"Milwaukee"
On Friday, Oct. 16, Maritime will release Magnetic Bodies/Maps of Bones, their fifth album overall and their second for the prominent Los Angeles indie label Dangerbird. For most bands, that would mean crunch time, signaling a blitz of promotion and touring, but for Maritime it doesn’t change much. They’ve already checked off their big tour behind the album—a modest four-day weekend on the East Coast. They’ll play a hometown release show on Saturday, Oct. 17 at the Cactus Club, then that’s about it; they’ll return to their families and jobs and resume carrying on like normal adults. Fifteen years ago, in their previous band The Promise Ring, singer Davey von Bohlen and drummer Dan Didier lived their lives on the album-release cycle. Now they couldn’t be further removed from it.
“I think that’s why Maritime has been a band longer than any band I’ve been a part of,” von Bohlen says. “Living outside of that cycle is what allows us to continue doing what we do. If I knew that after every record I had to go out on tour, and do this, then do that, I wouldn’t want to do it.”
It’s rare for a big label to invest real money in bands that won’t commit to touring behind their albums, but Dangerbird has made an exception for Maritime. Von Bohlen is aware that’s a privilege. “I’m not that naïve,” he says. “I know we’re very blessed by the idea that our prior works will give us this carte blanche for, I don’t know how long, but for at least a while. So we’re lucky that we can take this very nonchalant attitude toward it and we’ll still be fortunate enough to do so some very cool things. I’m not ignorant of that. I know a lot of bands put a lot of effort into this and still can’t make their way.”
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Each Maritime album has reflected those low-stakes origins, especially the three recorded after 2006, when bassist Justin Klug replaced The Dismemberment Plan’s Eric Axelson and the band’s sound really took shape. Like 2007’s Heresy and the Hotel Choir and 2011’s Human Hearts before it, Magnetic Bodies/Maps of Bones is warm, tuneful and charmingly understated. There’s incredible craftsmanship at work behind the band’s ringing guitars and hummable melodies, but the songs are never fussy or showy.
“Somebody brought it to my attention recently—and this is why I try to stay away from people—that the difference between Promise Ring and Maritime is Promise Ring’s records were all distinctly different, and Maritime has this consistent vibe,” von Bohlen says. “I think it was meant as a compliment, but I was totally mortified, and I remain totally mortified by it. I think every record should be distinct. Every record has its own life, so when somebody tells me your records sound kind of a lot alike, it’s super disappointing to me.”
As part of that process of distinguishing each album, the band has worked with a different producer for each one. For Magnetic Bodies the band reached out to Chicago’s Brian Deck, who’s crafted records with Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine, and Califone, among many others. Didier says Deck’s approach to recording was relatively hands off—he set up the equipment, tracked with the band for a few days then let them take it from there for the rest of the sessions—but he left his stamp on the final mix.
“I like to let the final mix be a surprise, because that’s the joy of having new people work on every record,” Didier says. “Usually after we track the songs, we send them to get mixed and we usually have very few notes. It’s like, ‘Hey, if that’s how you want this song to sound, that’s great.’ Our thought is we chose the right person, in this instance Brian Deck, to steer the ship, and wherever he wants to take that ship is up to him.”
Deck’s production puts the band’s shimmering guitars front and center. To these ears, Magnetic Bodies is Maritime’s best-sounding album yet, the band’s richest and prettiest. Von Bohlen doesn’t quite agree with that assessment—or at least, he says, that’s not what he hears when he listens to the record, though precisely what he does hear he can’t put into words. It’s clear he put a lot of himself into the album. For as blasé as he’s become about the business of being in a band, and for as much as his songwriting has slowed over the years, he says he still finds the act of creating a record as intensely fulfilling as he did nearly 20 years ago.
“I don’t think that will ever go away,” he says. “I think there will always be this weird, inner competitive drive to make an album with 10 absolutely perfect songs on it that you wouldn’t ever go back and change, where everything is exactly amazing, and it’s the album that creates peace on Earth, like a Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure thing, where it’s your music that ends war,” von Bohlen says. “That’s the idea: That you’re making something perfect, that you make one perfect song then another then another. That will never happen, of course, but striving after it is the interesting part.”
Maritime plays an album release show at the Cactus Club on Saturday, Oct. 17 at 9 p.m. Stream the album below.
