We told the fasinating story of Brooklyn resident Mishka Shubali in last summer’s Ten Year Anniversary Issue of The Deli. The man, who found commercial success as a writer after years spent chasing the rock’n’roll dream with bands like Freshkills and Beat the Devil, has more than one interesting – and often darkly funny – thing to say about his neighborhood of choice and its music scene. He’s now coming out with a new album scheduled for a February 2015 release and entitled "Coward’s Path," written at the nadir of his musical career: tunes about death and darkness and failure and the cold comfort of oblivion – but without ever losing his fatalist sense of humor: "“With Coward’s Path, well, you’ve drank the bar closed, they’ve kicked everyone else out and pulled the gate down so it’s just the bar staff and their friends. The drugs come out. […]The party turns weird. The party turns bad. Shit gets totally out of control. And then you have to stumble out into the daylight and confront what you’ve done.”

Talking about immigration controversy… The Deli would like to give the guys in Balancer (the ones in the band hailing from Columbia, since the Puerto Rican should be good) permanent residence in NYC for… making real good music? We are sure even the most raci… ahem… obstructionist Tea Partiers will fall in love with the celestial melodies of their latest record "Tipsoo," or at least with this beautiful single entitled "re-minder." And to those concerned about the fact the NYC scene (or any other place in this land) is getting less and less American, The Deli says: "yo, since when is America, American?!?"

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

LAVACHILD is a (mostly) Brooklyn based electronic collaboration between Friends’ (the band) collaborator Nikki Shapiro and soulful singer Chantel Marie. Their ethereal single  "Want U To" (streaming) has the sophisticated lightness of an impressionistic painting, enriched by a voice that’s beautifully expressive. The result is a sound that carves its own niche of influences in the current alt-soul NYC scene, and that will delight both the fans of Enya and Lauryn Hill. The band – unlike too many studio projects like this – is playing live regularly, you’ll get a chance to see them at Pianos on December 2nd.

We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best mellow songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!

"Holy Crap!" – that’s the first reaction we had while playing "Mine" by NYC female trio Wild Bore. In that track the three ladies beware as wildly as your average punk rocker circa 1977, while incorporating surf and post punk elements in their explosive sound. They have three singles out so far, all released in the second half of 2014. "Eddi Munster" is some kind of "half blues" featuring a Devo-esque vocal line – only less robotic and more psycho. "Mon Amie, Elise" – streaming below – is the tamer track of the bunch, but not necessarily the less tense. It also features a chord change, which here at the Deli we very much appreciate! You have three chances to see Wild Bore in NYC in the next few weeks: Pianos on 11.24, Rock Shop on 12.04 and Cakeshop on 12.19.

Transformations are at once the most painful and liberating processes we can experience, and can be also among the most inspiring. This past spring, Delicious Audio contributor and Americana performing artist Mya Byrne (previously known as Jeremiah Birnbaum) came out as a transgender woman. After this breakthrough, a period of intense creativity followed, which brought to life the songs in Mya’s debut album "As I Am." This is an inspired collection of folky, personal songs that mostly reflect influences from the golden years of folk-rock, from Joni Mitchell’s jazzy, disarming sincerity to Neil Young’s evocative, twangy poetry, with some exceptions veering towards blues and old timey. Opening track "April Fool" is a testament to change, which, filtered through Mya’s experience, is an explosively complicated – and therefore fertile – issue, in particular for the people who surround her: "And in me you see a stranger, someone you thought you knew, ink spilled, a quill collapsed on the last line of a picture you drew." Mya will be playing at The Living Room’s new Williamsburg location on November 22. – photo by Emily Raw

NYC’s Pants Velour work hard to represent the self-imposed genre of “irreverent hip hop.” It’s a moniker with a broad scope despite its apparent narrow-mindedness, but the band remains undeterred. MCs Josh Raff, Eli Northrup, and Niki Darling hoist a freak flag of such resplendent snark that it’s hard not to get behind (pun intended). In their new video for “Taxidermist” they pop references from Howie Mandel to Handel to Hanson all while preaching to “stuff that beaver – taxidermist.” The beat is perfect for grinding hips or teeth. That much is up to you.  – BrokeMc

Pants Velour is scheduled to play at the McKittrick Hotel on December 18

In the genre box of their Facebook profile Brooklyn garage rockers The Planes describe themselves as "anti-commercial, indie, DIY" – we should totally add "anti-commercial" to our list of genres here! However, it’s a tough call to be anti-commercial guys, because a small amount of anti-establishment acts who hated the idea of being commercial ended up selling quite a lot of records and touring a lot, and both things belong squarely to the field of… commerce! So, the only way to stay true to that statement would be for The Planes to not charge for records and only play free shows, two things they are actually scheduled to do as soon as tomorrow, when they will be releasing their new EP "Catch You/Milk Maid" at Cake Shop (cover $7). But anyway, this stuff doesn’t matter, what matter is the music, and The Planes have some cool songs that resonate with the slacker hiding in each one of us. We should have a song from the new record for streaming tomorrow, for now you can enjoy this track from last year’s debut album "Echo Forever/Forever Echo."

NYC’s Wet Leather plays pop the way we like it: super catchy, but tense and edgy at once. The vague Prince influences we detected in "Astral Projection" – opening track of their soon to be released EP "Past Lives" – become more than vague in following track "Stop Me if I’m Doing it Wrong," but hey, every band has its own references and hardly anybody is channeling "His Royal Badness" these days. Also, not many songwriters can come up with timeless melodies like the one propelling the chorus of "Astral Projection" (streaming). The sophisticated but gritty production enhances the dark side of this pop-soul gem through subtle dissonances and suspencefull staccatos – we dig. Check out Wet Leather at Rockwood’s Stage 2 when they celebrate the release of their sophomore EP.

It’s that time of the year folks!

Submit your band for The Deli’s Best of [YOUR SCENE] 2014 Poll for Emerging Artists – who wins gets featured in our SXSW pocket issue, distributed in Austin during Music Week! (Other prizes to be announced…)

ENTER HERE!

The Deli’s Staff

Storytelling is an art in music.  Slick Rick spun some yarns, Biggie added specific details that drew us in, and countless other MCs have taken up the torch with varying degrees of engagement.  Brooklyn’s Metermaids display their instinctual yen for towing the line and reeling it in slowly with their video for “Profiteer,” the new single for their upcoming album We Brought Knives out Dec 2 on Strange Famous Records.  It’s a moody piece with a Stand By Me (the movie) vibe that makes you nostalgic for the creepy days of your childhood. – BrokeMC

We blogged about Brooklyn goth rockers Cult of Youth a few weeks ago saying how such a great band should get more visibility… well it seems like the Gods of music listened to our wishes, since the band’s new record "Final Days" is getting rave reviews – including from Pitchfork, which gave it a resounding 8.1, and Stereogum, which chose it as their "Record of the Week." For complex cultural reasons probably due to the fact that American prefer more explicit forms of rebellion, this is a band bound to find most of its audience in Europe (in particular the northern part of it), a continent that welcomes quality dark music and art more than any other. That’s why they are touring it more than thoroughly early next year. They have no local show scheduled right now, but we can imagine they won’t be short of offers after the critical praise they are receiving, so watch out!

I really didn’t know what to expect when Tiny Hazard took the stage last Tuesday at The Silent Barn.  My ultimate description of this band ended up somewhere around "surrealist nightmare fairy tale music."  Alena Spanger set the tone not just with her appearance – barefoot, a white dress, she looked young, like she was straight out of a cartoon – and her vocals, which would change on a whim from operatic disney to demon lord fury. 

Spanger and Tiny Hazard don’t want us to have any expectations, actively fooling us into thinking they’re one thing until they’re not.   They’ll be in the middle of a soft, dainty melody until someone hits the tritone on the piano and everything goes dark.  When you barely have time to adjust to the sudden change they’ll plunge into heavy, distorted, no-wave inspired insanity.  But there’s a method to the madness, their recordings and their live sets are both highly contained and controlled atmospheres, where every move has a purpose.

Their most recent single, "Silhouette" is a further demonstration of their eclecticism.  The song is disguised as a highly accessible pop song, but it’s clear that we’re in a confusing mid-point between light and dark. "All of those sick faces/Crooked and vacant/Mounting is your unrest/Warping silhouette," Spanger sings over a R n B/soul inspired synth melody, it seems almost out of place until someone turns on the ‘evil’ switch on and we’re shot into hell and the lyrics aren’t as out of place.  Stream the track below (one of their slower ones) and check them out at The Mercury Lounge on 11.22.

INTERVIEW: Read Emilio Herce’s interview with Tiny Hazard.