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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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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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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One of Baltimore rock’s best kept secrets the last few years has been Thee Lexington Arrows, a garage rock quartet formed in 2004 by members of the Alphabet Bombers and the Shakedowns. Led by the bluesy wildcat yowl of frontwoman Kathleen Wilson, the Arrows may mix some surf guitar and rockabilly twang into their riffs, but their appeal is largely in just how unapologetically no-frills and old-fashioned their idea of punk rock is. And they’ve captured the sound of their killer live shows just about perfectly with their latest album, Cut Me Loose.
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A Recording & Mastering Studio in Baltimore
