I often wake up with songs already stuck in my head. However, this phenomenon rarely involves music I’ve been deliberately sticking into my head. Even when I’m ribs-deep in an album I’m reviewing- and even if it’s an album by a Top 40 hook machine like Lady Gaga- I don’t really wake up hearing its tracks inside my brain. Usually this just happens with random cheese from the ’80s and early ’90s that I haven’t heard since childhood.
But in the few weeks since I’ve started listening to Maps & Atlases’ Perch Patchwork, I’ve awoken nearly every morning with one of its tracks spinning in my mental stereo. And I don’t mean just one of its tracks. I mean most of the album’s songs have had at least one turn waking me up. This album is that absurdly catchy. Yet these melodies aren’t merely absurdly catchy. They’re nimble and sophisticated and precise, like Eastern European acrobats. Propelled by refreshingly unorthodox rhythms, intricate riffs, and singer Dave Davison’s tastefully poignant voice, the tunes frequently ascend toward heaven like fluttering moths before trickling back down to earth like misty rain.