic guitar with vocal harmonies.

AM: We’ve always been inspired by different types of music, "folk" and otherwise, and we try not to put labels on our songs and our style. That said, the two songs coming out on the Etxe Compilation album do showcase very different sides of the band — "Clusters" to me is an expansive song, with soundscapes reminiscent of Boards of Canada and some post-rock bands we love. The heart of our songs still have a folk music center, with Kelly’s vocals and an acoustic guitar as the basis for the song — but then we intentionally and mindfully mess it up. A whole lot.

Given that you frequently mention “meditation” in descriptions of your music, and that your music itself is—in a shallow sense of the word—less “stimulating” than a lot of other stuff being put out there, would you say that your group has a certain aversion to consumerism?

KS: It’s true that in some of our recent music–including this new song, Clusters–we take our time to explore a tone and feeling, resting in sparse, repetitive moments. Hooks are powerful, and catchiness can be a virtue, but open space can enhance those rewards — both for the performer and the listener. We hope people who consume our music are game to spend some time in these musical spaces with us. It’s not a statement about consumerism; It’s just what feels right to us right now.

AM: This question reminds me of a conversation we had last year. We were lucky enough to do a weeklong tour of Bosnia and Croatia in September 2017, and we got to meet musicians and visual artists and creative people from all over this very tragic region during our tour. One of our concert bookers, a funk musician based in Sarajevo who played in a very fun cover band, had the most apt compliment for us — he said "I love your music, incredibly deep and innovative, zero commercial potential, but I do love it!" We wear that as a badge of honor.

As a band and as people, what are your hopes for the near-future?

AM: We’ve got a couple of fun things in the horizon — the Etxe Compilation show is this Saturday, Jan 20 at Capital Fringe, a venue in Northeast DC that we love (show info here) — besides performing our own music, we will be featuring our friend Isabelle on cello on our other new song "Feuilles", which has a more traditional folk song. We will also be performing with our label mates Teething Veils on their 20+ min epic 2014 piece Constellations, something they’ve never performed in their entirety before. Beyond this Etxe release, we are also working with a San Francisco-based visual artist and filmmaker on an instrumental soundtrack for a "found film" shot circa 1918 — it is an anti-Western which was found in an abandoned underground cinema in the New Mexico desert that this artist is rearranging and getting scored in different ways. Beyond that, who knows — perhaps another album or EP? A tour of a new part of the country or the world the we are curious about?

Catch Near Northeast on Saturday, January 20 at Capital Fringe at the release show for "Etxe at 10 Years: a Compilation" — RSVP, and Thursday, January 25 at Gypsy Sally’s, playing with Seattle-based Kuinka – RSVP

-Mike Dranove

Today Stereogum picked still unreleased LP "All This Will Be" by Closer, a Brooklyn band blending punk and post rock we first covered about a month ago, as their Album of the Week. The records drops this coming Friday January 19th. We are posting below the two singles currently available for streaming. The release show will be at Silent Barn on the same night.

Since releasing debut EP Flowerama this past summer, Brooklyn art rockers HNRY FLWR have been on a roll. The brainchild of songwriter David Van Witt just unveiled a second video for single “Little Brother” (streaming below). While the sound comes across as atmospheric and almost eerily otherworldly, the video is comprised entirely of home movie footage from David’s childhood. The song’s lyrical content reveals an introspective look at the cycle of violence and bullying learned at an early age. “Beating little brothers out of love. There is still a violence that I’m feeding. Compensating for the fear that I’m not tough. Finding tiny little brothers within you.” The video presents a poignant look at childhood innocence juxtaposed against the songs foreboding subject matter.  HNRY FLWR will open for glam-rockers Uni and Blame Candy at the Knitting Factory on 1/19. –Dave Cromwell

Snakeskin started off 2018 with the premiere of “Seize,” a mid-paced fuzz rocker that shows songwriter Shanna Polley embracing collaboration with a full band. It’s still following Polley’s previous path, with sprawling song structures letting her detailed lyricism carve a story, but “Seize” has continued her development from bedroom songwriter to searing rocker. The sizzling guitars and thumping drums build a heavy platform for her voice to stand upon as it gains new emphasis and power. You can catch Snakeskin at The Glove on January 26th alongside Bueno, Milk Dick, and Spowder. – Cameron Carr

 “Please pray before watching” is the disclaimer at the beginning of the music video for “Cocaine Rockstar”, released by rapper Pretty Blackkk. Super-slick flow and some clever rhymes make this track stand out from the crowd. The video itself is quite entertaining, featuring Mr. Blackkk on some sort of drugged out trip through the wilderness with mystical women and some kind of sword. “All I ask is please pray for my kidneys”.

-Mike Dranove

Stuyedeyed is an alternative worldview presented through noisy and loud psych-rock, led by Nelson Antonio Espinal’s exuberant blues-inflected vocals. Their music is grounded in the punk DIY scene and the NYC garage tradition, and their personal revolt against the disingenuous and the gentrified shines through with each howl of rage. With fuzzy layers so thick you can practically wrap yourself up in them, the Brooklyn-based band delivers a serious ’70s guitar rock feel and loads of lo-fi goodness. Our sister blog Delicious Audio managed to catch Nelson before their three week February tour to ask him a few question about gear.

With an appreciation for the jubilance of pop music and the willingness to explore new sounds that NYC is known for, in 2014 the city’s electronic musicians created music that could soundtrack all-night dance parties or pensive nights alone. Beshken captured that contrast best on For Time Is The Longest Distance Between Two People. The album migrates between spacious, simmering instrumental sections and buoyant, pulsing rave-ups. Overcoats played more heavily on thumping, dance-floor anthems with their debut album YOUNG, but lyrically the duo looked further than the party scene. Overcoats’ portrait of inner emotional struggles rivals the tact of many veteran pop songwriters. The electronic genre also took influence from the indie rock world. Guerilla Toss, featured on our cover this past fall, released GT Ultra, a mish-mash of post-punk, psychedelia, and electronica that’s near impossible to accurately categorize. Covering stuttering electronica in a dream pop-inspired haze, Blood Cultures’ Happy Birthday balanced the danceable with the moody. Perhaps not quite fitting into the electronic realm, Sneaks made a post-punky sophomore album using almost only a drum machine, bass guitar, and vocals to craft the expertly concise and individual It’s a Myth. To be fair, that album came out before Sneak’s Eva Moolchan moved to NYC, but since the band’s relocation we’ve proudly embraced them as our own. Belonging to the Electronic realm are also two NYC records we recently blogged about: Torres’ dark and mysterious Three Futures and Standing on the Corner‘s avant-hip hop masterpiece, and recent Deli NYC Record of the Month, Red Burns. – Cameron Carr

Torres‘ musical path could be used as an ideal example of what should happen to a musician who dares to move from Nashville to NYC – something she did in 2015, soon after releasing her sophomore album Sprinter. Her 2017 follow up, Three Futures, reveals a more daring artist with an uber-edgy sound that makes abundant use of synths and guitar pedals. The tracks share a claustrophobic atmosphere that seems like an unavoidable by-product of the transition from the big spaces of Music City to the "coziness" of the Big Apple. The labels took notice (the album was out on legendary 4AD), the critics applauded (Three Futures is one of the top-ranked albums on Metacritic.com with a score of 79) and the fans multiplied. And more recently, the UK newspaper The Guardian included the video for Skin (streaming below) in its Best of 2017 list. Since the release, Torres has been gigging non-stop in the US, Canada and Europe.

Dirty Bird’s latest single, "Towers," will catch you off-guard.  "Towers" is a juicy, upbeat indie folk tune with a striking, purposeful arrangement and stellar vocal harmonies. Melodically, instrumentally, and vocally, this band is getting everything right. The recording is so delightful that I’m intrigued to hear them bring their music to life on the stage. You can catch them live as part of the #WomenCrush NYC showcase, an organization that provides opportunities for rising female artists in the music industry, at Rockwood Music Hall on January 31st. –Geena Kloeppel

Sheetal Singh knows what it’s like to fall apart and have to pick up the pieces again. After her previous band—early 2000s San Francisco indie darlings The Stratford 4—fell apart, she returned to school and even started her own family. Now, she’s returned to music in the form of a new project called Forest Bees—an indie electronica act with intensely feminist overtures. Today, The Deli has the privilege of premiering the opening track “Independence Day” (streaming below) off of the forthcoming self-titled debut EP. The track explores Singh’s experience as a wife and as a woman, which are themes that reoccur throughout the rest of the EP. The rest of the record will be released on January 25th at The Hemlock. – Lilly Milman 

It’s hard to place a firm finger on Standing on the Corner’s latest album, a 60 minute, two-track release entitled Red Burns, but the record – which opens with warm crackling, synth-y harp strums, and omnipotent narration treated with the kind of vocal distortion that sounds as if your cassette’s brown tapes have melted – is wildly innovative, and strangely mesmerizing. The project, headed by Gio Escobar and Jasper Marsalis, a Crown Heights based duo armed with a jazz background and an interest in rap and electronica, is a response to recent political and nationwide events, chronicling them with the distinctive viewpoint of those facing direct oppression, but expressing them through a medium that is widely freeform and experimental. (Olivia Sisinni)