| CD REVIEW Maeven |
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Band : Maeven British (they’re originally from Sheffield – some 40 kms North from Nottingham in the direction of Leeds…smack in the middle of the country between Liverpool at the Irish Sea, and Grimsby at the North Sea) all-girl (and I ain’t using the term idly, because all female members are still in their teenager years) quartet Maeven (and I’ve no idea where the girls got their bandname from…might be a bastardisation of the yiddish word “maven”, meaning “one who accumulates knowledge”; it also stands for a trusted expert in a particular field seeking to pass the knowledge onto others were formed in 2005, after the demise of guitarist/ backing singer Sally “Gallo” Saunders’s first band Psychological. Picking the Glam Rock genre as their choice of music-to-play (because they had always liked that style best, and hungred for reasonable success…and Glam Rock had always been the genre in which women in general faired best), the girls were apparently taken seriously for their technical abilities from the beginning, when the band was still a quintet with the addition of lead singer Becca Towler’s sister Dalle playing lead guitar (I ain’t sure whom else was in the band at that time too, as one Nina left the fold somewhere in Spring 2006, but the other current members are bassist/ backing singer Hannah Manterfield and drummer Mel Nolan). In their original line-up, the band released their self-produced 5-track mini-album Doctor Stallone in late 2006 (I ain’t too sure about that album only containing 5 tracks, though) which, in spite of a somewhat cluttered mix, showed a band eager to get-go, and not willing to take the easy route either, as they added a Thrashing Punky vibe to the usual Glam Rock! I’m not sure whether the girls’ very successful tour of the US (they’d already toured the UK up and down by then) came befóre or after that release (I eventually found out the US tour came in September, which would’ve been ahead of the release of Doctor Stallone), but during the tour they shared rehearsal rooms with Meatloaf, played at a pre-tour party for Guns ‘n’ Roses, and played at such legendary venues as The Roxy, Whiskey-A-Go-Go, the Cat Club, and Club Sputnik. Besides playing seconds to a shit-load of lesser known bands, the girls have also played support to such established musicians as Trashlight Vision, Dogs D’Amour, John Corabi (Mötley Crüe) and Dizzy Reed (Guns ‘n’ Roses). Not bloody bad for a bunch of unsigned teenagers…not bad at all! Maeven’s self-titled 10-track official debut album was recorded at Axis Studios in Doncaster (some 55 kms from Sheffield in NW direction) during December 2007 in a co-production with themselves and Matt Elliss (no info available on that guy), and features the band in their current line-up. As you will be able to hear from the songs posted at myspace.com/maevenmusic, both goldielocks (bleached, I’m sure) Becca and the others still sound very youthful and girly frail…in fact, during a couple of songs (album opener “Queen Of Hearts”, album closing “Legends”) Becca‘s voice is so thin, it’s like as if she’s been at it (singing, that is) fàr too long, about to lose it altogether. But apparently she’s simply able to tune her voice to such a mode! Let’s hope that growing morre mature will not spoil too much to the girls’ vocal abilities! End conclusion? At the moment the girls enjoy a slight hype around themselves because they’re still so young…and I dare say this in spite of the obvious professionalism with which they both write their songs and then perform them! What I say is: let’s see if the girls can hang onto each other long enough to give us a couple more albums, let’s see how they mature with age…but at the moment they’re my first all-girl band in the category “Ready To Play Alongside Girlschool”!!! 83/100 Tony. |