White Life is something of a departure for Jon Ehrens, the prolific and chameleonic singer-songwriter previously best known for indie bands like the idiosyncratic Art Department and the lo-fi Repelican. For one of the first times in his career, Ehrens is sharing vocal and production duties on White Life’s self-titled debut, which was recorded with Chris and Mickey Freeland at Beat Babies, and features several lead vocal performances by his sister Emily Ehrens. But more significantly, White Life is a big stylistic left turn for Ehrens into the world of synths, drum machines and unabashedly pop vocal performances.

I Want Love
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The eight songs on White Life’s album, out this week on Ehse Records, each offer different variations on the project’s polished aesthetic and retro sensibility. The closer “I Want Love” is the album’s most overtly R&B track, with a bubbly synth bassline and a euphoric vocal by Emily Ehrens that could pass for an early ’80s boogie classic by Deniece Williams.

Follow
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Elsewhere on the album, the ’80s evoked by White Life is more along the lines of brooding synth pop, with Jon Ehrens offering some of the most passionate vocals and nakedly emotional lyrics of his career, which effectively lend a sense of gravity and sincerity to what could otherwise be an exercise in campy, ironic nostalgia. On one of the best tracks in that vein, “Follow,” his staccato verses give way to a chorus. that soars with help from backing harmonies by Jenn Wasner of Wye Oak.

I had the pleasure of working with Bryson Dudley‘s first solo release a few weeks ago. We had a great time mastering this record together. Bryson has worked with Jason & The Butchers, June Star and Beard. Cold Summer Brew’s recording was completed by Chris Freeland at Beat Babies Studio with the aid of a wah-wah pedal and beer. Michael Harris donated some guitar leads and Jason “The Butcher” Butcher mutilated the drums on the song Memories Of The Street. Like the title explicitly expresses, this record is in fact a great record to listen to on a sunny summer afternoon drinking a fine Natty Boh.

Here are two of my favorite tracks.

Cold Summer Brew
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Memories Of The Street
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Civilian is Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack’s third full-length album for Merge Records. But it feels more than anything like the continuation of a collaboration between Wye Oak and another duo, brothers Chris and Mickey Freeland of Beat Babies Studio, who began producing the band on last year’s My Neighbor / My Creator EP. The four songs debuted on that EP pointed toward possible new directions for the band, including a wider variety of instrumentation and some of their most lively and upbeat songs to date. Ultimately, however, the ten new songs on Civilian are closer in sound and mood to 2009′s The Knot, another dark and subtle album that gradually unfolds and reveals its charms over several listens.

Holy Holy
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The third track, “Holy Holy,” stands out as one of the most immediately alluring songs on Civilian, an instant Wye Oak classic. The patient throb of Stack’s tom-tom rhythm foregrounds Wasner’s tune, in which the verses are as catchy and memorable as the chorus, and the song slowly builds in intensity with with the soft-to-loud dynamics that have become a hallmark of the band’s songs. Along with “Hot As Day” in the second half the album, “Holy Holy” is an assurance that Wye Oak is still capable of big, bold hooks.

Plains
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For most of Civilian, however, the band is toying with their sound and their songwriting in clever, counterintuitive ways. “Plains” features an elastic tempo that slows down as the volume increases for a heavy, lurching riff, then picks back up as the song heads back into quieter verses. “We Were Wealth” does a complete 180 in tone and texture about halfway through the song. Wasner’s 2-minute solo performance on the closing track, “Doubt,” is a strangely meandering little song that leaves the album on an ambiguous, uneasy note. These songs all reach interesting conclusions that avoid the big distortion pedal explosion that some of Wye Oak’s past songs have conditioned you to expect.

There are many ways in which Wye Oak could fade into the background a just another indie band circa 2011. There are so many other male-female duos who are also couples, so many other records featuring hushed female vocals over reverb-heavy guitars. But Wasner and Stack are not simply a cutesy couple band, or a cozy comfort food indie pop band, or shoegaze nostalgists. And though they arrived with a fully formed sound on their 2007 debut If Children, they’ve steadily grown since then, with Wasner’s voice now possessing a gravitas her early performances only hinted at. The increasingly ingenius arrangements and darkly hued emotional undercurrents on Civilian‘s songs make Wye Oak so much more than what they may appear to be on the surface.

Baltimore-based folk-rockers Midway Fair (Jon Patton, Jen Parde, and Tim Taormino) spent 11 months crafting their newest release, The Distance of the Moon at Daybreak with engineer Chris Freeland (Wye Oak, Sri Aurobindo). With marked influences from artists like Mark Knopfler, Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, The Waterboys and a touch of Bruce Springsteen and R.E.M., it showcases the band’s seamless synthesis of British and American traditional styles with indie rock. Jon recently came in to have his record mastered here at Mobtown. Look out for the release in 2011!

Here are two of my favorite tracks:

Blue Eyes
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At the Dawn of the Day
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Small Sur’s last record We Live in Houses Made of Wood was in heavy rotation in my household last year. So when Bob Keal came by the studio to have his next record Bare Black mastered, I was honored.

Small Sur is a collective run by songwriter Bob Keal. Bob writes beautifully haunting songs that remind me of being outside and traveling, of the feeling of moving from one place to another. Or simply leaning back against a tree staring at the stars. This newest record takes you to a place with insanely crafted melodies, occasionally droney textures, and haunting minimalist arrangements. Multi-instrumentalists Austin Stahl and Andy Abelow join Bob on this record.

Bare Black was released last week for Aural Slates Records. The sample song below is a complete reworking of a track recorded for the 2008 Friends and Friends of Friends Compilation on their former label Tender Loving Empire.

Other guests include Geoff Graham (bass; member of Lower Dens/Jana Hunter), Susan Alcorn (pedal steel) and Natasha Tylea-Cooke (vocals). Engineered by Chris Freeland and mixed by Adam Cooke, whose collective credits include Beach House (Sub Pop), Double Dagger (Thrill Jockey), Lower Dens/Jana Hunter (Gnomonsong), Oxes (Monitor), and Wye Oak (Merge).

Please enjoy my favorite track below.

Weeds
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DC’s Caverns will be releasing their new EP next week. This record is a progression in both dynamics and layers from their previous efforts. And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear some vocoder!

Our neighbors, J. Robbins and Chris Freeland recorded it and I mastered it. This record will be the first of many EPs on the Aural Slate Recordings imprint. In a time when the record label seems more and more irrelevant, I feel like what Greg is doing with his label actually makes sense. Small, easily digestible slices of music. There you have it. The record drops next Friday ($5 CD and $4 digital download). And there’s also a Frodus cover that rips.

Enjoy these two samples. I had a great time working with these guys – band and label alike. Listen to the snare in Arctic Phantoms. It’s incredible.

Arctic Phantoms
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I. Fight. Vampires
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I also really liked the album art. Caleb Moore did a great job. I hope to see more of his work soon.

In the past, Baltimore-based singer/songwriter Jason Dove’s music never quite clicked with me, despite encouraging signs like his classic power pop influences, and the sense of humor in display in his entertaining Jason Dove Diaries YouTube series. But the click has definitely at least started to happen with Illegal Activities, his third solo album and first with a new backing band, Vacation Face. That sense of humor is still more restrained on Dove’s records, though; even when some laughter rises up in the mix on the song “Each And Every One Of Us,” it’s directly following the droll lyric “information doesn’t make advertisers any money.”

[See post to listen to audio]

Recorded by local rock mainstays J Robbins (formerly of Jawbox) and Chris Freeland (formerly of Oxes) and released by The Beechfields, the sound of Illegal Activities is dominated more by keyboards than Dove’s previous releases thanks to Vacation Face’s Mike Ward on piano and organ, but the sound isn’t actually any softer. Christopher Demeo, of Dove’s previous backing band the Magic Whip, plays drums on one song on Illegal Activities, and the right amount of Keith Moon-style bombast that he brings to the piano-driven rocker “If You Think We Don’t Care” helps make it one of the album’s best tracks, as well as its shortest at only 2 minutes 22 seconds. That song, along with the peppy “Song For Neil,” the ballad “Hallelujah,” and the twangy closer “Be Free,” make up the strong quartet of songs that end Illegal Activities on a high note, to the point that you almost wish Dove had instead frontloaded the best stuff to grab your attention earlier in the album.