Review of Maia's 'Pepper Stars' for Artrocker magazine

“Here at the Olympic Games in London, our attention is presently focused on the 100m hurdles final. And they’re off! And, well, what we’re witnessing here can only be described as quite bizarre; the favourite in Lane 4, Maia, is not bothering with jumping over the hurdles and simply running through them. Unsurprisingly, they are being considerably slowed down as a result.” Not only does this metaphor recall the high spirits provoked by this summer’s Olympics, albeit with the help of a slight twisting of reality, it also handily captures my feelings about Maia’s new album, Pepper Stars. The fact that they are the favourites in my fictitious hurdles final represents the idea that the quartet from Huddersfield have the natural talent. That much is obvious. The finger work in the latter half of opener Alien, for example, could not be tighter. The breakdown in Where Else But Earth uses the combination of guitar and various elements of brass to great effect. Constant Play and Towards The Onion, which help close the album, show that the band have some really strong song writing in them. It is what the imaginary hurdles represent that so peg the band back, though – their inability to take themselves seriously. You’d struggle to find a chorus more plain irritating than that of Zuma Aluma, Dear iO features such nonsensical lyrics as ‘I headbutt your position in the coldest reaches of space’ and More Strangely Than The Moon contains more genres than most bands explore in their whole career. Whilst I’m ready to admit that joke acts aren’t exactly to my taste, I can still nonetheless appreciate that there is appeal – one only has to look at the sales of Tenacious D and The Darkness to see that. The issue with Pepper Stars, and perhaps Maia in general, though, is that it’s not obvious enough whether they’re an act to take seriously or to laugh at. If a band doesn’t know how they want to be interpreted, how can their listeners be expected to know? It’s frustrating as the band clearly have the ability to be a great example of one or the other, but instead try to be both. It is this that ultimately fails them.

2/5