As an English Literature student, words are my tool. I love language and all its connotations, permutations, and possibilities. A quick glance at my most listened on last.fm will reveal that this spills over into my music tastes, the wordy bookishness of Will Sheff and the meandering folk-tales of Colin Meloy being exemplary of what takes up a vast proportion of my listening time. With a singer spewing out his carefully considered lyrics, there is an instant psychological ”“ and, in the act of singing along, physical ”“ connection between the artist and the listener. We hear the words, and soon enough we are convinced that we have “so felt this song!”.So it’s hard for me to get genuinely excited about instrumental music. I certainly appreciate and enjoy the sweeping post-rock of Godspeed, or the beauteous soundscapes of Sigur Ros, or the technical achievements of largely wordless dub-step like Flying Lotus. But it takes something special to for it to get under my skin and demand that I replay the record RIGHT NOW. I wonder if you can tell where this review is going yet. If not, I’ll get it over with right now: Maybeshewill really, really got under my skin, into my pores, and lived in my brain. I’ve had this record for a few months now, and I just keep coming back to it, revelling in its unadulterated bombast.Sorry to keep name-dropping bands, it must look like a vain attempt to show off my music credibility, but the key touchstone with this album is 65daysofstatic. Not only that they were probably the last post-rock outfit to click with me in the way Maybeshewill have, nor simply that they can’t be bothered with spaces in their band name, but that they strayed from one tradition of post-rock that has oft put me off: song length. What is it with post-rock bands, who, when writing their tunes, feel the need to string them out well above and beyond the length of a traditional pop song? Maybe this is just my psychosis, but it really is one of those things that winds me up. Tortoise’s Millions Living Now... for example, is a great record, but its opener is over twenty minutes long, so I was immediately put off for ages. Think of everything I could achieve in twenty minutes! I could listen to five Maybeshewill songs. Yes, I’m a product of the fastfoodbroadbandcupasoupinstantcoffee generation, and thus my attention span is appalling, but that’s not my fault! It just means artists have be aware of that and write shorter, more easily-digestible songs if they want a positive review from me on a mid-level indie-music website.Not For Want of Trying sounds like the work of more than four people. It also sounds like the cost of more than next-to-nothing, which is what the band claim to have spent on its recording. It’s not like any of that really matters in your enjoyment of the music, but with songs so expansive and joyous, it makes you realise that what’s missing from the majority of music that actually has a budget is passion. Because what Maybeshewill do sound like is four people having the time of their lives. While at its best this album has some of the finest musical moments this year, there are points when that doesn’t even matter: artfulness, proficiency, everything else goes out of the window as you get carried away on the sound of love for music, on your own enjoyment, on music being made entirely for music’s sake and a band who doesn’t give a fuck what you think because they’re on top of the world, and if you’re not there with them, then that’s your loss. 90%Maybeshewill on Myspace