“It’s spring again! / And all my friends are dying.” Baltimore band Boat Water are full of unique mantras, repeated phrases, like the opening song, “A Song About A Bear,” where they repeat for five minutes, “Oh no! I chase that honey! / Oh no, it ain’t that funny.” The songs are mostly experimental, what they call “punk/alt-country” jams, in their Bandcamp tags. They reminded me of if old Baltimore artist, Will Oldham met My Morning Jacket, with MMJ’s flair for extravagant, psych rock and Oldham’s almost country sensibilities and warped story telling.
Most of the songs are over the six-minute mark, and fit sometimes into another tag they have on Bandcamp, “drone.” This is music fit for a Baltimore club, if you’ve ever been lucky to see music there. Gritty, soulful, punkish, but with satisfying melodic elements, as many Baltimore bands tend to be. It was recorded, for over a year on and off, it seems, at Baltimore’s The Watermelon Room, often in one live take, they said on their instagram.
They know how to spin a yarn. “What’s become of the cowboy’s story told? / Another story wrapped in its golden mold.” The 8-minute song “Adele,” in the middle of the album is about a friend from youth that goes off to the Army. It’s interesting to see what different paths our friends take as they grow up: one boy going off to war, another writing about it, with what seems like a healthy dose of skepticism. “And to poor Adele / The end was easy to see / Yeah the air smelled like the 4th of July.” “Go on and burn your city / Go on and burn and burn and burn and burn.”
“Sparrow Omen” is a song written “for the birds that sing,” but also “for the hurricane that brought me back.” The conclusion in the song is that “We gotta praise it all—birds and bees and carousels and a sweet song’s melody.” Each of the songs show a band telling unique stories, home grown myths, to get at the heart of the matter, much like poetry and song does, but without the predictable tropes often used.
The last song finds them, like Neutral Milk Hotel before them, singing about Jesus Christ. The singer is apparently the same age, 33, when Jesus died. But the song is a unique look at the story about stories. “It’s so funny! / It makes me smile!” “We are the image we create,” they conclude. “And when the world ended we showed up late.”
The music is super satisfying on this album and it’s no wonder record labels have been reaching out to them. It’s actually available for physical tape release on Baron Tapes. It’s only six songs, but plays for 45 face-melting and drone-drifting minutes. It reminds me of friends from Baltimore bands in the early 2000s, though the rock sound is timeless. If you like your music with a bit of quirk and a lot of sonic dynamics. If you like Baltimore music, I think you’ll like this album.
Prism Reviews 