The Maple State - Joanna / Wood And Rain

If The Kooks called themselves The Maple State and exacerbated Naïve with tah-de-dah choruses, this is what it would sound like. These are the kinds of tunes that are written during gap years and, in truth, it's the sort of music that only makes sense in the middle of a July water shortage. The fact that this drops in late winter - and considering the relative ambiguity as to whether or not The Maple State are old enough to have considered a gap year - only succeeds in making things worse. Contrived, and not much more. [Neil Ferguson]