They are one of the most invigorating proposals to come out of the always restless New York. Danny Orlowski and Tommi Kelly met during college, but soon swapped classes for studio sessions. With Deli Girls they have put together a punk manifesto that continues to transmute from album to album. On stage, witnesses of sweaty celebrations jump out, difficult to describe because of the intensity of what is happening. This element of unpredictability is a gravitational force in their music; a force capable of attracting and expelling antagonistic feelings, often greater than self-control. Recovering some of the expressiveness of the 90s scremo with an electronica in absolute zapping for its confines, it doesn’t even lack sarcasm, and even exaggeration, used as throwing stones to the declared war against despair. The Deli Girls enjoy this freedom of identity, aesthetics and even politics, which allows them to enjoy a very personal lexicon.
Proudly queer, they create an imaginary space where manga heroes, ancient demons and science fiction characters are elements summoned to bomb-songs, as radioactive as they are healing. There’s dense smoke and glitter floating in the air, or at least, that’s how you feel the wind when listening to the triad of albums in existence to date. Boss continues to sound majestic for the proposals it attests to, I Don’t Know How To Be Happy is an eternal cry of anxiety and hedonism, while Evidence preserves the best rave breeze in living memory. Maybe that lost and little glimpsed link between the nu-metal of the pioneers Senser or the futuristic esotericism of Genghis Tron with the pop maximalism of some 100 gecs (in fact, the surreal content here only tends to be exponential).
All in all, we are faced with authentic iconoclasts who cart around complex issues and worldly concerns. It is not certain where we will find the Deli Girls in a few years, but it is fair to say that this present time is theirs. NA