Maxwell Panther – Do You Feel Different Yet?
Allow me to introduce the latest release on Song, by Toad Records: Maxwell Panther’s debut album Do You Feel Different Yet?
I know we are more known as a grass roots label who try and nurture local talent (assuming we’re ‘known’ for anything at all, that is), but before the eminently Scottish and highly anticipated releases from Cold Seeds and Meursault later in the year I have two album by non-Scots whose work deserves a lot more than to be lost in the more immediately local focus we tend to engender.
One of those albums is the stunning He Was Such a Quiet Boy by Trips and Falls, and the other is this. The first time I heard Maxwell’s music I described it as being “rough as a bear’s arse, but fucking ace” and that is still about as good as I can do.
I was a little concerned about how to release this, frankly. It is indeed rough as a witch’s tits, and so I know it’s not exactly going to become a runaway commercial success, and I know a lot of people will basically just hate it. I do not care, however. I love it, and so we’re releasing it, it’s as simple as that. Maxwell may not record in a polished style, but that’s never been something which has bothered me: basically he is a really bloody good songwriter and that’s the only important part.
We’ve had some really nice reviews so far (from Chris at the Skinny, Aye Tunes, The Devil Has the Best Tuna and Radio Exile) and they all seem to feel the same thing I do: it just somehow works. This music has charm, wit, warmth, just enough bitterness to be interesting and just enough self-deprecation not to be too self-absorbed. Music like this either connects with you, or it doesn’t, and from the first time I heard Maxwell Panther’s stuff it just felt right to me.
The other thing about Maxwell is that to judge him on this album is kind of missing the point. These songs exist in different guises, he records things here and there all the time, kind of like sketches. As such his music kind of exists all together as a single entity, more than in the kind of defined chunks we would call EPs and albums, and maybe that’s why this music connects with me so much. Maybe it just feels like more of a conversation, and maybe the recording style actually helps that, in that it is pretty obvious there is no barrier between the musician and the listener.
So Maxwell Panther may not be bothering the charts any time soon, but his idiosyncratic, observational meanderings have a kind of awkward charm which I find completely compelling and I think they really deserve to be heard.
Maxwell Panther – My Ex-Identity
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Maxwell Panther – Lost Soul on a Roll
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Maxwell on: MySpace | Bandcamp | Buy from Song, by Toad Records
I was curious to see how you would introduce/describe this. I’ve still lacking a bit of the love for it, but each to his own – I can appreciate his charm if not the songs as yet. I a still hold the belief he will grow on me, but maybe just need more time to give him a proper listen when I get some down time.
Either way, I just thought this from The Devil Has The Best Tuna is just so perfect it needed to be quoted:
“[The Songs] might be rougher than a sandpaper toilet seat and sound like the microphone was in the toilet while he was in the kitchen but they sound real.”
Well, it’s a weird one. Basically I know a lot of people will not like it, but that’s fine – in fact it’s almost inevitable, it’s that kind of music.
What’s really nice, though, is that all of those reviews seem to react to this album in the same why I do, and with this release I just hoped I would find a few people who basically just got it too.
I don’t mean that in a snobby way, more that I just clicked with this stuff and I thought a few others might as well.
I like the Aye Tunes line, “better than the superbowl”. I think this is great and shall be buying it (next month but as I’m already skint).
Also, will he be playing any shows up here?
Well I’m hoping for a house gig album launch, but it depends on whether or not Maxwell can actually find some time off to come up here.
Lost Soul On A Roll is a great song which really takes to the DIY recording etchics and is actually enhanced by them.
I know I’ll be accused of missing the point, but I can’t escape the feeling that such an exceedingly ramshackle approach hasn’t been of similar a benefit to My Ex-Identity.
In the incarnation provided here, it’s certainly an interesting intellectual proposition. The songwriting is nicely wrought and the muffled, rough sound quality is challenging and rewarding in a chin-stroking kind of way.
However, while I appreciate the song for all that, it still makes me feel a bit sad, because there’s clearly a great air-punching, get-pissed-and-boogie-round-the-living-room little indie rock song struggling to escape from under the no-fi fog.
I can already hear hackles on the back of necks rising at that statement, but don’t worry, nobody wants this to sound like the fucking Kooks or something. I’m not suggesting this would benefit from any artificial gloss or FM-friendly production values.
However, tightening up the rhythm a bit, and standing a bit closer to the mic might have produced something that engaged a few emotions as well as stimulating the intellect.
It’s a great song, and I do want to hear more. My point is that while it succesfully engages the chin-stroking response, it could have so easily elicited a reaction from those muscles that control big silly grins, too; and it’s just a whisker away.
Well, you’re going to be surprised to hear this, but I don’t wholly disagree with you. I reckon that, a bit like Enfant Bastard here in Edinburgh, you certainly could use a more polished rock band approach to record a lot of his songs and you could actually make that transition into the mainstream – or you could have a good stab at it anyway. I certainly think Maxwell writes plenty of songs which have a really good pop core to them.
Having said that, though, whilst you could I am not sure why you would. No-fi is not necessarily something to be escaped, for some people it is something to be embraced.
Whilst I would happily entertain Maxwell (or Cammy for that matter) upping the production or recording ante, should they so choose, I still think that the recording method is such an interwoven part of the whole process that it would be hard to separate.
As I said, though, I actively enjoy the sound of low-fi recording, which means I don’t see it as something to be tolerated if it is the vehicle for a good song, I see it as something which I actually like on its own merits, so it’s rarely something I feel any personal need to push away from.
So while I’d agree that this is way more low-fi than it strictly needs to be, I’d also say that it probably doesn’t actually need to be any more high-fidelity either.
“..you certainly could use a more polished rock band approach to record a lot of his songs and you could actually make that transition into the mainstream”
See, now, that makes it sound like I think they should go for the Bon fucking Jovi sound or something.
It doesn’t need to be “mainstream”, whatever that means nowadays, just maybe a draw things in a little so that it sounds a bit more natural.
I know you weren’t suggesting making it all Jools Holland, and I certainly don’t think what you’re suggesting would harm the music. For me personally, though, there’s no real need, but I know my taste is a wee bit extreme in that respect.
I’d just take it on its merits and not worry too much about how else it could’ve been made. It sounds this way because he wanted this particular timbre, which is as much a part of the song as the melody, lyrics, etc. I think it sounds great. Like some lost Syd Barrett or Bowie demo from the late ’60s. I’ll have one, thanks.
Ha – it’s great seeing Dylan and Toad’s summing up of what they think epitomises the commercial mainstream:
“the fucking Kooks”
“the Bon fucking Jovi sound”
“all Jools Holland”
I agree with Matthew on this one; if he did make it sound all Dave fucking Matthews fucking Band it’d obviously sound dreadful for all manner of reasons, but even just tightening it up would kill off some of the charm. As I said on my review of Maxwell’s EP the other day, you have to take this music as a complete package; the production, or lack thereof, is an integral part of the whole thing.
I think it’s the same for Jeffrey Lewis: it’s slightly less extreme, but it works as a package – you assume the low/no-fi nature is a deliberate choice. When he teamed up with Laura Marling it just didn’t work because her voice is so “smooth” and completely jarred with Lewis’ delivery.
If I were Maxwell Panther I’d be eager to take it up a notch, but I’d be wary of breaking a good thing.
Arse; I’d made a witty/geeky aside about my oh-so-subtle linking in that comment: (shameless plug)link(/shameless plug) but with pointy brackets. It obviously thought it was proper html, so now I look like an attention hungry numpty… guess this comment only confirms that. *sigh*
Anyway, god bless the good ship No-Fi and all who sail in her!
Tom, it’s Fucking Dave Fucking Matthews Fucking Band.
I think Tom’s nailed it, actually, and his review reminds me of Chris’s from the Skinny. Basically this stuff just is what it is. It’s robust enough to stand up different treatments, sure, but why would you do that?
It’s rough, it’s great, just embrace it!
So much controversy of the recording style. Which is strange given that half the stuff on this site is rough as houses.
Good stuff, though.
my review….2 words…..’Oh dear’
My response, also two… ‘Lady Gaga’.
My response.
(Oh my God, I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of that!)
i’m tired of you Dylan…..
Lady Gaga has no bearing on my thoughts on this bit of ‘music’
It has every bearing. Put simply, if you like Lady Gaga then your opinions on music are Wrong.
thats a stalwart defence of MP’s music Matthew…..
It has about as much depth as your critique. If you can’t be arsed making intelligent comments, why should I bother?
but you have bothered releasing this! oh dear!
In fact, if changed my name to Gold Blend Pussy-cat and gave you a tape of some of the badly recorded stuff that i’ve done over the years….would you put a nice cover on it and release it please?
hows that for a critique
Now, Chutters, before you get carried away, take another look at the graph. I’ve added some figures which help explain things more clearly.
Now, as you’ve told me in the past you like Lady Gaga about nine. Unfortunately for Lady, though, the graph tells us that – in terms of fucking rocking – that means she’s only worth about one.
In contrast, you have said here that you’re tired of my comments, which I’m sure you’d agree would mean they achive a very low score in terms of your approval. However, from the graph we can quite clearly see that means my comments actually score 80,000,000 on the fucking rocking scale.
It may not be what you want to see, but you simply can’t argue with raw mathematics like that.
There’s just one thing that bugs me.
I really don’t think that ‘rough as a witch’s tits’ is an apt description. In fact, for me it’s a bit of a mixed metaphor. And I’d like to submit the following evidence to the contrary:
Samantha from Bewitched (and, to a lesser extent, from the ‘re-imagining’ movie of 2005)
Sabrina the Teenage Witch
Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s one hot aunt
Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic
Connie Booth in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
the Witches of Eastwick
Charmed (especially since Shannon Docherty left to be replaced by Rose Magowan)
That’s my thoughts on the matter.
It’s still not really a critique, is it Tom.
To answer your question though, if I thought you were a capable songwriter or that there was the slightest chance of you ever writing anything worth reading, drawing anything worth seeing or recording anything worth hearing between now and the next millennium then I would certainly consider publishing it in some form or other. Realistically, I think we all know that there’s absolutely no chance of that being the case, don’t we.
However, your lack of any discernible talent, or even barest shred of basic social skills, wasn’t really the topic at hand, was it. Was there some sort of point you were trying to make?
it’s a satirical critique, Matthew. (i would offer that it is more Juvenalian over Horatian, but it contains elements of both)
the point i was trying to make is; the above is woeful shite.
i have no idea if I’m capable as a songwriter, but on the evidence of the music contained within this post then i guess i pretty much in with a chance of being at least more credible then i ever thought i would be (in your eyes/ears anyway).
re social skills – i seem to get by with my limited social ability. thank you for you concern!
I was kind of keeping up with you until The Witches Of Eastwick, Bart.
I mean, Cher was in that film, and she looks like she’s got the skin of a lizard.
The bits that haven’t been replaced with latex rubber, anyway.
So, if the metaphor is applied directly to Cher, then it probably holds water; although, it may have been more appropriate to say, rather than “..as rough as a witch’s tit”, to say “..as rough as Cher’s lizardy tits.”
So the sum total of your critique is ‘it’s woeful shite’? Well it’s hard to argue with that level of analysis.
I’ll try, though:
No it’s not.
I forgot about Cher.
Shitbags.
Another approriate decription for Cher’s tits, Bart. Agreed.
well i’ve tried to listen to the songs again:
Have you ever had the experience when you kid brother gets a guitar/drum kit or whatever and has the great idea of forming a band and they starting playing in the garage? well thats what the first song sounds like.
Then your kid brother discovers Tim Buckley or John Martyn and believes that he can be the most sensitive singer songwriter going, and he comes and plays you his first self penned composition. well thats what the second song sounds like.
Do i feel different yet? no, but i do feel cleansed.
Nice heated debate here – cool
Makes good reading so it does.
I have only heard one MP song from a previous blog entry it must have been. Cant remember what song it was (I was just surfing through songs posted by Mr.Toad a while back). I do recall thinking that the chord progressions and delivery was very much like things I used to do when I started playing guitar or others did when they too were starting out in our teenage years. My stuff was worse though I am sure.
I only briefly listened so although I AM commenting, I cant really comment….If you know what I mean. So I can see where RCC is coming from basically.
Everyone should only listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash anyway. Just over and over again.
What about Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young?
Him too. Dallas Taylor and Gregg Reeves too. On the covers I think they are forced out of the picture and are peering through a window or something.
So, rewording that slightly to make you seem less of a cock:
1. You don’t think the playing on the first song is very technically adept.
2. You find the lyrics for the second song to be self-pitying and lacking in any sophistication.
Does that about sum it up?
1. Yes, technically this is all over the shop, from the playing to the recording to the singing. I wouldn’t disagree. Seeing as I find the songs really catchy, however, that doesn’t bother me at all, because I find myself humming them a lot and tapping my feet
I don’t listen to early blues recordings and care at all about the hiss and crackle on the recordings, or some of the rather ropey playing, I listen to whether or not a I have an emotional connection with the tune itself.
As for the lyrics, well a lot of this is down to personality. A lot of musicians write lyrics which are ‘sensitive soul’ type stuff. What makes the difference is how they take the edge off it, be it with humour or pathos.
Now, listen to that song in isolation and I guess you could get the impression you describe, but listen to more of his stuff and it’s clear he doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is one of the things which I find makes his music so likeable.
Funny though, because I can imagine people reacting similarly to early Withered Hand stuff, because Dan still exhibits a lot of the characteristics you’ve just pointed out in Maxwell Panther, although some of it’s been ironed out over the last year or two.
Mind you, you can’t see past the prickly exterior of Enfant Bastard stuff to the pop songs underneath, can you? So it’s perhaps no surprise you don’t like this.
Why is it Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Dallas Taylor & Gregg Reeves, and not Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Taylor & Reeves?
They could have arranged the initials into TRYNCS, which is the welsh word for what you wear to go swimming.
no no no, i think you’re trying to hard to intellectually protect your emotional investment in this.
Dan always had the songs.
and i can see what people like in Cammy’s music, i just don’t like it.
this however, is just shite, i can see no potential or in fact anything of merit hidden within it’s shallow bowels.
I think they probably figured Reeves and Taylor were not essential or something. Maybe. Maybe they were session guys. I guess it is mainly the 4 head honchos throughout but I really love some of the drumming and it wasn’t none of them 4 what done that.
Also, the Craft.
Did they have Reeves and Taylor put down after the sessions?
Steve told me something about them recently but I cant remember what he said. Therefore making this a completely pointless reply. Sorry Dylan!
Bart, have you seen Stardust? Michelle Pfeiffers boobies start of well but end badly (she plays a witch).
I am not trying to intellectually protect anything – you can’t intellectually defend liking music, you either like it or you don’t, simple as that. I am pointing out to you that if you enjoy something you do so instinctively, and all these things you’re moaning about become irrelevant.
Simply, if you find a song musically catchy – it makes you hum it, tap your feet, whatever – then the technical delivery of it really doesn’t matter. I like plenty of stuff which is littered with sloppy playing, people who can’t really sing, dreadful recordings, some deliberate, some not – and so do you.
The actual musical side of it that you’re on about only grates on you so much because, for whatever reason, you don’t find the songs catchy.
In terms of the lyrics, well that’s a personality thing and I think you’d have to have listened to a bit more of his stuff to know whether or not you agree with me. To me, Maxwell’s lyrics remind of the weird shy kid in school. It’s easy enough to find yourself dismissing him as this, that or the other, but then every once in a while he’ll say something much more cutting or sharp than you anticipate, and you realise there’s a bit more going on there than you realise.
I’m not trying to persuade you to like it on that basis, nor to justify anything – I am trying to explain to you which emotional reactions it triggers in me which result in my liking it.
Now, do I expect this to be a popular release? No, of course not, I’m not an idiot. I know full well most people will have a similar knee-jerk reaction to yours. In fact, I almost did the same when I first heard it, but then caught myself for a second and though ‘fucking hell, this may be a right mess, but it’s a really good tune under all that’. Then, the more of his that I listened to, the more songs like that I found.
So why are we releasing it, when there are loads more bands in Scotland, or even in Edinburgh, who are doing many more things ‘right’ than Maxwell is? Well put quite simply I get more enjoyment from listening to this album than an awful lot of the more suitable stuff I have heard over the last year or so, and that is the absolute only basis on which I make these decisions.
Is Maxwell going to make us any money? No. Is he going to enhance our reputation? No, probably the opposite. But so fucking what? I like it, I enjoy listening to it, and as long as I keep the up-front investment on a level appropriate to how many copies of this album we are likely to sell, then that’s really all the thinking about it I should feel the need to do.
Michelle Pfeiffers boobies start of well but end badly
Is that an anology for her career in general?
You should make a graph about that Dylan!
fair enough……
…. i hope you find an audience for the guy.
if i may be so bold, subject closed!
I never saw Stardust.
It looked rubbish.
It was. It is.
It might look something like this, Dav.
You know Matthew, you should pay RCC to post on your blog. I ‘quite like’ Maxwell but, after reading Chutney’s comments I’m fucking determined to love it. And after reading the back and forth doubly so.
Mr. Chutney, you would be an excellent agent.
Chutney is really just me pretending that there’s more chat on this site than there actually is.
If you’re going to create an alternate persona Matthew you should at least fight crime.
Is it wrong to point out that I find Dylans graph hot?
I hate alternative personas.
Snigger.
How dare you Nineball. If it wasn’t for alternate personas Dr Octopus would have taken over all of New York City by now.
Matthew eats octupuses for breakfast.
From a jar.
nineball bores me nearly as much as Dylan
RCC is clearly Dylans Dr. Octopus! I have no idea what Dylan looks like but, I’m sure he’d look dashing in a spandex unitard!
This is great, Chutters can now no longer slag off anything!
It’s like we’ve taken away his powers.
It’s Chutters kryptonite!
Chutn-O-mite!!!
That sounds like something Australians would add to a sandwich.
Only if they wanted to laugh their arses off whilst eating it!
“I wanna cheese n’ chutnomite sanger, stick it on the barbie with a shrimp and a tinnie of four-X, sheila.”
That’s me being Australian.
I still say the album was better than watching the Superbowl.