Unlike Kevin Costner, Douglas Martin did not sleep with Cal Ripken’s wife.
Baltimore is not well-known for being a sparkling-clean metropolis. After all, this is the city which served as the backdrop for The Wire, one of the grittiest shows on television. However, it does seem like the perfect little city to be an artist; cheap rent allows more time to drink beer and more time to indulge your artistic whims. Since location subconsciously bleeds into a person’s psychological makeup, it’s safe to say most of the artists based from Baltimore carry particles of the city in their DNA. Beach House, the city’s biggest musical export, creates hazy dream-pop with an alluring cheapness that emanates from their instruments and chintzy drum machines. Dan Deacon crafts a ballistic form of spastic, hyperactive electronic music which vaguely recalls Bmore Club music. Ponytail fires on all cylinders with warp-speed, charmingly obnoxious art-punk.
Lands and Peoples hail from the same place as the aforementioned acts, but are almost completely off the grid by comparison. Commencing with a bouncy thump, their new single “In Living Colour” represents the sort of prettiness that’s not often talked about when Baltimore comes up in conversation. In the song, Caleb Moore’s high tenor is cloaked in crystalline reverb and pushed high in the mix, reaching up to a falsetto and wordlessly cooing through certain parts of the song. Toward the bridge, buzzing distortion takes over and the bassline does most of the heavy lifting before returning things back to its comfortably balmy state. With all its blissed-out appeal, “In Living Colour” shows a comely side of Baltimore not yet represented in its music scene. Cal Ripken would be prouder than a motherfucker.
Lands and Peoples’ “In Living Colour” 7” will be out soon via Environmental Aesthetics.
Download:
MP3: Lands and Peoples – “In Living Colour”
