Dungeon Kids-Oh How it Hurts EP (2013)

 Dungeon Kids' upbeat, off-kilter garage thrumming doesn't really fit with what you expect from Baltimore, s a city best known for Edgar Allen Poe, The Wire, and grinding poverty.* I guess it's just further evidence that the internet has completely decentered physical space and its influence from how musicians work?

Getting off my pseudo-insightful high horse, Dungeon Kids offers thee five tracks that fall somewhere between garage rock and Fugazi-style postpunk. It's a strange mix that I've never really understood, but these kids is good at it. The lead song, "Is there Light?," perfectly encapsulates their sound. It opens with fullforce guitar fuzz and a mushy rhythm section that propels the band forward. Then, around 20 seconds, the song jerks into a midtempo verse that sounds like the chorus. It comes complete with the noodling guitar leads that never break through into catharsis. This is the third band in the last year that reminds me of the Unicorns without really sounding like them at all. Anyway Dungeon Kids are more interesting if only because it sounds like they in fact give a shit about the music they're playing. Same goes for Celestial Shore & Shopping Spree, the other two bands.

The "sounds like____" formula is escaping me right now, but this is the sort of album that my friends in Olympia would blast when it's noon, we're stoned and unemployed, and the sun hasn't come out for about a week. That sorta stuff.

Get stoopid then get a job with Dungeon Kids, over here!

*Oh, and this band!