
Maps & Atlases – Perch Patchwork
Barsuk Records 2010
Rating: 9/10
I think what gets me leaping over clouds about Perch Patchwork is how it peels away the components of Maps and Atlases and lets them lie where they fall. The illusion of what Maps and Atlases “is” has irked me ever since I became entangled with Trees, Swallows, Houses because it felt like I’d had my newest discovery pinned into a corner. It seemed everyone had this vision of the band who could only produce toe-tapping guitar lines, who would sooner die than sacrifice their ‘math rock’ definition and who would keep their borderline wobbly vocalist as yet another constant through any change. And hey, when You, Me and The Mountain, entered the canon of their EPs, I felt even more adamant at the backlash I had probably invented: the musical shift was a non-dramatic and entirely subtle act, but I felt the band had chopped something out of itself without me thinking any different of it – “Artichokes” didn’t meander through insane guitar taps nearly as much as “The Most Trustworthy Tin Cans” would’ve done in its shoes, but did I notice? Did I care? That’s one rhetorical question Perch Patchwork – the band’s first ever LP – can answer for you, and I can see these qualms of moving beyond the ‘guitar-tap’, beyond the ‘odd’ time signatures and the compulsive drumming disappearing with every adoring repeat of “Solid Ground.” This is a Maps and Atlases who aren’t anything in particular, but rather a celebration of all the quirky influences they ever listed. Chop out that sound or chop in this one, and Maps and Atlases aren’t any different a thing to your ears. Except better.
This Maps and Atlases record is the most universal yet, but I’ll admit I’m a sucker for one thing rather than the other and the sound I heard festering under their earlier EPs was a psychedelic form of folk, with the jubilant crackling of guitars on “The Ongoing Horrible” made all the more a tease by its short length. Now that I’ve basically gotten what I wanted in places – Maps and Atlases wearing Six Organs of Admittance on their sleeves – I want nothing more than to call this their ‘folk’ album. For me, it walks and talks with that persona even if it can’t be tagged with it, and it is incredible because of it: as soon as “Will” begins we are given this stripped down Maps and Atlases, acoustic percussion and guitars slotted under the primitive-sounding chants of David Davison. Even the production readies my appetite with the chimes and guitar plucking sounding as far away from me as possible, as if they do indeed intend to play the album on top of the coast its art depicts. Even better, Davison’s voice is still as manic as it ever was, trembling between the highest and lowest pitches as the record moves into “The Charm” (and what a seamless transition, too), and the band are just as manic with the marching beats they temporarily exchange their guitars for. In a sense, it’s the same old in aesthetic, but this new folk invasion picks up the album from its other sounds wherever it is poised. The joyous “Israeli Caves” moves listeners out of a moodier passage of Perch Patchwork and the album is finished with a colourful conclusion in its title track, where there is an abundance of wood instruments and little else. It’s almost childish, “Perch Patchwork,” with each cello and violin synchronised into a storybook march. Of course, Maps and Atlases tell the best fairytales.
In a sense, the album is so universal because the band gives its control over to the fans without really doing any such thing. Just as soon as the record has settled into something entirely different and started to sound like a huge and daring ‘fuck you’ to loyalists, Maps and Atlases turns on its heels and throws us a “Living Decorations” or a “Carrying the Wet Wood,” and suddenly we’re reminded that every member of this Chicago outfit is totally non-threatening, loveable and more likely to be issuing a small and humble ‘sorry guys’ than anything else. “Living Decorations” especially zips up old-school crowd, promptly paced for its injection of math rock and relieving due to its whereabouts on the album as a whole; the imprint of this loud and jingly number, heavily drenched in guitar riffs is – after two tracks that have burned through the albums beginning at a comparative snail’s pace – almost a sign of the band trying to appease its diehards. “Carrying the Wood,” too, strays away from the character of the album without being out of context, having the tone fans will have familiarised with most since 2005 and Trees, Swallows, Houses. It sounds welcome on that EP: Davison’s cries of “Why/did/you/tell me/oh why/that there was nothing left to climb” sound as structured and technical as anything from that album (as do the riffs, which roll ever onward) and yet there is some barrier stopping them from that hypothetical situation where they could sit by the comparatively robotic “Everyplace is a House.”
That barrier is the best thing that happens to Perch Patchwork. An uncanny presence dominates the record’s entirety, making it their best effort yet and proof that they can write albums better even than they can EPs. It’s the presence of things both small and big that can never be heard in the foreground because of our familiarisation with the Maps and Atlases of math rock rather than the Maps and Atlases of any thing else. We are so engrossed with these textures that we let any other additives drift to obscurity, but even if we forget the sounds, they abolish any technicality, any forced complexity that was left in the mix and that played foul upon our ears. It’s enjoyed with repeated listens of the album that take away the initial awkwardness of Perch Patchwork: on “Pigeon,” brass instruments curve the song playfully with distinct Caribbean spirit – ludicrous, when given the band we’re talking about, but it somehow it works. It counterbalances the mechanics of the song. Hell, it simply loosens up the band that has always needed loosening up.
My favourite example though is the delightful “Solid Ground,” a track fans had the pleasure of stewing over for the long months before the album’s availability. If this track was supposed to be an indicator, it did its job and then some; here of all places Perch Patchwork sounds like a Maps and Atlases who did away with the lab and went running through the wilderness. Or maybe they just set up their lab in that wilderness, because “Solid Ground” – and the 2010 album it belongs to – is a mix of the sound I so want my new favourite band to be and the remnants of the one I so adored in them already. I mentioned the folksy, one-man Six Organs of Admittance, but truthfully Perch Patchwork sounds more like if he invaded Don Caballero’s territory and stirred things up – and above all, the members of Maps and Atlases celebrating everything about each other, these influences included, is what makes their first ever record such a gem. They’ve taken cues from their grandest experimental peers to create yet more of the best pop. There’s a description out there that describes the band as “wrestlers” of the “intricate and organic,” and while we could debate back and forth which of the former or latter we see in them more, who are we to impose our favourite genres upon these guys? It’s time to stop speculating over what Maps and Atlases should do and just hope they do more.
Maps & Atlases – “Solid Ground”
| List Price: |
$11.99 USD |
| New From: |
$7.73 In Stock |
| Used from: |
$5.98 In Stock |
Release date June 29, 2010.
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