No matter how much music moves on (and when you take things apart, as I am required to do on a daily basis, you find that it doesn’t move on all that much, really), the art of making good, infectious, accessible, pleasing music remains the same. You can drape your songs in all manner of new sonics and employ cutting-edge technologies, fuse existing genres, create your own, or even defy categorization altogether, but some things are constant requirements.
A good hook and lyrics that catch immediately in the brain, a groove, no matter how delicate, and you have the basics in place. And how divine, the new eight-track album from maybesitter is an excellent example of how you turn those age-old elements into timeless music for modern times.
Take the title track, for instance. It dresses itself in shimmering and circular modern indie sonics, drapes itself in ethereal vocals, and grooves like a good-un, but it is about as pop-aware as a song can get. Call it what you want—indie, alt-pop, indie-pop—it comes down to one important thing, and it is this: when you have finished playing it, you want to put it on again.
“summer/wasteland” (what is it with kids these days and their lax approach to capitalization?) is shot through with chiming guitars and burbling bass grooves, “ooo000ooo” is poised and poignant and full of slow-burning intent, and “the end” is full of resonant twangs of guitar.
This may be music of the here-and-now, but it looks to older forms that have already proven their worth—surf vibes, drifting dream-pop, riff-driven indie, and indeed pop itself—for inspiration and infusion. As always, it is the meeting of long-established song-writing traditions, and forward-thinking innovation that makes how divine work so well.
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