Mae – Destination: Bsides

A little over a year and a half ago, Tooth And Nail Records started spreading the question “What is Mae?”. They soon helped the curious fans by giving them the answer, with Destination: Beautiful. Their debut record stirred quite a bit of commotion, and since then the band has been touring restlessly improving their sound and making it as good as they could. Before they released their follow-up though, the band wanted to release something showcasing the band’s evolvement during the 18 months. That is what Destination B-Sides is. Ten tracks of new, unreleased, and remixed songs from Destination: Beautiful, including some live and some acoustic songs.

Fans of Destination: Beautiful will easily fall in love with this b-side collection as it, once again, shows that Mae knows what they are doing. Creating tight, emotional, solid songs driven by soothing keyboard melodies. The vocals are soft and harmonious, going perfectly with the instrumentals. The music is smooth and calming, and the live stuff is so tight you can’t even tell it is live.

So its needless to say that Mae are capable of creating powerful melodies and great songs; but, like Destination: Beautiful, the b-side collection is also missing that kick it so desperately needs. The songs tend to sound the same and meld into one another, there isn’t a big standout anywhere. It can be a bit monotonous at times and very repetitive. With most of the songs averaging around five minutes in length, its a long time to be listening to the same things over and over again. It is good background music at fancy party. Nothing too mind blowing or energizing, just nice melodies flowing through the speakers, letting the crowd speak easily overtop of it.

The final word is this, if you liked Destination: Beautiful, then you’ll like Destination: B-Sides.