When the once- and sometimes-New Paltz-based songwriter Liana Gabel brought her fellow Rochesterians Maybird down for a show at Snug Harbor, the upstate lads blew me away with both the musical imagination and the professional polish of their game. That particular combination of qualities virtually screams “industry interest,” and, sure enough, more than a year later, this now BK-based band returns to Snugs all signed and shit.
Guitar rock – even psychedelic/indie guitar rock with Radiohead sonics and radio-ready melodies – is hardly in fashion at the moment. In fact, any number of well-educated white male writers have declared the entire order of well-educated white male guitar bands to be clinically incapable of relevance under current and foreseeable cultural conditions. So we shall see about Maybird. Most of their boroughmates make straight-up electropop records now, even as they still rock on six strings live. Not Maybird, whose lovely EP Turning into Water (just out on Danger Mouse’s 30th Century Records) convincingly acts as if a roots-inflected, guitar-based dream-pop record still might mean something to someone somewhere.
I highly recommend catching these cats on Friday, May 13 at Snug Harbor, located at 38 Main Street in New Paltz. Shows typically start at 10 p.m. at the village’s legendary and elegant dive (and premier loud music room). See you there.
Join the family! 
