The Mae Shi are another band that's "influenced by all types of music, maaaan!", but let's cut the shit: On their debut LP, Terrorbird, the Los Angeles quartet for the most part straddle that fat, comfy pummel horse between hardcore and no-wave. On one side are the yelps and screams and gymnastic bursts of mathy noise; on the other are the herk-and-jerk guitars, swishy cymbals, and funk-contorted basslines. The Mae Shi occasionally manage a song that welds elements from both genres, but for the most part devote their energy-- of which there is a ton-- to jumping back and forth between the two, often in a matter of seconds. The ultra-fragmented nature of the songs will draw contemporary comparisons to labelmates Deerhoof, XBXRX, Pink & Brown, or Brooklyn's Ex Models. More so than those bands' albums, however, Terrorbird's 33 tracks demand to be taken as a whole. Unfortunately, this turns out to be a double-edged sword. While the fragments themselves are never short on energy, they are short on substance-- Terrorbird simply doesn't equal the sum of its parts.
After the quick bursts of drum noise that comprise the album's title track, The Mae Shi pull out all stops for "Power to the Power Bite Two", the album's early highlight. Scratchy screams fight across the stereo panning, drums play catch-up with the guitar line that taunted it in the first place, and a steady bassline does its best to hold things together down low-- until it just can't take it anymore, and must join the guitar for a unison breakdown. Two "Revelations" follow, beautifully smogging the album's mood after such a relatively potent pop. On "Revelation Three", The Mae Shi mistakenly tread some embarrassing 311 terrain, which thankfully disappears into waves of snare triplets and antsy guitar intervals.
This seems to be The Mae Shi's modus operandi on Terrorbird: Brief exercises from Noise Rock 101 surround the band's more carefully composed numbers, providing a harsh contrast for the album's otherwise immediately accessible moments. That said, when these straightforward songs aren't up to "Power to the Power" snuff, all the guitar gymnastics comes off as talentless bullshit, drenched in noise to mask an inability to play. It happens on "Jubilee", whose forced recombination of plucked guitar, Casio beats, and vocal harmonies are so unintentionally out-of-tune that it makes Liars' Angus Andrews sound like a barbershop quartet. It happens again on "Takoma the Dolphin Is Awol", which sports a solid narrative lyrically, but musically falls back on some seriously obnoxious Rage Against the Machine white-boy funk trills. Perhaps the biggest offender is the one-two guffaw of "Surf's Up" and "Testify": After the band prove they're "down" with Garage Band's hip-hop loops on the first one, The Mae Shi try their best to emote and come out sounding like The Starting Line unplugged.
Thankfully, the band does strike some solid gold on a good deal of Terrorbird. The straightforward discopunk stomp of "Hieronymus Is a Dead Man"; the nervous lawnmower drum rim snapping on "One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi"; the tom-tom breaks and tambourine rattles on the minimalist Stones mock-up "Do This"; and the deranged Sousa-meets-Les Savy Fav breakdown of "Virgin's Diet, The Hand of Wolves" are all seriously great hooks that keep Terrorbird afloat.
The album's closing "Repetition" suite, despite its Erase Errata "no-wave lite" attitude, is at the least conceptually interesting: The suite's opening movement experiences four subsequent reincarnations, each brief but very distinct, save their common thread of the band members singing, "We learn by repetition." The Mae Shi end on a somber piano progression, a surprisingly mellow passage for an otherwise irate Terrorbird. While the rest of the album sometimes barely holds together, "Repetition" is well thought-out and still manages to be just as mean as what proceeds it-- the suite seems a good place for The Mae Shi to pick up from on their next album.
