Ira Gamerman is drunk on words. Stories pour out of the 25-year-old local (for the moment: word is that he's moving to Chicago) playwright and singer/guitarist in indie-rock trio Even So as if he can't keep them inside. "I was stranded in Seattle after five hours in the air/ pondering the ending of my latest love affair" he stammers in the opening line of "Drink Two (Homecoming and Departures)," the leadoff track of the trio's second EP. And he's just getting started: During the minute and a half song he sprints through the bridge with "So drink one for the title of the record/ drink two for the tearstains on your sleeve/ drink five and you'll survive if you make out alive/ drink seven and you'll get no more reprieves."

The stories Gamerman tells are less fully formed than feverish glimpses of the big picture, like watching a DVD at 32 times normal speed. And his bluntly throaty voice is an ideal imperfection to run through these slivers, an unmannered, yelping earnestness that sells such restlessness as sincere even when it sounds like John Ashbery madlibs-viz. the "but airbag, airbag I can't see the future from the dashboard window changing all your colors and alright yet my god can you tell me there must be a way to make my life more efficient" from "Interstellar (Airbag, Airbag)." Everything arrives in such hurried insistence that you suspect that for every song Even So has recorded Gamerman has 10 scribbled in a notebook and another 47 ricocheting around the inside of his skull.

Musically, though, the trio hasn't figured out how best to interact with these rushing non-narrative snapshots. At the moment, it almost sounds as if the implied pace of Gamerman's lyrics sets the songs' tempos-which means that drummer Sam Hoffberger echoes the skittishness in cymbal splashes and anxious hi-hats and bassist Tyler Wolfe is left to pound away keeping up. It makes for fine indie-rock spiked with playful jitters-think Ted Leo/Pharmacists minus Leo's almost Lindsey Buckingham-esque gift for pop gloss-but it all starts to feel too cookie cutter, as if there merely to frame the words. As in, when the meandering drive of Gamerman's "Interstellar" is paired with a slowly swaying beat and treble-kicking guitar sheen, the result sounds way too Hoobastanky. The folksy march of "A Song for the Stable Marie (Annelise)" works better, exploding into something almost as barn-levitating as Califone by the song's end. Best here is "Joseph Lewis Lucas," where Even So contrasts Gamerman's wry run-on sentences with endless summer power-pop. Gamerman eventually becomes a tad too precocious/precious at the end, but it's hard to fault overwriting in a young songwriter who probably still has another few hours in him he needs to get out before he finds his stride.

"I graduated [from college] and I decided that I wanted to play in a band and write a play, and I did both," Ira Gamerman says when asked about his parallel ambitions. And when it comes to music and theater in Baltimore these days, Gamerman always appears to be making the creative rounds, both on the page and the stage. An accomplished playwright—City Paper's 2006 Best of Baltimore—and a Towson University-trained actor, the scruffy and shy 25-year-old hiding behind a soft voice and a head full of baby curls is also the guitarist, singer, and songwriter for indie-rock band Even So.

The trio is sitting around the dining room table in drummer Sam Hoffberger's Pikesville home on an afternoon in May—an upturned colander full of ancient Halloween candy at its center. Gamerman works through a pile of Starbursts as they run through some of the bumps that occasionally come from being a band with so many irons in the fire. Despite already splitting his energies between theater and music, Gamerman still does administrative work for Agora Publishing to pay the bills. In fact, all of Even So's members have very adult-sounding jobs that support their musical lives.

Hoffberger, 24, is an insurance agent still brandishing a few piercings, the only visible evidence that he's the band's resident harder edge. And running in a couple minutes late, bassist Tyler Wolfe, 25, is still wearing the black turtleneck and khakis of his day gig as a librarian. (Gamerman and Hoffberger sport standard-issue rock band T-shirts and hoodies.) And the jobs and side projects do, occasionally, get in the band's way. "Ira keeps blowing vacation days on playwriting conferences," Wolfe jokes.

Even So formed back in the summer of 2004, shortly after Gamerman had written No One Told You? (A Black-Comedy Sitcom for the Stage), an offensive comedy that eventually won a Maryland State Arts Council playwriting grant. After three years, all three members still appear ecstatic to be in a band. None had been in any serious groups until Even So, and so, although all in their mid-20s and working grown-up jobs, Gamerman, Hoffberger, and Wolfe are now doing what most bands first do in basements as teenagers. "I feel like in many ways we're still a high school band," Gamerman says.

And despite its packed schedule, Even So found some time to record an EP—The Distance Is Less if You Never Leave, which it recently self-released—its breadth mirroring Hoffberger and Gamerman's contrasting influences and interests. "I like bands like Pavement, Belle and Sebastian, Magnetic Fields, Neutral Milk Hotel," Gamerman says, but Hoffberger's tastes lean more toward bands like Rage Against the Machine. Even So collectively describes Hoffberger's drumming as "busy," which often proves an interesting match for Gamerman's simpler, more folky melodies. Highlights on The Distance Is Less include "Nervy," the band's most well-known and catchiest track, with its simple but instantly memorable melodic refrain—"Hey, hey, hey/ Everybody's goin' out the other way"—and "Phantom (Thronebuilders)," which recalls the Decemberists, one of Gamerman's main songwriting inspirations, with a bit more edge.

Curiously, Gamerman struggles to write a song while a 90-minute play comes very easily. "Playwriting I get," he says. "There's a structure, a meaning somewhere. You spend a year, year and a half fleshing out a play, whereas you sit down and write a song in five minutes, and that could be your song. I know it's the same process but I haven't figured it out yet."

Partially joining Gamerman's theatrical and musical talents, Even So has been commissioned to prepare a handful of songs for a forthcoming film by local Sundance award-winning filmmaker Steve Yeager. "It's hard to read the script and remind myself that I'm just writing the music for it," Gamerman says.

Gamerman often toys with writing in character in his songs instead of writing about himself, and whether musical or theatrical, many of his protagonists—like the lover embarking on a submarine journey in "Farewell to Thee, Submariner!"—suffer a loss of some kind in the course of the story. "I put all our songs together and I found this weird undercurrent of loss, like sort of missing home, or losing a loved one, or a sense of lost childhood, that I accidentally explore lyrically," he says. "And I explore that in my playwriting, too, more consciously."

Gamerman's singing voice—much clearer and more confident than his quiet speaking voice—is what got him into the band in the first place. Hoffberger originally formed the band with guitarist Brennan Kuhns, who left after The Distance Is Less was recorded last year. When brainstorming about who would sing, Hoffberger immediately thought of Gamerman. "Five years prior Ira and I would jam with my electronic drum set, and Ira would wire a pair of headphones in reverse order to an amp and would sing Radiohead songs at inaudible volumes," he says.

Gamerman is completely self-taught on guitar, but Hoffberger attended Boston's Northeastern University as a music major for a short time in 2001, taking advantage of his proximity to so many musicians in the city. "Sam pretty much walked around with a pair of drumsticks, and if he would run into someone would say, 'Oh, you're famous, and I can get to your studio at some point—let me take lessons from you,'" says Wolfe, who was attending UMBC at the time studying political science.

"We listen to different music . . . and we both think about the music differently," Hoffberger says. "I know things about theory and application, and [Gamerman] doesn't have the training I have, so he doesn't think about that. He's more, 'This is what I'm feeling, this is what I'm doing, and this is the rock-out part.' And I'm OK with that, because God knows everyone loves a rock out."

Having hit most of the major and not-so-major venues in town, all the members agree that their favorite gig was for a crowd of toddlers at Rock 'n' Romp last summer. "It was just a really fun and laid-back atmosphere," Wolfe says.

"I'd really like to play Copy Cat Building, Floristree, Wham City, all that stuff," Gamerman says. "But we're not nearly cool enough for that shit, not nearly cool enough. I think they are really the heart and soul of Baltimore. I think that's where the best music's coming out of."

As the others nod in agreement, it's obvious the only tension in the band comes down to the conflicting tastes of Hoffberger and Gamerman. Wolfe expresses admiration for Gamerman's writing; Gamerman commends Hoffberger's technically pristine drumming. But recalling a recent show the band performed at the Lo-Fi Social Club, Wolfe cites an excessive amount of the infamous "busyness" in Hoffberger's rhythm. Hoffberger defends his percussion and adds that drumming for a guitarist who plays with little knowledge of theory is a challenge, shooting a playful "goddamn your G chords" to Gamerman across the table.

"So much of this band is about keeping Sam happy," Gamerman says. "Me, too."

Wolfe adds: "I think I've managed to keep it down to two divas instead of three."

Band  interjection: For the record, I don't think Sam listens to Rage Against The Machine. Or if he does, I don't think that would be the first band that he would list to define his musical tastes. That might've been one of those stupid things we said during the interview to make a point about something. ...I don't know what. But, regardless, badass article eh?

Schweet.