“It’s not a bed of flowers to be on the grind,” Dan Keech deadpans on “Hard Work,” from the Baltimore underground mainstay’s upcoming album as Height and Friends. You wouldn’t have known it from the free-spirited Rock and Roll, which arrives tomorrow via Friends/Cold Rhymes and puts the results of that grind on full display. The album title only tells half the truth: This Dan Deacon tourmate draws heavily from fuzzed-out rock aesthetics, but he’s first and foremost a rapper, one with a distinctively off-kilter viewpoint. Hear the full album below, including guest contributions from such fellow Baltimore musicians as Kevin O’Meara of Dan Deacon Orchestra, producers Mickey Free and King Rhythm, and rootsy dream-pop duo Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack.
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