There are bands that have a name which fits their sound before you even hear their music; The Strokes, Animal Collective, De La Soul, The Hives, Kriss Kross. There are bands whose name invokes a particular sound in your head before you hear their music, but upon actually listening to them they sound nothing like you expected (whether it be good or bad). Upon hearing of the band The Maldives I had pictured in my head some sunny rock, born on the coast of an island in the Indian Ocean.
Something fresh. Something vibrant.
Thirty seconds into “Goodbye”, the first song from their label debut album “Listen to the Thunder
As the album progresses you can hear Band Of Horses (both bands are from Seattle and even have similar bearded band members, they probably hold beard-wearing competitions too), Neil Young, Nicklecreek….even My Morning Jacket, as well as Bluegrass, straight up “twang” country, steel guitars, and harmonicas. With thoughts of old men playing the harmonica on a dusty front porch, the album flits between sounds of Country, Alt-country, tolerable Country (which some might say IS alt-country) and Rock. Yeah, Rock.
On songs like “Time Is Right Now” you can really hear the comparison to the afore-mentioned Band Of Horses, and even though it begins with good old-fashioned barn-dance music and lines like “Wanna live and let it all be/I wanna lose this darkness inside of me” it ends with a resounding guitar-driven outro, something Neil Young would be proud of. “Say Nothing” is a slow, pianio-laden ballad in which singer Jason Dodson cries “There’s a knocking on my window/There’s a frost in the air/Manhattan’s on my mind/Got no reasons, got no cares/I could have loved you if I tried/ But the night was way too young/”. “Whidbey Island Blues” follows in the footsteps of “Say Nothing”, almost too closely, and “The New One” is a short and sweet pining for a love lost, bringing back the organs you hear briefly in the opener but filling out with more guitars over shouder, as opposed to sat on the knee. “Do You Still” begins as a standard country song, voice-twang in full effect and slide guitars a-plenty, but then jumps into what at first reminded me of a Benny Hill sketch, with guitars chasing fiddles, fiddles chasing harmonicas, harmonicas chasing the drums and then it all ends with exposed breasts and someone falling over.
If this album is trying to cross over from country to something else, it doesn’t. If it’s trying to sound like most other alt-country albums of the past couple of years then it’s doing a pretty good job. If you like your music with slide guitars, knees up, and a splattering of country-twang then you’ll probably really enjoy this. One thing you can be sure of is that it’ll get your feet tappin’.
For anyone who can appreciate some good rock but can’t get past the country twang, stick with Band Of Horses.
5/10
Worth checking out: Band Of Horses, Neil Young
Buy Listen to the Thunder from Amazon
Listen Before You Buy – “Listen To The Thunder”:
