Plumbiferous Media

Maps & Atlases was formed in 2004, with the band mem­bers still in col­lege, and since then, they have released quite a few EPs. Perk Patch­work, how­ever, is their first full length album, and it was worth the wait. The band has exper­i­mented with their folk-rock sound, mod­i­fy­ing it to enough of a degree over these past years that it has truly become a com­pletely unique sound, with only the bare rem­nants of either folk or rock. Perk Patch­work is an excel­lent and beau­ti­ful album, a clear and wor­thy suc­ces­sor to Maps & Atlases’ past.

Maps & Atlases’ per­cus­sion is eas­ily one of the most unique ele­ments of the album. Say­ing that it acts as more than a metronome would be an amaz­ingly gross under­state­ment. The drums and per­cus­sion of Perch Patch­work is such a well fleshed out beast that vocals and per­cus­sion alone could eas­ily form full, rich tracks, and they very nearly do in more than one occa­sion. This is, of course, not to say that the other instru­ments slack off.

There is an amaz­ing amount, musi­cally, that is sim­ply incred­i­ble on Perch Patch­work. Tran­si­tions are invari­ably per­fect, whether clean dividers between con­trast­ing sec­tions of a track or slow shift­ings that, for exam­ple, serve to val­i­date the open­ing track “Will,” oth­er­wise a bit lack­ing in con­tent, as a fully devel­oped song by blend­ing it per­fectly into its suc­ces­sor. Maps & Atlases also man­ages to flirt quite suc­cess­fully with often dan­ger­ous tech­niques such as rep­e­ti­tion and uni­son, some­how always per­fectly fit­ting and bal­anced by the depth of devel­op­ment of some other element.

Maps & Atlases’ vocal duties fall to Dave David­son, and he does an absolutely amaz­ing job with them. Davidson’s voice is ele­gantly reedy, a sound that seems to have been devel­oped from a coun­try twang to some­thing not quite that. At times whiny, though never exces­sively so, Davidson’s pas­sion­ate wail­ing enchants the lis­tener while never sound­ing overly stressed or stretched. Where nec­es­sary, David­son can also dou­ble as a rich bari­tone, seem­ingly at odds with his stan­dard range, yet per­fectly fitting.

Though it can some­times be hard to deci­pher what David­son is singing, as he tends to obscure words by slur­ring, even if he isn’t slightly over­whelmed by the instru­men­tals, what can be heard is quite inter­est­ing. The first lines on the album, on “The Charm,” are: “I don’t think there is a sound that I hate more / than the sound of your voice.” While the lyrics are never more clear, both in mean­ing and audi­bil­ity, the lyri­cal con­tent rarely suf­fers, even as one of the objects of least impor­tance on Perch Patch­work.

Seem­ingly no mat­ter what Maps & Atlases does, it sounds excel­lent. Per­haps this is a result of Perch Patch­work being a long time com­ing, per­haps it is the band’s exper­i­men­tal nature, or maybe Maps and Atlases sim­ply has the magic touch, but what­ever the rea­son, Perch Patch­work is an incred­i­ble piece of work. Really, the only sad part of the release is that there’s not much else by Maps & Atlases to lis­ten to when you’re through with Perch Patch­work.

This post is tagged 80-89, Maps & Atlases