AEM085 Life Size Maps

When I heard Life Sized Maps for the first time my imme­di­ate reac­tion was, “Wait, haven’t I heard this band on the radio?” Of course, I hadn’t, but it sounded like the kind of thing I could have.

On one hand, that’s a pretty big com­pli­ment.  It says, “your music has poten­tial to be huge.” But I’m not sure it’s a com­pli­ment that the band would be entirely com­fort­able with because it also implies a cri­tique, “your music sounds like some­thing I’ve heard before.” And I sus­pect it’s a com­ment they get a lot.  Life Size Maps play a brand of indie pop so chocked full of hooks, some new and some re-contextualized, that they inevitably sound a bit famil­iar.  And yes, they could be huge.

Life Sized Maps is a power trio from NYC fea­tur­ing Mike McK­eever on vocals and gui­tar, Robert Kar­pay on cello, key­board, and vocals, and Grif­fin Kisner on drums.  They formed in 2008 after meet­ing through music classes at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and Man­hat­tan School of Music.  Though trained in a vari­ety of styles, McK­eever explains, “we bonded over the idea that pop music is the most imme­di­ate and vis­ceral type of music around.” It’s a phi­los­o­phy they embrace head on in their music.  Life Size Maps bring a sur­pris­ing blend of youth­ful energy to the table to com­pli­ment their tech­ni­cal abil­ity, churn­ing out a highly infec­tious brand of indie pop.

Come­dian and musi­cian Rob Par­avon­ian likes to rant about Pachelbel’s Canon, a com­po­si­tion he’s had it out for ever since he was forced to play it in orches­tra when he was in mid­dle school.  He calls Johann Pachel­bel the “orig­i­nal one hit won­der” and curses about how those eight obnox­ious chords  con­tinue to haunt him to this day, reap­pear­ing in just about every pop­u­lar song of the 20^th cen­tury, from Bob Dylan to Green Day to Aero­smith to Avril Levigne.

I men­tion this because in A-side “Seems To Me”, Life Sized Maps takes that same (in)famous chord pro­gres­sion and flaunts it.  I don’t think it’s an acci­dent.  Maybe those chords found their way into a lot of the hits that Par­avon­ian men­tions by chance, but in the case of Life Size Maps it seems like a delib­er­ate re-appropriation of the Canon and all the bag­gage it car­ries, that impres­sive legacy of recy­cled hits.  And because the verse in  “Seems To Me” is played on cello (it’s the same cello part that scarred poor Par­avon­ian for life) the allu­sion to the orig­i­nal is pretty unavoid­able.  So my deja vu upon hear­ing it for the first time might have some­thing to do with that.

But Pachelbel’s pro­gres­sion is hardly the only hook in “Seems To Me.” The song begins with an ener­getic dance punk riff while the cho­rus is more del­i­cate, sup­ported by a cello arpeg­gio and tight vocal har­monies.  The vocal melody is con­sis­tently catchy.  In the verse it pro­vides bril­liant coun­ter­point to the Canon while in in the cho­rus, which is har­mon­i­cally more sparse,  it floats to the top.  The melody in the bridge is a lit­tle more defi­ant, “I shouldn’t go to your light any­more…” But the pin­na­cle for me is def­i­nitely in the final cho­rus when all of the dis­tinct vocal hooks sud­denly dove­tail together.  It’s almost like a round… you know, “row, row, row your boat.” Its a huge moment.  The song ends when the two pri­mary melodies sync up, albeit on dif­fer­ent words, “see” and “dif­fer­ently,” and harmonize.

B-side “Meet Me In The Shade” has a rather dif­fer­ent vibe, but like “Seems To Me” it sounds a bit like some­thing you might have heard on the radio.  Or rather, sev­eral things you might have heard on the radio.  Old ingre­di­ents are thrown together to cre­ate a new recipe.  The record­ing begins with an atmos­pheric cello riff that could just as eas­ily be the begin­ning of a Phillip Glass com­po­si­tion before launch­ing into a peppy pop song (circa 1967) in the style of The Tur­tles or The Beach Boys.  The lyrics have a clas­sic ring to them too, but with a pinch more cyn­i­cism. “All I’m need­ing is what you’re drink­ing,” McK­eever sings, “but I am not pre­pared, so fill my glass with care.” After the sec­ond cho­rus, the vocals drop out for a lit­tle while and the melody is echoed on the cello and my favorite moment is at around 2:30 when the entire band drops out except for Kar­pay, who makes that cello swing harder than I’ve ever heard a cello swing before.  Grad­u­ally the drums and gui­tar creep back in and cul­mi­nate in an explo­sive final chorus—well, I’m call­ing it a cho­rus but really it’s the verse and cho­rus trans­posed onto one another.  Just like at the end of “Seems To Me”, Life Size Maps again man­ages to weave sev­eral melodies together into a joy­ous tapes­try of pop.

When I lis­ten to Life Size Maps I am reminded of a pas­sage in Salman Rushdie’s “Midnight’s Chil­dren” in which the nar­ra­tor Saleem Sinai, after spilling his life story for nearly one hun­dred pages and hav­ing not yet arrived at the point where his par­ents meet , explains that to under­stand one life you have to swal­low the world.  Con­ve­niently, I might use a sim­i­lar excuse for writ­ing a thou­sand words about Life Size Maps and barely scratch­ing the sur­face of their music, devot­ing more time to asides about a 17^th–cen­tury Ger­man com­poser, Rob Paravonian’s com­edy rou­tine, 1960’s pop, and most recently, British-Indian nov­el­ist and essay­ist Rushdie.  But I think the same can be true of a band.  To under­stand what Life Size Maps is doing you’ll need to swal­low Pachelbel’s big hit and all the spin­offs it spawned, a legacy of adap­ta­tion and par­ody, you’ll need to digest the Beach Boys in their entirety, not just the tasty bits but also the debil­i­tat­ing addic­tion and depres­sion that sent Brian Wil­son into rehab, you’ll need to swal­low punk, from it’s birth in 1970’s coun­ter­cul­ture to it’s mar­riage with pop in 1990’s alt rock, you’ll need to…

Get the idea?  Life Size Maps is an exhil­a­rat­ing hodge­podge of pop­u­lar music span­ning cen­turies.  Swal­low it all.  Or if you’d rather, just let it wash over you, lis­ten, and enjoy.  Their lat­est EP is avail­able for free down­load below.

Nate Green­berg

[[[Down­load the 7-inch]]]

[[[Down­load the Life Size Maps Free EP]]]