Maps And Atlases
Cargo, London
12/10/2010

We don’t want to overstate the interest tonight’s headliners are attracting, but, to be honest, we haven’t been party to this almost-paralysingly packed a Cargo in years. Not, in fact, since Turin Brakes played here in their Next Big Thing days, and, thankfully, while Maps And Atlases have yet to embrace the somnambulism that’s blighted the Brake boys’ more recent endeavours, they’ve got every bit as light-treadingly memorable as melodic a nous and, moreover, an on-the-money timelessness that really ought to leave them snatching spoils aplenty. Of course, whereas early in the last decade that meant hitching a lift on the heels of the Travis/Coldplay double whammy, our cartographical protagonists have posited themselves as the answer to a rather different question: essentially, what would Kings Of Leon have been like had they a) turned up in the wake of Vampire Weekend and b) skipped the enormous learning curve of the first two albums and gone, wisely, straight to the delights of ‘Because Of The Times’?

Alright, perhaps not exactly like this, but there’s a definite sense that they’ve immersed themselves in the more interesting end of mainstream-bothering indie, kept the bits they liked, and sprinkled a few more esoteric elements into the mixture. Frontman Dave may well even have the look of a faux Followill, for instance, but, vocally, he casts an increasingly lost-in-music figure, almost approaching moments of rapturous communion – even as complex cuckooing adventures are taking place just out of his line of sight via Erin’s ecstasy-shouldered bass doings, Chris’ ambitiously skippy beat syncopation, always flirting with the avant-garde from the safety of a dervish-filled dancefloor, and joyous guitar contortions courtesy of our new favourite named bloke in band, Shiraz Dada. Maps And Atlases tout victorious, valedictory stuff, and, with the likes of ‘Solid Ground’ (cracked late-Beatlesy wistfulness ahoy!) and ‘Pigeon’ (their garrulously-grooved soca signature) in their arsenal, the charts’d be churlish not to come a-knocking. Way to go!

Iain Moffat