Sometimes music as seemingly simple as Page France’s feels like it’s hardly worth writing about. At the Black Cat on Thursday, the Cumberland, MD six-piece (reigning as the undisputed best indie pop band in western Maryland) played a thirty minute set. Maybe 8 or 10 songs, each one barely more than a hastily-strummed acoustic guitar, a tinkling xylophone, and a simple snare beat. Some songs hardly even had a single chord change for the first…

Perhaps you’ve been to one of those shows where the crowd – for whatever reason – keeps a ten foot distance between themselves and the stage. We’ve seen it before (last summer’s Clientele show at Iota comes to mind), but it baffles us every time. Seems to be that those expecting a night of folk-pop or softer stuff don’t want to get too close to the stage, lest they embarrass the performer or something. Luckily,…