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News Mention: Maps & Atlases SXSW in the New York Times
Another mega-news media outfit mention of Maps & Atlases, this time in the New York Times Art/Music section covering SXSW in their Friday edition. The article is titled So Much to Play, So Little Time by famed review critic Jon Pareles (ex-Editor of Rolling Stone, rock critic since the 70s):
Both kinds of bands probably hate the thought, but progressive-rock and hardcore bands often share something: an impatience verging on fidgetiness that makes them pack lots of changes into brief timespans. Maps & Atlases, a band from Chicago, is firmly in the math-rock camp: odd meters, intertwining guitar lines and stop-start drumming. The structures wind themselves up, knock themselves apart and veer into something new - which could be another hurtling pattern or a one-chord meditation - within seconds. The lyrics are sung in a reedy, unpolished croon that reminded me of Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, and they mention things like coin collections and “reassembling artichokes with Esther,” or something like that. Maps & Atlases’s music offers every bit of the exhilaration of virtuosity, but it’s not about showing off. It’s about getting all those ideas out before the next one crowds in.
That’s a heckuva paragraph for the Chicago foursome, and a good step in the right direction.