The Maybe Happening Beyond the Bells (self-released)

[January 30th, 2008]

[THEATRICAL POP] Debut albums can often be hurried, sordid affairs. Rarely do they appear as fully realized visions. And most bands wouldn’t dare attempt a concept record from the get-go. Then again, most bands don’t have as much fun as the Maybe Happening.

Recorded at Type Foundry by local troubadour Nick Jaina and loosely based on Martin Prechtel’s modern epic The Toe Bone and the Tooth, Beyond the Bells tells the tale of an unnamed 17-year-old boy who sets off on a Joycean adventure across the city of Portland. He rides buses and cabs, catches advice from record-store clerks and sneaks underage into concerts.

The album really takes off with “Tunnel Under Mountains”—all infectious energy and triumphant horns—and it’s not the only point where the band sounds like a more streamlined, less ADD-riddled Architecture in Helsinki. “Tunnel” immediately spirals into the tumbling drums and quick shouts of Hives-esque garage rave-up “Record Store” before the album arrives at “Ruby,” the one completely downtempo moment in a well of constant movement. A duet between singer-violinist Nathan Langston and Maranda Dabel as the title character, “Ruby” mixes clean guitar and jaunty piano with doo-wop backing vocals and a killer violin hook.

The tracks play out like individual acts in a play, and with the sheer theatricality in many songs (shouts! bells! exclamation points!), it’s no surprise that the contributors are listed as “cast members” in the liner notes. And though it jumps from noisy rock to some generally pretty moments, the albums held together by Jaina’s warm and intimate production. Even when the band adds more disparate elements to the guitar-drum-violin formula—the maniacal catcalls and drunken laments of “Consortium of Scoundrels,” for instance—everything’s still given room to breathe.

Beyond the Bells is packed with so many detailed, wry observations—“Oh I can hear the cars laying on their brakes/ The collective breath the city takes,” Langston sings on “Tunnel”—it’s easy to overlook the story on first listen. And that’s exactly the point: It’s not just a concept record, but a pop record, filled with songs that sound just as good blasting out of shitty speakers as they do through headphones with lyrics in hand.