Given that nearly two and a half years passed between the original local release of Baltimore duo Wye Oak’s debut album, If Children, and its Merge Records follow-up, last year’s The Knot, it’d be reasonable not to expect a new record from the band for a while. So it was a delightfully unexpected surprise to hear word of a new Wye Oak record just 8 months after The Knot, even if it’s just an EP. And the 18 minutes of My Neighbor / My Creator are as meaty and substantial as fans should have come to expect from anything the band does, in fact possibly surpassing the band’s last full-length in terms of moment for moment quality.

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Sri Aurobindo are what’s often referred to as a ‘guitar band,’ the kind of act whose records are dominated by swirling overdubs of noodling leads and effects pedal textures. But that kind of characterization would diminish how key bass guitar is to the Baltimore quartet, who have one of the best bass sounds going: fuzzed out and high in the mix, but round and appealing, like a foghorn cutting through the otherwise trebly mix. On Cave Painting, their first release for Friends Records, Sri Aurobindo’s bass is in your face more than ever, hooking you even when the lyrics are impossible to make out and the psychedelic songs’ shaggy structures are hard to follow. In fact, that massive low end may be what ultimately sets  the band apart from the pack of similar psych rock acts currently crowing the indie scene.

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J Roddy Walston and The Business, a group of old-fashioned rock’n'roll bruisers from Tennessee, picked up and made Baltimore their hometown in 2004, quickly becoming one of the city’s most exciting live bands. In 2007, they cemented their growing local following with a killer first album, Hail Mega Boys, and continued touring the country and eventually catching the attention of  Vagrant Records. With their self-titled Vagrant debut due out on July 27th, the label has issued a 3-song digital EP on iTunes as an appetizer for the full length. And while that 11-minute primer may not be a full meal, as the first new music from the band in 3 years it’s still an exciting prospect.

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Ever since I interviewed Gary Barrett, Jr. a few months ago and he noted Jonathan Richman as one of his personal songwriting heroes, comparisons to the Modern Lovers frontman keep springing to mind every time I listen to Gary B & The Notions‘ latest album. Like Richman, Barrett has a voice that’s an acquired taste and a certain air of perpetual adolescence, a romantic innocence inextricably tied to a fascination with older forms and tropes of rock. Even the title of the album, New Twist & Shout, is a nod to early rock’n'roll, though it doesn’t quite feature anything close to an actual rewrite of “Twist & Shout.”

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Night Falls, the title of the second album by Baltimore quartet Thrushes, seems to mirror the title of their 2007 debut, Sun Come Undone. And in many ways the album feels more like a companion piece to its predecessor than a new chapter for the band, with similar production and faithfulness to the shoegaze guitar sound of the early ‘90s. But the more you listen to the two albums and compare them, the more it becomes clear that the new songs do represent some subtle but notable steps forward in the band’s songwriting and arranging.

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The self-titled second EP by Lands & People establishes the trio as one of Baltimore’s most intriguing young bands. In the space of just 20 minutes, Caleb Moore, Beau Cole and Amanda Willis manage to combine simple ingredents like guitars, synthesizers, percussion and vocals in several distinct ways that suggest different future directions for the band with almost every song. After a couple of sleepy soundscapes open the EP, the standout “Awake” kicks in with a muffled snare and kick drum beat and a low, decaying synth tone foregrounding the chorus’s soaring male/female harmonies. And as the song comes to an end, that synth line comes front and center, its beautifully distorted texture washing over everything.

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