Roomrunner, the new project from Baltimore multi-instrumentalist Denny Bowen, could not have become a full-blown band at a better time. The past year brought the break-up and breakthrough of several high-profile Baltimore groups. Bands like Wye Oak and Future Islands enjoyed time on the national radar while other much-loved groups called it quits. ... Continue Reading

Instrumental rock outfits bear a burden that groups with vocalists do not. They must use the tools at hand to tell a story in song, no human voice or lyrics providing a fixed point for an audience to reference. Local rock quartet Yeveto have mastered the art of telling a story without a storyteller on their new album Remote Unelectrified Villages. ... Continue Reading

Over the course of one’s listening life, it is hardly unusual for favoured bands to come and go. The anxious hardcore and punk acts that scored one’s teenaged years giving way to the pensive, NPR-friendly pop and folk-centric “adult contemporary” of later life. Long nights spent in beer-soaked, eardrum-bursting venues replaced by quiet evenings wit ... Continue Reading

Do you believe in love? That question, posed by vocalist Sam Herring, is the crux upon which Future Island’s ambitious new album rotates. A new exploration of the terrain the trio have claimed artfully for so long, On the Water goes big, the results monumental. Having hit the Baltimore music and arts underground five years ago with much gusto, b ... Continue Reading

Believe it or not, people used to make things in Baltimore: airplanes, cars, even brooms. The most iconic factory in town was Bethlehem Steel's complex at Sparrow's Point, tucked in a peninsula just southeast of the city line. Deborah Rudacille's criminally overlooked Roots of Steel is the story of Sparrow's Point, from its Nineteenth Century origi ... Continue Reading