aaamusic | On 28, Jan 2011

Well, this is something special. The very first time Mazes get access to a ‘proper’ recording studio, and they turn out a bona-fide gem of an album with choruses and hooks aplenty. Recorded last November on an old lightship moored on the Thames opposite the Millennium Dome, ‘A Thousand Heys’ (FatCat, 11th April) captures the excitement and fizzing energy of a band still in day-jobs with everything in front of them. And, by taking 10 instead of the usual one – maybe two – days to record, it delivers that energy while sounding like one of the freshest, most life-affirming collections any of us are going to hear this year.

*A special limited cassette tape version will be made avaliable on Record Store Day, April 16th.

Mazes appreciation of the D.I.Y ethos and sense of community amongst their peers – Pens, Cold Pumas, Male Bonding, Spectrals – stems from the attitude many of the acts they admire embraced. Jack runs Suffering Jukebox whilst Conan, also a member of Graffiti Island, is CEO of Italian Beach Babes, labels that are very much a part of what makes the UK scene so vibrant at the moment.

‘A Thousand Heys’ sees Mazes dart in and out of their respective record collections with the rapacious enthusiasm of wide-eyed kids in the proverbial sweet shop. Opener ‘Go-Betweens’ is a song influenced by the honeyed, major-key pop of the band the song’s title references, embellished with Pavement’s wayward shakes, Buzzcocks’ intensity, and Big Star-esque nihilist lyrics. At other times – Marc Riley reckoned them a ‘sort of really garagey Kinks’ and ‘less like The Beatles, more like a crazed Monkees!’ – they can sound like a British Invasion group – witness the syncopated McCartney bassline that kicks in on ‘Surf & Turf’, with lyrics that actually reference ‘…The Beatles at JFK’.

Extensively covered on the blog scene, much has already been made of Mazes’ ability to juxtapose measured three-minute pop songs with short bratty blasts. Although there is no ‘Painting of Tupac Shakur’, the thirty second thrash punk song found on the Italian Beach Babes mixtape (see their MySpace for details of previous 7″ & tape releases), songs such as ‘Till I’m Dead’ prove they can still shred when they want to, whilst ‘Eva’ sounds like a fleeting moment in time recorded for posterity.

Conversely, the Dunedin Sound influenced ‘Cenetaph’ is a beautifully delivered pop song that reveals an ambivalence toward spelling but a strong aptitude for songcraft, whilst ‘No Way’ recalls early REM. Lyrics on the album display a similar range, from the idealised childhood and subsequent collapse into post-adolescent apathy of ‘Summer Hits/ J&J Don’t Like’, to the youthful forcefulness of ‘Death House’ to the world-weariness of ‘Wait Anyway’.

Supporting Dum Dum Girls – March/ April 2011.

31-Mar-11 Manchester Deaf Institute
01-Apr-11 Dublin Whelans
02-Apr-11 Belfast Belfast Film Festival @ The Black Box
03-Apr-11 Glasgow Stereo
04-Apr-11 Leeds Brudenell Social Club
05-Apr-11 London Dingwalls
06-Apr-11 Brighton The Komedia