Not familiar with the 1978 film from which Admiral Browning‘s Corvette Summer takes its name? Don’t sweat it. I don’t think the band could hold it against you. Corvette Summer stars a post-Star Wars, pre-Empire Mark Hamill as a recent high school grad whose sportscar gets stolen and he spends the entire summer trying to track down the jerks who took it. Yup, that’s the movie. On the tape version of Admiral Browning‘s latest EP, you even get to hear the audio from the trailer. How the Maryland three-piece came into awareness of its existence, I don’t know, but for an outfit who’ve always specialized in doing things just a little weird, just a little their own way, to release a hand-signed red metallic four-song limited tape EP (five if you grab the download) with two studio tracks on side one and two live tracks on side two, housed in a classic red case with their logo in a blazing late-’70s font at the top makes a fitting kind of sense. It’s better not to ask questions, in other words. Just roll with it.

It’s been two years since Admiral Browning‘s fifth album, Give No Quarter (review here), was released. A change in geographic situation — i.e. one of them moved — can be blamed for a relative lack of activity, but Corvette Summer was put together to coincide with a recent week-plus on the road, and they’ve embarked on a series of digital, expanded reissues for their past albums, so guitarist Matt LeGrow, bassist Ron “Fez” McGinnis and drummer Tim Otis are by no means done.

And in addition to sitting on the merch table at shows, Corvette Summer serves the further purpose of pushing the long-instrumental outfit’s continuing experiment with vocals even further than did the last album, LeGrow and McGinnis harmonizing on the side one studio cuts “Human Dilemma” and “The Devil’s in the Details” to an effective degree that enhances the bizarro-prog sensibility that has long been in their songcraft while also grounding the material in a way that supports their blazing turns of rhythm rather than detracting from them. Particularly the latter, “The Devil’s in the Details,” is delivered with a focus on hook that, when Admiral Browning released Battle Stations (review here) in 2011 probably would’ve been inconceivable for them. That’s not to critique their progression one way or another, just noting that in addition to their grooves, sometimes the nature of the band itself is given to unexpected shifts.

That also suits Admiral Browning well, and if Corvette Summer is meant to be an experiment in realizing the next stage of the band, they deliver a comprehensive glimpse at where they might be headed between sides one and two. Recorded in March at Cafe 611 in Frederick, MD, at a gig which also hosted local luminaries Righteous Bloom, Nagato and Faith in Jane, both cuts on the tape — “Corvette Summer” itself and “Spanish Trampoline” — are instrumental, but the download also gives a live version of “Human Dilemma” as a bonus track that finds LeGrow and McGinnis working through the vocal arrangement smoothly on stage while Otis pushes through his standard-operating-procedure cardiovascular drumming method behind.

The core of Admiral Browning‘s approach has always been the trio’s ability to remain heavy in the face of technical intricacy and to groove while fulfilling frenetic pacing and unrepentant nuance. That has not changed, but their melodic conceptualization has, and ultimately makes them a stronger, more versatile act. I wouldn’t necessarily expect Admiral Browning after Corvette Summer to go all-out, vocals-every-song, verse-into-chorus-into-verse on every release from here on out, but the simple fact that they have another tool in their arsenal — two, if you count the contributions of both singers — only broadens their reach as they move forward.

Hopefully they do move forward. Corvette Summer plays a distinct role as a stopgap in demonstrating the trio’s commitment despite living apart — the tour does likewise — but the question remains as to what their process might be for putting together a full-length follow-up to Give No Quarter while essentially having to work around an all-in-the-same-room approach or otherwise jam out in limited or intermittent stretches. Whatever they do next, the progression they continue to show in everything they do is plainly evident in “Human Dilemma” and “The Devil’s in the Details,” and while the tape is short, it finds them undaunted in their considerable task. If this is how Admiral Browning can keep growing, then so be it. They still sound like a band who needs to be making this music, and they deliver here with a clarity that highlights how underrated they truly are.

Admiral Browning, “The Devil’s in the Details” Live in MD, 2013

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Now more than a decade on since getting together in the formidable Maryland heavy underground that now regards them as stalwarts, mostly-instrumental trio Admiral Browning arrive at their most progressive space yet with their fifth album overall, Give No Quarter. The album is something of an enigma, because with it, the band depart the relative comforts of the visual and musical narrative they put to such effective use on 2011’s Battle Stations (review here), opting instead for a collection of seven individual pieces less tied together than last time out, while at the same time, the individual complexity and personality of the tracks themselves is much more varied and individualized. Invariably, they touch on some of the seaward thematics they’ve brought out in the past — the title comes from a quote attributed to the pirate Edward “Blackbeard” Teach: “Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters… or take any from you” — but musically, with elements of progressive rock, jazz, flamenco and psychedelic jamming, they’re far less tied to one aesthetic than they’ve ever been. That’s not to mention that Give No Quarter also marks the first time an Admiral Browning long-player features the vocals of guitarist Matt LeGrow, who’s joined in the trio by  bassist Ron “Fez” McGinnis and drummer Tim Otis, with the track “Zee Birds” providing an early and unexpected curve. Helena Goldberg of fellow Marylander outfit Akris also guests on vocals alongside McGinnis for the following centerpiece, “Malachai’s Lament,” so from whatever angle you want to approach it, Give No Quarter presents a more textured and complex Admiral Browning than has been heard on any of the band’s prior outings, be it Battle Stations, 2009’s Magic Elixir (review here) or 2007’s Dead Pets. Seems unlikely that the fact that Give No Quarter is also the first album they recorded completely by themselves would be a coincidence, but in concert with that, the sonic boldness that much of the record shows is easy to read as a signal overall of the band having simply decided to do what they want and said screw it to the rest.

That would seem to imply some level of settling in terms of their sound, but again, Give No Quarter in no way feels still. Beginning with some post-tuning guitar drums and a quick six-count, “Theme for Evil” shows with an immediate rush that Admiral Browning are continuing to refine their balance of technical intricacy and overarching groove. They are initially and remain unpretentious for the duration, and though it was recorded as they note in the CD liner in Otis‘ garage, the production throughout is no less tight and crisp than the band themselves, who’ve always walked a line between sonic dirt and delve-into-it mathematics. The real miracle of Give No Quarter (though perhaps “miracle” is strong since they’ve been at it for over a decade; man, time flies) is that even as the album rounds out with the captured-live exploration “Rogue Planet,” there’s never much sense that LeGrow, McGinnis and Otis are wholly indulging themselves rather than composing a song. Don’t get me wrong, “Theme for Evil” rounds out with some prog-noodle guitar leads met with bass-fill righteousness underneath — Otis being a steady hand in holding the string section together — and instrumental music by its nature is bound to have some indulgent elements, but Admiral Browning are never out of control either of their own play or of the course of the album’s 41 minutes, and on “Leeroy Jenkins” — which includes a gang shout of the titular name that’s every bit as countrified as you could hope — the impression is more that they’re having fun than they’re showing off. “Leeroy Jenkins” is the shortest of the collection at a blink-and-you-missed it 2:48, but efficient for its quick course, launching with a rush of fast riffing and fleet turns made smooth by consistency in the guitar. Just before a minute in, there’s a stop and the aforementioned shout, McGinnis‘ bass signaling the return, soon joined by LeGrow and Otis as the rush rebuilds, somewhat different but headed in roughly the same direction. They build it to a fitting cacophony before returning to the opening progression to bookend and cap with suitable intensity to lead via feedback to the somewhat more foreboding opening of “Zee Birds.” The intro is the slowest thing yet on the album — it still moves — and some coinciding Korg weirdness from Otis provides a hint of the different approach still to come once the speedily-delivered vocals get underway. The Korg continues behind the vocals in a kind of semi-siren sound, almost Theremin-esque, to add to to the unepxectedness of the track itself, and underneath, McGinnis delivers more jaw-dropping runs on bass while LeGrow‘s guitar fleshes out thick and memorable riffage and Otis proffers a controlled chaos on drums that underscores just how lethal Admiral Browning have become.

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Even before you press play on Battle Stations, the third self-released album from Maryland instrumentalists Admiral Browning, the album is provocative. With fantastic, intricately-drawn artwork from the Los Angeles-based Sean “Skillit” McEleny, there’s a narrative happening across the album’s fold-out visuals. The digipak of Battle Stations opens as normal, and glued to the inside liner is a four-panel foldout poster that joins with the cover to reveal a full picture of three battleships (no coincidence, I’m sure, that Admiral Browning is a trio) going up against a giant, futuristic robot. To look at the cover image above, only the bottom left-hand corner is what you see at first on the digipak.

I’ve included the images after the jump, but what you can see immediately is that there’s a story playing out. On the outside cover, the fight is beginning and the ships look doomed. On the inside, guns ablaze, it looks like the invader is done for, and on the back cover, the alien robot’s carcass smolders on the horizon while the three ships look on, victorious.

All this interesting enough in itself, but taken in the context of Admiral Browning’s back-cover dedication – which reads, “Battle Stations is dedicated to all those remaining positive while battling life-threatening illness or disease, to those that persevere and overcome in the face of insurmountable odds, to those that rebuke thoughts of turning pain into suffering, and to survivors that refuse to give up” – Battle Stations becomes even more thematically loaded. The giant robot becomes a metaphor for some invading disease (cancer seems an appropriate example; tumors have long been depicted as outside invaders in art and literature), and with the musical notes surrounding the battle in the second panel, Admiral Browning are saying that music is at least part of winning the fight against whatever it is being fought.

Aside from being fodder for a deeper read of the album, the visual side of Battle Stations speaks to the conceptual breadth of the band. Doubly curious, then, that the theme and/or story arc doesn’t carry over into the music – or, at least not if titles like “Dreams of Mammurabi” or the Star Wars referential “The Binary Language of Moisture Vaporators” are to be taken on their face. One could easily imbue the five component tracks of Battle Stations as depicting a journey of overcoming conflict, but with well-flowing progressive-edged instrumentals, I get the sense you’d probably be able to do that anyway if you tried hard enough. Particularly as the album presses on to its later cuts, the Eastern-style “Interlude” transitioning smoothly into aforementioned closer “Dreams of the Hammurabi,” there is some feel of resolution in the tracks, but how much of that is put there by Admiral Browning and how much by me listening, I really couldn’t say.

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