U.S. Maple - Bitter shivers from the world of blues

Few people remember it today, but blues music wasn't originally meant as entertainment. What has since been sweetened by legions of guitarists, from Clapton onward, was born not just as a music of suffering and pain, but as something dissonant and difficult to listen to. The so-called blue notes, the intervals that marked out the 12-bar structures, stirred the same fear in audiences of the time as my own generation (the one raised in the years of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet) felt dropping the needle on "Confusion Is Sex".

Out-of-tune music (as blues was once called in Italy), searing guitars, graceless and incomprehensible vocal howls. This was primordial blues, and it's from this school that musicians such as Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Oxbow and Old Time Relijun drew across various eras.

And, of course, Chicago's own U.S. Maple.

Born from the ashes of Shorty at the behest of singer Al Johnson and guitarist Mark Shippy (joined for the occasion by baritone guitarist Todd Rittmann and drummer Pat Samson), U.S. Maple are the perfect embodiment of the phenomenon that went by the name of Now Wave. Their deranged, deconstructionist approach is without doubt as close as one could imagine to the archaic spirit of the blues. A sound made of arrhythmias and nervous pulses, slicing guitars, singsong vocal murmurs and non sense lyrics.

It takes the four of them little time to catch the attention of Skin Graft Records, who in 1995 release their debut 7" Stuck/When a Man Says "OW"! A veritable cascade of disharmonic guitars sacrificed to the contortions of Arto Lindsay and the convoluted geometries of early Mark Ribot, over which looms an irreverent, ironic vocal delivery born of Pere Ubu's cabaret and AC/DC's hard rock.

A few months later comes Long Hair In Three Stages, which deepens the ideas of the single by emphasizing the band's improvisational, free-form streak. With Jim O'Rourke at the helm, the four are helped to express themselves at their best, scattering small inventions throughout the album, though what emerges most forcefully across its 10 tracks is the visionary talent of all four Maple members. From the opening "Hey King" onward, the band's sound assaults the listener, leaving them stunned. The track opens with a crooked, limping rhythm, over which the guitars rattle and writhe, before exploding in full force with a driving gait that stuns and disorients. Al Johnson howls incomprehensible phonemes, while Samson's agile, essential drumming stubbornly seeks order and rhythmic sense within a mixture that closely recalls the voodoo orgies of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.

On the record, exceptional from first minute to last, the standouts are the sly "Aplomado", embellished by Thymme Jones's trumpet, and the instrumental "Lady To Bing", while "Northwad" anticipates the process of sonic destructuring that will reach its peak on the following Sang Phat Editor. The substance of the sound is unmistakably blues: the chords, the scales, however transfigured, betray an almost obsessive attention to respecting the blueprint, albeit in a decidedly postmodern form. This is clearly felt in "Letter To ZZ Top", which finds Shippy engaged in chord progressions of clear southern lineage. And in the aforementioned "Lady To Bing", which resurrects the Beefheart of "Trout Mask Replica".

The logic pursued by Maple isn't far removed from that worked out by the very earliest Sonic Youth: music that is essentially adventurous and “avant” in substance, but cloaked in rock moods. With U.S. Maple, Now Wave reaches its highest expression. The decadent, morbid sound of sonic youth is put through a further process of fragmentation; even the last residues of meaning present in the New Yorkers' music are definitively swept away in favor of a pataphysical mood devoid of any referent.

The masterpiece had already been in the air, and it arrives in 1997 with Sang Phat Editor. The recording is once again entrusted to the Chicago guru, and the sonic substance reaches a perfect balance between experimentation and blues moods. The guitars have become even harsher and more jagged, Johnson's vocals are by now an incomprehensible agglomeration of vocal emissions, an improbable cross between a pagan ritual and a hallucinogenic trip gone bad. But the record's real novelty lies, if anything, in the definitive annulment of rhythmic scansion, which represented the last “musical” element in the quartet's sonic flow.

To put it in McLuhan's terms, with Sang Phat Editor the “tool” becomes “impediment,” amputation. The guitars and drums are no longer the implements through which man carries out his task, but an obstacle that subjects meaning to its own characteristics, making the act of communication impossible.

U.S. Maple represent, better than any other band, the incommunicability and the anxiety of incomprehension of all humankind: the anguish of an existence spent acting out one's own life in a material world that turns against its own creators.

The guitars trip over themselves, the drums sink into quicksand, the voice stays trapped in Johnson's throat. U.S. Maple's music is “impossible” music, a brutal staging of the dramatic gap between spirit and body, power and act, desire and reality, signifier and signified.

The album contains memorable tracks like “Missouri Twist,” an admirable example of blues futurism, with Samson's sobbing drums alternating between timid hints of meter and moments of pure delirious chaos. The guitars had never sounded so good; Johnson's bark is a vocal retch that (while retaining a vaguely sarcastic edge) has lost its ironic character to become pure desolation. “Mountain Top” features the Flying Luttenbachers, who for a few seconds turn a track made entirely of dissonance and screeching into their usual jazzcore explosion, while on “La Click” Fred Lohnberg-Holmes and Julia Pomerlaugh supply a caustic incipit that pushes the track into territory bordering on contemporary classical music. “Songs That Have No Making Out” drags on agonizingly for two minutes before spilling into an epilogue made of whispered creaks and graceless squeals (a kind of musique concrète for musical instruments).

The finale is nothing short of majestic: “Through With Six Six Six” and “Home It's Ok,” morbid arrhythmias, exhausting silences, disjointed atonal explosions, tracks in which everything and its opposite happen at once (here and there a banjo even pops up, tortured within the shapeless chaos of beats and yowls).

In the meantime the band starts drawing attention worldwide for its live shows too, which cement its reputation as an atypical, irreverent group, with performances that are pleasantly ironic (full of entertaining moments as well) yet always brutally incisive.

Having reached formal perfection with Sang Phat Editor, U.S. Maple decide to reconcile with the song format. This reverse journey, which would take six years of work before it could be called complete, begins with a sharp change of course. Jim O'Rourke, producer of the first two albums, is let go, and the band ends its working relationship with Skin Graft.

For Talker, from 1999, Johnson and co. turn to Michael Gira (ex-Swans) and Martin Bisi, as producer and sound engineer respectively, while it's Drag City that puts out the third chapter of their saga. The shift from their previous work is evident: Talker is steeped in a dark, noir atmosphere. The recording is more “focused” and less overflowing. The sounds overall are more orderly, and the songwriting too has become calmer.

It's still too early to call it a turning point, since the record remains firmly anchored to the feverish format that had characterized the two previous works, but there is undoubtedly a palpable desire to work by subtraction, to say less and say it better, and above all to move closer to a vaguely pop format. The compositions are the finest they've ever written.

The opening “Bumps and Guys” starts off quiet before detonating into a spine-tingling crescendo. The voice grows even thinner, the words are now hissed, spat out. The guitars, once sharp and jittery, become more open, less abrasive and brighter, in stark contrast with the surrounding darkness. Samson's drums no longer muddy the flow, making it deformed and incoherent, but scatter disordered specks of dust here and there without ever attacking. The geometries are essentially the same, but what changes is the band's overall attitude: less iconoclastic, more atmospheric. This is borne out by “Apollo,” “Don't You Crust?” and “Breeze It's Your High School,” which are rhythmically steadier and less convulsive.

The sound tries to break free from the cliché of deconstructionist blues in favor of a more “human” feeling. There's no shortage of more typical episodes, like “Go To Bruises,” “Stupid Deep Indors” and the closing “So Long Bonus,” which evoke the sick spirit of the good old days, but overall Talker deserves credit for deepening the themes dear to Maple and for introducing new insights.

This path of redemption is brought to completion two years later with Acre Thrills. The approach has decidedly changed: the darkness has thinned out and the band takes on an unexpected vigor. This is clear right from the opening (and enchanting) “Ma, Digital.” Fragmented, delicate rhythmic figures and brief melodic snippets interlock and interact with impressive lightness. The composition is constantly balanced between order and chaos. The drums move in and out of the rhythmic register, repeating small off-beat phrases, following the flow, slowing it down and then realigning with the other instruments. The modus operandi is that of Storm & Stress and San Agustin: the music no longer takes on the gloomy connotations of the past, but becomes lively and colorful.

The sonic flow becomes coherent and regular, conventional rhythms and meters appear (even a classic 4/4!), the tracks become gentle and light. Johnson's singing settles into almost soul-like registers, softening its dazed nature while keeping its evocative power intact. Shippy and Rittmann set up their usual cacophonous duels, but with a new feeling, made of soft, muted tones. In short, a genuine rebirth. Compositions like “Open A Rose” and “Troop And Trouble” are as shocking in their evocative power as ever, but with remarkable grace and lightness.

Acre Thrills is a thrilling record that opens up uncharted territory for the band. Not just experimentation, dissonance and theatre of the absurd, but for the first time also soul, groove, melody. Obviously, don't expect a Smiths record, but the leap in quality compared to the past is unmistakable; still, the band remains the same at its core and, however refined and softened, is still as caustic and explosive as ever.

Right after recording Acre Thrills, Pat Samson left the band. His replacement was Adam Vida, a far more conventional drummer who would play a decisive role in the band's definitive shift towards pop music. With the new lineup they recorded Purple On Time, released in 2003 and still to this day the group's last release. It's an album decidedly below the standard we'd grown used to - not a bad record, but overall less inspired and lacking in spark.

This "change of state" seems to have done the combo good, as they sound perfectly at ease with more classically rock registers, but the vibrant mood that had marked their previous releases seems to have gone missing. It's probably no coincidence that the group took a break (one that has now lasted five years) to regroup and pick up the thread.

Purple On Time is what you'd call a transitional record, well conceived and executed, but ultimately not that striking.

It's hard to guess what's next for the U.S. Maple saga: rumour has it that for a few months now the band has gone back to playing together with its original lineup. Skin Graft's website mentions a mysterious recording session that was supposed to happen in total secrecy, but was called off just a few hours beforehand by one of the four members.

It also seems the band is working on a DVD that should collect live material from their various periods. Let's hope it's not meant as an epitaph.

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