Introducing: Mazes

No one seems to have told Mazes that guitar music is supposedly dying a slow and tawdry death. If there is an End Of Year Poll for albums displaying ‘Wide-eyed Joie De Vivre’ the London quartet’s debut effort, A Thousand Heys, should win at a canter. It is a cynicism-free headrush through Juke Box Utopia – a splash of REM, a dash of spiky post-punk and each song bristling with a devilish melody. Indeed there is a vintage feel to Mazes – they are a band who are not afraid to dress a huge hook in classic guitar sounds with no tricks or need to deceive the ear.

TLOBF met up with singer/guitarist Jack Cooper in Manchester ahead of a recent Mazes show supporting Dum Dum Girls. The venue is the always-excellent Deaf Institute, a place where Jack already has connections having previously hosted a weekly club night. Indeed, the band members are industry veterans having created at least three record labels – Jack started Suffering Jukebox during his pre-Mazes time in Manchester.

While various Dum Dum Girls preen themselves pre-gig, Jack is happy to chat perched on a crate at the bottom of a flight of stairs backstage. He’s self-deprecating yet switched on – Mazes are a band who can juggle their limitations with their undoubted potential. Indeed, after self-releasing a number of 7-inch singles, Mazes have recently signed to FatCat and if tonight’s skillful and energetic set is anything to go by, great things await Jack and the lads.

A Thousand Heys was recorded on a converted boat moored on the Thames. Why did you choose a floating studio?

FatCat suggested three places; one was with Adam Pierce, of Mice Parade, who runs FatCat in the USA – there was an opportunity to record at his studio in Upstate New York, which was certainly tempting. Then, there was an idea to record at Sigur Ros’ studio in Iceland. Both were kind of slightly overwhelming. We chose the Lightship because I took a trip down there on my bike and it is really central, just near the Millennium Dome, but it doesn’t feel like London – it feels like a Cornish town or something. The place has a kind of arts community and it felt really good.

I believe it was the first time you had availed yourself of a proper recording facility. Did that release a burst of creativity?

It did feel like that for half the album, but for the older songs even when we were recording them it was less satisfying because we have already done most of them right. It felt slightly pointless but they all came out on 7-inch which 250 people have, and we definitely hope that more than 250 people will like us. The songs that turned out really well and we were really excited about were the new ones, we brought in a little idea and just did it there and then.

Did you have a vision for how you wanted the album to sound?

We have released stuff before which is really kind of aimless – which is fun. We did a tape for Conan , before he was in the band and he had a record label called Italian Beach Babes [TLOBF can confirm we did Google ‘Italian beach babes’ solely in the name of research]. It was about 30 songs – demos and live stuff and bits and pieces – but it felt really aimless in a way that early Guided By Voices albums were aimless and sprawling. The intention with the album was to record a concise album. We might never have this opportunity again to do something really concise. It is quite a naïve album; it is melodic and I don’t want anyone to come to it or listen to it and be cynical about it. There is no room for cynicism where melody is concerned.

There seem to be a lot on influences running through the record – from The Kinks to early REM via Pavement and Big Star. How did this range of styles create the sound you were looking for?

The song is the melody and they come from everything and anything. The actual sound was originally informed by not being able to play that well and not having much time to do it, so we just bashed everything out. We would do it very quickly and there wasn’t much thought regarding arrangements or instrumentation really, it was just about getting the song across as quickly as possible.

But A Thousand Heys doesn’t sound ‘bashed out’ – how much has the band evolved since your early releases?

I don’t think we’re any better players – it may be that we’ve learned to use our limitations more. I’m a weird guitar player, I can’t really play guitar that well but I’ll go with my style as opposed to trying to be technical. All of us are doing that and it is informing the sound. The album wasn’t a lot more thought out than anything we had done before.

Going back, how did Mazes get together?

I lived in Manchester and it started when I met Jarin . He lived in London and I used to go down and watch bands that weren’t touring up here and I’d stay with him. I’d been writing songs for a while, so I’d send him songs and I always say – and I don’t know if he is embarrassed by it – it was kind of an excuse to hang out, because we got on so well.

So you started with the band split between Manchester and London. That must have made band practices a bit tricky?

At the start we didn’t rehearse. We did a tour with Wavves initially and it was good, because none of us knew what we were doing. I said before that we can’t play our instruments – well, we kind of can – but it was really exciting at the start because none of us really knew our parts of the song and it gave it a real energy live. It was like hanging on for dear life.

Before Mazes, a number of band members had their own record labels. Why did you feel the need to set up your own labels? To the uneducated, it sounds very entrepreneurial.

We come from a background and have grown up with bands who have done that. Actually putting out a record is incredibly easy and I think Conan and Jarin would say the same. You need a little bit of money to start off with and then you send off the tracks and some artwork and if you have the money for the first one then you are away. Also, we are all huge music enthusiasts; we all think about it all the time and are digesting music and reading about it. You get to hear a lot of things, especially these days with the internet, that aren’t getting anywhere. I just felt people needed to hear it and so I put it out.

You have recently signed to FatCat, which is a pretty heavyweight indie label. Having had your own labels, were you worried at all about compromising your creative control in signing to FatCat?

It was definitely a worry. But it has been fine, it has been great. We had an expectation because they have worked with bands like No Age and Animal Collective that those bands probably wouldn’t have worked with them if they had been pushed around. FatCat always seem to do things the right way and it has been like that with us.

These must be exciting times for Mazes?

It is all so exciting. Things like speaking to people like TLOBF, going to South By South West and we then are going to Ireland tomorrow – that’ll do for me. I’m really thrilled by it. I am quite ambitious for the band but I suppose if people like the album then wonderful, but I don’t want to force it down anyone’s throat, or get to wound up as whether it is going to be a success or not.

Looking forward, what might the follow-up to A Thousand Heys sound like? Have you got any ideas for new songs?

Yeah, loads. Recently, we recorded six in a night – which is the complete opposite of recording a proper album. I think the idea is that we are going over to America at the end of the summer, and at that point find a studio and record some songs. We recorded the first album on Pro Tools. I think, if anything, we’d like to do something where we recorded to tape and it was done live.