On Sunday night, we got our first recorded taste of just what that sounds like, with two tracks from the “Honeycomb/Gotham” 7-inch uploaded to the band’s site. Indeed, the A-side, “Honeycomb,” features a sample of a radio promo spot before launching into a collage of manipulated gurgles of electronic noises, resembling something off a whimsical, hyperactive video game soundtrack. B-side “Gotham” is much darker and spare but is no less apparent in its representation of these otherworldly sounds.

You can hear the two songs for yourself here. The single will be available through Domino Records’ online store on June 26 and is scheduled to hit shelves in the summer.

“Dope Boy” is a southern-flavored banger in line with some of the other tracks OOH has released outside of Brown F.I.S.H., such as “Let the Light…” and “Pink Money.” And though the song’s title and the name YoSlick may indicate that OOH is adopting some kind of character to make more overtly “ignorant” rap, the song’s verses still contain some of the MC’s undeniable intelligence and way with words. OOH is launching the YoSlick project alongside the announcement that he’s the new host of a regular event/weekly showcase at NowChild Soundstage in Mount Vernon, called Judah’s Juke Joint Thursdays.

As noted in an update about his condition on the Telesma web site, Hesford is, like many other musicians, woefully uninsured and unprepared for his recent health issues. So the remaining band members will continue performing without him to help raise money to benefit their bandmate, and in the meantime has set up a Paypal link for anyone who’d like to donate to a trust that’s been set up to help Hesford with his medical bills.

I first heard Valium Eel last year, when I sat down with Baltimore musician Jon Ehrens of White Life for a lengthy rundown of the many bands and recording projects he’s had over the years. He mentioned one of his earliest band experiences, playing drums for one of his classmates at Walt Whitman High School.

Muralidhar and Ehrens met when both attended Walt Whitman; Muralidhar later attended the Unversity of Maryland, College Park, before moving to Minnesota, where he died. From 2000 to 2005, Muralidhar recorded a number of Valium Eel songs, sometimes playing all the instruments, sometimes with Ehrens or Justin Shapiro on drums. In light of the sad news, Ehrens decided to memorialize his friend by uploading a collection of those songs to Band Camp as a free download.

The nine Valium Eel songs featured on the Band Camp page feature a variety of sounds and moods within the spectrum of lo-fi indie rock, from minimal acoustic tracks to full-band rockers. The aptly titled “Tangled” is a peppy, tightly coiled array of jangly riffs and caffeinated drum fills, while the stark opener “Call Me Around” is a direct voice-and-guitar recording.

Telling me about Muralidhar last year, Ehrens gushed, “Man, I didn’t really understand how to write a song until he gave me a tape of his songs. And it was just insane to me. He was really young, like a year or two older than me, and he was just so fucking good, it really upped the ante.” And if the rest of us didn’t know this young man, we can at least mourn the sadly unrealized potential of the songwriter heard on these recordings.

Lyric Opera Baltimore stays true to form with their new take on Gounod’s Faust (in partnership with Arizona Opera) at the Lyric on April 20 and 22nd. Provocative? Check. Profane? Check. Occult? Check. The Lyric’s version of Faust is dark enough to tickle the heart of any Goth and its Mephistopheles will delight any fan of Marilyn Manson, with his brocade swag and red silk, top hat, and long black hair.

Faust’s story is simple. A learned scholar, wizened by age, Faust feels that all is lost. He can’t even commit suicide successfully. Then Mephistopheles comes offering the famous bargain: your soul, for youth. All the while, the beautiful, young Marguerite is dangled like an enticing prize for Faust to capture.

Temptations abound. Director Bernard Uzan takes his cue from thinker Pascal who said, “Mankind has invented entertainment in order to forget to die.” And in his production, temptation is writ  bold, complete with a Lady Gaga-like persona gracing the stage. Words pop forth on the black screen of the night as on the Las Vegas-strip: Sin, MAN, Force, Power, Love. (Faust is in French. If you don’t like reading subtitles, this backdrop is a quick crib sheet to the action.)

The romantic core of the opera–the seduction of Marguerite–has no novelties. There’s no need. Marguerite’s famous “Jewel Song” sparkles in high coloratura from the throat of Stefania Dovhan. For a brief, bright moment you could believe you’re in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and Mephistopheles is nothing but a “Puck.” Bring on the flame-licked scrim. . .

Bass-baritone Kristopher Irmiter’s Mephistopheles is a gentlemanly tempter, with his low wiles and coy self-absorption. While he doesn’t have a full, stage-quaking voice, he’s plenty evil. Bryan Hymel is no stranger to the role of Faust, whose tenor voice garners sympathy even as he’s the one to plunge the fair Marguerite into doom.

The real surprises strike in the final two acts, both chilling. Marguerite, now an unwed mother, seeks refuge. She finds a Vegas-strip “church” crowned with a neon-trussed cross. It is still dark and filled with a perfect Baroque chorus of nuns and deacons miming song and censor, frozen like statues. Marguerite throws off the nun’s habit and animates the scene. Three nuns surround her like Macbeth’s witches to condemn her drastic actions. The shock hits when Christ steps down from the cross to participate.

The final act brings out the straitjackets. We rejoin Marguerite in a madhouse. Here Dovhan has the hollowed eyes of an Edvard Munch painting come to life, her heavenly silver voice lofting in a song of love. She’s a wild-haired, wasted Madonna with bandages on her wrists, tended by red-wigged triplets in red fishnets and nurse white. Fluorescents flicker on, heralding Faust’s rescue attempt, contrasting sharply with the buttery remorse in his voice. But all is too late. The baby is dead. Only God can save Marguerite. No one can save Faust. . .

Some operas make you weep, others make you laugh. Faust chills. By bringing Faust into the harsh light of the present day, we get a perfect stage illustration of the contemporary debate about the value of condoms and the act of abortion.

Care to try it? Faust shows at The Lyric April 20 at 7:30 p.m. and April 22 at 3 p.m. If you’re lucky enough to be a student, you can get 50 percent off all seats at the box office or Ticketmaster. The password: devil.

The Art of Argento, a series presented April 20-29 by the University of Maryland School of Music, will look back at Argento’s career by combining student and faculty performances to cover a vast range of works by the artist. The American composer will soon celebrate his 85th birthday. “His music called out for us to do it,” said Linda Mabbs, artistic director of the series and a University of Maryland College Park professor. “There is no one who sets the English language better for singing. It is not so much the words, but the way he combines themes.” Argento won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1975 for his song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf. He also won a Grammy in 2004 for Von Stade’s recording of his song cycle Casa Guidi.

Mabbs said she and professor Leon Major decided that Argento’s work was the perfect fit for their current ensemble of students. The special series also coincides with the 10th anniversary of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The series includes a wide variety of concerts, recitals, and discussions. “In a way it’s a real retrospective of my career,” Argento said in a recent phone interview. Argento added that the collection of works was “like having your whole life laid out in front of you.”

Argento composed some of the works in the series in Baltimore. And while he has never taught or attended a class at College Park, he says going there will be like a homecoming; he was born in York, Pa., close to the Maryland border, and has fond memories of visiting Baltimore as a child. Argento received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Peabody Conservatory, and also worked several summers with the Hilltop Opera Company in Baltimore. It was during his time in Baltimore that he first became interested in composition.

Highlights from the series include an open masterclass with soprano Frederica Von Stade and the world premiere of Cabaret Songs, written by Argento specifically for this celebration. The series will conclude with fully staged productions of Postcard From Morocco and Miss Havisham’s Fire and a performance of A Few Words About Chekhov.

The series is a momentous occasion for confirmed opera-lovers as well as neophytes. Argento’s songs take themes many people are familiar with (including Miss Havisham’s Fire, about the Great Expectations character) and translates them into music. His use of humor adds lighthearted moments to his work, which turn just as easily to moments of profound emotion for the characters. There are several preshow discussions of the work, and many of the events are free.

Music Monthly was an outgrowth of Susan Elizabeth Mudd’s own passion for music, and she was a tireless lifelong supporter of the Maryland music scene covered by the magazine, which had a circulation of 90,000. “Susie was absolutely dedicated to the music and musicians of the mid-Atlantic. Seeing ‘local bands,’ although she loathed the term ‘local,’ go on to bigger successes was a huge thrill for her,” says journalist and photographer Kelly Connelly, who is Mudd’s niece and worked for many years as a Music Monthly staffer. “She forged her own path and was never afraid to voice her opinion.”

In recent years, local bands and venues threw “Susiefest” benefit concerts in support of Mudd, including one in December 2011, as she continued to promise to revive and revamp Music Monthly in the final months of her life. Mudd’s Facebook profile has played host to an outpouring of grief and remembrances from her many friends in the Baltimore music community over the past week. A memorial service will be held 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 22, at the family owned Peaceful Alternatives Funeral and Cremation Center at 2325 York Road in Timonium.

The mixtape is, of course, a nod to its namesake, the blockbuster joint album released by Jay-Z and Kanye West last summer. But the Watch The Throne Mixtape is decidedly more of a tribute to the former, featuring Travis Davon freestyles over songs from throughout Jay’s solo career and only a couple from the West collaboration. And since Jigga’s influence has always loomed large over Bossman’s music, it is a refreshing way for the Baltimore MC to reconnect with his roots and just rap his ass off on some beats he loves, the way he used to in his early days of making mixtapes with the group NEK. In one especially entertaining moment, Davon raps over the terrible “Haters” from The Blueprint 3 and finishes a hate-filled verse with “I don’t even know why I rapped to this wack-ass track, I hate that.” It’s a deliberately minor project, and Davon tries a little too hard to sell “swavor” as his new catchphrase, but it’s a largely enjoyable listen. Tracks like the relaxed, confident “Can I Live 2K12″ might not compete with the Jay originals but bring to mind Bossman in his prime more than some of the songs on The Re-Up that tried to be everything to everyone. And the sole original song that closes the mixtape, “Illuminati” produced by CLAWS, gives evidence that Travis Davon isn’t just playing around with rap for the hell of it.

A few years ago, it was pretty commonplace for a handful of Baltimore’s better-known MCs to hop on an overstuffed posse-cut remix whenever one of them caught some success with a single. That practice has been a bit neglected lately, though, which makes the show of unity on the “Trashbags” remix feel like more of an event. DBoi acquits himself well, laying down a better verse than he had on the original song, and Caddy sounds at home on the beat, but the last verse is reserved for almost inarguably the most famous and talented MC on the track. It’s one of Los’ first guest appearances since re-signing to Bad Boy Records, and it doesn’t disappoint. But the fact that this remix marks the first time I’ve ever heard Los on 92Q, years after he’d proven himself to a rapidly growing mixtape fan base as well as the major-label world, gives a little credence to the perennial question of exactly how and why the station’s gatekeepers choose which local artists get airplay.

The 7-inch, limited to a pressing of 500 copies on orange vinyl, is available for preorder through Friends. Or, if you so choose, you can purchase a copy at the Ottobar on April 19, when Wasner opens for Sharon Van Etten.

Earlier this year, City Paper sat down and talked with Wasner about her solo work; you can read the interview here.

It ranks as one of the tightest pop songs in the band’s repertoire, featuring beautifully arpeggiating keys from Victoria Legrand and some of Alex Scally’s most ebullient guitar playing to date. As for the vocals, Legrand continues to show a crispness and sense of melody in her singing, pulling back another layer of the bedroom haze and giving the lushness and tranquility of her voice more resonance.

The new record, Bloom, will be released on Sub Pop May 15. In an interview with NME, Alex Scally says the album will be “their own Pet Sounds or Disintegration, not in sound, but as something which feels like a definitive statement.”

Blaqstarr—Roses by Interscope Records

With No Age guitarist Randy Randall for “When I’m in a Car” in tow, the group’s 1:14 jam features a new layer of buzzy skittishness that hits the same pleasure spots as some of the more propulsive Wire songs.

Hear the full song below. Jazz Minds comes out March 20 on Load Records.

The entire video focuses on a seated Jana Hunter, as seen through a convex screen resembling that of an old television set. You know the kind, the huge boxes that required proper positioning of an antenna so the picture wouldn’t scramble.

As the song begins its slow build, the image of Hunter begins to flutter. With each new element of instrumentation, the fluttering becomes more pronounced, creating something of a waveform filament to place over top of the image of Hunter singing. When the song reaches its zenith, we are thrown into swirling black and white colors, then a shot of Hunter singing the chorus that kind of looks like a colorized version of the authoritarian figure in the 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl commercial, and finally the crystalline opening shot from whence we came.

You can view the video in its entirety below. Nootropics hits shelves on May 1. You can see Lower Dens four days after that at the Ottobar.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The news of Los returning to Bad Boy, then, is both exciting and surprising, and perhaps should be greeted with some healthy skepticism. After all, Los leaving Bad Boy four years ago was arguably the best thing that ever happened to his career; it was only after he went independent that he began giving away tons of mixtapes and freestyles online and building the estimable fan base he has today. And though Bad Boy has been one of the most famous brand names in urban music for nearly two decades, it’s had a shaky history with rappers since the late ’90s, after it experienced the tragic death of its marquee star, Notorious B.I.G. Soon after, Craig Mack disappeared, the LOX defected, Ma$e retired, the then Puff Daddy became more of a professional celebrity than a rap star, Shyne went to jail, and the label was kept afloat mainly by R&B acts like 112, Faith Evans, Carl Thomas, and Cassie.

Around the time of Los’ initial 2005 signing, Bad Boy’s hip-hop roster was enjoying a resurgence with the success of southern acts like Yung Joc, Boyz N Da Hood, and 8Ball and MJG. Since then, however, things have been relatively quiet; Bad Boy released two critically acclaimed R&B albums, by Janelle Monae and Diddy-Dirty Money, in 2010, but last year marked the first in the label’s history that it didn’t drop a single full-length. Last year was a rebuilding year, as Diddy started signing buzzed-about new rappers like French Montana and Machine Gun Kelly who, along with the label’s longtime also-ran Red Café, are set to drop debuts in 2012. So Los is not only returning to Bad Boy with the leverage of an actual following, but is now part of a roster that he fits in with a little better, one that’s set to actually make some noise this year. In hip-hop, getting “signed” is often looked at as a goal in and of itself, the reward for a rapper’s hard work rather than the opportunity to work even harder for a more concrete type of success. But we know better than that, and more importantly, so does Los.

Sword Swallow’s self-titled cassette was painstakingly assembled by Ehrens a few years ago as an experiment in collage, pulling together various demos and ideas into a deliberately patchwork whole–seriously, one of the tape’s best songs is called “A Veritable Hodgepodge.” The other tape, 21st Century Disasters: Random Repelican, is a career-spanning compilation of a couple dozen songs from Ehrens’s most prolific project, including tracks from each of Repelican’s three previous self-released albums as well as songs that have at times been credited to other bands like the Anywhere and the Failed Ygriega. Check out “Badmood Baboon,” which originally appeared on Repelican’s 2005 album Anyone? Anyone?, and the Sword Swallow tape’s opening track, “The Terrifying Prospect,” below:

“Badmood Baboon,” Repelican by EverydayElk

“Terrifying Prospect,” the Sword Swallow by EverydayElk

“Cookamonga,” featuring Money on the song’s outlandishly silly hook, debuted on Powder Meth Blow last year, and has been racking up spins on 92Q and elsewhere. Now Future, who broke through last year on YC’s smash “Racks” and has since been scoring solo hits like “Tony Montana” and “Magic,” has hopped on the song’s second verse as Caddy hopes to break the track nationally. Caddy recorded all new lyrics for the track himself, taking the first verse before Future shows up with his odd, gruff voice, dropping memorable lines like “I’m still walking on the moon, I feel like a thousand goons.”

Caddy Da Don ft. Future, “Cookamonga” by EverydayElk

Click here to view the embedded video.

First, let’s get to the video, for the song “Diagonally Talking Echo.” The layers of swirling guitars we’ve come to love in Wong’s music are given a full color wheel treatment, first seen on screen as circular splotches of various hues and then as a full-on psychedelic swirl.

Beneath that layer we see Wong, his face painted completely red, offering a rare vocal accompaniment, a shifting series of wordless wails and mumblings, to his guitar work. With the utterance of a short “waaaa,” the shot shifts to colliding bodies of water, and for the grand, thickly layered musical finale, a combination of everything.

As for the contest, Wong is asking people to post a recorded narration of a vivid dream that has affected them to his Soundcloud page. He will then take some of the descriptions and write original soundtracks for each. Snippets of the recorded results will be posted online beginning Feb. 20.

“We Stay Winning,” DJ Class by EverydayElk

The only person sampled without their knowledge on Class’s other new song, the single “Orangutan,” is the titular primate, who makes a squealing cameo on the song’s ingratiatingly silly hook. Like “We Stay Winning,” the song rides the kind of burbling synth horn that’s typical of a lot of Baltimore club tracks (particularly from the late ’90s and the early 2000s) but is kind of a change of pace for Class, particularly from the AutoTune hooks and screaming rave synths that have dominated many of his tracks since “I’m the Ish” revitalized his career.

“Orangutan,” DJ Class by EverydayElk

The McBride connection helped Wolf land a deal with a major independent record label, the nationally distributed Mack Avenue Records. McBride not only played bass on the resulting album, Warren Wolf, and produced the sessions, but also climbed the long staircase at An Die Musik to play Wolf’s hometown record-release party Saturday night.

So there was McBride—in his black suit, bald-domed head, and goatee—thumping out the muscular push-and-pull rhythm to Wolf’s composition, “427 Mass. Ave.,” the funky blues that kicks off both of his albums—the new one as well as 2008’s Raw. Wolf, looking dapper in a gray blazer over a black T-shirt, hammered the keys of his vibraphone with two blue-felt mallets, sometimes reinforcing McBride’s thump, sometimes pushing back against it. These rhythms enjoyed the physicality of popular dance music but never its predictability. Later, when Wolf ushered in his lovely ballad composition, “How I Feel at This Given Moment,” with an unaccompanied intro, one could see as well as hear how his mallets slowed down to sketch the romantic melody over a bass line and then sped up to mark the chord changes in brisk arpeggios.

Chick Corea originally wrote “Senor Mouse” as a duet between his piano and Gary Burton’s vibes, and that’s how Wolf began it, engaging Maryland pianist Alex Brown in an unaccompanied, conversational give-and-take. When the rest of the quintet joined them, Wolf shifted the dialogue to soprano saxophonist Tim Green, his musical foil since the fifth grade. The Jule Styne standard “Just in Time” was also treated as an unaccompanied duet, this time between Wolf and McBride. Here especially one could see the strong fingers and hear the rich tone that make McBride one of the best upright bassists in jazz. In all three of these dialogues, one could hear how each statement shaped the response, which quickly became a new declaration demanding a new answer.

The Crown Ain't Safe

Earlier this week, I logged onto the popular mixtape hub DatPiff.com to listen to some of hip-hop’s latest underground releases, and was pleasantly surprised to see that the banner at the top of the site counting down the day’s big new release was from Baltimore’s own Los. The eagerly anticipated The Crown Ain’t Safe is the Maryland freestyle master’s highest profile release to date, co-hosted by DJ Ill Will and mixtape legend DJ Drama (who first featured Baltimore rappers in his prestigious Gangsta Grillz series with 100 Grandman’s 2009 Welcome To Baltimore and Tony Austin’s 2010 The Influence). I often think back to the afternoon five years ago that the young rapper sat in my living room for an interview in this very paper and marvel at how far he’s come since then. So I decided to listen to the mixtape as soon as it became available this afternoon and offer some reactions in real time to what could very well be a breakout moment for Baltimore hip-hop’s most realistic hope for the mainstream right now:

1. “Make You Fly” featuring Jazze Pha

After a brief monologue by DJ Drama, Los comes out swinging with a hilarious gag about one of hip-hop’s biggest current stars: “I ain’t never change like Drake’s singing key.”

2. “Living My Dreams”

A cracking snare drum from producer Mike Cash backs this early highlight, in which Los recounts how his greatest successes have come well after an abortive stint on Bad Boy Records: “Six years ago I signed a record deal with Puffy Combs/ I told my city pop them bottles off, I’m comin’ home/ They see me fail so I hope everybody watchin’ this/ A champion’s only as good as the ones he missed.”

3. “King Los” featuring Lola Monroe

One of Los’s most frequent collaborators these days is LoLa Monroe, the female rapper from Washington, D.C. who first found fame in the hip-hop world as the eye candy model Angel Luv in countless popular rap videos. Her bars are nothing to write home about, but you can’t fault Los for hanging around with her, I suppose.

4. “Money Loud”

The producer of one of the biggest bangers of 2011, Meek Mill’s “Ima Boss,” contributes a track here, but it’s unfortunately a little closer to a generic Lex Luger track.

5. “Stroke Of Genius”

A short, aggressive song that ends with a dick joke.

6. “2 Vs 1″

The Young Boyz produce the first track of the mixtape that sounds like it has radio potential, with Los darting around a bleeping, thumping club beat with a playful flow reminiscent of the Trey Songz hit “Say Aah.”

7. “Wait For It”

Jazze Pha returns to produce a catchy, skeletal track that retains some of his signature claps and booming bass but little else to great effect, letting Los sprint around the track with a double-time flow.

8. “Biggest Fan” featuring Sean Hayz and Kid Ink

The mixtape’s first whiny R&B hook, courtesy of South Africa-by-way-of-Atlanta crooner Sean Hayz.

9. “What’s Good”

Things get back on track with one of the mixtape’s most relentlessly punchline-heavy tracks. So many quotable one-liners that I didn’t manage to catch one to quote.

10. “Shine” featuring Phil Ade

Regardless of whether the so-called “DMV movement” is actually uniting D.C., Maryland and Virginia or just expanding the territory of Washington artists, it’s always fun to hear rising Baltimore and Washington rappers band together, especially Phil Ade, who also collaborated with Mullyman earlier this year.

11. “Finally Here” featuring Twista

Los occasionally raps fast, but it’s more like another skill in his toolbox than his defining trait. Still, it’s fun to hear him paired up with the Chicago star widely regarded as the fastest rapper in the world (seriously, he’s in the Guinness Book). But instead of a speed rapping competition, “Finally Here” is a more serious track, with both MCs keeping it solemn and lyrical and mostly holding back on the pyrotechnics.

12. “All The Way To Church” featuring Jazze Pha

Once again Jazze Pha rears his head, shoehorning some of his circa 2005 obnoxious ad libs in between Los’s verses over the organ-heavy Battleroy production.

13. “Get It” featuring XV

This bombastic anthem feels like perhaps the best point of entry for Los offered on The Crown Ain’t Safe so far, showcasing both Los’s rapping and his underrated hook-writing abilities, while Lifted’s impressive production moves in peaks and valleys, mellowing out for a few bars just before the chorus explodes.

14. “Make You Proud” featuring Sean Hayz and DMX

Of all the big name artists lending Los a hand on this mixtape, easily the most surprising is DMX, the late ’90s New York rap superstar (who, we’re eager to point out, was born in Baltimore) currently making his latest comeback attempt after years of personal struggles. X spits some vintage grimy introspection, but the track is sunk by another limp Sean Hayz hook.

15. “Fast Lane” featuring Ernie Gaines

Ladies and gentleman, I am not pleased to inform you that there is a singer worse than Sean Hayz on this mixtape. In recent years, rappers have begun treating mixtapes more like albums in terms of songwriting and production values, but the downside of that is that they feel compelled to fill up these so-called “underground” releases for diehard hip-hop fans with wimpy R&B crossover tracks.

16. “Masterpiece”

A lush, soulful track that puts the focus back on Los’s lyrics, as he fills up the first verse with a flurry of internal rhymes and alliteration. Like most mixtapes The Crown Ain’t Safe is undoubtedly frontloaded, so it’s good to hear a song this exciting this far in.

17. “Never Say Never” featuring Sean Hayz

One of the few Baltimore-based producers on the mixtape, J. Oliver (known for work with Greenspan and on Los’ Shooter mixtape) turns in a great track full of warm, brooding synths that almost make another Sean Hayz chorus bearable.

18. “Vintage Rolls Royce Interior”

It bears mentioning at this point that Los suffers from the same affliction as many of the new generation of mainstream rappers like Drake and J. Cole that he’s hoping to join in the mainstream: most of his lyrics are not just about his talent and riches but about how he’s destined for greatness, forever attempting to raise his commonplace music industry setbacks to some kind of epic drama. It’s not much more compelling coming from Los than from those guys, but he at least has a little more of a sense of humor about himself, which in addition to his raw lyrical talent may ultimately be his saving grace.

19. “Outro” featuring Sean Hayz

For the first time since the intro, we hear the mostly absent DJ Drama speak at length, although Los quickly takes the track over for one last self-aggrandizing rant about his up-and-down career. We got a fourth and final appearance by the annoyingly ubiqutious Sean Hayz, and then Los closes down the “album disguised as a mixtape” that is otherwise of a high enough quality that it just might be what takes his career to the next level in 2012.

Opener Jessica Lea Mayfield joins Adams for the entirety of his brief tour, and anyone who likes what Adams has to give will enjoy spending a set in Mayfield’s folkie world. A young blond pixie of a guitar player, Mayfield’s bleeding heart lyrics were accented by a slight country twang, and while the songs themselves blend together in retrospect, too similar in tone to leave any individual impression, her sound was a suitable complement to Adams’ show.

If nothing else, you can’t deny that Adams has stamina. Over a two-hour set, the singer/songwriter played two guitars, harmonica, and piano, filling the gorgeous stage at the Lyric with equipment befitting a band and managing it all on his own. His current emo-kid haircut belies his 37 years and the maturity behind his voice. But of course, none of that would shock an Adams fan. He’s known for that soulful croon, and Sunday’s show didn’t disappoint.

What was pleasantly surprising was his geniality, goofing off between songs and bantering with members of the audience, surely a benefit of his finally achieved sobriety. And the goofballery was a welcome reprieve from what sometimes became a bit of a downer, one heartbreaking ballad after another, which, coupled with Mayfield’s set, made for a long night. Nowhere was the usual concert pacing of bringing the audience up and easing them back out. Adams even called his shots, with quips like, “This time I’ll play a ballad,” or, flipping through his songbook, “There’s got to be something not depressing in here.” Nope, turns out there isn’t, and it’s a testament to his stage presence and, overall, his voice that everyone left smiling anyway.

As part of the its second annual compilation, the label has culled 30 new songs from some of the area’s top talent. Some we’ve heard—new songs from Secret Mountains, the first releases of Wye Oak lead singer Jenn Wasner’s solo project Flock of Dimes—but much of it is brand new, including unreleased songs from Dan Deacon, Ponytail’s Dustin Wong and Molly Siegel, Jason Urick, and many, many more.

Below we’ve got the full track list and the world premiere of a new track from psych-rock veteran Celebration, titled “Sure Shot.” Friends is giving away the compilation for free on Thanksgiving. For all you collectors out there, the compilation will be getting a physical release as a two-tape package, which begins shipping in about a week.

Side A
Celebration – Sure Shot
Future Islands – Tomorrow (Live @ KEXP)
Weekends – Basement Fuzz
Microkingdom – God’s Total Woman
Moss of Aura – Post
Jason Urick – Woman (For Jah Shaka)

Side B
Oxes – Hiawatha (Live @ WNUR)
Witch Hat – Break Interstate Park
Violet Hour – Absence of Limbs
Sri Aurobindo – No Coincidence
Lonnie Walker – Inside Factories
Height With Friends – Mustard Seed

Side C
Soft Cat – This Is How We Walk on the Moon
Lands and Peoples – Memo (Live)
Flock Of Dimes – Prison Bride
Beth Varden – I Can’t Stand
Brian Adam Ant – Psychic Assassins
Secret Mountains – Weepy Little Fingers
Buhloones – Something Else Exchange
Holy Ghost Party – Breakfast
Beyond Say – Bowl of Water Moccassins

Side D
Dan Deacon – The Token Circle High
Co La – Visions of Excess (Wet Version)
Jake Lingan – Hair Trigger
Vlonde – Love Theme
Avocado Happy Hour – Tactic
Dustin Wong and Molly Siegel – Untitled
Chase O’Hara and Amy Reid – Love You in Summer
Inflatable Mattress – Fantasy Motorboat
Neal Reinalda – Sunset in Baltimore

Celebration
- Sure Shot by friendsrecords

He expects the club to be opened mid-next week. Tonight’s Freddy Redd Quintet show has been cancelled, as has tomorrow’s Ebony and Irony performance.

For more details and a few words from founding member Jeff McGrath, head over to Impose Magazine/Bmore Musically Informed, where the story was first reported by Brett Yale of Friends Records.

The nut of it:

Jeff [McGrath] explains, “It sort of just feels like we’re moving out of an apartment.” A few weeks ago William Cashion of Future Islands asked Thank You if they wanted to join them for a January tour. When the band got together to discuss William’s proposal, it became evident to everyone that not all of the members still enjoyed touring or had the will to continue to do so.

Each of Thank You’s LPs since their days with original drummer Elke Wardlaw have been hand-crafted with a strong ode to their live performance. First and foremost, Thank You is very much a live band. Without this component, all four current members couldn’t envision moving forward under the same moniker. Jeff was quick to point out that they’ll all remain best friends, they all plan to stay living in Baltimore, and that they all plan to continue making music – just with different friends and artists. This makes sense, especially when considering the musical cycle currently occurring in Baltimore.

Thank You was probably one of the most unsung bands in the city, which is to say it never caught on nationally as big as it should have. Thank You was sort of like our own little secret. Its live shows were mammoth, a delirious swirl of keys, guitar, and bass created by McGrath and Michael Bouyoucas, with Emmanuel Nicolaidis posted up in the back, all flying limbs as his hands and feet worked parts of the drum kit at a seemingly inhuman rate. The band this year added Stephen Santillan on bass, and it’s sad to see that this lineup will be short-lived.

On looking back before heading out on tour:
Nolen Strals: Last night I was actually looking through these folders saved on my computer with all these photos people have sent us over the last nine years. Looking at those pictures of shows from 2003 and 2005 and 2006—just moving through the years made me really happy to remind me of these awesome shows that we had played and all these awesome times we’ve had. But at the same time, it was also like, “Well, that’s the end of that. Won’t be having this kind of fun except for eight more times.” Like Bruce said, it was this bittersweet thing. But that’s what nostalgia typically is.

On earning respect and being sincere:
NS: I’m more proud of this band than almost—almost—anything else I’ve ever done. It seems like a good number of people respect the band. There’s tons of bands that are liked and they’re loved, but I think respect is something not a lot of bands get. And I think we got that just because as the times changed, as a band, we stayed true to the punk ethics and that way of operating we all learned in the late ’90s and early 2000s. We still did stuff mostly, but not entirely, the hard way. And maybe that didn’t benefit us at times, but I’m glad we stuck to our guns.

Bruce Willen: One thing I’m proud of the band is I feel like we’ve been very sincere in the music we’ve been trying to make. I think we’ve all been trying to make music that we like.

NS: We’re not gonna kowtow.

BW: We’re not gonna kowtow to whatever is popular. I know Nolen was very sincere with the lyrics. Even when the lyrics are sarcastic, there’s still a sincere idea and feeling behind that. I think that’s something is not—the sort of sincerity with ideas and putting ourselves out there with the risk of failing or being viewed as whatever, I think that’s something to be happy about.

On the ability to cross over and appeal to different audiences and being mislabeled by critics:
NS: There’s something in what we played and how we played it that’s appealed to this broader base. That’s one thing I have always loved about this band: You can’t pigeonhole us. There’s lots of people who’ve tried to, saying, oh, they’re this genre or that genre. But if they listen to the next song that’s on the record, then they’re wrong.

BW: More recently, we haven’t really thought of the band being a particular genre. I guess it’s loosely postpunk or whatever.

NS: Whatever that means [laughs].

BW: [Laughs] Yeah, exactly. Which is the most fucking amorphous term you could use. I think working within this pop music, rock music genre roughly, but I think within that we haven’t ever been focused on the trappings of genre.

NS: We never set out to sound like one particular thing.

BW: I think that definitely has helped us be able to cross, I guess, sort of social boundaries within underground music. I think it probably also has hurt us at times, with reviewers especially. You see so many reviews of us, and people talking about, ‘Oh, these guys sound—they’re like punk, but they’re not really.’ But you can see they’re reviewing us as if we’re a punk band and they’re upset because it’s not really as . . .

NS: “It doesn’t fit my narrow views of how things easily codify.”

BW: [In mocking voice:] “It’s like pop, but then your vocals are too angry or abrasive.”

Which, whatever, that’s fine. People who like the band, like the band. People who don’t, don’t. I don’t think we’ve ever cared too much about it.

NS: We do this for us.

BW: Yeah, exactly.

NS: We don’t do it for a reviewer, and we don’t do it for a point score.

CP: Hmm, I wonder which site you’re talking about with that one.

BW: Citypaper.com. [laughs]

On songs about fonts:

CP: When I asked Dan Deacon [about the band’s ability to cross over], he said, “Because they were a hardcore band that sang about fonts.”

[Group Laughs]

NS: There wasn’t only one song that ever—oh no, there were two—that ever specifically mentioned fonts, and the most recent was, like, four or five years ago. And we still get, “Oh, they sing about fonts.” Fuck you. No we don’t. Listen to the words. There’s a lyrics sheet in there.

[Group laughs].

Even when I did, it was [in extremely sarcastic tone:] a prism to view it through [laughs].

On the fate of Bruce’s hearing protection headphones:
NS: We should have a raffle for them.

[Group laughs]

BW: Oh, God. They’ll be very disappointed when they get them and they smell them.

NS: And they squeeze them and a cup of sweat comes out [laughs].

BW: Yeah, with my first pair, I realized too late that you need to take the foam pads out after every show, because otherwise all the sweat that builds up in them gets in there and they smell really bad.

NS: It’s like a faucet when you squeeze them.

BW: Little-known Double Dagger trivia there.

[Group laughs]

NS: Little-known Double Dagger trivia: We’re gross.

On the importance of the live show and liking different types of songs:
NS: This might sound really corny, but this music means a lot to all three of us. And I think through the way we performed it, we wanted to express the way it made us feel. But also, watching a band that just stands there is boring as hell. If I want to go to sleep, I’ll stay at home. Give me my five bucks’ worth.

BW: I think it’s one thing if someone is playing some really complicated music and you’re watching the musicianship, appreciating that. But we’re playing rock. It’s not like we’re gonna do crazy solos or switch between five different instruments in one song—something like that that is going to have that kind of visual interest.

NS: We’re a punk band. If we were playing punk music and standing still, we wouldn’t be a punk band. We’d be Green Day.

BW: [In slightly hushed tone] We just told him we were genre-less, Nolen.

[Group laughs]

CP: Contradicting himself.

BW: Well, I think that’s fine.

[Group laughs]

BW: I mean, we are a punk band relatively speaking.

CP: Like you said, it’s the ethos.

Both: Right.

NS: Punk brains.

BW: I think it’s OK to be multiple, to play more than one kind of music.

NS: I think that’s part of why we can play at these different venues and we can play with such a wide spectrum of bands, because we don’t just like one kind of song.

BW: I think that’s a better way of putting it. That sounds a little pretentious: “Oh, we’re like genre-less.” Which I think wasn’t necessarily what we were trying to get at. It’s OK to be a punk band but to also have pretty parts in your songs.

NS: Or to have adult lyrics.

On why you shouldn’t eat off the Zodiac’s floor and misadventures from wandering into the crowd:
NS: My shoe had come untied. It was really loose. I could feel that it was gonna come off as I was running around. My heel was already out of it. And the space [at the Zodiac] was really confined, so I couldn’t move around much, and I felt like I was not giving the people the show they deserved for $5 or whatever. And I was like, Oh, for some reason, between lines, I will take my loose shoe off my foot, lick the bottom of it, and throw it back on the floor. And it was very wet, covered in grit, and the next day I laid on the couch all day because I was feeling sick from whatever was on the bottom of that shoe [laughs].

There’s other times I’ve accidentally grabbed people where I shouldn’t have because I was stumbling and trying to catch my balance. I’ve taken a lot of people’s elbows and knees and feet to the face.

BW: He’s taken a lot of people’s drinks.

NS: I’ve taken quite a few people’s drinks. I’ve knocked a lot of cigarettes out of people’s hands, and I don’t regret one of them [laughs].

CP: You’re doing them a favor.

NS: Yeah. I’m doing myself a favor so I don’t have to struggle to breathe.

On the More release show at Floristree:
BW: I remember that show, there was kind of like a weird moment: Whoa, I’m in this band and there’s all these people here who are so pumped that this record is coming out—they’re not even my friends. [Group laughs]. They’re a bunch of people I don’t even know but they’re still excited about the band.

NS: I’ve never seen this person before.

BW: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, I don’t know—it’s cool.

On trying to trick the Canadian Border Patrol:
BW: So we were going into Canada, and we had heard so many stories about bands getting their merch confiscated. We had this fake letter that we’re going to this recording studio in Montreal, this whole story made up. We left most of our CDs and shirts at this friend’s house in New York state so we could pick them up on the way back. We’re so nervous about our merch getting confiscated that everybody put on five or six layers of T-shirts. I remember Nolen and [tour drummer] Ben [Valis] in the back of the van putting on T-shirt after T-shirt, and we’re like on our way to the border [laughs].

NS: Once you put on three shirts, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth one, it’s really tough. And then maneuvering to put your jacket back on and then trying to look natural [laughs], it’s not easy.

BW: I think they didn’t even look in the back of the van.

NS: No, they opened the back doors, glanced in, and closed them.

On lyrics:
NS: Anybody who knows me will tell you I’m really opinionated. The band has always been my primary source of expressing how I feel, mostly about things that frustrate me or they just piss me off. I think when the band started, it was much more, “I’m angry. Fuck this.” When you get older, your life gets more nuanced and complicated, and I think the lyrics still had frustration at their root, but their approach to that frustration was not so black and white.

Because the older you get, the more you realize life isn’t black and white. We think about the state that the city’s in and what the responsibilities as residents here that we have and how we can respond to what’s going on. I think it’s awesome that now there’s this pretty good number of people who care about what we do and what we have to say. I feel like when we have songs that are like [“Luxury Condos for the Poor”], hopefully, maybe it does make an impact. Hopefully it does sort of make people just think more concerning these issues. Because that luxury condos thing is still an issue. So obviously no one in City Hall heard it [group laughs].

Final thoughts:
BW: Start a band.

NS: Yes.

BW: Start your own band.

NS: If you like us so much, then take that energy and that excitement and do your own thing with it.

BW: Or start your own metaphorical band, if you aren’t into being in a band. Take the word band as you will, your own version of a band. Do your own creative projects that you want to put a lot of energy into.