CD Odyssey Disc 1248: MAOW

I know I shouldn’t, but I am again watching American Idol. I am not proud of this. I realize I am only getting 40 minutes of music for every two hours I waste on this stuff, and 30 minutes of it I don’t enjoy, but I can’t help myself. I like watching these kids give it a go and pursue their dreams and a few of them (usually the ones who don’t win) are pretty amazing artists. Also, there is Katy Perry. She gets me through watching Lionel Ritchie awkwardly applaud people.

Most people don’t get their start on American Idol. Hell, most people on American Idol don’t get their start on American Idol. Those people bounce around a few bands before they hit it big. So it was with Neko Case, and this next review is one of those bands.

Disc 1248 is… The Unforgiving Sounds of…MAOW

Artist: MAOW

Year of Release: 1996

What’s up with the Cover? Our band stages what appears to be the worst boxing match in recorded history. This cover combines the amateur qualities of your typical folk music band photo without any of the earnestness that makes those covers forgivable. Sorry, MAOW.

How I Came to Know It: I knew that Neko Case had been in MAOW so gave them a shot.

How It Stacks Up:  MAOW made two albums but this is the only one I have so it can’t really stack up.

Ratings:  2 stars but almost 3

“The Unforgiving Sounds of…MAOW” is raw and uneven, but it has a joyful delivery that lets you forgive its faults and celebrate the fun of it all.

Fresh from drumming for Cub in 1993, three years later our heroine Neko Case was now drumming and singing in MAOW alongside co-vocalist/guitarist Tobey Black and bassist CC Hammond. While this is the second consecutive all girl trio based out of Vancouver, MAOW has a different sound from Cub – actually it has a couple of sounds.

The band is half pop-punk, with those songs tending to be sung by Black. Whereas Cub’s version of punk has a cute melodic core, MAOW is all about the raw energy of a garage band. They do the sound well, reveling in rough-edged topics. “Mommie’s Drunk” explores alcoholism and poor parenting, and “Woman’s Scorn” is about doing violence to a (presumably) deserving man.

Even when they’re dark, though, MAOW has a tongue in cheek, particularly when they are exploring sexually explicit topics, which they do often. “Wank” is a woman teasing someone she’s rejected and imagining him going home to masturbate to her memory.  “One Night Stand”, a song about telling that man you slept with to clear out and stop making such a big deal of it. She was drunk, and you were there. The rhymes are obvious but visceral:

“When I was drunk you really turned me on

But now I’m sober and I wish you were gone

Either go get me a six pack of beer

Or just grab your shit and get out of here.”

Nice to know there is still at least one way back into her heart…

These are the Tobey Black songs, but they only represent half of the album’s sound. “The Unforgiving Sounds…” is just as much rockabilly as it is punk, particular on songs where Neko Case takes the lead. Case even does a cover of rockabilly pioneer Wanda Jackson’s “Mean Mean Man” with good results. Case’s country vocals also juxtapose well with Black’s punk growl. Case never unloads the full power of those pipes, but on “Very Missionary” you can hear the first hints of the big brassy vocals that would come fully into their own a year later on her first solo album, the classic “The Virginian.”

“The Unforgiving Sounds…” is no Virginian, and I wished I could hear Case just fully belt out one song, but it is cool to hear her starting to find her voice.

Overall, you can feel the punk seeping into the rockabilly songs and the rockabilly songs seep into the punk ones. The tracks are short and it sometimes makes for a toxic marriage, like two ex-lovers living in a house too small for their anger. Other times that tension makes the songs even better. “Showpie” is a good example of both, awkwardly fusing what feels like two totally different songs. It is disjointed but you forgive it because the two songs involved in the unholy union are both good.

I like MAOW’s bravery, and the album has an undeniable energy. At 16 songs and only 20 minutes long I would have preferred a few fewer songs that lasted a bit longer, but hey – that’s the nature of this style of punk. Get in, get on it, and get out. I didn’t do that as a listener, though. The record was so short I gave it about 8 solid listens over the last two days. Despite the repetition, the record held up well so I’m giving it the honour of some shelf space in my collection after all.

Best tracks: Wank, Sucker, Rock ‘n’ Roll Boy, Very Missionary, Showpie, One Night Stand