The Mae Shi - Heartbeeps

Genre experimental Publisher 5RC External Links Official Website 5RC

Quality over quantity. One of those axioms that's burned into our brains during childhood, but don't ask me where I picked it up exactly, because I can't for the life of me remember. I bring it up now in reference to Heartbeeps, though in this case I need to turn the old saw around. It's not that the Mae-Shi haven't done us proud this time, see, but that they haven't loaded us up; rather, the trough is half-empty.

On last year's Terrorbird, the L.A.-based quartet squeezed half a career's worth of ideas into a 33-track, 42-minute jackrabbit spincycle, dashing madly from dance-punk to mealy synth-pop to meth-dosed computers. If you blinked, you missed a lot; that hyper-drive was half the fun, and why Terrorbird made this writer's Top 30 of 2004.

Conversely, the 10-track, 16-minute Heartbeeps EP finds our heroes easing back into their Ritalin regimens with actual songs, though their whiplash appeal's still high, if somewhat curbed. It's always been impossible to say who's singing what as all band members handle vocal duties, but whoever sounds like Steve-O being shaken like a martini on a mechanical bull dominates here -- as well he should (is it programmer Ezra Buchla? Drummer Brad Breeck? Guitarist Jeff Byron? Bassist Tim Byron? Who knows?). Nimble guitar twitchings thumbed by electronic trills are crashed by conjoined, dynamic bass'n'drum blows on "The Universal Polymath" as paranoid gibberish gushes as though muzzling is imminent: "We found it wrapped in Post-Its/Underneath the basement stairs/At your parents' house in Palis Verdes." "Crimes of Infancy" throws a tantrum of cannibalistic drum rolls and stamping guitar before breaking into an all-out, going-nowhere sprint that lands our manic *Jackass*-esque singer huffing and puffing along to a memory of Stone Temple Pilots "Plush," while the title track crosses SOSing medical equipment tones with what may be the best Unicorns song not written by the Unicorns.