Yes, it's been a while since we've heard a show at the old Falls Road mill building know as the G-Spot. Was it Beach House? That long? In any case, plan on trundling over this Friday for Phosphorescent, a.k.a. Matthew Houck, a Jagjaguwar/Dead Oceans songwriter that makes lovely, drowsy beardo folk music that should appeal in drooling degrees to fans of outfits like Au, Vetiver, and Animal Collective, if only for the few hoots and hollers, but is a bit more languid and staid than any of them. Phosphorescent's recent release, Pride, strikes of both the reverent and deeply personal, slipping out of passages of simple somber folk into vocal orchestrations wide enough to swallow a village. Potentially devastating. Noble Lake and Virgin Forest also perform. 8 p.m. $9.



"A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise," from Pride. Listen:

The Oranges Band's new album is all about revisiting the Baltimore rock scene's past, so it's appropriate that it was unveiled in a somewhat anachronistic way on Friday night--a local release party at the Ottobar several months ahead of the album's national release date. It's something that even the smallest indie bands are now much more reticent to do than they would've a few years ago, letting even a small clutch of local fans get copies of an album early, which inevitably translates to the album getting leaked to the internet. But the Oranges Band, God bless 'em, were happy to lay the new CD out on the merch table for anyone who wanted it, and play a few songs from it for everyone else in the house.

The night's openers happened to be two bands we'd seen play on the same bill before. Deleted Scenes, an impressive Washington-based quartet who play with Baltimore bands so often that we'd be tempted to claim them as our own if we didn't have plenty of local bands to champion, put on a loud, fun set as usual. The other band, Baltimore's own Gary B. and the Notions, seem to be coming into their own as a live act, still giving off a gawky, geeky vibe but sounding tighter and more confident as musicians. [MORE]

Given how many times "crayola" has been used as a adjective to describe the music of Dan Deacon, this really couldn't be more apt: the producer/performance artist/ringleader has licensed his song "Pink Batman" (from Spiderman of the Rings) to said crayon company for a commercial for some very awesome looking glowing/drawing thing that looks like it would suit either kids or psilocybin wonderfully.

Deacon had this to say in a MySpace bulletin posted over the weekend:

this is the first time i've let a large company license one of my songs. i've been asked by serval others before but this is the first time its been for something that promotes a company that creates a product that encourages people (children) to make art and to use their minds to create. maybe i'm being naive but i used their crayons.

[MORE]

A large part of Height's appeal as a rapper is his fraught, heady flow, not necessarily angry or urgent but ticked enough that you know business is meant. I'd have a hard time calling Height, Dan Keech to the government, a party rapper, at least in the bubbly, sprightly AK Slaughter sense. You won't find that Height flow lacking on "The Woods," but it's surrounded by a veritable forest of deft, forward-thinking production--ringing guitar, dubbed in rhythmic vocal loop, meaty bassline. Very nice. The track is off Height's forthcoming Wham City album Baltimore Highlands, which has an extensive production cast including PT Burnem, King Rhythm, Mic Free, Jones, and Height himself, hence the "with friends" adjunct. Height calls out PT Burnem in the track ("two friends crunching leaves/ out in the wilderness") so I'm guessing that's who does the production on this one.

Stream "The Woods" here. [MORE]

It's not difficult to imagine that Asa Osborne, looking sort of like an aged Michael Palin, performing his Zomes project live appears rudimentary to a newcomer. It's him, sitting on the Talking Head's floor surrounded by a close-in crowd of sitting, rapt listeners, with a keyboard synthesizer and a tape recorder. He has two younger folks performing with him, adding another synthesizer and a small box of effects pedals. The result is a whole lot of hypnotic beauty out of a remarkably simple palette--a guitar, which comes up a bit on his record, is not in attendance. The long, buzzing drones on that recent Holy Mountain debut are even longer; the brief, repeating melodies seem even simpler. (On reflection, this wasn't so much the case--Osborne's live show was a pretty accurate translation of his record.) The vibe is "circle of friends"; Osborne looks pleased. (A down note: the loud rock/hardcore/teen metal/etc. pounding through the walls from Sonar's club room was more than obnoxious given it's fighting against smallish, pretty drone music.)

The next door music had chilled out by the time Philadelphia's Fursaxa, aka Tara Burke, came on. But the Talking Head's bar vibe had nothing on her last Baltimore show at the monthly Los Solos series at the Carriage House, a far more supportive space for Fursaxa's wholly unique style of angelic droning folk-for-lack-of-a-better-term music. She has the sort of trained, choir-ish voice that scrapes the clouds and makes you tremble up and down your spine. And, importantly, it's a tool powerful enough to survive a rock club vibe more or less unfased. (We split before headliner Brightblack Morning Light came on because it's not our bag so much, but noted on the way out that a smoke machine was involved.) [MORE]

Well, the biggie is that M.I.A. is hosting the compilation, due in early December on Koch Entertainment in cohort with local club gold standard, Unruly Records. And, we're saying that's pretty cool. In an e-mail statement released earlier this week, Unruly heads Sean Caesar and Scottie B had this to say: "We are happy to have such an eclectic and versatile artist such as M.I.A to host this album. Swift and M.I.A share similarities that go deep into the appreciation of club music and the movement that Swift personified for that club sound." Expect 36 of the late "Club Queen" K-Swift's favorite tracks, with featured contributions from Blaqstarr, Rye Rye, and production work from Say Wut. Exciting news indeed. [MORE]

It constantly amazes how such a hushed, languid two piece can be so devastating, so covertly affective; think foggy, tungsten chills, like the strange feeling of waking up and knowing, even before you open your eyes, that it's a gray, chilly day outside. And "Used To Be," running around on the excited interwebs as "the new Beach House song," might be some of the duo's finest work yet. Twinkling organ, chiming vibraphone (we think), trailing vocal chorus, churning downcast electric guitar, all of it dubbed into an amazingly compact space. That sense of concise claustrophobia is amped up even more by a queer, wooden metronomic drum tap that runs through the whole song, functioning as a simple intro and outro. The track has a lot of dubbing/looping going on and might come across as a bit overdone, but it doesn't suck at the song's vibe enough to find much fault. (Though, if the band's forthcoming album were all like this, we might be bummed.) The b-side of the 7-inch, released a couple weeks ago by Carpark, is a demo version of "Apple Orchard," from the band's 2005 self-titled debut, in which Beach House levels the listener first with Legrand's finest lithely expressive vocals and then a woozy slide guitar (singing saw?) that sounds like it's in some kind of erratic, slowly decaying orbit around your ears. Lovely, of course. [MORE]

At some point in the past couple years, the Beechfields Record Label seemed to grow from just another Baltimore indie imprint with a couple bands producing the bulk of its discography to a fully formed label with several active bands on its roster. On Saturday night at Frazier's in Hampden, the label marked its latest release, the debut album by eastern Maryland singer/songwriter Mike Pursley, the way it always does: with a release party performance, complete with a cake to celebrate the occasion.

Another Beechfields artist, Neil Cotterill, also sometimes known by the band name Infinite Honey, opened the show with his own solo set. Cotterill played his first couple songs on a synthesizer, accompanying his keys and vocals with a simple clicking rhythm track, before moving on to play the remainder of his set with a guitar that he seemed more comfortable behind. Whether it's a reflection on Cotterill's songs or not, what was really memorable about his performance was his guitar tone, which had a wonderfully warm, hollow feel that we could've listened to all night. [MORE]

An entity known as the Baltimore Scene has made its presence felt in local music over the past few years with a variety of concerts and events. Included among them was last year's "Baltimore Crown" tournament at the 5 Seasons, mainly a live competition for musical performers. This year's "Baltimore Crown," however, expanded to a poll open to the public, for a variety of categories, including awards for venues, poets, and media. And though the awards ceremony, held this past Friday, constantly brought to mind memories of the similar Blammy Awards that took place in the same venue last December, it was nonetheless a fun night and an opportunity for many people in local music to get a moment of recognition for what they do.

It was also a very long night, packed with several performances and attractions aside from the award announcements. Larry Lancaster, a local stand-up comic who also appeared at the Baltimore Scene's Word War I event back in April, was the night's host, and had a smart-ass comment for every moment, even as the show wore on for nearly five hours. Dozens of performers, mainly a mix of rappers and poets, took the stage to perform one or two songs each, and early highlights included Sonny Brown, finally putting a welcome emphasis on rapping after a long stint of mainly hosting shows, and UnReal. [MORE]

A recent, pre-Nov. 4 holiday in London confirmed a few suspicions I had from daily online reading of The Guardian: 1) That UK citizens were as agitated about the outcome of our presidential election as we were, and 2) that The Wire has earned a loyal a British fan base during its recent UK airing. And thanks to Paste magazine, I now know a different Londoner is showing some Wire love through her working relationship with homegrown talent Blaqstarr. The local producer has somewhat interpreted the HBO crime drama's theme song, "Way Down in the Hole," for M.I.A.'s single "S.U.S. (Save Ur Soul)." [MORE]

For the past few years, DJ Frie has been one of Baltimore club music's most prolific mixtape DJs, issuing 17 volumes of his Da Club Tip series of mix CDs. But this week, when we caught up with him outside Rod Lee's new Club Kingz record store, Frie noted that, like many in the club scene, he's been laying low since the death of one of its leading lights, DJ K-Swift, in July. "Every month, like every first of the month I'd have a new CD," he says, crediting Swift as one of the only other local DJs who kept up the same pace. "Me and her was the only two that was doin' it. She'd do hers and I'd go, she'd have new stuff, I'd have new stuff. But when she passed away, I just like gave up."

A short, soft-spoken 30-year-old, DJ Frie has been spinning records since he was a teenager, and names unsung '90s Baltimore club pioneers such as Mark Henry and DJ Shawn Marshall as his early inspirations. But it's his old friend Scottie B that Frie warmly recalls has had the most impact on his career. "A lot of people do say that I mix like Scottie," he says, pointing out that the Unruly Records co-founder has offered Frie a leg up as a DJ, and helped get him out of a less legal line of work that he'd been preoccupied with. From time to time, Frie has worked for Unruly, packing CDs for distribution to retail, and Scottie helped Frie land gigs at Club International on Baltimore Street, hosting parties and manning the turntables. [MORE]

A confession is in order: I just couldn't hack AIDS Wolf, the opener for Monday's Times New Viking and Deerhunter show at the Ottobar. In full weenie-mode, I scuttled upstairs in favor of the comparative tranquility of an all-metal DJ night. Before planting a defeated tail firmly between legs and slinking off, I did witness a bunch of screeching while the Montreal act savaged on at a punishing volume. The cumulative effect of this discordance was disturbingly visceral, rattling deep inside the chest as if intended to throw your heartbeat permanently off-kilter. Not surprisingly, this was a weirdly unpleasant sensation, one perhaps shared by the people milling about outside, looking like they were biding time till the set was over. Still, AIDS Wolf has its fans: a smallish crowd, clearly made of stronger stuff, gathered around the petite singer thrashing on the floor.

Shortly after, the Athens, Ohio, threesome Times New Viking took the stage for a rather disappointing, though pleasant, set of thrashed garage pop. The energy-level appeared low among the group's members, especially the keyboardist/singer Beth Murphy, who wore a static, bored expression throughout. Still, the set was enjoyable, featuring the catchiest of songs from the band's records, though a crucial wildness was conspicuously missing. Perhaps it had to do with the clarity of the night's live sound. The crackling fuzz and tinny lo-fi murkiness of Times New Viking's albums--which sound like well-worn cassette dubs of haphazard basement recordings--are essential to the band's raggamuffin charm. Without it, the live show felt starkly simplistic. [MORE]

The 13th Floor is by far one of the most picturesque venues in Baltimore, with its dim, red-tinged lighting, cocktail lounge atmosphere, and panoramic view of the city from the top floor of the Belvedere Hotel. But it can also be a difficult environment to see a show if the band playing there is relatively quiet and the folks at the bar are feeling chatty, as was the case Thursday night. But the evening's entertainment, the Cameron Blake Band, was worth the effort of occasionally straining to hear, and eventually the band managed to overpower the din and fill the room with their ornate, dramatic pop/rock.

Singer-songwriter Cameron Blake, a Peabody Conservatory graduate, has arranged around him a large and skilled band, which began its set on Thursday with five members, and added a sixth later that night. In the first few songs, as a quintet, his vocals and piano were accompanied by violin, cello and two percussionists for a somewhat timid chamber pop sound. The drummer, sitting behind a full set, played with splashy confidence, but it was clear he was holding back so as not to drowned out the string section. Blake came off as a mild, bookish presence, seated at his keyboard and introducing his songs with references to Sylvia Plath and John Steinbeck. [MORE]

If you're among the many Baltimoreans kvetching about the Baltimore Round Robin Tour dodging its hometown, we've got good news. On Dec. 18 and 19, the tour will be performing both its "eyes night" (thinking/vibe music) and "feet night" (dancing/active music) at Sonar, according to a message board post at beatbots.com. Nice. Tickets, to go on sale soon, will run $8 for one night and $15 for both nights. That lineup, again, performing in "round robin" style, includes on "eyes night," Beach House, Creepers, Ed Schrader, Jana Hunter, Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, Lexie Mountain Boys, Nautical Almanac, Santa Dads, and Teeth Mountain. The "feet night" features Adventure, Blood Baby, Dan Deacon, the Deathset, DJ Dog Dick, Double Dagger, Future Islands, Height, Lizz King, Nuclear Power Pants, Smart Growth, and Video Hippos.

Wednesday night was my first time checking out the downtown venue Bedrock since it started booking music in recent months, though I remember going to shows in the same building years and years ago, when it was called the Vault. Not much has changed since then, both in terms of the room layout, and the fact that the place never seems to pull in a crowd, despite its nice central location on Baltimore Street. Of course, it was a chilly autumn weeknight, but it was still disappointing to see such a low turnout for the night's bill, which included five worthwhile local rappers.

The first act up was McCracken, who usually performs as part of the duo Minlus and McCracken, but has been striking out solo as of late. While his group's recordings never clicked with me, McCracken was a surprisingly commanding live performer, putting enough energy into his set to work a large crowd while noting, with self-deprecating humor, that there was not a large crowd. The new songs he played struck a delicate balance of crass sexuality and autobiographical introspection, and though white rappers rarely stand out in the Baltimore scene, it felt like McCracken made a convincing case for why he will, or at least should, in the future. And while he joked that his solo album won't be out until "early 2028," hopefully it'll come along much sooner. [MORE]

Little Feat was arguably one of the greatest rock bands of the 1970s, and most certainly one of the best not to have achieved significant mainstream success or classic rock canonization, spinning off from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention with an idiosyncratic blend of blues, country, and R&B. And while Little Feat's original run, which ended with the 1979 death of founder Lowell George, will always define the band, for the past 20 years a reconstituted Little Feat has added to the band's recorded legacy while maintaining its status as a beloved live act. And as the son of a lifelong fan, I took it upon myself to take my dad to see Little Feat at the 9:30 Club last Friday, and he shared memories of seeing the band at the Warner Theatre and the Baltimore Civic Center in the mid-'70s.

Little Feat's set opened with the up-tempo title track from the 1988 comeback album Let It Roll. But the 8-piece band, which features five members from the classic Dixie Chicken-era lineup, spent most of its two hours onstage running through highlights from the Lowell George years, from the funky licks of "Skin It Back" to the twangy slide guitar of "Fat Man In the Bathtub." Guitarist Paul Barrere now acts as the band's de facto frontman, but several members of the band take turns on lead vocals, from percussionist Sam Clayton's gravelly take on "Spanish Moon" to the occasional showcases for singer Shaun Murphy, who joined the band in 1993. But when it came time for gray-haired keyboardist Bill Payne to sing his most significant contribution to the Little Feat songbook, "Oh Atlanta," he up and forgot his own lyrics, and had to ask for help from his bandmates to recall the song's first verse. [MORE]

We weren't able to get this into yesterday's paper, but if you're looking for some late Barack Obama boosterism or if you're a McCainiac with a sweet spot for tender, upswelling indie-rock sound fields or urban-folk rusticism, this Sunday Wye Oak and Caleb Stine and the Brakemen have put together an Obama fundraiser at the Metro Gallery.

According to Wye Oak's Andy Stack, the idea came after seeing a defaced Obama poster in Hampden. "It got us talking about the meanspiritedness which has filled this campaign season, and also about how important the upcoming election really is," he writes in an e-mail. (You can find quite a bit more elaboration in this interview with local music blog Aural States.) Show is at 9 p.m. Donations at door. [MORE]

Strained under the pressures of maintaining a band long distance and many, many solo/side projects, the too-brief psych-noise quartet Wzt Hearts are disbanding, according to an e-mail sent out this afternoon by member Jason Urick. "The challenges of staying active while being physically displaced from one another eventually took it's toll as we all have been involved with other aspects of our life as well," he writes. "We are extremely thankful to all those who we've met, played with, and worked with over the last four years and we hope to continue those relationships as we all move onto other projects."

He goes on to outline the many various places we can now find the Wzt Hearts alumni: [MORE]

It's interesting to see a band save itself via a good live show. Starfucker's recently released album of cavity-inducing indie pop is fine and fun enough to listen to, but feels unfinished or perfunctory, like the increasingly hyped band was rushing it. The building blocks of great songs are there, but the blocks themselves are sort of monotone and rudimentary. The upshot is that it's way more boring than it needs to be. Live at the Talking Head on Thursday, Oct. 16, with two drummers, one of them splitting duties on guitar, and a keyboardist/turntablist, it's positively infectious forget-about-the-dying-world pop music cut up with go-nowhere soft skronk. The latter of which is kind of a bummer; it feels a little pretentious, and hurts the band's momentum. I get what they're going for with it, though, this over-the-top pop music lurching out of gray soup like a whale breeching. The catch is that the water doesn't need to be gray. In any case, the crowd, all half-dozen of them--this was one of those shows where folks split after the local openers--loved it and bounced around like a whiskied-up closet full of rubber balls. Kudos, Starfucker, you proved me wrong.

The two openers I caught seemed a bit mismatched, playing nuanced listening-not-dancing music bent toward trad rock and folk/country. Steve Hefter and Friends of Friends are very good at what they do, particularly when they add a viola part or female vocal harmony, but the Talking Head crowd was more into socializing than paying attention. I'd go as far as to call it disrespectful. The poppier Vacation Face, which included a handful of local rock scene vets, including Steve Hefter and Jason Dove, was ultimately more engaging and seemed to grab more of the room. The band, which I'm assuming is a new project, is something to look forward to. [MORE]

The Windup Space is such a clean and well-lit room that it probably shouldn't feel right to see a night of live local music there, but somehow it does. Not that all other indie venues in Baltimore are dark, dirty holes in the wall, but there is a certain atmosphere we're used to, and the Windup Space defies it to great effect. The first act onstage, or rather in the corner of the room, on Wednesday night was local group Beans, although for this particular performance the lineup was winnowed down to just one member, a female singer/guitarist who noted that "usually we're Beans, but tonight I'm just Bean." Though she apologized for a cold that limited her vocal performance, it was nonetheless a short, pleasant set, with original songs ranging from melancholy to goofy. In fact, at one point she took an informal survey about whether the audience would rather hear a melancholy song or a goofy one. When the latter option won out, she played a song about a robot, complete with a spoken-word bridge, and it was very goofy. And then she played the melancholy song anyway.

Chicago trio Magical, Beautiful was the only touring band on the bill, as well as the only full band. Playing in an unusual configuration of a drummer and two synth players, with one of the keyboardists switching to bass guitar on certain songs, Magical, Beautiful has a dark, densely textured sound. But it felt like that sound would've been better served by more expressive vocals than the low monotone provided by one of the keyboard players. Still, the tune the band introduced as "a new song" was by far the highlight of its set, with tighter polyrhythms and deeper bass grooves than any of the band's other material, indicating that Magical, Beautiful may still be in the process of hitting its stride. [MORE]