Maps & Atlases

Exeter’s Cavern Club is a venue steeped in history. As are many, admittedly, but I'm talking personal history: for this scribe the long-standing basement locale resonates with the memories of a youth spent frequenting its halls. A sprightly Coldplay witnessed (the week ‘Shiver’ broke the Top 40, no less); encounters with Matt Bellamy and Tim Kasher among others; Battle Of The Bands contests entered (emerged from victorious, even, in one controversial instance). In terms of the vibrant local scene, these chambers take on a magnitude belying their somewhat cosy nature. It’s a bona fide pleasure, then, to escape the seething melee of the capital and find solace in an old haunt, reassuringly familiar – right down to the alarmingly cheap house-doubles – and soon crammed with a whole new generation of music fans.

It’s also telling that many of the elder statesmen of the scene are out in force tonight, as Maps & Atlases (DiScovered here – the band that have brought me home, also imminently to play London with the superb/superb-of-moniker This Town Needs Guns) have been a cult concern for what feels like a while by this point, engendering feverish levels of dedication from musicians and music fans alike through their technically flawless and dazzlingly relayed self-releases.

And so, while late arrival and catching-up with friends and contemporaries thwarts close scrutiny of the supporting pair (though the clarinet-wielding first act-whose-name-escapes-me fire out handclap-happy grooves with aplomb and Sleepercurve are sufficiently hoary to correctly consider themselves the “rock thorn between two indie roses”), there’s a buzz of anticipation in the air preceding the Chicago-based headliners. Poor judgment sees me miss the opening number (unverified reports suggesting it might have been the soaring tech-pop whir of ‘Every Place Is A House’), though it’s a delight to sidle up and watch this band as they gradually hit their stride. Jaunts supporting Foals have brought them to the periphery of many, similarities between the pair certainly existing to a point, but where that band’s confrontational streak is brought to the fore in a live scenario, here it’s eschewed in favour of something warmer, subtler, tricksier.

A deft lightness of touch informs Maps’ playing this evening, Dave Davison’s unique, Marmite vocals impressing deeply, as he utilises the mic to return ever-wayward spectacles up his nose between staggering bouts of fretwork that mingle with joyous effect to the similarly apt bass, drum, xylophone and guitar lines the rest of the band supply. Mention of the name ‘Kinsella’ certainly can be made in describing the tapping, virtuosic guitar techniques this band revel in (seen this? Heavens, do), though rarely have they been married to such buoyant, easy melodies and solid intuition. Songs stop, start, explode into life and scurry to unexpected halts all in the space of about 30 seconds, spiralling towards art-pop crescendos and crucially never jarring; the only criticism you could level at the band a willingness to pack their song-shaped boxes too tight, leaving them in danger of bursting open any second.

This isn’t so much a complaint, however, as it is perhaps an inevitable side effect from watching a band of such unabashed proficiency for the first time. In the manner of many touring bands from across the pond, they thank their audience and support acts in admirably profuse fashion, leaving the stage to no encore though having sated the appetite of many a South West-based muso and ardent admirer with a grace and euphonious ability uncommon.