Upon first listening to Ripped by Future Spa, I was immediately faced with two questions: why the hell did this band wait until now to send this to The Deli (it was released in June of 2014) and why the hell have I not heard these songs before? Surf-punk, lo-fi garage rock--I could list more random sub-genres, but no one would be interested in reading them anyway. These guys have a great sound--wicked loud, wicked fast rock n’ roll. If Raw Power isn’t a collective band favorite of theirs, I would be very surprised. They’ve got a show coming up at Club Bohemia on April 25, which will probably be pretty rad. They'll be accompanied by Miami Doritos, Greasy Hearts and Dinoczar. You can check out the details here.

-Dan McMahon (@dmcmhn)

The term “Poser Pop” shows up sometimes in the words Austin’s future-leaning Your Plastic Toys have written about themselves. Check their online shit, and you’ll see those two words more than once, those two descriptors that aren’t really a genre as such, but more a stance by Your Plastic Toys on their own place in music. In our estimation, the idea is that Your Plastic Tree poses at pop, refusing to make the standard plays while still fully playing a pop game. They are as art-aware as they are pop-aware as they are experimentally on point, and their music is at once a serious approach to pop music making and a bit of a mockery of the pop that’s already out there (in the fine tradition of acts like Talking Heads, The Fugs, or the very contemporary PC Music label out of the UK). A band that views the pop rulebook through half-broke virtual reality goggles.

In that same vein, you’ll also see a lot of abstractions and hyper-modern shit on Your Plastic Toys’ various web profiles, like glitchy saturated pixel-heavy images created by the band itself, short thoughts and quotes decoupled from their source and presented as something to be considered on their own, and not a single clear photo of the band to be found. This digital obfuscation of the band, its image, its motives, its views, evokes a highly modern feeling of existing in a never ending swirl of bit-noise and net fuzz, and it’s exactly what Your Plastic Toys’ sound is like.

On the just-released album OOO, shoegaze-gone-modern swells and currents of sound layer over tight digital beats and the vocals are threaded in and out heavily tweaked and disaffected, sometimes even disdainfully so (to great effect, it must be made clear). Your Plastic Toys comes through like a band seen and heard through a diabolical storm of TV snow on a channel that’s shakily fading in and out of a 1990s tube TV in a busted up apartment with a courtyard pool in the summer. It’s music that rides on that bright burning edge of culture just curling out from the future and into the present, and that throws back a tech-addled vision of what it sees to those still lingering in the cultural past. Take a listen to one of Austin's most forward-thinking bands below, and inject their entire new album here.

Boston pop-punk rockers Rebuilder will be releasing their debut album, Rock & Roll in America, on April 3 at O’Brien’s Pub in Allston, MA. Local punks Choke Up and Bundles will be joining-in on the raucous fun, along with solo artist/effects loop-maker extraordinaire Sun Dog. DJ Mateo Williams (WMBR’s Late Risers Club) will supply some tunes in between sets to save you from having to awkwardly interact with fellow concertgoers while the bands set up. Oh, and did I mention the festivities will be brought to you by our pals over at Bishop and Rook? Well, now you know; and knowing is half the battle.

If you’re curious about what the new Rebuilder material sounds like, you can stream “The National Bohemian”, the first track off of Rock & Roll in America, here.

For more info about the album release show, click here. For more info on Rebuilder, visit their Facebook page.

-Dan McMahon (@dmcmhn)

 

The fourth annual Treefort Music Festival is proving to be the biggest one yet. Not only is it their first year as a licensed LLC, but this year’s lineup is larger than any previous year with over 400 musical acts, not to mention whole mini-festivals dedicated to comedy, performance art, technology, yoga, skateboarding, beer, and then some.

With massive national musical acts headlining the festival like TV On The Radio, Built To Spill, Foxygen, Yacht, Viet Cong, Of Montreal and !!!, just to name a few, the $139 price of a full-weekend pass is pretty much already god damned steal, and that’s barely 1.5% of the full 2015 lineup. Adding to the glory of this year’s festival, the vast array of amazing Portland bands making the trip to Boise makes Portland one of the most represented cities of the festival. Think of it as a huge rager with all your favorite Portland bands and friends, just in a new, way more fun location.

To help you sort through all of the madness, here is a quick list of some of the Deli Portland’s favorite Portland bands who will be performing at this year’s Treefort Music Festival. Find out exactly where and when they will be playing during Treefort, here. 

Super Thief is one of the four artists up for our most recent edition of The Deli Austin's Artist of the Month Poll, and they are without question the loudest, grittiest band in consideration this go around. They also just put out a 7 song eponymous EP in January that's not just good and heavy as fuck, it's also smart, and from the first thudding, gut-shaking bass line on intro track "On the Internet," you know you're not about to hear another Austin indie-pop or psych-rock group. No, this is music that remembers 80s hardcore and no wave, music that scratches that guttural screaming and crunching guitar itch and which does so while speaking about the modern condition without pretension. There's not a boring spot on this whole EP, and it's been on heavy rotation in the Austin Deli offices since we came across it. That's partly because Super Thief's use of chaos and dissonance and confusion turned into tight, complex songs is refreshing as fuck to hear coming out of Austin, where bands so often focus on the pretty and the peaceful. Sometimes you just want to thrash and wreck shit and work out some fucking frustration about this weird goddamn world, and Super Thief gives the listener the chance to do just that for a bit. Listen to standout track "Needle Fix" below, the rest of the EP here and vote to the right if Super Thief is hitting your shit-wrecking nerve nice and good, like it is ours.