Cream Premiere: Stream Pale Houses' Dreamy Songs of the Isolation [Fresh Tracks]

Good and thoughtful songs, even when paired with impressive musicianship, don't always equate to a massive music career — if they did, Imaginary Baseball League would have built a much higher profile before breaking up in 2005. If you've lived in Middle Tennessee less than a decade, there's a fair chance you don't know IBL and frontman and songwriter Aaron Robinson, and that's too bad, because they were too good even for Stage Dive, our concert review column before we had The Spin, to hate on.

Even if they'd stuck it out, Robinson and IBL's earnest rock mode tied them to emo, some exponents of which have not aged well. Robinson's latest project is a group called Pale Houses, with guitarist Joshua Hood, bassist Aaron Yung and drummer Ryan Rayborn. We're very pleased to premiere their new EP Songs of the Isolation today, which you can stream below. Together, they make a sound that trends toward dream-pop, and it suits Robinson's feelings-forward narratives to the proverbial T.

“With Songs of the Isolation, we went in with a pretty defined sound as a band,” says Robinson in an email. “Choosing to work with Brandon Owens was the best decision we could have made to build on that sound. He understood us and our songs and patiently helped us chase down what we wanted from each one of them. We set out to make something that people could really feel, and I love how it turned out.”

You can get a digital copy of the EP from Pale Houses' Bandcamp beginning on Friday. You can also preorder the vinyl version there — those are slated to ship on May 10. The band is also set to play a release show on Friday, April 20, at The High Watt with Poly, Patrick Damphier and Kyle Andrews in his first solo appearance in several years. Advance tickets are $7, and you can get those right here.