It had been 2 years and 8 months since the last time WTMD hosted a First Thursday concert at the Canton Waterfront Park.
They’ve had plenty of time to plan and they delivered, as they always do. They celebrated local music, emerging music in the alternative scene, and brought an already-nearly-legendary band to the stage. They combined to deliver one of the finest nights of music to grace the park.
Peach Face
An emerging face of the Baltimore scene, Alison Ramirez (as Peach Face) makes lo-fi indie/pop music that explores timeless themes. She cut her teeth playing music at open mics and opening for bands at The Depot and Ottobar. It allowed her to hone her sound, as well as connect to other musicians in the Baltimore scene, reinforcing the city’s reputation for community and collaboration in the arts.
Recently featured in an upcoming documentary on the Baltimore scene (by WTMD’s Sam Sessa), her music alternates readily between a softened big pop sound, the textured rhythms and melodies of an indie band (a la Sylvan Esso), and the smooth groove of rhythm and blues. Right before the extended quarantine period, her star appeared ascendant, playing the main stage at Firefly and picking up opening sets for popular indie pop acts.
At WTMD’s First Thursday, Ramirez picked up right where she’d left off, her voice soaring in the early evening sun. She played known and unknown songs as the growing audience increasingly danced, letting loose and finding itself in a place that was at once deeply familiar and unfamiliar – together.
The show began with the recently released “Dirt Boy”, a lovely slow jam that that bubbles into a heavy and sensual groove that matches the delightfully flipped manic pixie boy themes. She followed with “Lady Bird”, defined by its smooth, subtle guitar lines and an interplay between observational and confessional lyrics. The band went right back to bedroom grooves with “Midnight Lover”, an undeniably sexy song that begs the listeners to dance with anyone they can.
They peppered the rest of Peach Face’s set with songs that perpetuated the groove while embracing singalongs. Recent single “Grocery Store Flowers” rode a thick backbeat and Ramirez’s fluid vocals and flowed straight into “Ghost”, the single she wrote with Modern Nomad. Ramirez and her band also delivered a delicious reinterpretation of “Baby One More Time” (Britney Spears) that both amused and moved me. Other features included the more downtempo “Treat Me Like the Weather” and her biggest hit, “Grilled Cheese”, one of the most charming songs to come out in years. The music video is also delightful and worth your time.
After they walked off the stage, she made sure to say hello to any fans, both new and old, graciously making everyone she encountered feel important. I am excited to catch another show and watch her career continue to grow. Please go see her as soon as you can.
The Heavy Hours
A band formed in the fires of adversity, The Heavy Hours released their first EP, Wildfire, during the heaviest part of the pandemic. Recorded with Simone Felice (The Lumineers, The Avett Brothers), it signaled a clear beginning and a mission statement simultaneously, sharing their vision for catchy and propulsive alternative rock.
Their full-length debut Gardens – first recorded several years ago before the pandemic – in February of this year. Before it ever released, it found the ears of Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys), which resulted in more attention and support, including a Nashville writing session that eventually led to Wildfires. Sonically, Gardens predicts Wildfires, its emphases on huge moments and massive melodies likely to inflame crowds to loud singalongs.
The band took the stage after Peach Face and showed a side to their music that is influenced by recent tours with acts like Galactic. They stretched out the songs while still embracing their poppier and catchier elements, as the lead singer strutted around the stage and encouraged the Baltimore audience to engage with them.
Parquet Courts
Parquet Courts explores what it means to live in this world by exploring the tensions of noise/dissonance paired with tight harmonies, hooks, and the sorts of phrases that feel deeply existential. They never get bogged down by their explorations of how to be human, how to be alive; their sound buoys the questions into a dance or a thrash, a singalong instead of a letdown. Never has this been more true than with their pandemic-released album Sympathy for Life, an album that captures the simple ecstasy of being human better than any of its predecessors.
Which doesn’t mean they ignore the cavernous and endless search for understanding that has defined their work. Andrew Savage (singer) explores questions about what it means to exist in a world that glorifies the objectification of all people (e.g., as the thing we are or the role we possess more than the self we identify), the impact of capital and migrancy on the modern era; the tension between algorithms shaping humanity and the products they provide being genuinely good in their way; the tensions of learning how not to live in a depressed state, to avoid being underground. Generally, much of the album (and work in general) is concerned with how to be human in an era when humanity isn’t valued by society.
Ultimately, they let the grooves do the answering. There is no truth more true than movement.
Parquet Courts might be the most perfect band to reopen First Thursday. In the face of a world that is changing more than many choose to acknowledge, during which the powerful gather more power and increasingly plan for a world that won’t exist (at least in the same way), Parquet Courts’ propulsive punk rock and incisive commentary lend itself to the zeitgeist of the 2020s. There’s an element to Parquet Courts that screams “Fuck you” at the same time as “Let’s fix this shit” and “Fuck it, let’s mosh and groove together”.
And damn, if it didn’t feel good to shout along with them and feel the both/and tensions of enjoying life and embracing the simple terrors of existing in 2022. Parquet Courts drew from across their oeuvre; “Freebird II”, “Human Performance”, and “Almost Had to Start a Fight/In and Out of Patience” all enlivened the crowd in a specific kind of way, taking hold of a little nostalgia at the same time as opening the room to fuck shit up and forget ourselves.
Revelation, though, struck with the songs from Sympathy for Life. “Application/Apparatus” opened the set with its blips, plunks, and evisceration of inhumanity, but my personal favorites were “Marathon of Anger” and “Plant Life”, each of which became meaningful songs to me. “Walking at a Downtown Pace” with its themes of memory, place, and the pains of losing oneself in time exploded with more power in person, almost becoming an anthem of self-remembrance and self-perseverance.
Of course, the back end of the setlist featured “Mardi Gras Beads” and “Stoned and Starving”, buoying the audience one last time before ending the set.
Ultimately, Parquet Courts’ music functions to bring awareness to the anxieties that plague society while holding onto the joyful stubbornness of staying alive anyway. After all, “the soil’s got a fever.”
