• Stupid band name, funny album name, mediocre album.

This has been quite the year for Baltimore’s experimental music scene. Noah Lennox (a.k.a. Panda Bear) may have escaped his Maryland hometown for the sunnier pastures of Portugal, but he did release two of the year’s best albums — his solo release Person Pitch and Animal Collective’s upcoming Strawberry Jam. Party-rocker Dan Deacon has also become the talk of the town lately, and even the guitar-worshipping two-piece Ecstatic Sunshine are getting some love.
    With the release of Unbeast the Leash, the lo-fi audio-visual duo Video Hippos have thrown themselves onto the heap as well. The 13 songs here sound like they were recorded live to tape in a hallway, yet the underlying pop hooks, galloping percussion and longing vocals still come through loud and clear. Japanther is the most obvious comparison, but Halifax’s Windom Earle or a punk rock take on The Rentals wouldn’t be too far off either.
    The downside with this group is that as cool as their sound can be, it’s not versatile enough to maintain an entire album’s attention span. There are certainly high points, like the sunny, tightly wound “Bear Fight,” the hyperactive video-game soundscapes of “Wages Of Fear” and especially the fuzzed-out guitar-driven “Rider,” but for the most part these songs meld together into a sugary, half-baked mess.