Amid shaky reverberations, melancholy crooning and eerie whistles, Bill Campbell, or Thee Midnight Creep, delivers his signature gothically-inflected gospel on his latest release. I Lie Like a Dog at Your Feet is an album that can stand up to the works of the great shiver-inducing wordsmiths; Campbell’s brand of woozy folk is as macabre as any Edgar Allan Poe creation. Minimalist auto-harp accompaniment allows his stirring vocals, suggestive of a soul tormented, to take listeners hostage in a world of brocade, gnarled trees and perpetual dusk. The aptly named opener “Codeine” pairs heady instrumentation with woebegone lyrics that sound like they were uttered in a long empty hallway. The song, and the album, act as an auditory narcotic – hypnotic, calming and, ultimately, hard to let go. But don’t take our word for it – Thee Midnight Creep will be performing live on KEXP at 8 p.m. on February 18.

– Kate Shepherd

Deli Readers

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After a somewhat dramatic competition, atmospheric psych/post rockers Equals won our Best of Austin Readers’ and Fans’ Poll for Emerging Artists, congrats to them! Kudos also to electro-rock duo Auto Body, who placed 2nd, and alt-folk ensemble The Preservation, third in this list. Great bands and great variety!

Boy (the band) also deserves a mention here. They were leading the poll when they realized that a fan was helping them gather votes through illicit hacking. If everybody showed this kind of integrity the world would be a much better place – we want you guys in Congress! We decided to cut down their votes to 5% of the total, so that they would still appear in the top five, since it’s very likely that at least a portion of those votes was legitimate.

1. EQUALS

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2. AUTO BODY

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3. THE PRESERVATION

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Fans’ poll top twenty list below, final results of The Deli’s Best of Austin Poll for Emerging Artists (which also include jurors and writers votes) will be announced soon.

ARTIST VOTES   1 Equals 1489 2 Auto Body 630 3 The Preservation 144 4 Empire machines 102 5 Boy* 89 6 Whalers 51 7 GASHCAT 42 8 Shakey Graves 38 9 Holy Wave 35 10 Not In The Face 30 11 The Couch 24 12 Frank Smith 23   Elaine Greer 23 14 Tiger Waves 21 15 The Bright Light Social Hour 20 16 The White White Lights 19 17 The Saint James Society 16 18 Meggan Carney 14 19 Black Books 13 20 Gary Clark Jr. 12

The Deli’s Staff

The Clox formed in Brooklyn in 2007 after Kazakhstani professional soccer player Denis Orynbekov chose rock music over the round black and white ball, and moved to NYC. The Clox have shared the stage with The Toadies, Clinic, The Gift, Mumiy Trol, Drew Halcomb & The Neighbors, The Night Snipers, Lyapis Trubeckoy, etc. Their songs are now in rotation on both Pandora Radio as well as New York City’s 87.7 Indie Darkroom Radio, and their new album, “Civilian” was released a few days ago.  – (as posted in The Deli’s Open Blog – post your band’s entries, videos, and Mp3s here). The Deli’s NYC Open Blog is powered by The Music Building and APS Mastering.

DIVE plunges into an aquatic soundscape of blur-soaked loops and echoing underwater vocals. Following the gaze through the shoes and into the chill waves, the founder of the band, Z. Cole Smith, was the guitarist for Captured Tracks labelmate Beach Fossils, and the two bands certainly share a similar aesthetic. They also both have a water-based name, but you already picked up on that, right? (They also remind me of Beat Connection, especially the song "In The Water" but maybe that’s taking things just a little off the deep end. Shit.) The vocals unwind into themselves, male and female voices coming together and falling back apart, like jellyfish in a twilight tide. DIVE has released two 7 inches and have an EP set to debut in March. Catch their last New York show before the band departs on tour, with a stop in Austin as part of Capture Tracks’ SXSW showcase. – allison levin

The Lounge Act is an alternative rock group based out of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The band was formed by Simon Guzman and Jordan Wuest when they began writing songs together and performing at open mics around the city under the moniker "Simon and Jordan". They eventually recruited their good friends from high school Nick Ciccantelli and Roger Walsh, and immediately started working on recording their songs. The Lounge Act draws influences from modern rock and indie music, check them out live at The Sullivan Hall on March 6. – (as posted in The Deli’s Open Blog – post your band’s entries, videos, and Mp3s here). The Deli’s NYC Open Blog is powered by The Music Building and APS Mastering.

Ravens & Chimes showcase the kind of urgency you usually expect to hear from folk frontmen desperately running from a broken heart and delaying the pain of unrealized expectations. Lead singer Asher Lack may share many of these same issues, but on sophomore record "Holiday Life" (out April 3rd On Better Looking Records), he handles it all with deft songwriting and a wandering curiosity that launches this record to some surprising places. Filled with sudden stops and orchestral interludes, "Holiday" is very bit a symphony as much as it is a Baroque pop classic. Like them or not, one thing you have to respect about these five NYU grads is how demanding their music can be. This isn’t a group to leave on while cleaning the dishes. Their latest single ‘Night’ contains the kind of contradicting multitudes Whitman might have been proud of. The influence of Asher’s downtown artist dad Stephen Lack must be rubbing off… Check out ‘Night’ below and see them when they play in Zurich, Switzerland on March 6… or just wait until they come back to New York at WNYC Greene Space on June 1st. – Mike Levine (@goldnuggets)

Mp3: Ravens and Chimes – Night

Most musicians dream to to be recognized and praised by their own musical heros, and that very admiration often triggered their ill advised decision to try the rockstar route. This dream suddenly came true for Brooklyn and CT based The Stepkids when, on January 28, none other than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke posted this blog on the band’s site. Since we picked these guys for our cover in our Fall 2011 issue of The Deli, we also feel like a little dream has materialized… MAYBE THOM YORKE READS THE DELI!?! Here’s the song mentioned in the Radiohead blog – it’s called "La La".

Brooklyn-based folk rock band Jones Street Station will be previewing their new EP, “The Understanding,” this Tuesday (February 14) on Spotify.com for 2 weeks and then will be releasing it officially on February 28th. Several tracks from the EP are accompanied by CJ Camerieri (Bon Iver, The National and Sufjan Stevens) on the horn and the music video for the title track (streaming below, directed by Adam Reid) features Danny Pudi from NBC’s “Community.” The band will also play a gig on February 12th at Public Assembly in Brooklyn with Ben Lovett’s (Mumford & Sons) Communion, David Wax Museum, Trixie Whitley, Julie Easterlin and Aoife O’Donovan. Do not miss! – Chelsea Eriksen

A cohesive theme can be a determining factor of whether a live show is actually a show or just a bunch of performances by different artists thrown together by time and space. So, at first blush, the lineup at Webster Hall on the 10th seems like a mishmash put together by a clueless intern. Funky pop (Turkuaz) with hip-hop (Deathrow Tull – pictured) commencing with folk-pop (Futurist)? That would probably leave those unversed in the actual sounds and energies of each band scratching their heads. But, if we’re assigning physical movements, let’s give whoever put this show together a pat on the back instead, because all three artists work at the fringe of their generic bounds. Turkuaz‘s funk and gospel backing vocals leak over inspirations that pull from the past 5 decades. Deathrow Tull offers spitfire rhymes from a three-headed Cerberus of emcees with a backing band tight enough to do battle with the beast, and Futurist harkens to the past with the sounds of strings and colonial drumbeats, but the underlying darkness meshed with sunny demeanor proves they offer enough light to burn. But what really pulls these bands together is that they’ll make you move. Some shows you go to to be seen, this one you should go to to sweat. If you have no plans this Friday or even if you do, check it out. Webster Hall. $10. 7pm doors. P.S. All these bands were featured in the past two editions of The Deli’s Best of NYC Poll for Emerging Artists – allison levin