NYC Scene Report – Scout Gillett, Oneida, & Pearla

This week’s NYC Scene Report features Scout Gillett looking for a “signal” (and the perfect sandwich), something “Rotten” from Oneida, and Pearla trying her best to make an “Effort.”

* Remember the episode of Friends when Joey attempted to save his meatball sub from what he thought was a gunshot? That’s the kind of epic sandwich love Scout Gillett is searching for in the video for her song “signal.”

“I chose to make the object of desire a sandwich rather than a lover,” she says of the self-directed clip, “I wanted to channel the slapstick work of Charlie Chaplin. I never end up finding the sandwich, just the mime pretending to chow down.”

Gillett continued, adding, “I think lightness is achieved by letting go, and embracing uncertainty. As in the video, which ends in laughter and acceptance, there is joy in surrender.”

“signal” is off Gillett’s upcoming full-length debut, no roof no floor, which is due out October 28th via Captured Tracks, and the song was inspired by what she describes as over-anticipating the outcome of a newly formed romance – “I was searching for answers, and looking for signals to affirm the love, rather than just letting go, and letting things be.”

Gillett recently completed a summer tour, and will now be performing locally with a show in Queens on August 25th, and a trio of Brooklyn shows September 15th, 24th, and October 28th. For now, you can join her in her search for sandwich love by clicking play on “signal.”

* Oneida will be releasing their latest album, Success, this Friday via Joyful Noise Recordings, and it has some interesting roots.

The band’s Kid Millions explains, “We’ve been in the woods for a long time, doing very challenging, fucked up, and psychotic things and sharing them with the world and expecting people to keep up.”

He adds that when it comes to the music of the album, “We honestly did not try to make something more straight ahead, but it came out that way.”

Check out the video for the standout single “Rotten.” The song features Yo La Tengo’s James McNew on bass, and the video is filled with heaping doses of cavity inducing sweets, and apocalyptic scenes. Even with all this as the backdrop, the band sings, “I’ve never felt better in my life.”

* As Pearla sings, “I don’t know why it takes so much effort to feel good these days” on her latest single “Effort,” I think there’s more than a few folks who can relate to the sentiment. We’ve all found ourselves attempting to slog through emotional mud at least once in life.

Discussing the song in a statement, Pearla said, “‘Effort’ is about being too tired to do the things that you know will make you feel better. Getting stuck in a pattern of isolating yourself, and resisting what you know you need. I wrote it as a sort of scream out from the stuck-ness.”

“Effort” is off Pearla’s upcoming full-length debut, Oh Glistening Onion, The Nighttime Is Coming, which will be released in early 2023 via Spacebomb Records.

I hope at some point we get to unravel the origins of that album title, but for now we can continue to click play the video for “Effort.”

For more of the best of NYC’s indie music scene, come back next Wednesday, and check out the archives for previous columns.