Philadelphia noise-rock trio
Birds of Maya record most of their no-frills, louder-than-a-jet-rocket songs in their small basement rehearsal space, with the amps cranked up to ten and a cheap tape machine rolling. When the time came to put out an album, they'd sift through the accumulated tapes and pick a selection of songs. Their first three records were made this way, but 2021's
Valdez was done a little differently. The trio decamped to a New York studio to lay down their
Stooges-meets-
Blue Cheer jams in slightly cleaner, more produced fashion. It still sounds extremely raw, blown-out, and loose, but the rhythm section has more power, the guitars cut through more sharply, and the vocals are audible. This slight upgrade makes a world of difference to the bottom line. Where before the band sounded like a bunch of knuckleheads making a racket just because it seemed like the best thing to do on a Friday night, this time they sound a little more committed, more ferocious, and dangerously knife sharp. Sometimes when a band breaks out of their collective comfort zone -- and spends money on a studio -- the results are more focused and here
Birds of Maya definitely are. It shows most clearly on the concise and direct rockers: "BFIOU" sounds like "TV Eye" taken at double time as bassist Jason Killinger and drummer Ben Leaphart race guitarist/singer
Mike Polizze to the finish line in a cloud of mighty riffs and howled vocals and "Front Street" is three minutes of gnarly swagger that sounds like teenage brats taking an axe to a
Black Sabbath song. The long, fiery jams that make up the rest of the album also have an admirable amount of focus and energy even when they threaten to meander off into sonic oblivion. "Busted Room" rolls queasily along on a submerged blues riff with
Polizze strangling out leads like
the Groundhogs'
Tony McPhee on a cough syrup trip, "Please Come In" rides a naggingly repetitive bass riff, malevolent drum rolls, and
Polizze doing his best to answer the question of what a band with both
Ron Asheton and
Leigh Stephens would sound like, and the almost jaunty "Recessinater" features the bass and drums locking into a rollicking groove while
Polizze simultaneously imitates the three-guitar attack of
the Allman Brothers in speaker-cone-shredding fashion for more than ten exhilarating minutes. This is not a record for people who like their noise rock packaged nicely or for those who need a melody or song structure; it's for people whose idea of the best thing to do on a Friday night is being locked in a basement with three sweaty rockers bashing out songs with all the fiery energy and unschooled enthusiasm of their heroes. ~ Tim Sendra