Mazes -‘A Thousand Heys’ (Fat Cat)
Mazes don’t waste any time on their debut, rattling through thirteen songs in just over half an hour. Not that they particularly evoke the Ramones per se; it is more to do with the way that they simply charge through the songs that make up this album.
There’s some good tracks on here like ‘Surf n turf/maths tag’ and ‘death house’ which are worth hearing. The thing is that while the band appear to have a very impressive DiY pedigree and, no doubt, achingly cool record collections (60s garage, classic punk, c86 etc..), some of this is just a bit too derivative to be impressive, to these ears, at least. To whit: ‘Boxing Clever’ is a Pavement rip-off, frankly, while album closer ‘Til I’m Dead’ is The Kinks circa 1964.
It’s not a bad album, but it’s not great either. There are album promos I get sent where I feel I have to buy the album for myself. Sorry to say, this is not one of them.
**1/2
A Thousand Heys is out now on Fat Cat.