We’re going out on a limb right here, however generally you have to take a danger and make the powerful calls
Everyone loves a good indie-rock origin story — like Paul Westerberg holding it down as a janitor within the workplace of a Minnesota senator earlier than becoming a member of the Replacements, or Dayton, Ohio’s Robert Pollard instructing grade college whereas biding his time earlier than Guided By Voices turned a factor. Right here’s a brand new one for you: Meet Mike Maple, a mailman within the small faculty city of Marquette, Michigan who spends his time strolling the postal beat dreaming up relentlessly enjoyable punk-rock tunes to play in his band Liquid Mike. “Given what you realize/The American dream is a Michigan hoax,” he informs us on their glorious new album Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot. These guys flip their Higher Peninsula slacker blues into guitar-banger gold.
Liquid Mike debuted in 2022 with the EP A Beer Can and A Banquet, with focus tracks like “Lease Settlement” and “All Hail the Ketamine Children.” The press picture that went out with Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot reveals the band sitting round a hearth pit cooking sizzling canines, and the LP opens with “Ingesting and Driving,” a track that highlights a life talent the members of Liquid Mike could have had down earlier than they have been out of highschool. (To be clear, we’re not condoning the apply.) On Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot they play quick, quick, muscular songs that cut up the distinction between Nineties pop-punk and Nineties indie-rock, tempering the petulant angst of the previous with the latter’s successful resignation.
On “K2,” they construct a track a couple of wasted summer season out of silly Coldplay allusions (“The frenzy of blood straight to your head/You pissed your pants/And so they have been all yellow”), making the goofy conceit work as a result of the music is so charged up and enjoyable. On “Drug Supplier,” which appears like Blink-182 by means of GBV, Maple sings about being caught getting stoned along with his pal and her scary new boyfriend, processing a bunch of bizarre emotions in a high-as-hell torpor. “USPS,” a bouncing ode to Maple’s administrative center, suggests Weezer with a working-class soul. On “Small Giants” he presents the sage piece of recommendation: “You’ll be able to shoplift any retailer you need/It’s not pathetic in case you don’t get caught.”
Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot knocks by way of 13 songs in simply 25 minutes, together with a thirty-second Superchunk tribute and a minute-long Constructed to Spill throwback. Nevertheless it leaves a long-lasting impression. In truth, you may need to return to the 1971 debut by John Prine to discover a report by an worker of the US Postal Service that wins this tough.
