Between the title, one of the simplest and most universal phrases in the English language, and the cover art, a commonplace portrait of the planet Earth from outer space, Jason Urick’s latest album I Love You seems to be pursuing an aesthetic that’s as neutralized and devoid of detail or personality as possible. The only thing he could’ve done to make the exterior packaging of the album more generic would be to change his last name to Smith. But that’s not to say that I Love You suffers from a lack of ideas or creative expression. If anything, the album is a culmination of a running theme in Urick’s music, which often takes very specific source material, and stretches and manipulates the samples until they become abstract and ostensibly meaningless, sound for sound’s sake.

Although Urick, a longtime fixture of Baltimore underground music, recently located on Portland, Oregon, I Love You was partly recorded at Floristree, the Baltimore performance space he previously ran and lived in. Like the 2010 album Husbands and Urick’s other solo releases on Thrill Jockey Records since the breakup of his band Wzt Hearts, I Love You is a collection of a handful of lengthy tracks, mostly running from six to ten minutes, each with its own particular palette of sounds that slowly unfurl in subtle variations. It’s a headphone album in the classic sense, with the pure aural beauty of its best moments being derived primarily from the way the sounds drift from the left to right channel or vice versa.

[See post to listen to audio]

The most ear-catching overtly rhythmic track is “Ageless Isms,” which keeps a consistent groove even as its central loop is buried under more and more layers of echoing noise. “The Crying Song (Album Mix),” an alternate version of a track from the single that preceded I Love You, is at the other end of the spectrum as Urick at his most ethereal, with the kind of trebly, pixellated swirl of sound that might be compared to ’80s new age music but only could’ve been made in the 21st century era of laptop avant garde sound manipulation. In either case, Urick’s very individual aesthetics and ideas can’t help but shine through, as much as he may mask them in seemingly impersonal packaging.

A few months ago we received a call from WYPR, asking us to produce a live set of Future Islands songs for our favorite local arts and culture show, The Signal. The set was to include new arrangements of songs to complement an acoustic show they would be playing at the Metro Gallery.

A couple weeks later, Future Islands packed them in at Metro Gallery and then came to Mobtown to share an incredible session with us. They were joined by Denny Bowen (Double Dagger) on drums, Kate Barutha (Soft Cat) on cello and Devlin Rice on acoustic guitar. After the session, the band was interviewed by Jon Ehrens of The Art Department for the radio piece.

Ultimately, the band and their label, Thrill Jockey, decided to release the songs from the session on 150-gram vinyl in a limited run of 1000 numbered copies. So the band returned to mix it over a period of a few days and then it was mastered by Adam Cooke at Lord Baltimore Studios.

You can listen to the final piece on The Signal here. Clips of the MP3s are available below.

Long Flight
[See post to listen to audio]

Little Dreamer
[See post to listen to audio]

The rock trio Pontiak, comprised of the brothers Van, Jennings and Lain Carney, have quietly become some of an unstoppable force of late, with a surprisingly prolific output via Thrill Jockey Records, which in the past two years along has yielded four full-length albums and one split LP, 2008’s Kale with likeminded Baltimore pals Arbouretum. But while 2009’s Maker and the vinyl-only tour release Sea Voids were knocked out relatively quickly, their latest album, this year’s Living is the band’s first attempt in a while to slowly, patiently assemble an album over the course of a few months.

The downside of a band like Pontiak is that they don’t exude a whole lot of personality or excitement with their guitar sludge or Van Carney’s low key vocals. But on Living they prove willing to hold the listener’s attention with unpredictable structures and stylistic details, even with wildly variable song lengths. “Original Vestal” and “Forms Of The” clock in around two minutes while feeling like pieces unto themselves, and the longer songs rarely follow any discernable formula. As usual, Pontiak make room for at least one epic on Living, but the 6-minute “Pacific” is relatively humble and unassuming, meandering along with an instrumental coda before simply fading out without much in the way of a resolution or crescendo.

[See post to listen to audio]

“And By Night” is the most arresting track on Living, a barnstormer with the band’s pummeling rhythm section foregrounding a smoking guitar lead, the closest thing the band’s ever gotten to heavy metal.

[See post to listen to audio]

Just a couple tracks later, the band is swinging its pendulum in the opposite direction, with the acoustic strums and whirring organ tones of “Beach.” That leads immediately into the hurricane of guitar noise that opens “Lemon Lady” and eventually warps into a slow, sludgy rocker. It’s hard to say whether Living is the best of Pontiak’s recent string of releases, or even if there is any one essential album out of the bunch. But it’s clear that the band is intently building a dense body of work that’s becoming harder to ignore with each new album.

As 2009 came to a close, it became clear that More, the third album by Double Dagger, was one of Baltimore’s most acclaimed albums of the year, on both a local and national level. Unfortunately, I’d been attempting since its release in May to identify the album’s appeal, to no avail. The power trio’s Thrill Jockey debut, recorded in a vacant space above the Current Gallery, is as raw and loud as the band’s popular live shows, but for whatever reason, it took a while for me to warm to it.

[See post to listen to audio]

Ultimately, it was the More’s second track, “Vivre Sans Temps Mort” that provided my entry point to appreciating the album, with its slow burn groove stretched out over five minutes in contrast to the album’s faster and shorter songs. But of the latter, the frantic groove of “We Are The Ones” is another highlight, bringing to mind Stay Afraid-era Parts & Labor.

Still, I remained frustrated that Double Dagger’s commitment to their punk roots has manifested itself in vocals so perfunctory, and at times inaudible, that I almost wish they were just an instrumental band. Songs with titles like “Surrealist Composition With Your Face” and “Helicopter Lullaby” probably have interesting lyrics, but I can’t make any of them out given how low the vocals are in the mix on More, and “Half-Life” packs the album’s catchiest riff, but the vocals that accompany it completely skirt the melody. Double Dagger are definitely a band to watch, but I’ll be waiting until the next album to see if they make something more up my alley.

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.