After “Time Doesn’t Lie,” the towering 9-minute epic that Arbouretum featured on Kale, last year’s split LP with Pontiak, I had high hopes that the Baltimore quartet would more ambitiously lengthy songs on their next full-length. On that front, their third album Song Of The Pearl is a disappointment, in that only one song, “Infinite Corridors,” stretches out past the 6-minute mark with a false ending and a climactic coda. But beyond my own arbitrary expectations, Arbouretum has made a solid and varied album, where the shorter more concise songs are more of a strength than a weakness, and the band’s stellar guitar work is on display as always.

[See post to listen to audio]

“Thin Dominion” is one of Song Of The Pearl‘s most immediate standouts by virtue of also being its hardest rocking track, with a heavy groove and rumbling toms. But elsewhere on the album, frontman Dave Heumann expands on the band’s austere aesthetic with warmer, earthier tones and more inviting songwriting, and “Down By The Fall Line” and the title track show a mellower side of Arbouretum. And “Midnight Cry” points toward a whole new direction for the band, with a faster tempo than their usual comfort zone, and a soaring lead guitar line reminiscent of Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets. Still, this album does make me yearn for bolder, longer jams that knock me out as much as “Time Doesn’t Lie.”

The veteran Chicago-based indie label Thrill Jockey has been snapping up Baltimore bands left and right as of late, including Thank You and most recently Double Dagger. And earlier this year, Pontiak made their Thrill Jockey debut in a rather interesting format: a split album with hometown labelmates Arbouretum, released not on CD but on vinyl and via digital release, each band contributing both original material and covers of solo material by John Cale of the Velvet Underground.

[See post to listen to audio]
Arbouretum opens Kale ambitiously with the longest of its three songs, “Time Doesn’t Lie,” which clocks in at nearly ten minutes. It’s also far and away the album’s highlight, with a chorus full of soaring harmonies that eventually gives way to a long, slowly dissolving instrumental coda. The two songs that follow, “Flood of Floods” and the Cale cover “Buffalo Ballet,” are by comparison mellower and less striking, but still carry Arbouretum’s strangely bewitching sense of grandeur. After the somewhat muted and austere atmosphere of Arbouretum’s half of the album, Pontiak comes storming in quite abruptly with “Dome Under The Sky,” although they too lead with their most aggressive song, and finish Kale with quieter material.

[See post to listen to audio]
However mellower they are compared to “Dome Under The Sky,” Pontiak shine most brightly on their two Cale covers. “The Endless Plain of Fortune” in particular feels fairly epic, with two lengthy guitar solos reminiscent of Neil Young. The entire album, recorded at Pontiak’s home studio, is about as cohesive as a split album by two separate bands could be, and in some ways it feels like Arbouretum and Pontiak are two sides of the same coin, kindred spirits who decided to highlight their similarities and contrasts on record instead of merely playing shows together.