After nearly three years of crowd-roiling shows, plus multiple attempts at recording, basement band releases its anticipated debut album: a polished compilation of the group’s best live songs to date. basement band was founded when longtime friends and musical collaborators Jeff Malinowski (guitar, vocals) and John Durgee (drums, vocals) moved to Brooklyn in 2005. The duo began performing their folk-rock-influenced songs in venues throughout NYC, and fortuitously fell into a group of talented young musicians reviving country music’s Honky Tonk tradition at the Lower East Side’s Living Room. Performing there and at various other New York venues ever since, the band retained its harmony-driven, alt.country feel while its size—and sound—expanded. The outfit now floods the stage six musicians strong, with Amal Bouhabib’s honey-drenched vocals, James Preston’s cadenced bass, Patrick Hay’s prodigious guitar and Bryan Trenis’s organ accompaniment often augmenting their original sound to a fever pitch. In the summer of 2007, basement band began recording their debut album the way most NYC groups do: In a cramped Manhattan studio, laying down tracks individually (guitars first, then drums, then bass). But created track by track, the band found that their songs lacked the “live” feel so essential to their sound. So after finding a recording studio large enough for them all to track together in Woodstock, NY, the musicians quit the city for a weekend trip. There, the album’s ten songs were all re-recorded. With basic tracks in hand, the band returned to Brooklyn to add some finishing touches (vocal harmonies, percussion), but purposely left the tracks bare enough so that the recordings retained their live sound. The resulting album, “until the evening came” is a stirring mix of barn-splintering rock and heartbreaking country ballads. basement band’s songs have been likened to Harvest-era Neil Young, or Wilco, though their unique style filters from the group’s component parts: a strong musical proficiency (full, knitted harmonies, tight arrangements), peppered with arcs of influence like Keith Richards slide-guitar, Dylan-esque harmonica solos and Fleetwood Mac-like layered vocals. This combination of instrumental mastery and soulful intuition result in a polished and spontaneous rock band whose modern lyrics add relevance to melodies reminiscent of classic rock standards and poignant campfire refrains from eras gone by.