U.S. Maple
So I was a little taken aback–but not necessarily displeased–by the raging controversy they inspired on their stint opening for Pavement on the road this summer. Comments in various indie-rock Web forums ranged from “U.S. Maple kicks ass….I think they totally upstaged Pavement” to “I would rather have my fingernails pulled out with a pair of rusty pliers than sit through that shit again.” Pavement fans being generally a mild-mannered lot, we didn’t get the fistfights and rioting that accompanied, say, the debut of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, but the back-and-forth was virulent enough to make me wonder if this subcultural-fragmentation thing is getting really out of hand. For all their freshness and energy, U.S. Maple have never struck me as particularly outre. Jagged, yes; with distinctive song structures, yes; sputtering and gasping in a sort of poetic nonlinear language, sure–but more than 20 years after Pere Ubu and no wave, their stuttering, high-tension churn is just what your basic inspired, breathing, visceral, turn-of-the-century rock ‘n’ roll sounds like. Or should.
