Every Issue Presents Itself: Whysall Lane

Whysall Lane began as a solo/side project for Richard Baluyut of New York's Versus. Now that Versus is on indefinate hiatus, he's moved to San Francisco and finished recording a full album as Whysall Lane with Mikel Delgado and ex-Jawbreaker Adam Pfahler supporting him. You can sample several tracks on their MySpace page and 30 second samples of all of the tracks at the Midhaven Mailorder site, where the album's also available for pre-order.

Whysall Lane - The Way Back

If you're not familiar with Versus or any of it's offshoots, well, let me catch you up. Versus mainly feature Richard Baluyut singing and playing guitar, Fontaine Toups singing and playing bass and James Baluyut providing additional guitar while Patrick Ramos and Ed Baluyut split drum duty. They released numerous albums, EP's and singles from 1993's Let's Electrify to 2000's Hurrah. They are pretty much a guitar-driven band, with an equal mix of jangle, noise and sweet boy/girl vocals.

Versus
Yeah You from Secret Swingers
Deseret from The Stars Are Insane
Reveille from the Ear of the Dragon compillation
Crashing the Afterglow from the Afterglow EP

With Versus on hiatus, James Baluyut formed a project of his own called +/- with Ed Baluyut backing him on drums. For the first +/- record Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut Album, James moved away from the louder guitar sound of Versus and towards a softer, acoustic/electronic mix. To tour the album he put together a full band, which brought the louder guitars back into the mix by default. That line-up recorded the second album, You Are Here. Their 3rd album Let's Build a Fire was released in Japan on Dec. 14th by &Records. So far, there's no word on a U.S. release, but there are streaming samples on the &Records website.

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Ventriloquist
Trapped Under Ice Floes (redux)

Fontaine Toups released a solo album of her own in 2004 where she took her sound from Versus and added a bit more pop. She also made up half of Containe with Connie Lovatt, who herself made up one half of The Pacific Ocean with Ed Baluyut.