Cult Maze move well beyond Ice Arena with 35, 36
By SAM PFEIFLE | November 7, 2007
JUICED: Cult Maze are full of energy. |
| 35, 36 | Released by Cult Maze | with Gulley | at SPACE, in Portland | Nov 23 |
There’s some talk that Cult Maze are the best rock band in Portland right now. No longer young up and comers, songwriter and guitarist Jay Lobley, bassist/keyboardist Peet Chamberlain, drummer Andrew Barron, and bassist/guitarist Joshua Loring have paid their dues with more than two solid years of gigging and an ambitious-if-uneven debut album in 2006’s Ice Arena. They now find themselves with a consistent draw and a sophomore album in 35, 36 that sparkles with 10 songs full of intelligent indie-pop songwriting, biting melodies, and inventive arrangements. I’d call them mature if I didn’t think they’d be offended by it.Cult Maze have taken what was a blurry picture of a band captured by Ice Arena and brought it into sharp focus. Transitions have been tightened, the sound is more thoroughly their own, and frontman Lobley has gained confidence in his vocals, which probably wouldn’t win anybody over on American Idol, but are now distinctively attractive and enough to stamp his imprimatur on the album as a whole without that being a problem. He’s something like the Shins’ James Mercer with his plaintive wail, mixed with the grittier and sneering Morrissey — and his guitar style apes Johnny Marr to boot.
Even better, you can now understand Lobley’s lyrics, which may bend toward the absurd sometimes, but often are poetic enough to say something universal in a way no one’s thought to say it before. The excellent “Treble Treble” opens with a spacey guitar line, joined quickly by the bass in a complementary melody line, then quickly fills out with a second guitar and drums and isn’t far from a Coldplay tune, though dirtier and a different manner of love-struck: “I want to tell you about my wife, and her dementia,” Lobley pipes up, “She’s made a point of making sense, in front of the dentist/Everybody likes to play it off like everything’s okay/but I’ll stay with her, you stay away/I’ll stay with her, you stay away.” The emphasis of the repetition weighs palpably, protective and self-pitying at the same time, and great to sing along with. At 4:03, it manages to feel too short when the lilting guitar line comes to an abrupt end. I want more of these wife-inspired turns of phrase: “Guess you’re rich so it’s okay, to spend so much on her birthday ... I guess I waited much too long/To dance to your song/Cuz the most important thing to do/Is to shake what god gave you.”
There something so world aware about the song, like it’s referencing all of pop songwriting in one fell swoop (and I like the handclaps, too, which I’m told were definitely not producer Jon Wyman’s idea — not that he’s against their use).
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