On The List :: Deleted Scenes @ Mercury Lounge [7.19.12]

If being a small rock band on a small label was easy, everyone would do it. Deleted Scenes took to the Mercury Lounge in the 8 o'clock slot as the headliner of the "early show," which is rapidly becoming code for, "How do we turn this place over twice in a night?" The band opened with the buzzy onamonapia song, "Days of Adderall" before turning to the more esoteric, "Teenage Kids," a song that is, according to the band, not available anywhere, sporting a central lyrical image, "This is what it must feel like to have teenage kids" in regards to a failing romance. "I'd die to please you," the lead singer intones in what has to be the most heart breaking moment on the Lower East Side this Thursday. The middle of the set turned the band toward its more 1990s indie rock influences, cheeky and thinly veiled Pavement turns of phrase and, at times, chunky Built To Spill-style guitars. Deleted Scenes updated their reference points to those of the quirky, looping pop of the Shins on, "Bedbedbedbedbed," a song good enough to use a noun five times with no need a space bar. The night closed with "Fake IDs", a 2009 release and, surprisingly not their most recent single, "English As A Second Language," a song that was left out of the Thursday night set list. "Fake IDs" rang, as it has for the last three years, as an identity think piece, settling on the somewhat provocative lyric, "We've all got fake IDs" and its presumption that for all their "everyman pretensions," you couldn't be this band if you tried.


Listen :: Deleted Scenes - "English As A Second Language"

The band plays Rock Shop this evening, 7/20.

Deleted Scenes :: "English as a Second Language"

The way to the top is a peculiar journey. First, you identify a style, then you perfect it. In the pursuit of this perfection, you become a parody. People glance at your work and think, caustically, "They would do something like that." You move from climber to monolith, a literal becoming of the object of your desire. If it can happen to Hemingway, it can happen to anyone. James Mercer of the Shins finally succumbed to this fate in 2012. Jettisoning his entire band and trading his anxieties (see: Wincing The Night Away) for sureness, Mercer released his slickest and more commercially accessible album yet, the quixotically titled, Port of Morrow. It was James Mercer playing what he thought James Mercer would play. It ended up next to the other impulse purchases of nuts and mints at your local Starbucks. You may own a copy. This type of pinnacle is, at the very least, lonely - being the band with the album at Starbucks - but, this type of inverted ascendancy leaves a trail. Deleted Scenes and their stunning next single, "English as a Second Language" are rooted firmly in the tradition of the strange-pop that Mercer made so popular in 2003, but they confront none of the same pratfalls as the Shins of 2012. "English as a Second Language" retains much of the pleasant weirdness and off-beat hooks of early Shins material, here featuring an unavoidable f-bomb and a final movement that kicks the doors off the arrangement, a move Mercer would never have chanced. It is a charming, fun and dark, a band on their way up, whatever the risks.

Listen :: Deleted Scenes - "English as a Second Language"

Top 50 Songs of 2011 :: 50-41 [They're setting fire to my face]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2011 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 50 to 41.

50. California Wives - "Tokyo" 

Nothing felt more neon than California Wives' "Tokyo" in 2011. It was nothing but synths and guitars, a chorus rooted in a geographic tautology, "They're building houses and lights in Tokyo." The brilliance was relative and it was made manifest in the metallurgic guitar chords and keyboard progressions. It all felt like little dabs of mercury slipping around the surface of a table.

49. All The Apparatus - "Let's Go Ride Bikes"

All Apparatus appeal to anyone who enjoys the work of Los Campesinos and anyone who enjoys fun. But you don't need to be watching that "Grab Some Buds" Budweiser commercial to feel like even your most asinine behaviors hold a life-and-death importance. For this Portland band, it is the simple act of riding bikes outdoors that doubles as a thesis statement, a raison d'etre. It is youth in revolt; youth screaming a silly chorus; youth playing big horns, guitars and chimes. It is unanxious youth in an age of increasing anxiety.

48. Letting Up Despite Great Faults - "Sophia In Gold"



We were arguably more into Letting Up Despite Great Faults' cover art on their 2011 EP, a sepia toned shot of some girl's knees, than we were into their music. This is compliment to that girl's knees and "Sophia In Gold", a snappy little slice of electro-pop that reminds the listener of a more seriously heartsick Jimmy Tamborello. LUDGF finally quit on the girl, whoever she is, saying, "I can't say your lines for you." This is a final act, to be sure, and a good one at that.

47. Ducktails - "Hamilton Road"

Certainly the most underrated chorus of the year belonged to Ducktails, a Real Estate side project, and their song "Hamilton Road". Nothing sounded more like a lazy summer afternoon played over a broken stereo as the band mushed through the awesomely singable, "We sit by the water". It wasn't even two-and-a-half minutes, and it didn't need to be.

46. The Echo Friendly - "Same Mistakes"

First, The Echo Friendly isolate the guitars, then add a clap track and the most distant male and female vocals of the year. If it sounds obliteratingly sad, it is. They're talking to each other, ostensibly about, well, the "Same Mistakes", but it never feels conversational. These two parties divert and merge with each other like two lost sides of a double helix, intersecting for a momentary duet before chasing each other away again.

45. Deleted Scenes - "Bedbedbedbedbed"

We loved that Deleted Scenes gave the world such a head-nodding single in 2011 and we loved that they gave us the central lyric five times in a row. No one made a better case for the lack of a need for a space-bar as the band reflected on a woman who pulled their act together, cut their hair and made them get out of bed in the morning. It sounded like The Shins on too much cold medicine which was entirely great.

44. Gauntlet Hair - "Top Bunk"

Gauntlet Hair are one of those awesome college radio bands with a good gimmick (the reverb thing) and an uncommon boldness. "Top Bunk" snapped like their previous work, only this time it changed time signatures with the effortlessness of Art School Rock. It spun off the rails toward the end, grinding the echo-chamber to a halt. The original statement of purpose still stood: We can make huge music with three guys and an effects pedal.

43. The Radio Dept. "The One"

The Radio Dept. had their best year in history, releasing a double-disk compilation album featuring the previously unreleased, "The One" to go with a decade of singles. It was a slow-drive version of the band's usual cold keyboard, placed firmly on a reggae upbeat. This wouldn't be the same brilliance as "Heaven's On Fire" but it didn't contend to be so, more victory lap than finishing kick.

42. Yukon Blonde - "Fire"

If Family of the Year was going to break out in 2011-12, then Yukon Blonde was determined to be close behind, maybe even transcendent of their genre rivals. Both bands make pop with a distinctly Western feel, "Fire" featuring some slide guitar and an affinity for the apocalypse that you only find in musicians and certain circles of evangelical believers. Since the band qualifies as solidly the former and solidly not the latter, we assume their references to burning water and faces is purely metaphorical, but entirely sticky, a hook that lodged in your brain like it was its last day on planet earth.

41. Dominant Legs - "Hoop of Love" 

There is a world in which you can argue that Dominant Legs' "Hoop of Love" had the single best chorus of 2011. A shimmering slice of guitar pop, the song has a respectable pre-chorus, a vague portent to the take off that happens in the real refrain. Muttered asides about "keeping my mouth shut" blur into the completely elevating hook where the band yelps interrogatives about who will be the one to do a variety of things; they leave these questions unanswered. This fails to mention the bridge, an updated Belle and Sebastian inspiration, full of a flecking strum pattern and a final taxiing to the runway of "Hoop of Love".

Deleted Scenes :: "The Days of Adderall"

It was in the winter of my freshman year of college that I saw the broad impact that phamacutical-grade amphetamines were making on my generation. After a night spent cloistered in my dorm having one of those conversations that college freshman so frequently have about nothing and everything, I arrived at breakfast an exhausted and unprepared wreck. It was exam week and I had spent the night not studying, rather predictably, in self-sabotage mode. Over runny eggs and weak small talk I glanced at my table-mate's nose where one nostril, like a pencil sharpener, was covered in the faintest ring of blue powder. This was Adderall, crushed up and divorced from its time-release function, mainlined into the bloodstream. The blue-nosed girl was unembarrassed, bushy-tailed even, and I was tired and unsurprised. This was the new face of focus. These are "The Days of Adderall" according to the glittering, swimming pop of DC's Deleted Scenes. Rooted in a harp loop, the band crafts a hymn for a generation of kids who haven't slept, a generation of kids who never needed to find hard drugs; they were prescribed by a licensed professional. Deleted Scenes root this contradiction in a bass heavy chorus, "I've got a logical illusion", repeated over and over, an anti-mantra for the children of the 1980s who took all the pills, crushed them up and drove until sunrise.

 

Deleted Scenes plays Music Hall of Williamsburg with the awesome Bear Hands and Fort Lean this Friday night.

Deleted Scenes :: "Bedbedbedbedbed"

For all of you biding your time with Pepper Rabbit (wait, that sounded terse; let's start over). For anyone who enjoyed Pepper Rabbit's recent material (softer, good), especially the truly sublime, "Rose Mary Stretch", you need to be listening to Deleted Scenes latest single, "Bedbedbedbedbed". (No, I think they're aware it's not a real word.) In full disclosure this owes even more to the grand tradition of creepy caring as laid out by James Mercer and the Shins than you might be entirely comfortable with. Here, she (and there's always a woman) is described as "an immaculate girl sent from above". Ditch your irony for a moment and take this at face value. The rumbling drums and echoing keys build the architecture within which a hooky, little chorus (and there's always a chorus) focuses on the title lyric, the head nodding, "crawl into my bed, bed, bed, bed, bed". Even the dissonant bridge can't make this edict feel weird. Some things need saying five times. Some things don't even need the space bar or a parenthetical interior monologue (there's always an interior monologue).

Top 50 Songs of 2009 :: 50-41 [Have some courtesy and keep it in your sleeve]

50. The Sweet Serenades - "On My Way"

There is something vaguely aerobic about The Sweet Serenades' "On My Way." It pounds out of the gate and the back-beat panting manages to hold out just long enough to tumble into a quivering, crystalline chorus. It is fragile, shabby, and entirely propulsive. Turn yourself, and this, up.

49. War Tapes - "Dreaming of You"

An American Editors mixed with a Cure cover-band, up the drama a little and you're in the zip code of War Tapes' "Dreaming of You." That is, of course, until the 3-minute mark when the whole arrangement grinds to a halt, only to explode in one of those, "Is My Heart Going To Pop?" chord progressions. At that point, there is an edge to this band, an aggression that isn't common to a first sentence rife with comparisons to other bands. War Tapes are going for broke, and for that, no one can fault them. And for that, they gave us one of the biggest moments of the year.

48. New Roman Times - "Smoke In Your Disguise"

New Roman Times have a publicist who likes to compare them to Airborne Toxic Event. I like to compare them to Sweden's Moonbabies. The power is in the imagery, an imagination that places us as conspirators needing to get away together. The boy-girl vocals of the chorus, repeating, "But you are breaking my heart," aren't the killer. But the image of being the smoke in someone elses' disguise, the image of being the the getaway car for someone elses' robbery, is powerful. They wax philosophical, "I'll be there when you fall apart/I'll be the smoke in your disguise." Fair enough, as the guitars crash and the arrangement spills over the top of the glass.

47. My First Earthquake - "Cool In The Cool Way"

My First Earthquake, for the record, are cool in the cool way. But in that more terrifying conception of "coolness" where having a creative disdain for what is "cool," in effect makes you cool. Their single, "Cool In The Cool Way" is all about embracing your nerdiness in a world that forces American Apparel and Urban Outfitters down the the throats of unsuspecting and confused American youth. Are you afraid of slap bracelets because someone told you they could cut your wrist off? But then later you embraced them in an attempt to keep up and despite your fears, only to find that "cool" had moved on? Well, this is the opposite of that. You've got a robot name, Becca, and that's awesome.

46. Red Wire Black Wire - "Locked Out"

"Locked Out" is a tumbling piece of synth-rock by a band with a name that implies exactly the kind of explosiveness that reveals itself in the down, down, downbeat of the second verse. Of course, the narrative is about a suffocating moment when you lose the girl you're with to some older, strong, behind-closed doors guy. If you listen closely, it's depressing. But, there's an element of "we don't have to take this" in the midst of all the self-conscious anger and micro-management. But you'll find yourself singing along to "I know that I'm a bother/and it's hard to refuse an offer/and you've already got a father/and I always play the martyr/But I'm locked out." Now, it's time to blow the place to bits.

45. Alex Metric - "Head Straight"



There are times when, especially in the indie rock circle, you feel like you're going to lose it. Everything is so carefully done and even the dance music isn't always Dance Music. So, with relief, Alex Metric storms out with a straight club banger. "Head Straight" charges out of the gates with no other purpose than to explode in a chorus with tumbling drums, synth-stabs and not an ounce of self-reflection. Metric intones, "I keep up/I reach out/Crying, 'Get my head straight.'" He's all about getting yourself together, about not losing your mind. With a humming, buzzing, breakdown the doors cut, "Head Straight" does it.


44. Deleted Scenes - "Fake IDs"

"Fake IDs" takes on the challenge of identity in a world becoming rapidly more and more dishonest. Instead of bemoaning this loss of connection to Truth, Deleted Scenes head the other direction, insisting, "I don't mind you lying to me/if you think you're right, you must be." Later, they reflect that, "We all have fake IDs." They aren't talking about breaking the law but they are talking about the lies we tell each other and ourselves. Who we are is far more contextual than it is independently real. With ethereal, powerful vocals Deleted Scenes are like a more credible Fleet Foxes with a bubbling keyboard riff to drive your mind through a series of, frankly, tough conversations about the veracity of the universe.

43. Stricken City - "Small Things"

An angular, pissed-off, echoing post-punk record, Stricken City gave us Songs About People I Know. The centerpiece was the turn it up and turn it out, "Small Things." The track doesn't fully take off until after the bridge but, from 2.20 on, it turns into a stumbling, chanting, sweaty sing-a-long. Lead-singer, Rebekah Raa leads us down alleyways and we find something that, at volume and the right time of night, might just break you in half.

42. Deer Tick - "Easy"

Deer Tick are from my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island. When they perform, they raise the state's flag with them and it is emblazoned with only one word, "Hope." Of course, lead-singer, John McCauley, doesn't sound particularly hopeful; more like he's been up half the night drinking Beam and smoking Reds. And this is the charm: Hope amidst the backdrop of disappointment, hurt and anger. On "Easy," McCauley is himself, gravely and propulsive. The guitars clatter around him and the harmonies sound like they were written on the back of a cocktail napkin at Captain Seaweeds. That's a Providence-reference and I hope you know it.

41. The Thermals - "Now We Can See"

I spent most of the summer in Los Angeles, California driving around in a rented Kia with a sattilite radio hook-up. Between driving down to the ocean and out east to Silverlake, we spent a lot of time in the car and got awfully comfortable with the college radio feed that came through XM. The Thermals cut "Now We Can See" was in heavy rotation and, without exaggeration, Noah and I probably heard it 40-50 times in the month of July. I didn't love it - until I did. By the time I was hitting the airport back east, the song's hook-infested chorus, and its "oh-way-oh" group-vocal, were firmly planted in my mind. This is power-pop at its finest. And if you get through without wanting to growl, "Now we can see/the warnings and signs/read in between the lines/like writing on the wall," well, you might need to listen to it again. Say, 40 or 50 times.

Deleted Scenes :: "Fake IDs"

You can't advocate using a fake ID. Legally, it's identity theft. Morally, it's a misrepresentation. Emotionally, it could be confusing. Who are you really? How old are you really? Are you consistently places where you're not supposed to be? This is, at the very least, disjunctive.

Washington D.C.'s Deleted Scenes are actually more comfortable with lying. In fact, the first lines are "I don't mind you lying to me/If you think you're right/You must be." This is an expression of unquestioning trust in the face of capital L "Lies." But, this analysis of false identification runs deeper than a broken communication stream. Reflecting later, and perhaps a little weakly, "We've all got fake IDs," the implication is our identities are all, at least in part, fictionalized. Sure, it's a little pedantic. But any song about false identification that wasn't a little adolescent wouldn't be doing the job.

Aurally, you're hearing a fuzzy keyboard progression mix up with some Fleet Foxes-style harmony and a thudding kick drum that sounds a million miles away, until the snare snaps close to the ear. Later, a rollicking down-stroke guitar (think, the first two measures of "I'm Not Going To Teach Your Boyfriend...") and the song comes crashing to a spatial finish. It's an ambitious, fuzzed-out project - like an anachronistic fresco or a chalk sidewalk drawing of the "Last Supper." It's art but out of context. It's pretty but it doesn't make great sense. And that's the point - nothing is exactly as it seems. We are all out of place.

Listen :: Deleted Scenes - "Fake IDs"