MP3 Review: Maff "Maff EP"

[$7.92 to Download // $9.99 for CD // Edition of 30 // https://maffmusica.bandcamp.com/releases]

The music of Maff is not easy to describe because it seems to change from song to song, though it manages to stay within that same genre of defiance.    "Linger Around" is one of the finer examples of shoegaze on here with just the right amount of fuzz and yet "Walking On Fire" has this Verve feel to it but it is mostly instrumental with only a few words spoken here and there, most of which are the title, and it is just all around trippy.     "You" has a bit more life to it, somewhere between Smashing Pumpkins, Elastica and Veruca Salt.    And at the beginning of "Someday" I can hear Soundgarden until it turns into a lovely ballad with female vocals.

In many ways, I feel like the music of Maff is anti-rock n roll.   At one point in time (Though I wasn't there) someone got tired of rock n roll and that sort of style of music and they went out and started playing different music.   And it's not that it's punk or grunge or something like that, it just has that feeling to it where it almost feels like rock n roll but they're playing it just slightly off so as to sort of stick into the faces of those who do play rock n roll.   It's quite fun though.

"Million Year Picnic" has a more familiar sound to it while there is an instrumental number on here also.    I enjoy "Planet Wave" because it's a mix of psychedelic rock and screams of distortion as you hear "Welcome to the Planet Wave!"   Maff is just one of those bands that feels familiar enough to play shows with and be on compilations with the bands you already know and love (Most of which fall under the "shoegaze" tag) but yet they don't sound exactly like any single one of them and that's remarkable to me.

It's also worth noting that this is an EP of eight songs with the ninth and final track being a radio edit.   It's not that these songs are particularly long but this just feels to me like one of those EPs that has a lot going on and in that sense it just seems to accomplish a lot more than most full lengths can.   I know this is an EP because the title is "Maff EP", but if they tried to pass this as a full length I wouldn't question them on it.   This is just so good and it feels like seeing an old friend for the first time in many, many years and you just pick up right where you left off.