"I'm trying to remember where I went wrong/ I only want to talk you into coming back/ I won't even ask you where you've been/ Or who you've been staying with," Stevens sings, as though staring out his window, watching some memory of domestic bliss. It's followed by the gorgeous "Come Home," which moves gracefully from a slow ballad with male-female harmonies to a soaring climax. It's simply a broadening of a sonic pallet that was already pretty broad, and it's impressively well-integrated. The subtle, room-miked drums and banjo/guitar plucking that enter soon after, though, make it immediately clear that that isn't the case. haven't given over to Depeche Mode-styled synth-pop. Old Blood fades in on "Cinquefoils," with a pulsing electronic rhythm that's almost enough to make you wonder if Stevens and co. Though there are still some rough spots, he sounds more confident on the microphone these days, displaying his widest expressive range ever.
#Mayday album cracked#
His singing has come a long way since he first cracked and groaned his way through songs like "Show Me How the Robots Dance" half a decade ago.
Since Lullaby had their final cadence, Stevens has gone on to become the guitarist for southeast Nebraskan post-punks Cursive, and musically, Mayday falls somewhere in between his two other bands, occasionally utilizing the rhythmic push that makes Cursive's music so urgent, but using it mostly to support the grandly humble gestures and ramshackle navel-gazing that characterized Lullaby for the Working Class. During his tenure with breadbasket troubadours Lullaby for the Working Class, Stevens once referred to himself as a "pale white torso, complete with two struggling oars," and it only seems fitting that the imagery of that line should come to the fore in his latest project, as that's what Mayday's music largely seems to address.
But frontman Ted Stevens has always seemed to view life itself as a vast ocean that we're simply cast into- forced to struggle against currents and undertow, not to mention all the sinister surprises lurking in the depths. The members of Mayday seem like an unlikely bunch to relate to a primarily nautical distress call, having spent the majority of their lives adrift in the oceans of grain that cover Nebraska and the rest of the Great Plains.
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