SUPER CITY W/ QUIET HOLLERS, OUTCALLS, & NATURAL VELVET

Super City is back at Creative Alliance with an epic lineup of local special guests including Outcalls and Natural Velvet, as well as Sofaburn record label mates Quiet Hollers!

Having released their first album with a record label in 2023, Super City is hitting the road again and starting the year off right in Baltimore. Their Sofaburn Records release, In the Midnight Room, is still traveling the airwaves across the country. Still bringing their melodic, guitar-driven sound to the stage, Super City is known for blending heavy rock elements and danceability, all with band choreography that results in striking live performances. This Baltimore band expertly crafts guitar and synth earworms that thrive on the creative tension between bombastic rock and roll and stylized movements. Their structures and melodies leave no room for a dull track.

QUIET HOLLERS
Shape-shifting Kentucky indie outfit Quiet Hollers’ music connects with listeners around depression, anxiety, grief, and addiction, nodding to a wide range of influences across the spectra of alt country, indie rock, punk, and in what they have coined “post americana.” Formed by its songwriter Shadwick Wilde in the early 2010s, the group has announced work on their fifth LP, Loud Mountains, a painfully self-aware retrospective on a decade of fighting through mental illness and the music industry.

OUTCALLS
The vocal pop duo Outcalls has been dubbed the “electronic opera queens” of Baltimore. Led by Britt Olsen-Ecker and Melissa Wimbish, both classically trained musicians, Outcalls creates genre-defying pop music that counters the tired narratives pervading much of today’s popular songs. With compelling performances and songs that feature melodic and harmonic surprises, their voices can “tickle your ear hairs one second and shake your teeth the next” (David William, The Bulletin). Masterful sopranos fuse into lush harmonies that easily translate from the operatic stage to bandstands and radio waves.

Unconventional pop arrangements layer acoustic and electronic elements to create refreshing, dance-inducing, woman-fronted hits. Their album, No King (2017), features “art pop songs” that unfold in chapters and have a cinematic quality. For WTMD Radio’s Alternative Music Awards, they were awarded Best Vocal Performance for “No King” in addition to nominations for Album of the Year and Best Album Art. “No King” was listed in Baltimore Sun’s “Songs That Defined Baltimore in 2017” and voted #6 in the Top 89 Songs of 2017 by 89.7 WTMD Radio listeners in Baltimore. The following year, they were voted #1 for their single “Keep Falling Over” in the Top 89 Songs of 2018. Outcalls’ latest releases “Stay” (2019) and “Mother” (2020) were featured on celebrity astrologer Chani Nicholas’ Cosmic Playlist Series. They were recognized as Baker Artist Award Finalists in both 2019 and 2020, and were winners in 2021.

Olsen-Ecker and Wimbish are dedicated to building a stronger, more sustainable future for women in the music industry. They were recently invited to present a master class and recital for Colorado Mesa University commercial music majors for the CMU Presents Series. They are creative risk-takers seeking greater independence as composers, tour managers, engineers, and sound designers.

Outcalls has self-booked several tours throughout the US and Canada including The Skinny Tour, Expand the Fam Tour, Goin’ Down South Tour, The Breakfast Tour, and Nothing Will Go Wrong Tour. Recent performances include opening for American rapper, singer, and poet Dessa at Ottobar (November 2022) and their sold-out album release show Release the Gowns at The Voxel (May 2022). Their third studio album, Greatest Hits: Vol. 1 was released on February 4, 2022.

NATURAL VELVET
Natural Velvet is Corynne Ostermann (bass, vocals), Greg Hatem (drums), Spike Arreaga (guitar) and Kim Te (guitar). The post-punk quartet is known in their native Baltimore for a distinct sound that is both aggressive and catchy. Framed by washing guitars, vocals that alternately howl and harmonize, and throbbing drum sounds, Natural Velvet creates music that moves between gazey indie pop and guttural, “wall of sound” noise rock. Aggressive bass lines throughout tie together a dark and foreboding framework, ultimately leaving the listener with haunting melody and hypnotic rhythm. At times confrontational, at times seductive, Ostermann’s vocals guide the listener through dark rolling narratives of identity, existence, rage and femininity.