The Maldives – Listen To The Thunder
I wanna live and let it all be / I wanna lose this darkness inside of me / so ladies let love in and let all go / we are the wind that don’t know tomorrow
– Time is Right Now” from Listen to the ThunderToday I sat down with the intention of writing my first actual record review in some time about The Maldives just released LP Listen to the Thunder via Seattle’s Mt. Fuji Records. It was mapped out in my head beforehand to be the usual spiel about how these gents are making everyone else in Seattle look bad right now, how they’re on the forefront of modern country rock movement locally, and yadda yadda yadda. This morning though, after my first close listen of the record, with tears welling up in my eyes, I realized I couldn’t write that review. Not because those things aren’t completely true, but because that would no longer be addressing what it is that makes the Maldives different and special to me anymore, nor talking about what the album is really communicating.
How is it that this massive country rock collective is making me cry, you’re probably asking. I was asking myself that same question. It was unexpected. As I sat with no distractions, drinking in the album and writing notes about each of the songs, the more I examined the words and myself, the more it felt as though front-man Jason Dodson’s words were speaking directly to me. Of my hopes, of my fears, and of my mistakes. Of things that recently have become daily points of meditation on my growing uncertainty about my place in the world where I never had even considered them before. It’s an album that seems to be foreshadowing the choices I’m making right now, while reminding me of the poor choices that I’ve made in the past. And I’ve made plenty of those.
While I can’t guarantee that you’ll get the same feeling out of this album as I did, (actually I hope you don’t), I think you’re definitely gonna get something out of it. Which is more than I can say for most albums I listen to these days. These songs are complete idea’s with the developed emotion behind them embedded into the music. Maybe it’s that I’ve grown older, and I’m valuing the people around me and my relationships more acutely, but most rock today just sounds to me like a whole lot of whining and not a lot of living. And there-in lies the heart of what is so special about the Maldives music for me now. This music is coming from a place of living life, not fighting life.
In the case of Listen to the Thunder, had I heard it a year ago, I don’t think it would have hit me with such force or I would have thought about it in this way. Even though I’ve been hearing many of these songs for a while now, I just haven’t been thinking about the words so deeply. Last year at this time I was previewing them as one of Bumbershoot’s must see sets, hailing them as “Puget Sound Playboys” and “Wrangler Headbangers” (one of my favorite turns of a phrase I’ve ever originated). A force of rock melded with country, unbound by any rules about making popular music that either genre has created for themselves. I also viewed them as a distinctly male band, one of just a few popular alt(ish)-country male voices in town who loves a rad guitar solo as much as the next schlum. Now, I’m appreciating a whole new layer of human experience within their musical philosophy.
In the first song on the Listen to the Thunder “Goodbye,” also the lead song of the Maldives debut EP which we were so enamored with last year. Dodson sings by repeating “Goo-ood-byeeeeeee-oooooooh” over a heavy, almost solemn beat, his words intertwined with pedal steel, fiddle, and guitar lines. From the listeners perspective, the song can feel a sort of a progression. Through turmoil a coming-to-terms, yet much remains unsaid between the song’s spare lyrics, and we’re left to let the song find our own resolution in the final bittersweet guitar lead guitar lines. Today curiously, I found no resolution at all in that end, or the process of the song at all. I was simply left mournful.
The album’s third track “Cold November,” on the other hand, is a shameless and hopeful love song; that in it’s devout honesty delivers itself from being simply a embarrassing diversion in to romance-land. I always feel a bit embarrassed myself for liking this song so much, yet it raises me out of a bad mood as few songs can. “Cold November” and “Goodbye” both showcase an epic treatment of love, far removed from the superficial and unrealistic portrayal as so often authored by young songwriters who’ve minimal life experience. The reality is: real love means showing it and living it over time, through bad times and with intention, and the Maldives aren’t shy about tapping into that wisdom here. It’s a perspective I myself am still recently coming to terms with as it applies to my own life.
The longest track on the record at 10:35, “Walk Away” might be the most thoughtful track with regard to this notion of living fully. “Walk Away” opens with Dodson mournfully “Ooh-ooh-ooh”-ing over a spare acoustic and piano tracks, before launching into a remembrance of the ghosts that haunt, those of the ones closest to us, inescapable in their absence. To “walk away” is the ultimate human sacrifice, to accept that there is nothing left to do but turn your back on the ones we know we’ll never shake in our consuming love. If it is hard to find resolution in the final moments of “Goodbye,” the guitar led instrumental last half of “Walk Away” serves as almost a second meditation on the topic, one where it’s much easier to find solace and be left with a hopeful vision for the future.
To celebrate the release of this long awaited record and because living means doing a lot of celebrating, starting tonight August 27th, the Maldives are playing three consecutive nights at Ballard’s Tractor Tavern, a venue who are also using the occasion to honor the fifteen years that they’ve been in business. Friday night with Zoe Muth and the Moondoggies is already sold out, but tickets are still available for tonight with North Twin and 17th Chapter. and Saturday with Thee Emergency, SHIM and Pickwick. On Saturday at 4pm the Maldives will also be doing a free in-store at Ballard’s Sonic Boom Records on Market Street. Going to any or all of these shows comes with our highest recommendation.
Posted By Josh
on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 2:39 pm