Maserati - "Inventions for the New Season"

Maserati - "12/16" (Temporary Residence Ltd. 2007)

Maserati - Inventions for the New Season / Temporary Residence Ltd.

There is a moment on the three-way split Maserati did with fellow Athens, GA residents Cinemechanica and We Versus the Shark in 2004 where you aren't in love with this band. It is the moment before you hit play on "Towers Were Wires." It is also the last moment I can remember thinking that Maserati sounded like a really good name for a band and not just a car company. Now I know better: It's not just a classic car brand. It's a great name for a post-rock band that's come a long way in their short history.

Maserati have flown under the radar in the past few years, but with Inventions for the New Season they have re-emerged from their post-rock hideaway to deliver a full-length that's as much punk-funk as the expected post-rock. In fact, the group may have welded the two together to produce something not unlike LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver or !!!'s Myth Takes, except with more blissy guitar tones.

There's a long-winded explanation to this. Here's the abbreviated version: When Kindercore filed for bankruptcy in 2003, Hello Sir took Maserati under their wing where they released a 7" (which was the first appearance of the brilliant "Towers Were Wires"), one split with The Mercury Program and that three-way split mentioned earlier, and their out-of-print sophomore release The Language of Cities. The band went on hiatus in 2004 and though most of their core members eventually reunited in 2005, drummer Phil Horan is now in a reggae band called Still Flyin'. So material for Inventions for the New Season began to form. The only problem was that there was still no proper drummer.

Enter Marietta, Georgia native Gerhardt "Jerry" Fuchs: This guy's prowess is such that he has been in demand and delivered for the likes of the aforementioned LCD Soundsystem, The Juan Maclean and Turing Machine (which he helped found). More relevantly, Fuchs helped out on !!!'s Myth Takes, and so it comes as no surprise that when !!! swung through the Southeast to play shows in Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia, Maserati were in the opening slot. Fuchs professes to not enjoying standing still; by drumming for both bands on those nights (and considering !!! usually does hour-plus sets), he's certainly been kept busy.

His uptempo style of drumming has profoundly influenced the new record. For example, on epic opener "Inventions," guitarist Coley Dennis has explained that it was influenced directly by Ash Ra Temple's 1975 recording "Echo Waves." This sort of stuff, coupled with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and touches of all flavors of krautrock, means that Maserati sounds more like Neu! than Mono. The sort of epic quiet-to-loud build-up followed by the inevitable comedown of bands like Explosions in the Sky or even Mogwai in their more contrived moments is absent here. Instead, Maserati drive as quickly as an MC12 around the streets of Bucharest. There's never been any patience for vocals in their music, but there's virtually no patience for anything else except sheer speed here.

If it sounds like they're devolving and falling into some kind of post-rock-meets-dancefloor mentality, you're way, way off the mark. Meaning: I haven't done this band justice. So let the awesome power of "Show Me the Season" grab a hold of you. Let the sheer might of "12/16" conquer you in its final minute. Let "The World Outside" win you over with an avalanche of cymbal-crashing, adrenaline-fueled beauty. "Awesome" is a weak adjective to describe many things, that much is true... But Maserati isn't one of them.