Birmingham trio Maybe Don’t have signed to the awesome Odd Box Records to release ‘At Owl Mansion’, a three-track EP which will be released as a limited edition EP (only 100 are being made!). Following on from their self-released cassette last year, it’s also available to stream and download via Bandcamp.
With talk of dirty rivers and the passage of time, the EP opens with ‘Torridge and Taw’. The band sing about how they want to ‘wind the clock by running more errands’ and how it’s a case of ‘one call and everything changes’ and you want to join them in this escape from the mundane aspects of ordinary life. With chanted backing vocals and some super-sweet pop hooks, there’s an element of C90/early Los Campesinos! in the sound and this is backed even further by the bittersweet lyrics: ‘Time’s not on our side’; ‘It’s quiet now the battles have ended – except the one you fought with yourself’. Clocking in at just two and a half minutes, the final throes of the song have the ready made sing-along of ‘Who’s got eyes on me?’
‘Certain’ follows this and this song has a vocal delivery in the vein of Johnny Foreigner as MaybeDon’t talk about how ‘It’s not uncertain you’re not unkind’ in complete harmony. There’s then talk of turning their backs to Canada (with a healthy dose of ‘oh, oh, ohs’) amidst a flurry of frantic drums. ‘Mansion Owls’ closes the EP and this is a song that fits in with the modern slew of brilliantly fun and melodic indie bands like Get Inuit, The Spook School and Spring King. There’s a real passion in the delivery of the lines: ‘I don’t want to feel like everything is getting better. I don’t want to feel left out’. Following this there is a breakdown and then all-too-familiar anxieties rise to the surface: ‘I can feel it slipping through my fingers, I’m a liability’.
We’d advise you to Maybe Don’t miss out on this EP.
Filed under: EP review, New music, Preview Tagged: alternative music, Bandcamp, Birmingham, EP review, indie, indie music, indie pop, Maybe Don't, music, new music, Odd Box Records
