Long Odds – “Before Here”

The second preview from Long Odds’ new album doubles down on the project’s time-collapsed feel. “Before Here” is a dusty, three-quarter-time number—guitars warble at the edge of their tuning, the drumming tiptoes, and Adam Elliott’s vocal stays buried just enough to make the song sound excavated rather than recorded. It could pass for a forgotten 4-track session from three decades ago, but the sense of balance is too precise for that.

Elliott, who drums and fronts recently reunited noisemakers Times New Viking, uses Long Odds as a softer counterweight. Here, he’s joined by Philip Kim (Connections) and Joseph Anthony Camerlengo (Van Dale, and a long list of other Columbus concerns), reinforcing a lineup that reads like a small archive of Ohio underground guitar music. The convergence never tips into overplaying; the track hovers, faintly, as if reluctant to land.

Kim shot the accompanying video, which serves as a bleary visual complement. The album, The Dry Land, arrives July 24 on Clean Demon Records. Two release-week shows in Columbus and Cleveland are on the books, with support from a clutch of local fixtures including Big Fat Head, RA Washington, and Braxton Marbury.