The Bad Penny (beta)

It’s not every day you come across a band touted as “bridg[ing] the gap between cerebral jazz-rock, raucous post-punk shredding, and tightly composed minimalism in the school of Steve Reich/ Terry Riley/ Philip Glass.”

But listen to Talking, the debut album by Baltimore-based experimentalists Crying Laughing, and you’ll be hard-pressed to conjure a more apt description of the quintet’s adventurous sound. The band released the record Friday on Hausu Mountain, which is rapidly becoming one of our favorite record labels.

The Bad Penny had the good fortune to catch up with drummer Jen Kirby and alto saxophone player/percussionist Christian Best about, well, all things under the sun, really: Crying Laughing, their music backgrounds, their chemistry, the Baltimore music scene and much more. Fitting for the band’s moniker, we shared lots of laughs, which is why we’ve decided to bring you this interview in video form.

For more on Crying Laughing – and to snag a copy of Talking – go to their Bandcamp page.

This entry was posted on 09/16/2026 at 10:08 am and is filed under Features, Interviews, The Visionaries, Videos with tags Christian Best, Crying Laughing, Hausu Mountain, Jen Kirby. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.