The Subways @ Hull University

With their second album now recorded and prepped for release just two weeks away The Subways should have a great deal to live up to; it’s been three years since Young for Eternity, recorded when the band were just in their late teens. Read more

How’s My Pop?/The Ending Of../The City Joy Cons/Little Engines/El Condorez @ Maps Festival, Joe’s Bar, Manchester

To say that Manchester has an abundance of live music going on this weekend would be akin to suggesting one of their football clubs was a bit happy with the result on Wednesday. Read more

Interview: Fuck Buttons

Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power, otherwise known as Fuck Buttons, were two art school kids from Bristol who set out to make a nihilistic noise project. Don’t let that scare you off. Their debut album ‘Street Horrrsing’ is nothing less than transcendent. Read more

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

Shaun Greenhalg is, to his acquaintances, a quiet, borderline reclusive man. To the art world he is a master counterfeiter, pulling the wool over it’s eyes for 17 years with an incredibly diverse range of forgeries, ranging from paintings to sculptures, amassing almost a million pounds from the sale of his spurious art. Read more

The Lodger - Life Is Sweet

Already hailed as a ‘work of genius’ by NME magazine, Life is Sweet is the long awaited second album from loveable Leeds three piece The Lodger, and it’s instantly likeable. Read more

Lizzyspit: Laura’s Diary

Everybody and their mother’s dog now own a copy of “Made of Bricks” so it’s easy to see why there has suddenly been a massive explosion of female singer songwriters and that’s why when you finally find one that knows what to do with herself and stands out of the crowd, you should take note. Read more

Beirut @ Music Hall, Williamsburg

On Sunday night in Williamsburg the rain has been coming down all day. But as one admiring Beirut fan yells ‘there’s sunshine in here!’ No argument here. Read more

Interview: Beirut (Jason Poranski)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in 2006, nineteen-year-old Zach Condon and his band Beirut caused quite a stir with Gulag Orkestar, an album infused with the brass orchestra sounds of Eastern Europe. Read more

Killing Fields Of Ontario - No Hero

Killing Fields of Ontario perform ‘No Hero’ at the Northern Monkey, Leeds.

Maybeshewill - Not For Want Of Trying

Simon Catling
Since when did Leicester become the hotbed of all things post rock and instrumental? Her Name Is Calla are making ripples and are soon to be heading up to Leeds, where an undoubted increase in attention awaits them; and now we have the debut full length LP from four piece Maybeshewill. The band showed promise in 2006 with the EP Japanese Spy Transcripts- four tracks undoubtedly indebted to 65 Days Of Static but containing enough originality, pitch and emotion to hold their own unique sound. ‘The Paris Hilton Sex Tape’ makes another, re-recorded, appearance here as does a follow up to ‘He Films The Clouds’. Yet this is a group who’ve grown since then and whilst the glitchy, IDM influenced percussion and effects are still there, they’ve been allied by new sounds and greater expanse so as to provide a terrifically exciting, energetic and diverse album.The quietly disarming introduction of ‘Ixnay On The Autoplay’ does little to prepare the listener for what is ahead, and is hence swiftly split apart by the atmospheric rumbling drums of ‘Seraphim & Cherubim’; a song that seems by its nature of full throttled riffs and ceaseless energy to be tailor made for a live setting. The ear searing guitars fall away however to be replaced by simple yet effective keyboards, before the two contrasting armies of sound come back together in a crashing crescendo of a finale. The redone ‘Paris Hilton Sex Tape’ comes with additional added muscle and an increased emphasis on a fuller sounding, heavier track. Its age does tell however in that it remains Maybeshewill’s most telling nod to their contemporaries taking in both Mogwai and 65 Days Of Static on its electronically charged, ear-bludgeoning three and a half minutes. In contrast ‘I’m In Awe Amadeus!’ fails to live up to its title, proving one of the weaker tracks as Maybeshewill opt to play it safe with a slow gurning melody hiding itself behind some overly frothy layering.

Form is regained though with the Slint-esque spiky brilliance of ‘We Called For An Ambulance But A Fire Engine Came’ that drills away at the brain in sharp, angry bursts; before a calm descends with soaring strings bringing giving respite. Indeed it’s in the quieter parts of this album that Maybeshewill manage to play their trump card: when shorn of the vacuum of sound building up behind them, the four piece opt for the simple options and intertwine them together instead of fidgeting around with unnecessary time changes or piano-wankery. Whilst it can mean subtlety goes out of the window, its effect is such that the calming beauty of its emotion shines through as strongly as any of their powerfully moving walls of sound. Then delightfully, during ‘Heartflusters’, we hear a most surprising but wonderful thing: vocals! And not just thrown in as an afterthought either. As John Helps asks ‘are you feeling the walls closing in?’ you can feel the wonderful juxtaposition to the uplifting, fragile music behind him- not unlike Thom Yorke’s solo title track ‘The Eraser’. Helps in fact provides an uncanny impersonation of the Radiohead man but just as the music appears to be drifting up towards somewhere untoward, the electric storm returns as the chanted refrain ‘stop, do not engage’ is submerged under a torrent of fuzz and glitch before ‘C.N.T.R.C.K.T’ roars into life with an unrelenting power and intensity.

In the consequence of all this, the final three tracks come across as an extended finale to the entire album. ‘He Films Clouds Pt. 2′ allows to bassist Tanya Byrne to take the lead on vocals after a suitably epic build up, as the piano and percussion build ominously behind her and the familiar hook from Japanese Spy Transcript’s ‘Pt. 1′ returns as a haunting presence. Title track ‘Not For Wanting Of Trying’ is something else though. The sound is of the group expending every last ounce of energy that they have, as though they’ve reached breaking point yet refuse to yield. Once again its simple but effective; raging metal gives way to isolated splendour, xylophones and, curiously, Peter Finch’s ‘Mad as Hell’ speech from Network. Readers may be aware that the already mentioned 65 Days Of Static have a collection of bootlegs floating round known as ‘Unreleased/Unreleasable’. Take the best of that, saw off the rough edges and what you get is ‘Not For The Wanting Of Trying’ which, even amidst such exhorted surroundings, comes across as nothing short of a masterpiece and is in effect the final track, short of the slow, winding down outro of ‘Takotsubo’.

Maybeshewill are a band with awesome potential; but what comes across from the above few sentences is that we’re dealing with an epic, sprawling, long haul of an album. Yet as the final strains of ‘Takotsubo’ fade out, the whole thing has clocked in at under forty minutes. The range of the pallet that they’ve created in this album is worthy of attention, that they fit it all into such a compact timeframe whilst losing none of their expanse and gravitas is nothing short of startling. In a year which has already seen a slew of stellar albums released right across the board, ‘Not For The Want Of Trying’ is an LP that rightly deserves it’s place right amongst them- daft song titles and all.

Robert Ensor
Some albums are one piece of music from start to finish. Some may have two or three particularly good tracks emerging as icebergs in a sea of relative filler. Others float somewhere between the two, and it’s this third category that Maybeshewill’s debut album falls into. Certain tracks will certainly stand alone as excellent pieces of musicianship, both in writing and playing - ‘Heartflusters’ and the ninth, and title, track, for example - while there are sections of this album that pass so easily the listener is unaware that two or three tracks have just gone by.The album opens promisingly, flowing quickly through the first few tracks until reaching the first peak, ‘I’m in Awe, Amadeus!’, before hitting a few glitches, both figuratively and literally. This perhaps increases the impact of ‘Heartflusters’, allowing it to take on an extra dimension in moving the album on and away from what had come before, a feeling exaggerated by the first appearance of lyrics on the record.

Merging passages of piano with electronics and guitar isn’t necessarily an original concept - 65daysofstatic, clearly one of Maybeshewill’s influences, have been doing it for a while - but that doesn’t change the joy felt when it’s executed so expertly as it is in places on this album. ‘He Films the Clouds Pt. 2′ is a wonderful example of this, ultimately giving no clue to what comes next in the title track - an exhiliratingly aggressive intro which takes heed of the voice sample introduced halfway through: “I want you to get mad”. These two tracks are the clear highlight of the album; almost a microcosm of the whole thing.

Ultimately though, the album appears hit and miss with some great passages punctured by what are sub-standard tracks, for the high standards already set. It seems to be a clear case of a missed opportunity, as all the ingredients are present for a truly brilliant album, but they’ve just not been put together in quite the right way. Even more annoying is that the band are seemingly unable to nail their mind-blowing live sound on record. If they were to manage that, the result would be a record of the year.

Next Page »