Album Review: Life Size Maps - ‘Life Size Maps’
Attempting to make it as a proper indie rock outfit in the heart of the over-competitive Brooklyn scene probably ranks amongst one of the more tougher ways to make a name for your band, and it’s been that way especially more so since the better part of the 2000s. Add in a few lineup changes and sonic evolutions into the equation, which of course force a re-start of focus on each subsequent next try, and it’s only to his credit that Mike McKeever and his noise pop project Life Size Maps have not only survived the seismic shifts, but managed to create a clearer vision in the face of things getting bigger and more complicated.
On their self-titled full-length debut, Life Size Maps power up their colorful electrocutions into grand charges of pop. McKeever has struggled to find the right chemical compound to react as he sees perfect since forming the band in 2011, and he has seemingly found it in the stability of a four-piece arrangement that includes synth pro Rob Karpay: bassist Dave Stoecker and drummer Sean Thornton. While The humble thudding undercurrents of the electric cello heard throughout their early demo Magnifier doesn’t go unnoticed, Life Size Maps — now built like your favorite retro-fitted 16-bit video game emulator found on a 4Chan string — sound as if they’ve been freed from the sonic restrictions it confined them to.
Their sound in 2015 has drifted away from dreamy soundscapes, now sinking intensely and heavily into dark, dense sheets of glassy electro-rock much like Brooklyn DIY scene luminaries Parts & Labor’s latter day efforts. “Abstract Speed” benchmarks the dozen tracks with both mystery and exhilaration in the way McKeever muses cyber age existentialism around an aurora borealis of electronic and guitar fusions tailor made for today’s Tumblr meme-making. “Darkling” and “This Same House” swallow them whole in a controlled manic state looking for some of those answers with Internet obsession in mind, reflected both in the lyrical context of hyper-connectivity and a sonic aesthetic that uses sensory-inducing spells to its advantage.
It’s in its one-two punch of openers "Weird Luck" and “All Been Spent” where Life Size Maps sound at their most comfortably piqued, however, as the lucid noise brushing waves of WiFi against McKeever’s aquatic vocals uncover something very important for their future success: A vividly weird, yet beaming identity for theirs to call their own. Credit that to the masterful production of Chris Coady behind the boards. Just as he refined and pronounced the best facets of Beach House, Grizzly Bear, TV On the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and in turn helped turn “small”-sounding indie music into a mainstream thing, he pulls Life Size Maps in from the obscure deep web, and into an easily digestible form of social media.
It might just leave you wondering if it’s too early to start getting nostalgic about the golden age of blog Aughts indie rock, too. Either way, Life Size Maps suggests there is still vitality in those circuits. The Brooklyn four-some has finally found themselves amidst the white noise of the Internet and their search for answers within it, even if history is beginning to suggest it may actually be the least reliable and most disconnecting resource for anything resembling the truth.
Life Size Maps’ Life Size Maps will be released April 7th on Old Flame Records.
