Anthemic guitar licks and post-punk/math-rock undertones

10 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Album Rock, ROCK: Experimental Rock

Show all album songs: 35, 36 Songs


Details:
From the Portland Phoenix:

Thereâs talk that Cult Maze are the best rock band in Portland right now. No longer young up and comers, songwriter and guitarist Jay Lobley, bassist/keyboardist Peet Chamberlain, drummer Andrew Barron, and bassist/guitarist Joshua Loring have paid their dues with more than two solid years of gigging and an ambitious-if-uneven debut album in 2006âs Ice Arena. They now find themselves with a consistent draw and a sophomore album in 35, 36 that sparkles with 10 songs full of intelligent indie-pop songwriting, biting melodies, and inventive arrangements. Iâd call them mature if I didnât think theyâd be offended by it.

Cult Maze have taken what was a blurry picture of a band captured by Ice Arena and brought it into sharp focus. Transitions have been tightened, the sound is more thoroughly their own, and frontman Lobley has gained confidence in his vocals, which probably wouldnât win anybody over on American Idol, but are now distinctively attractive and enough to stamp his imprimatur on the album as a whole without that being a problem. Heâs something like the Shinsâ James Mercer with his plaintive wail, mixed with the grittier and sneering Morrissey â and his guitar style apes Johnny Marr to boot.

Even better, you can now understand Lobleyâs lyrics, which may bend toward the absurd sometimes, but often are poetic enough to say something universal in a way no oneâs thought to say it before. The excellent âTreble Trebleâ opens with a spacey guitar line, joined quickly by the bass in a complementary melody line, then quickly fills out with a second guitar and drums and isnât far from a Coldplay tune, though dirtier and a different manner of love-struck: âI want to tell you about my wife, and her dementia,â Lobley pipes up, âSheâs made a point of making sense, in front of the dentist/Everybody likes to play it off like everythingâs okay/but Iâll stay with her, you stay away/Iâll stay with her, you stay away.â The emphasis of the repetition weighs palpably, protective and self-pitying at the same time, and great to sing along with. At 4:03, it manages to feel too short when the lilting guitar line comes to an abrupt end. I want more of these wife-inspired turns of phrase: âGuess youâre rich so itâs okay, to spend so much on her birthday ... I guess I waited much too long/To dance to your song/Cuz the most important thing to do/Is to shake what god gave you.â

There something so world aware about the song, like itâs referencing all of pop songwriting in one fell swoop (and I like the handclaps, too, which Iâm told were definitely not producer Jon Wymanâs idea â not that heâs against their use).

Later, âReggie Lewisâ sprawls out page eight minutes, the equivalent to âOn a Branchâ from Ice Arena, another epic surrounded by largely standard-length pop tunes. A Boston Celtic great felled by heart problems in his prime, Reggie Lewisâs 1993 death was traumatic enough for me that I know exactly where I was when I found out about it: peering over a guyâs shoulder as he barred me from his doorway in the middle of canvassing a Brighton neighborhood for a non-profit in favor idea of universal health-care (that wacky idea thatâs infested the soft minds of every industrialized nation but ours). Here, Lewis serves as a touchpoint for a brother and sister. Is the life they live so temporary? When, at the 1:30 mark, everything falls away but the guitar and drums, seemingly being played across a vacant basketball court, itâs like the breath being knocked right out of you, before a rapid heartbeat of a keyboard steps in to introduce the first verse: âSo she missed practice/well I need practice too/Every time she drops it, I laugh so hard/Every time the basketball bounces into the boulevard.â Before the second verse, the song reduces to the barest of scritched guitar and solitary keyboard line, from which Lobley escapes with this: âShe wants me to see, the progress of her passing/When she throws the ball to me, Iâm Reggie Lewis, sheâs Reggie Lewis, too.â

Like Reggie Lewis before them, Cult Maze are homegrown stars in the making, maybe held back a bit by staying too much in their musical comfort zone. Theyâve now done the equivalent of graduating Northeastern and tearing up a weak basketball conference. Next up? How about something along the lines of being the only Celtic player to record 100 or more rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals in a season? Thatâd be something.