They're in Your Head

A Conversation with Baltimore Dream Pop Dreamboats, Lands and Peoples

You are walking through a dark, lush forest. There is no moon or light overhead. Wet leaves brush against your face. Something is moving with you, breathing with you. You hear drums in the distance, getting louder with each step, so you follow their sound, walking towards the unknown.

Open your eyes. You are in a small room full of people, standing, listening, entranced by the music onstage. Lands and Peoples takes you on your own hero’s journey with each performance. In the short span of just two years of coming together and creating their sound, they have been heralded as one of the Baltimore’s brightest in the city’s thriving independent music scene. On first listen, one could guess that the band members have a few well loved Beach House, Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective records laying around the house. This inspiration has created a foundation upon which they have begun building their own meticulously crafted structure of sound. Their self entitled five song EP, which was released in 2009, has pulled at listener’s heartstrings and left them wanting more.

Each listen reveals another hidden detail: a bird chirping, a faint clicking noise that could be a bicycle passing by. This production was not hastily put together but painstakingly completed with care. 

The creators of this beautiful fever dream are Caleb Moore, Beau Cole, Amanda Willis and Brian Goldstein. While one may want to imagine them as the archetypal brooding, socially introverted musicians, that is far from the truth*.

My conversation with Beau covered a wide range of topics covering the new IFC show Portlandia, earworms, and 90’s sitcom Caroline in the City. We will get back to the ear worms in a moment. The first question was my most serious and probably the one that fans would rate as the number one question they could ask: What is your favorite gas station food? The answer was full of conviction “Cardboard pizza from 7-11”. Relieved that I was now done with the hard hitting journalism, the conversation moved on to what it was like to collaborate with fellow band mates onstage when creating their dream scape of sound.

We’re a lot like a Fire Fighting Calendar. You have the summer months with the pictures of us with the wind in our hair, then the fall and winter months where our looks are sleepier, slightly more seductive. The exposed abs and hard bodies would just be a bonus

After we both created our own mental images of the Lands and Peoples fire fighting calendar, Beau took on a more serious tone, “Our performances are very mellow and focused. Amanda, Caleb and I take turns playing each instrument while Brian fills and completes the sound with the Bass, giving us more texture and depth. Each sound we create is very intentional and placed at the exact moment we want it”. When asked about the name of their new album, Pop Guilt, Beau explained that its all about ear worms. An Ear worm, according to the scholarly site Wikipedia, is “a portion of a song or other music that repeats compulsively within one’s own mind”. That, according to Beau, is what Pop Guilt is all about.

We want to find the balance of playing for ourselves and playing for an audience. It is a both a continuation and a departure of our EP. We are finding our voice.

This is the third tour that Lands and Peoples has gone on and the first time that the band plays in many of the southerly states that the some of the members hail from. Beau talks with admiration and excitement about Lands and People’s participation in the Stopover Festival this year.

Booking shows can be difficult during SXSW so it’s so great that Savannah is facilitating a place where bands can easily come together and reach a new audience. There will be some amazing performances.

After their one night in Savannah the band gets back on the road in their Dodge Nitro and heads off to Tallahassee Florida to play alongside Holiday Shores, then to New Orleans, Houston and finally Austin. 

Be sure not to miss your first chance to see Lands and Peoples live. They are playing with fellow Baltimore favorites and tour companions Secret Mountains and the rockin’ Birds of Avalon. It is a guaranteed night of amazing music, people and collaborations. March is going to be a great month for Lands and Peoples, so if you have your own Fire Fighter Calendar, be sure to mark them down.