There’s an innocence to Playing To Vapors. An innocence that’s also evoked from your favorite band’s first records. This is the stuff of what musical juggernauts were made of before the music industry, egos and fame had tarnished their musicality. When it was still about having fun and expressing whatever needed to be strung and sung and carried by a bass and drum.

At it’s purest form, it’s a curiosity, an amalgamation of your influences and ordeals brewed down to a sound that implores you to send its vibrations through your body and to your aural cavern again and again. If it’s done right, there’s an absolute magic there. And if it’s done with heart, it can awe and inspire.

“I’ve always said that, ‘I want people to feel something when they listen to the music we make.’ And, I want it to resonate with them, because – my favorite music that I like to listen to always makes me feel something.”

I first saw Playing To Vapors at Mahall’s back in the early spring. The Columbus band played along a slew of local groups on a conventional night out.

The crew took the stage as the closing bill, and opened with the first track off their latest LP, A Glitch In A Void.

“Fragments” is a sonic pulse. It’s an introduction that engrosses with sounds that warble and sputter as if you’re transitioning from a continuum. A sort of, eyes shift from left to right; loosen your head up to peak above and think, “Where are we?”

The strangeness and space-ness of “Fragments” seamlessly descends (or ascends?) into “You Never Seem Sorry When You’re Gone,” with a trickling guitar begun by Mike Stokes. Vocalist, Lucas Harris sweetly croons over the pleading case brought by drummer, Josiah DePaso, and Zack Cramp meets the conviction on his bass. The verse calls your attention, and before you know it, Daron DiSabato’s guitar is soaring and descending, like a murmuration of starlings.

The night of mundane bands and flat plot is revoked. And beyond just the cold in the night, the humidity in the bar, the buzz from the beer, you feel something. As the words, “Damn those boys are good!” exit your mouth, you realize, a connection has been made.

The next morning, I listened to A Glitch In A Void in its entirety. I applauded those clever-Columbus boys in their management of bridging gaps of tight-grooved live performances and an album production that borderlines Godrich.

“A lot of people have related our music to something that’s more calculated and thought out. There’s definitely an element of that in there…something we try to do when we’re writing music is really think out each part and what it’s purpose is in the song. And how it relates, not only to the song, but it’s place in the record as well.”

What is most impressive about Playing To Vapors is the excitement they induce whilst listening to them. They remind me of what it was like to listen to my favorite alt-rock bands for the first time. It’s that innocence. You can hear and see that they’re having fun. Through every riff, every interlude, down to each note, everything was painstakingly placed there under much calculation and after several reworkings. That’s not a process – it’s a passion. And it channels so well in their live performances and on A Glitch In The Void that the listener is at their disposal.

These are exciting times for Playing To Vapors. And exciting times for the audiences that get to catch them now. The band will remind you of why you listen to music. After you’re swooned by their melodies, you can’t help but to get super stoked for them. Playing To Vapors, that little kid with looks of charm and charisma, casting you a smile and saying something as witty as it is heartfelt. You think, “You’re gonna go somewhere, kid.”

Playing To Vapors play tonight at The Grog Shop