Maritime

Heresy and the Hotel Choir | Flameshovel
By MIKAEL WOOD  |  November 19, 2007
2.5 2.5 Stars
maritimeinside
The third album by this affable Milwaukee quartet is their handsomest, most assured outing yet. But that doesn’t mean Maritime have distinguished themselves to the point that the first few sentences of any review of Heresy and the Hotel Choir will fail to mention that the line-up includes two former members of the Promise Ring, one of the late-’90s emo scene’s brightest lights. Frontman Davey von Bohlen is writing songs in the same jangly, up-tempo mode he stuck to during the Promise Ring days, and his telltale vocal lisp doesn’t make the job of creating something new and different any easier. But perhaps that’s not what drives him and his bandmates — these dozen tunes certainly don’t seem weighed down by any great artistic ambition. And that’s no knock: “For Science Fiction,” “Hand Over Hannover,” and “Guns of Navarone” (in which von Bohlen cheerfully announces that “sticks and stones might break my skin and bones”) provide familiar guitar-pop pleasures that aren’t likely to go out of style any time soon.

Maritime + The One A.M. Radio + The Soft Drugs | Middle East upstairs, 472 Mass Ave, Cambridge | November 28 | 617.864.EAST
Related: Billy Bragg, Gram Parsons, Excellent Italian interview, More more >
  Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Music, Music Reviews,  More more >
| More

Most Popular
Blogs
 More: Phlog  |  Music  |  Film  |  Books  |  Politics  |  Media  |  Election '08  |  Free Speech  |  All Blogs
ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS | FURTHER  |  July 07, 2010
    Astralwerks (2010)
  •   DEVO | SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY  |  July 01, 2010
    Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.
  •   TAIO CRUZ | ROKSTARR  |  June 24, 2010
    When Taio Cruz sings, "I can't live without you," in "Take Me Back," pop-song conventions tell us he's referring to a lover.
  •   THE FUTUREHEADS | THE CHAOS  |  June 16, 2010
    "I wish that I could stop the noise," sings Barry Hyde not long into The Chaos . It sure doesn't seem that way.
  •   BETTYE LAVETTE | INTERPRETATIONS: THE BRITISH ROCK SONGBOOK  |  June 01, 2010
    Bettye LaVette’s previous two albums had titles that required a little digging to unpack.

 See all articles by: MIKAEL WOOD

LATEST SLIDESHOWS

All Slideshows