Maz and The Phantasms EP: Neither Ironic nor Serious – Maz and the Phantasms Find the Sweet Spot (review)

As if the events of the past year couldn’t get more bizarre, we were blessed with an EP that sounds like The Beach Boys, Joy Division, and The Breeders were locked in a studio and told to write an equally-influenced record: with the inclusion that the results had to sound neither ironic nor overly serious. In their recently released debut self-titled EP, Glasgow-based Maz and the Phantasms commence the EP on a breezy ‘woo-hoo’ that sounds sampled straight from a Beach Boys track, end on a ‘too bright/too hot’ guitar slide that could stop the heart of someone who’s had one too many in the mosh pit, and explore nearly every other tonal permutation in the tracks in-between.

The range of opening track ‘Nothing Feels So True’ immediately proves they couldn’t have a better lead singer for their genre(s) of choice: Mariam El Sadr’s voice is smoky and fragmented enough to be believably imperfect at the right moments yet contains enough ochre to not pitch out while carrying the fiercer choruses.

The song bypasses genre barriers so effortlessly that you almost don’t realize the number of recalibrations it takes: as hard as it is to make a song submerged in its own microcosms, mini-ideas work on from a higher-level viewpoint, it perfectly pulls off the pingy wooze of rock-surfers who smoke too much weed with the abrasive industrial shoegaze intensity of Glaswegian rockers that drink too much alcohol. (It’s truly a shame the EP came out in the fall; where were they all last year when we truly needed them?). 

‘Natalie’ rides a similar sweet spot between relaxation and punkish revulsion to overly easy songs, melting into the scintillating reverb characteristic of dreamy mood acts of the 90s before giving way to a galloping frisson reminiscent of Blur’s ‘Song 2’ – I was half-expecting the tightly-packed electric riff-off to give way into ‘Woo-hoo!’ sample. Thankfully, my disappointment was more than patched with the cathartic refrain, ‘Leave your boyfriend/he’s f****** boring’ (again – we could’ve used that earlier last year, but better late than never).

Propulsive and unflinching ‘VOICES IN MY HEAD’, in its Caballero-esque twisted guitar and vaguely unnerving bony rhythmic pulse, sounds as though it could soundtrack the moment in an 80s’ horror comedy when the main characters sprint away from a poorly CGI-d ghoul; or, perhaps, it’s meant to encapsulate how a surfer feels pre-entanglement into an ominous wave.

Regardless, the track embraces the right amount of tension-drenched, nervy jangle-rock without fully submitting itself to nostalgia-farming. ‘Es Lo Que Hay’ takes on a similar tone; the embellishing synths sound Moog tube-driven and indulging in creeping verses that flirt with camp but never quite touch it.

In a similarly devil-may-care spirit, Spanish-translated track ‘Vapor Cósmico’ borrows strong Breeders’ energy in its vocal placement dissemination and downward-sliding rhythmic relief: rather than the expected aspirational, if gratingly barked, rock chorus, climaxed tension is disseminated by free-falling shouts out of a warbled megaphone. 

Closing track ‘Psychosomatic’ is similarly sunshine-through-the-clouds, even setting aside their more cynical lyrical tendencies for ‘All you ever need/is someone to believe in you’. Allergic to saccharine as fixtures of Glasgow’s rock scene should be, the track still features a tidal push-pull between porous bittersweet rock and sliding into denser territory – but ultimately lets the good vibes hang instead of gradually frittering out, eclipsing on a climbing golden noise bath of electric guitar.

I typically avoid leaning into ‘good for a debut record’ praise – especially seeing as on a blind listen, I wouldn’t have guessed it was this particular collective’s first release. However, the ‘band in progress’ template might be useful to express that the chemistry and genuine taste the band possesses could be seismic if fully pounced upon: it’s rare enough to encounter a band whose debut release would even attempt to lodge a kingpin into alt-surf, buoyant international influences, and thicker punk viscidity and keep it there for the duration of the EP, and it’s far rarer to find the sort of band that can pull it off. 

However, some of the most infectious moments on the record happened to not be those guided by tautly hemmed-in genre transitions, but those which allowed for release and unmoored experimentation.

As Maz and the Phantasms develop even more confidence in their group synergy and personal sound, we hope to hear them sprawl into their more jam-oriented moments for their next release: each impulse of theirs proved to be more than engaging enough to justify the extra airtime.

Follow and listen to Maz and The Phantasms