MARITIME
Glass Floor (De Soto)
Reviewed by Erick Mertz

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There are a few extremely clever moments sprinkled all over the surface of Maritime's album Glass Floor and its forty-five minutes of rock. Whether it is the darkly simple refrain, "someone has to die," or the fact that it's cheerily repeated over a mid-tempo sweet pop beat, the hooks and wit represent - and quite impressively - these convergent pieces of The Dismemberment Plan and The Promise Ring. The light beat is timely for summer, infusing moods of delight into the lazy afternoons like a long steeping fruit drink.

The other side of that coin though, is the places where Glass Floor feels like the repeat performance of a dozen other albums. Its point of access is its laid back ideal, but at times it feels lazy both lyrically and musically; other times, it's just plain perplexing. When Davey von Bohlen sings "My life is a marathon our milk and honey days are gone," I don't know whether to laugh or be appalled: It's freshman creative writing poetry, yes, but is that enough to turn me off to this album?

The answer is a conflicted, I don't know yet. Maritime has, as I've stated before, moments of delight and others of sheer drudgery. It's great that I can listen to "The Window is the Door" over and over, bad that it is only the first song.

© 2004 - Erick Mertz