In his review of Three Mile Pilot's 2010 comeback LP, The Inevitable Past Is the Future Forgotten, Ian Cohen said that you couldn't argue for the San Diego band as "one of the lost treasures of 90s indie" because "they sound too much like themselves." And it's true enough that 3MP's sound is as immediately recognizable as theirs in 2012 as it was in 1995: the spooked-out murmurs building to wheezing pained cries, the clean bass propelling you across the songs' emotionally blasted terrain, the down-and-out dirges alternating with swinging rhythms like some starved and serious take on 70s glam and prog-pop. But 3MP's odd-man-out status in the current indie landscape also has something to do with the fact that the original context for their music seems to have utterly disappeared.
So Guided By Voices can return to a world where dozens of wannabe garage geniuses and lo-fi delinquents draw on the skuzzy and scatterbrained Pollard-pop aesthetic. They feel like part of a continuum, a sound that continued on in their absence. 3MP was once part of a scene too, however loosely defined and fractious, but one that pretty much no longer exists, or at least has zero cultural currency at the moment. Marrying the stately quiet-then-loud musical dynamics of what would come to be known as post-rock to the emotionally raw performing style of hardcore, "post-hardcore" was one of the most baldly named subgenres of all time-- and, at one point, enough of a potential commercial draw to get the resolutely grim and furrow-browed 3MP signed to a major label.
If they're going to be an isolated if ongoing concern, 3MP should at least be free to do follow their hermetic course without succumbing to a jones for keeping up with the Joneses. That's what makes Maps, a classic growing-pains-between-albums EP, so frustrating. It's precisely the sort of flawed and exploratory record you'd expect from a band stretching itself awake after a long absence, taking the opportunity to flaunt some new styles since no one was expecting their return anyway. But Inevitable was so strong as a whole, with even its minor departures grounded in 3MP's long-assured aesthetic, that it's odd to hear them futzing about on their second major post-reunion release.
Maps is the most richly realized of any of their recordings so far, full of painterly little sonic details and given a warm production sheen. (Even when they rolled in the orchestral touches, the albums 3MP made in the 90s were full of spiky instruments playing out against austere backdrops, in keeping with their contemporaries.) And two of the five songs here, "Wires" and "This Escape", are classic examples of 3MP's knack for pensive gloom, which sounds even better with all that sonic attention lavished on it. On the other hand they make some regrettable choices, mostly whenever they decide to lighten up and/or pick up the pace.
With its big bright chorus and bouncing rhythm, "Long Way Up" is the closest thing 3MP have ever come to writing a "real" pop song, rather than melancholy mope rock that plays around with out-of-date pop forms. In places it also sounds a hell of a lot like TV on the Radio's shoegaze-funk circa Dear Science. Not so much that it comes off calculating, but either way, it's disarming coming from a band that's made a minor career out of sounding so inimitable, dark, and inward-looking. And while it's competent enough as indie-flavored pop tunes go, let's just say light and hopeful and groovy isn't really 3MP's forte. Better is "Blu", which builds not to a howl but to an angelic ooh-ooh-ooh, traditionally anthemic without totally abandoning the dark stuff for professionalized indie's current fixation on stadium-aspiring cheesiness. The only real flop is "Birdy", where 3MP's interest in glam swagger gets so cleaned up and mechanized they come off like one of those goofily "menacing" industrial-tinged dance bands that got signed in the wake of Nine Inch Nails' success.
Who knows what any of these directions will mean for the next 3MP album, or if there'll even be one. Maybe Maps' jumble is something they had to get out of their system to return to their patented bleak-ass and arty post-hardcore epics. Or maybe they're scoring their future plans as they go, figuring out their next move before they've really worked out the kinks. It takes a lot of spine to completely absent yourself from the cultural conversation, to focus solely on your own idiosyncratic space, especially in a world as trend-driven as rock music. So while it's easy to understand 3MP's desire to branch out and meet modern indie halfway, it was a lot easier to admire them when they came back doing the same damn thing they've always done, and doing it well.
