For artists from David Bowie to the Birthday Party to Liars, seeking refuge to record in Berlin has resulted in some very dark, very far-out releases. So when psychedelic pop twosome Moon Duo-- which features Wooden Shjips' Erik "Ripley" Johnson on guitar and fellow San Franciscan Sanae Yamada on keyboards-- decided to head to the German capital to craft their second proper full-length, Mazes, one could reasonably expect the results to be a bit tortured or mysterious. Where their noticeably toothy debut, Escape, often threatened to slip backwards into the scuzz-laden heavy-psych of a Wooden Shjips record, Mazes is an exercise in accessibility and concision, using familiar, melodic pop templates to support their drone and krautrock tendencies.
Mazes operates very simply, with Yamada setting up the repetitive, unexpectedly hooky keyboard patterns (usually using a variation of organ sounds) and Johnson, displaying some of his best guitar work to date, dropping monstrous, zoned-out sounds over her backdrops. While there are plenty of gnarly effects pedals being stomped all over Mazes, Johnson for the most part refrains from using his guitar to blanket these songs in trance-inducing washes of noise. Moon Duo are still able to achieve awing levels of depth here, but it's made more impressive considering how easy these songs are to follow. Where some of their output (and the same can be said about Wooden Shjips) is about getting lost in the fog, the band helpfully lays a trail of breadcrumbs.
This is also a much more consciously rhythm-focused album that its predecessor, and when songs fall flat ("Scars") it's usually because Moon Duo haven't taken the time to make sure the groove is properly locked in place. The one you'll hold on to tightest is "When You Cut", a deranged sock-hop that rains a torrential boogie on Mazes with such force that it threatens to wash everything else out. Yamada and Johnson work with such precision and symbiotic rigor, going ape over the handclap-filled drum programming, it's a mystery as to why Johnson keeps singing, "I feel the walls closing in on me." Instead, it feels as if the doors have been flung wide open.
