The rock pantheon is full of innovative artists who have created great music by infusing the avant-garde with strong pop sensibilities. Bands like The Velvet Underground or My Bloody Valentine manage to bring "high" and "low" art together so seamlessly that the union seems not only enjoyable, but inevitable. But without a delicate artistic sensibility, the fusion of the sublime with the ridiculous can lead to music that self-destructs before the listener’s very ears. Enter The Mayfly Dance, a sobering reminder of how difficult it really is push the boundaries of popular music while still maintaining a structure that people can relate to.
Stuart and Caan take a minimalist approach to folk, stripping away the rhythm section altogether and leaving only the interplay between two acoustic guitars overlaid with multi-tracked psychedelic vocal harmonies. The band frequently undercuts the natural groove of folk song structures by lurching to a halt, switching tempos, and sometimes even changing the chord progressions mid-song. It’s a staggering example of how musicians can take risks left and right, yet still end up with a product that isn't particularly interesting. The compositions are often dull and very frequently frustrating. “I Waited So Long” meanders on for an interminable five-and-a-half minutes and registers as little more than a tedious stream of twee guitar-plucking. “Big White Boat,” with its strum-strum-pause, strum-strum-pause structure never gets off the ground. And when the band actually attempts to reach out with a more straightforward pop number, as they do on sappy-love-song-with-a-surprise-twist-ending “Isn’t It Wonderful,” their hip, minimalist tendencies effectively hamstring them and leave the music sounding empty.
Stuart and Caan’s jarring start-again-stop-again tactics only pay off on two tracks: “God Song” and album-opener “Lalita.” In “God Song,” a female vocalist sings “God asked me up into heaven for tea,” her voice rising along with the spare solo guitar strumming. A half-second pause, and then she comes back down with the line “And filled up my cup with his sweet misery.” The pattern repeats over and over, until about two minutes in, she is joined by a lusty baritone who echoes her lines slightly off-time. In “Lalita,” a gently picked guitar builds gradual momentum in time with the multi-tracked vocals, picking up speed like a diesel engine only to putter out and start over from scratch. The song is greatly enhanced by the addition of a Calabrian Lyra, which lends the whole song the atmosphere of a gypsy street festival.
Both tracks capitalize on herky-jerky dynamics to create tension. They sound as though they're tumbling down a sheer cliffside, powerless to slow the decent. More often than not, however, their whiplash-inducing approach tends to kill a song in mid-stride. The Mayfly Dance may possess some intrinsic merit as an experiment in folk deconstruction, but it fails to gel in an engaging way. Stuart and Caan should consider spending less time taking the folk song apart and more time learning what it means to put one together.
1. Lalita
2. I Waited So Long
3. Big White Boat
4. Rosemary
5. Isn’t It Wonderful
6. Lord of the Cosmos
7. Look to the Sky
8. God Song
9. Holy Moment
10. Do You Want To
11. Set Sail
12. Land of Stone
More about: Stuart and Caan
