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Album Review
Maupa Run, Run, Sleep Song Records
Article written by
Ged M - Oct 12, 2008
Maupa: Run, Run, Sleep
The easy job is to describe Maupa’s second album as a brilliant pop record but further definition is tricky when there’s such in-built variety. In the first three tracks alone the band offer powerful post-rock that builds from a gentle electronic buzz to a crescendo of scintillating guitars (‘Run Run Sleep’); then a Strokes-y blast of rhythmic rock (‘Big Pig’); and thirdly a gloriously twinkly bittersweet ballad (‘Satellites’). That’s a pretty good start for any band and you’ve still got seven cracking tunes to follow! The Accrington six-piece – who apparently have some links to the Fischers – are by turns, ethereal, sensitive, loud and direct, combining psychedelic darkness with melodic pop. It’s hard to pin them down to a particular style when they’re clearly unafraid to mix it up, and it works because there isn’t a poor track on the album. It would be easy to tag it as some Northern pop (and to be fair there are shades of Echo and the Bunnymen) but there’s clearly an echo of the more intelligent strain of American indie, particularly the idiosyncratic constructions of bands like the Cold War Kids. It’s a record whose attraction grows exponentially on each play; though it’s their second release it’s my first encounter with them and I’m hoping it won’t be the last. It’s a gift that keeps on giving.