aaamusic | On 24, Jun 2010

Super complex songs [that] sound like Vampire Weekend after a math-rock makeover… can’t hide the band’s knack for a good tune or six. Maps & Atlases are clearly the thinking man’s pop group.’ NME

Fatcat are extremely pleased and excited to announce that Maps & Atlases have signed to the label, and will release the quartet’s debut album ‘Perch Patchwork’ on 27th September – a densely textured, exhilarating body of work that sees the band creating intricacies in songwriting, emphasising lush brass and string arrangements rather than the lightning-fast guitar lines that characterised their earlier work, and resulting in a gorgeous, complex, slightly skewed take on pop music.

The band have announced European tour dates for OCTOBER as follows:

8 Fri  BRIGHTON Freebutt
9 Sat  LEEDS Brudenell Social Club
10 Sun  GLASGOW Captains Rest
11 Mon  MANCHESTER Deaf Institute
12 Tues  LONDON Cargo
14 Thurs  PARIS Point Ephemere
15 Fri  AMSTERDAM TBC
16 Sat  HAMBURG Hafenklang
17 Sun  BERLIN Bang Bang Club
18 Mon  DRESDEN Beatpol
19 Tues  WURZBURG Cafe Cairo
20 Weds  BRUSSELS Botanique
22 Fri  LIVERPOOL O2 Academy 2
23 Sat  DUBLIN Whelans

Having met in 2004 as art students at Chicago’s Columbia College, Maps & Atlases’ initial output (a 2006 EP titled Tree, Swallows, Houses) showcased their astute technical abilities and deft musicality, changing rhythms and tearing across guitar fretboards at breakneck speed. Their follow-up EP (2008’s You and Me and the Mountain), however, demonstrated a desire for a more organic – but no less eccentric – pop-orientated course that retains the mathematical precision of their first set of recordings, but allowed for more compositional virtuosity than instrumental. It is this path that has led them to forthcoming debut full-length Perch Patchwork.

The band – David Davison (vocals, guitar), Shiraz Dada (bass), Chris Hainey (drums), and Erin Elders (guitar) – produce a sound comparable in places to the mature, graceful pop of Band of Horses or TV On The Radio combined with the excitement of Deerhoof or Vampire Weekend and the experimentation of CAN. That their live dates see them share stages with FatCat’s Frightened Rabbit and Our Brother The Native, as well as acclaimed experimental hardcore band mewithoutYou, and African legend Vieux Farka Toure demonstrates the broad-reaching depth of sounds that Maps & Atlases take in.

Maps & Atlases recently signed to Barsuk Records in the US, who will handle the North American release of Perch Patchwork, and to FatCat for the UK and Europe.