Sometimes a song rips but in a highly controlled way. LAPêCHE is good at writing those kinds of songs and “Elbow Grease” is one of them. Opening with a driving tom-tom rhythm a tight little guitar riff, the song exudes a dark coiled intensity from the start. And the entrance of yearning yet slowly metronomic vocals only adds to the sense of anticipation with the opening line “It’s not so easy to uncover without splitting the seams” confirming the impression of something that’s contained waiting to be released.

The song’s lyrics as a whole appear to revolve around control and efforts to maintain it, or at least to appear to even when failing. But at a couple points the moody vibe gets broken by a stomping half-time riff leading into a repeated refrain of “rusted anchor pull me down.” It could all be a metaphor for addiction or obsession or Fleet Week who knows. Or for throwing oneself over the edge of a figurative bridge with a figurative anchor tied around one’s foot.

Or a real bridge. Speaking of ripping in a controlled way, LAPêCHE just released an official music video for “Elbow Grease" this last week, and in the video lead singer/lyricist/co-guitarist/keyboardist/tiny dancer (not really that tiny) Krista Holly Diem shimmies and twists and struts across the Kosciuszko Bridge (which spans the mighty Newton Creek separating Brooklyn and Queens) like a rogue Jazzercise escapee and still mangers to get off some good moves even constrained to a walking lane on a somewhat heavily trafficked bridge. So again we got the theme of controlled chaos and it’s engaging to watch. It’s also engaging to watch because personally I’ve crossed this bridge a good number of times on foot and by bike but now I realize I was doing it all wrong. What you see above is a much more aerodynamic approach to the crossage, and plus people will get out of your way if you’re bopping around like Jack Lalanne on poppers (if only Ludacris had thought of this approach).

“Elbow Grease” is the final track on LAPêCHE's recent sophomore full-length release Blood in the Water (New Granada) which had reportedly been in the can for about a year before release, originally slated to come out right around when things went to Hell In A Handbasket so the band and label wisely held off. In the meantime, they’ve reportedly almost finished their next album and I’m sure it helped they purchased a Band Pod™ by Hasbro and hunkered down for months on end writing a new set of songs which means at least something good came of all this.

And finally, you may ask yourself, did I learn these facts by conducting an interview with the band? Hell no do I look crazy to you! Instead I leaned them by watching someone else conduct an interview with the band on FLTV—otherwise known as the Footlight Bar’s official Vimeo channel which is located in cyberspace right next to Ridgewood, Queens. Each episode of FLTV features a single band put under the microscope by host Kendra Saunders who asks penetrating questions while wearing a fashionable glitter encrusted mask, as well as live performances by the band in question. And you can watch all the episodes from the first season for a small fee on their Vimeo channel. Now where is my commission FLTV? (Jason Lee)

Atlas Engine is a band whose material ranges from lush laid-back elaborated-arranged art-pop not totally unlike Alan Parsons Project if Alan Parsons project was cooler (sorry Alan Parsons Project but you don’t need to be cool anyway!) to driving motorik rock perfect for your next excursion driving the Autobahn (here's a great motorik playlist to check out if you got 41 or 42 hours to spare, you're welcome!)

Officially released today, “As You Are” is the second advance single by Atlas Engine (the first being “Modern Mind”) taken from an upcoming “suite of EPs” to which the average punter on the street may reply “what’s an EP?” and “what’s a suite?” But you, dear Deli reader, are far from being average—and whether you have the attention span to process a suite of EPs or not, you can most certainly appreciate the emotional resonance and the fine Swiss craftsmanship of a song like “As You Are” (note: the band are not Swiss but no doubt consume plenty of cheese and chocolate in Brooklyn so it’s close enough). But no doubt when the song eventually appears on When the Compass Resets Part I (Favorite Friends Records) it will be all the more fulfilling in that context. 

Speaking of the band's coordinates and identity (btw you can hear all their previous singles on the comp above) up until the past year Atlas Engine was one of those deals like Nine Inch Nails where it’s really just a single guy (in this case, Nick LaFalce) and whoever he surrounds himself with on a given record or tour but minus the rivalries with Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson. But that’s all recently changed. In 2020 Nick did something pretty much the opposite of most bands I’m guessing and human beings in general in terms of retreating into near isolation and just barely managing to feed and clothe ourselves (and not always the latter) but instead he used the time to solidify a stable, permanent membership for Atlas Engine in the middle of a pandemic with said bandmates being Meredith Lampe (vocals/keys), Patrick Cochrane (Bass/vocals), Brendan McGuckin (drums), and Jeff Fettig (guitar/synth) who now also participate in the songwriting process. And yes Nick has made us all look bad in the process and should be terribly ashamed of himself, but we’ll let it slide for now because these new songs are solid and we may wanna ask for VIP passes at Atlas Engine's next live show.

So let’s now turn to “As You Are” since it’s the new one. The song fades in with an electronic wind chime kind of sound and then moments later over a relaxed, rippling drumbeat there’s an ascending piano chord pattern/bass line with a sustained layer of electronic ambience before Mr. LaFalce’s stately yet etherial vocals enter. Up through this point “As You Are” sounds a bit like Wilco being fronted by Damon Albarn, and in the opening lines he slowly declaims that “the wretched hour / we’ve been waiting for / has come.” So wait, things are about to get more wretched compared to the past year (!) or maybe he's referring to the past year so let's table the discussion for now and move on.

And then right after the line “mouth is open wide / sharpening the knife” the band goes into a Grandaddy-like section (others might say “Radiohead section” but I’m sticking with Granddaddy) with cascading synths and a warm enveloping halo of sound—and this is where the the song really gets me—plus four overdubbed voices floating above it all like a rapturous choir of Brian Wilsons singing in falsetto, and I can almost imagine this part of the song being an actual Beach Boys song from their post-Pet Sounds Smiley Smile/Wild Honey artsy period. Then for a moment everything drops out and LaFalce drops a George Harrison-ism or maybe more like an Oasis-like pronouncement to “become as you are” and this is making me realize there’s a certain Britpop vibe to the song overall under the heading of indie pop power ballads that rock out at the end.

Speaking of rocking out, after the cycle described above repeats one more time with some new textures and lyrics thrown in, “As You Are” suddenly and briefly transforms into thumping half-tempo time with a pulsating tremolo guitar complete with grungy distortion overlay and a small dash of space rock synth until one last swooning harmony-laden chorus comes in that builds to a fairly epic climax before dissolving into a final few seconds of twinkling ambience which takes the whole thing full circle. So as you can see listeners are taken on a cinematic sonic journey in the space of just over four minutes which is handy since you can boil an egg to the song no problem that is if you like a soft yolk. Also adventurous and ambitious is the song’s lyrical theme which according to Nick is about “technology’s effect on one’s understanding of themselves” which honestly I’m not sure what he’s on about because I compose these blog posts on an old Radio Shack word processor.

And speaking of ambition, one last thing that bears pointing out is the larger concept underlying “As You Are”, "Modern Mind" and the band's other soon-to-be-released material is this whole suite-of-EPs idea mentioned earlier--more specifically, a collection of four EPs to be released throughout 2021 that will taken together comprise a set of conceptually-related chapters as part of a larger overriding work that will then be released as an album of its own once the pieces are in place. And hell we at the Deli heartily co-sign this Russian Nesting Dolls approach to record releasing because even King Crimson or Yes or Rush never came up with this particular concept in the Concept Album Sciences and we support innovation in all its many forms. (Jason Lee)

Elektra Monet isn’t just another Juilliard-trained viola and violin player from Texas who performs the occasional DJ set at Burning Man because yes she is one of those but one who also creates original electronically generated pieces combining 4AD/This Mortal Coil style avant/ambient floatiness with modern glitch beats and the kind of wraithlike female vocals favored by the likes of David Lynch and Serge Gainsbourg among other inspirations and influences.

You can listen to her latest full-length release titled Angels of Sweat from late 2020 below if you doubt me (recommended tracks: “Love is a Diamond Lie,” “In A State,” “Trash Humper,” “1995”) or better yet the new album-teasing EP released just today called Transience on which Ms. Monet steers her ship into more Tangerine Dreamy waters. And there's truly some transience happening on Transience what with the brighter, sharper synth timbres and mind-melding arpeggiations that may possibly have some of us fantasizing about riding a real train with Tom Cruise or Rebecca De Mornay or both or is that just me.

The one caveat that may exist for some fans is the lack of vocals on the three tracks because of Elektra’s especially spectral voice but then again singing may have somewhat broken the “Late Night Tales” spell cast so perfectly by the EP. And anyway you can check out some recent vocalizing by Elektra on two tracks where she's featured as lead vocalist on Jeremy Bastard’s Everyone Is History, There Is No Memory from earlier this year, reviewed on the DELI blog not long ago, where she adapts the crystalline hushed high-register school of female vocalizing and stirs a little grit into the mix.

And hey wouldn’t you know it, Elektra and Jeremy are labelmates on Somewherecold Records based out of Shelbyville, Kentucky, and while he’s clearly no Dyna Girl they do make seem to make a good musical team, especially since they both record for a label specializing in all thing slowcore, gothic, shoegazy, darkwavey, post-rocky, and ambient-but-not-New-Agey. (Jason Lee)

ALT TITLE: "Dream-pop Girls"

Way back in 2020, the Phantom Handshakes put out a song called “Aisha (Vs the Dirty Tongues)” which just from the title alone sounds like it should be a rock opera. And it’s not just the title because the song’s dramatic, moody music is likewise suited to the stage and would likely appeal to the youth of today since they don’t yet have a rock opera to call their own. Anyway I’d say the time has finally come for a shoegaze/dream pop takeover of Broadway and the West End.



The newest release by the Phantom Handshakes entitled No More Summer Songs could be the album to break the impasse and tap the potential for a dream pop rock opera if somebody could just find the next Mr. Lin-Manuel Miranda and get him or her to write a staged adaptation. I mean just listen to “Cricket Songs” and it’s inner monologue describing the protagonist’s heightened sense of perception in the midst of a summer heatwave complete with bedroom dancing and sweaty sheets and overemotive mothers and drifting off to the sound of chirping crickets. It’s pretty evocative stuff and so is the video above.


The album’s opening track “I Worried” would make a perfect overture with its ghostly echoes looking back at past misspent summers (that’s my take on it anyway) which would serve as a perfect framing device for the musical, and then the next song “No Better Plan” would be the crossover crowd-pleaser with its wordless catchy yet slightly taunting “Nya Na Na” refrain which should translate well to foreign markets.



The song captures a doomed-yet-determined forlornness but with a sunny/boppy melody and beat (sidenote: the aforementioned hit song from Hamilton also has a “Na Na Na” refrain) with lyrics about “building sandcastles despite the wind” which is essentially what King George does in Hamilton. 

P.S. I’ll gratefully accept a producer co-credit and a modest percentage of the gross box office if this idea comes to fruition. But if it turns out to be the next Moose Murders just remember you didn’t hear any of this from me.

The Planes are a power-indie-pop power trio who've mastered their own distinctive brand of pop-rock-craft as illustrated by their new album-teasing single called “Decoder Ring.” Check out the exclusive Deli-made video for the single below because you gotta pass the time somehow until Eternity on its Edge comes out on June 11.

If you’ve ever seen the holiday perennial A Christmas Story (directed by the same guy who directed the seminal slasher movie Black Christmas) then you’ve heard of secret decoder rings. Made famous in the 1940s and ‘50s by Ovaltine as prizes given away in packages of the sweetened and vitamin-enriched milk powder product, decoder rings could be used to unscramble coded messages broadcast on the Ovaltine-sponsored Captain Midnight program in which the show’s titular aviator war hero battled villains like ruthless criminal mastermind Ivan Shark, his sadistic partner-in-crime and daughter Fury Shark, and the Nazi ne’er-do-well Baron von Karp.

But I digress. "Decoder Ring" is a fitting title for a Planes song given how good the band are at writing and arranging sugary pop hooks but enriched with indie rock nutrients like guitar jangle, grungy distortion, and psychedelic flange--all joined to a narrative about being “down in the dungeon and out in the sea” (just like Captain Midnight!) with an appeal to “look at me / I can’t be seen / without a decoder ring” (just like the show's Ovaltine-hawking host!) which is enough to make you wonder if "The Planes" is really just a cover story for this trio of fighter-pilot Nazi-hunting super spies. Or maybe not. Maybe instead they're taken inspiration from Keith Moon and the Who in hawking sugary milk-based treats to kids.

Tune in next week to learn the thrilling answers to these and other questions!  (Jason Lee)