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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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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For years, Karmella’s Game have been one of the most infectiously fun live bands in Baltimore, with a bombastic treble overload of squealing synth lines and polished female vocal harmonies. However, like many power pop bands, they’ve struggled to translate the energy of their concerts to studio recordings without losing the heft of their rhythm section and the crunch of their more guitar-driven material. Their 2003 debut EP, What He Doesn’t Know Won’t Hurt Him, was promising but still tentative and lightweight, while their first full-length, 2006’s The Art Of Distraction, was a confident step in the right direction, with heavier rock and almost proggy song structures.

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Rjyan Kidwell has been releasing records and performing as Cex in and around Baltimore for roughly a decade now. And while there was a period, running from 2002′s Tall, Dark and Handcuffed through 2006′s Actual Fucking, that he operated primarily as a vocalist, creating music that was a vehicle for his singing or rapping, the majority of his work before and since then has been instrumental, driven by programmed beats. As closely associated with the IDM scene as he’s always been, though, there’s long been a thread of appreciation for less “intelligent” dance music running through Cex’s catalog. And his latest release, Bataille Royale, is his most overt attempt at incorporating the sounds of some of those other genres, particular Baltimore club music, into his own murky, proggy aesthetic.

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Impossible Hair‘s members have been kicking around the Baltimore indie rock scene for well over a decade, in outfits of local legend and modest national renown like Buttsteak, The Oranges Band, Roads To Space Travel and the Lee Harvey Keitel Band. So in a sense it’s easy to regard them as just another project from a few journeymen that will probably move onto something else in a couple years.  And while their breezy, 35-minute debut, What Is The Secret Of Impossible Hair, doesn’t necessarily disprove that notion, it packs an impressive punch that consolidates the strengths of their previous bands into a fun, compact package.

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