Maps

Its been quite an exciting week for music for me, the new Decemberists album has leaked (which is insanely awesome, I know shows on this tour will start selling out too fast now; see, that's part of why the hipsters drop bands when they get big, you can never get in to see them anymore...), I found the spiritual descendants of the Jesus and Mary Chain and I found a young man from the UK who records under the name of Maps. If Anything After is the new Jesus and Mary Chain, then Maps is the new MBV. Now in both of these cases I don't really mean to compare either of these bands directly to these bands, but those are the ones that come to my mind when listening to them. I don't really like to throw those bands out there because, well, both of them deserve to be heard for their sound, not because they sound like someone else. But the aesthetics are hard to deny for me. If you take one part My Bloody Valentine, mix in a dash of Low, and sprinkle liberally with a lot of Spiritualized (the quieter parts, there's no 8 minute feedback drone freakouts here) you come up with Maps. That's the best way I know to describe them using other bands as reference points. But like I said about Anything After, its bad both for the band and you to describe them that way. The best way is just for you to download the songs and enjoy them. I hope you take something close to what I did from these songs, and bear in mind they are only demos. I get chills thinking how good finished these songs will be.

Join James as a friend here on myspace. The Maps message board is here.

MP3: Maps - To the Sky (demo)

MP3: Maps - Lost My Soul (demo)