I love post-rock names – they sound like one half of a conversation. Some are enigmatic and portentous (Explosions In The Sky), some are kookily affectionate (iLiKETRAiNS), some are unexplainably sad (Her Name Is Calla) and some, well some are optimistically hopeful. Like these guys
A three-piece from Leicester, Maybeshewill have been going for about three years and have been fair busy – this is their second album – and are not purely post-rock. Not at all. No, these guys are blending some tasty PR with some kick-ass riffs and no-nonsense rhythms. I think I’m in love.
First of, this album is big. Not as in size but as in sound. From the first heavy metal power chord of ‘You Can’t Shake Hands…’ to the last energising statement of ‘Sing The Word…’, everything is writ large – John Helps and Robin Southby’s guitars cram in the kind of riffs that Rage would peddle if they were doing it now and James Collins piles on the drums like they were shrimp at an all you can eat buffet. It is an all you can eat, nay hear, buffet and you will be crammed witrh meaty tunes by the end of this.
Take the upward spiralling arpegios of ‘Co-Conspirators’ that lifts you out of your seat on a column of fuzz; or the dynamic finger work of ‘How To Have Sex With A Ghost’ that makes you itch with viral melody. This is positive stuff. The best and cheekiestly lifted riffage comes on ‘This Time Last Year’, a huge piece of happy hardcore (in the original sense) that lifts a hook wholesale from ‘Retreat, Retreat!’, slaps on a geat film sample and lets lose. Nothing and everything.
Though it’s massive through out, it isn’t always overwhelmingly heavy. The piano and guitar duet on ‘Accept and Embrace’ is somewhere between sex and violence – as beautiful as the first, as threatening as the second – and Last Time This Year even goes three four for your sentimental soul. Synths are also touched upon, but in the same way as Roddy Bottum did synths for FNM, the keys here are blended into the rich metal/coal seam.
Yes, we do get the echoing delayed guitar, yes the titles are ridiculous, but this album throbs with energy without being aggressive. This is ‘you can do it’ music, even considering the accusatory tone of the last track, ‘Sing…’. You’ve got less hippy intentions than Vessels, less electrronics than 65DOS, but it’s positivety and weight more than make up for those shortcomings. Apart from with regards to their straight theft from 65DOS, I can find little to fault about this album. Maybeshewill? She’d be a fool if she didn’t.
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