All Time Top 100: Maps

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Maps - Barfly

Maps, then: Too synth-poppy for the Indie set, too Indie for your electronica types, way too twee for the hipsters and quite possibly too ‘out-there’ for the mainstream. It’s a tough one. And really, would they be here tonight without their shortlisting for this year’s Mercury? For sure it’s given them a sufficient boost in profile to embark on a nationwide tour of this scale. Not that “We Can Create” doesn’t deserve a bit of recognition - it’s a unique and occasionally innovative record. Unfortunately it’s just not a particularly tasteful one; sickly, cloying and all too often sounding like the drippy electronica that features on the demo pages of geek-tech magazines like Future Music.

Expanded to a four piece for live purposes Maps take to the stage to the strains of Surgeon’s seminal, drone-tastic remix of ‘Mogwai Fear Satan’ and it’s a neat summation of writer/producer/singer James Chapman’s various reference points - bit of shoe gaze here, a bit of electronica there, synth driven and densely layered like a compacted symphony. As an opening gambit it’s a pretty bold statement, but the band make a decent fist of replicating the album for live consumption. A live drummer gives the record’s sequenced breaks the requisite shuffle and Chapman’s otherwise weedy vocals are gifted a celestial sheen by way of some subtle digital trickery.

Kick drums and bass lines ride high in the mix and each number leaps from the system like a buffed and streamlined club track. Eventually, with a majestic “It will Find you” - its heartbreaking chord sequence and pulsating bass line simultaneously dark and dreamy like prime-time prog-house - things finally began to slot into place. Throughout the venue everyone’s gently nodding and swaying, couples are embracing and the hitherto soulless Barfly assumes the ambiance of a packed festival tent at THAT moment on the Saturday evening. You know, that point when everything starts to go a bit woozy and trippy? It’s a beautiful moment, man.

Head bowed and eyes shut tight throughout , Chapman displays all the showmanship of a remedial school child; ambling about the stage between songs and generally looking like he’d much rather be at home in front of the sequencer with a pot noodle than onstage facing a row of freakish superfans. But come the end of the set, this apparent indifference reveals itself to be nothing but honest to goodness humility and you have to consider what the alternative would be: A pompous, preening front man, relentlessly emoting and exhorting you to feel their pain coupled to music as stirring and cinematic as this? It would be like Bono fronting a trance version of Keane. And nobody wants that. This will do for now.

posted by: Jim Brackpool @ 10:11 PM

All Time Top 100

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