There’s a beautiful story behind Wooden Aquarium, the third full-length from British Ameri-indie devotees Mazes. It involves travelling to an upstate New York town where their gear was stolen, conditions turned wintery, and the band had to dig their way through thick snow to get to the studio each day. That paints a romantic picture of both isolation and commitment, with the band hunkering down to record as the world turned white around them. While the circumstances surrounding Wooden Aquarium suggest escapism, the music found inside is all grazed knees and furrowed brows—a brush with reality instead of a retreat from it. Mazes’ last album, Ores & Minerals, was a shift away from the slacker-lite indie of their debut. This album is a smaller turn of the wheel, albeit one still indebted to scruffy 1990s guitar-rock figureheads of a plaid-shirted vintage.
The question of identity is something that comes up often with this band, and other British acts (Yuck, in particular) whose adherence to thick walls of guitar fuzz makes it clear they’ve grown up on a strict diet of J Mascis and Ira Kaplan riffs. At least Mazes approach such cross-continental thievery with a dose of wit; the standout cut from this record, “Salford”, pings back and forth across the Atlantic many times. Guest vocalist Heather Strange twists American vowels around singer Jack Cooper’s distinctly English take on the Greater Manchester borough of the title, while the music is a straight throw-down between Pavement and Prolapse, pitching it somewhere between tunefulness and abrasion. In a lyrical sense, it’s Mazes’ most English song to date, making Strange’s contribution feel like a buffer to prevent them from revealing too much of themselves—which in itself gives the song an odd, unique weight.
Cooper rarely stretches the band beyond “Salford”, instead settling into a set of unfailingly polite indie-rock songs centered around gently ambiguous lyrics. There’s an affable swipe at those who think Mazes lean too far to the other side of the Atlantic in the title of “Explode Into Colo(u)rs”, although it’s crafted from a mélange of clear-cut Sea & Cake guitars and the spare atmosphere of old Swell records. The general position of Wooden Aquarium is inward-facing, with highs coming when the band disconnects from traditional songcraft, such as on the merge of chattering voices on “RIPP”—making it something like the well-turned-out cousin of Gang of Four’s “Love Like Anthrax”. There aren’t quite enough moments like that here, and the album could benefit from bringing back some of that diversity in its back half, when it settles into a long bout of well-meaning but ultimately forgettable wistfulness.
Cooper has said he doesn’t like getting compared to other acts, but there’s never a sense that he’s working too hard to get beyond his influences, such as the moment where he adds a little Posies with a dash of Real Estate by way of the Feelies (“Mineral Springs”). The difference between those bands and this one is in the finer details—Real Estate’s best songs, for example, are just a touch brighter, sharper, and more memorable than the ones Mazes have presented here. It’s not the borrowing that’s the problem, it’s the execution and delivery, coupled with moments of distinction (“Salford”, “RIPP”) that suggest this band could touch down in a better place on a more regular basis. On Ores & Minerals, there was a measure of spaciness that’s been lost here, perhaps surprisingly considering the circumstances of its birthing. If that album was a leap, this one is a step, and a gingerly one at that.
