From Liberty Street is a considerable improvement on Mapache’s 2017 debut and may just be my favourite album of the year.
Rating: 85/100
If you want an album that’ll never fail to bring a smile to your face when you’re cooking, or if you need to provide a gentle soundtrack to a board games night with friends, look no further than From Liberty Street. Full of deftly-played acoustic guitar and easy vocal harmonies, there’s very little to fault in an album sorely needed in 2020.
The stripped-down country/general West Coast sound of Life on Fire has a very live feel to it, making room for bang-on vocal harmonies and gently weaving electric guitar lines. They recorded it in the house they lived in at the time (on Liberty Street, ta-daaa), so there are tiny guitar ‘blips’ (not mistakes) every now and then, including in the more Southern Read Between the Lines, that more perfectionist artists may have laboriously overdubbed, but Mapache are very honest about their fantastic musicianship, and that’s genuinely very refreshing.
Me Voy P’Al Pueblo is the first of several Spanish-language tracks, and even though I don’t speak much Spanish, there’s a calming, joyful presence that speaks to the listener, leading to a very satisfying listening environment, completely devoid of clichés. Sam Blasucci (mainly lead vocals/guitar) and Clay Finch’s (high vocal harmony/guitar), love of Spanish has also influenced their band’s name, as Mapache translates to ‘raccoon’ from Spanish.
Blasucci and Finch’s vocal harmonies are impeccable, but their guitar work also belies the respect they have for each other, such as in the interesting harmonic progressions of Cactus Flower. Their fluid lines are always tasty and never suggest any kind of egocentrism, and the instrumentation throughout the album is never overbearing, with the occasional tasteful violin solo. However, it’s on tracks like Cowboy and Coyote where the sparse instrumentation works fantastically as their voices and guitars perfectly complement each other.
Occasionally, there are songs like See Through and Igual, which serve as a continuation of the general vibe (filler tracks if I was being unkind), but they do nothing to diminish the excellent work of Mapache. Perhaps the easiness of their union comes from the fact that they went to high school together, or their time in Grateful Shred, a Grateful Dead tribute band. In this trippy video of Grateful Shred, you may notice Dan Horne on bass, who also acts as Mapache’s producer – hats off to him for being able to convey a real immediacy in their sound, which also comes across amazingly well on vinyl. Some albums may make grander statements, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a record with some much vibrancy in it. Because of their commitments to Grateful Shred, there was a three-year gap between their debut and From Liberty Street, but I can’t wait to hear what they do next.
You can buy From Liberty Street on Bandcamp or stream it on Spotify.
Standout tracks:
Life on Fire
Cactus Flower
Cowboy
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