One unfortunate thing about doing previews for bands is that I don't always have time to do reviews. Bands blow through town, and all I have to go on is their recorded music and whatever cell phone footage has been shot of them at some dingy bar show. If I got paid a substantially large amount of money, then I would of course drop all of my friends and family to attend every possible show I could, but this is not the way things have worked out, so I'm forced to use my intuition. Does this blurry video of a band seem compelling? Do their albums sound good enough?

There can be a fair amount of indecision - even aside from music criticism - when it comes time to make a choice about what local show you'll give your attention to. No one can see anything, but it can be embarrassing, sometimes, to realize how many people in town are unfamiliar with our most popular faces. Bands like Oh Dear!, FLORIDA (nee Not From Brooklyn), Wow, Laura and The Rusty Cleavers. Next to seeing them live, on a whim, the best way to get acquainted with the true personality of a Tacoma band is quickly shaping up to be to watch their performance on a Cave Session, the monthly video series from MountainHouse Recordings.

The Cave Sessions have been in production since April, with Andrew Nalty and Jesse Goodrum inviting bands into their recording studio for a live show, which they professionally record and is beautifully photographed by Last Minute V/P. So far, five bands have come through the studio, at no cost to them, to make gorgeously shot videos of what it looks like to see them perform - a benefit that Nalty and Goodrum have actively strived for.

"We wanted to help out bands around here and give them a place to film a video, and put it out as promotion for both parties - the studio and the band," says Goodrum. "Our pilot was Not From Brooklyn, and we pitched that to Last Minute V/P, which decided that they wanted us to help out with filming it, and making it HD and getting us a lot better camera equipment."

"We had been at MountainHouse Recordings for three years," says Nalty. "I got Jesse an internship, which turned into him being a studio manager, actually, which is his title now. He was going to Bates Technical College for a while, and (the Cave Sessions) was originally going to be a school project, just a final portfolio piece, but it went really well. We know how hard it is, because we've been playing in bands around here since school, so we want to help give people a reason to go out and see shows. If there are bands out there that are playing shows, then they deserve to have a video online to give them more of a reach and get people to these shows. We've got a lot of good music around. ... We quickly realized that it was more than just a school project."

Bands come in, they play their five best songs in front of a crowd of invited guests, and then everything is beautifully edited together to be uploaded online. The people of MountainHouse Recordings aren't shy about saying that it promotes their studio just as much as it does the bands, but they're right to say so. The recordings sound crisp and clear, and the breadth and variety of the bands that they so far had come through show their versatility. In addition to the punk bluegrass of the Rusty Cleavers and the wordy indie rock of Oh Dear!, the math-rock of Fantastic Animals and the bedroom pop of Coma Figura's Kyle Gootkin have all rolled through, thus far.

The Cave Sessions is nothing if not a way to get intimate with your favorite bands you've yet to hear.

>>> To see more Cave Sessions, visit youtube.com/user/MountainHouseTV.

>>> To learn more about MountainHouse Recordings, visit mountainhouserecordings.com.

SEE ALSO

The Rusty Cleavers perform live Dec. 13 at the Polar Plaza Ice Rink