Mazes - Wooden Aquarium

The Manchester three piece returned last month with their third helping ‘Wooden Aquarium’ and TT is on hand to check it out. The latest outing witnesses Mazes’ love of 1990s lo-fi US indie once more but a turn towards a more polished pop sound is helping them tread yet more exciting new ground.

The manoeuvre towards a mod-cum-psyche direction is reminiscent of their peers Toy and Foxygen. What gives them the edge is the ability to combine their previous Teenage Fanclub dirge-pop sound with the new direction. ‘Letters Between U&V’, ‘Mineral Springs’ and ‘Salford’ are prime exponents of this.

‘Letters Between U&V’ delivers a riff worthy of Teenage Fanclub or the Lemonheads but with a crispness that the aforementioned Toy have trail blazed with in the previous years. The motorik beat allows them to meander between the two styles. The grouping of sullied US indie and English Mod-psyche together is unusual on paper but in practice it works. So button up your Fred Perry and grow your hair long, anything goes!

‘Mineral Springs’ witnesses Jack Cooper’s vocals at their best. They are angelic and wrap around the driving guitar loops with a quality that Bobby Gillespie was searching for on Primal Scream’s ‘Gentle Tuesday’. Meanwhile, ‘Salford’ has a style similar to the Pixies’ ‘Gigantic’ with male and female vocals working in tandem, whilst the guitars are a comparable to David Tattersall’s Wave Pictures. All that said, Mazes are their own band with their own sound and the influences act like the great flms of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright; great if you get them but if you don’t it’s still a great film.

To just talk about the merging of these styles would be a disservice to the creativity elsewhere on the album. ‘Explode Into Colo(u)rs’ sounds like a mellowed out Graham Coxon, whereas, ‘RIPP’ has a Pixies via James Yorkston feel, combining spoken word vocals with a dreamy semi-consciousness. 

Fans of the first two albums will revel in the more uninhibited ‘Universal Me’ and ‘Stamford Hill’. These two have the aggression of their earlier work but, now they come with an additional surging For TT though, the standout track is ‘Stamford Hill’. It encapsulates everything the band is now about. It blends the lo-fi angst of their previous work with the new nods towards motorik much like rest of the album. However, on this song they get the energy and free flowing sound they create conjure a sense of lawlessness one can completely lose them in.

In recent times we have witnessed bands such as Wild Beasts, The Maccabees and Jamie T all produce their best work on their 3rd album and ‘Wooden Aquarium’ is no different. For any record label considering signing bands, we implore you to believe in them and let them grow. ‘Wooden Aquarium’ is another fine example of the quality which can be achieved if bands are allowed to go about their business as they please. Go. Buy. It. Now.