Maruja – Knocknarea (self produced, 2023)

There are times in which you wander (on the internet, in physical places like record stores, etc.) just asking yourself if you’ll find out what you’re looking for. And there are times in which you ask youself if what you have find out is what you were looking for. This is the case of this EP by the Manchester based band Maruja. At a first listening I was skeptical. Too much similar to the post punk – and post rock – I love, something I have listened to yet in the past.

Actually, they’re reminding me through the last song of this mini album issued last March, Kakistocracy, of one of the bands I loved the most at the end of last century: Goodspeed You! Black Emperor. Then there are the effected guitars, the groaning saxophones, everything in its right place. So I skipped and I quit, looking for something more unsettling. Until yesterday, while I had the opportunity to watch them in a video playing live and I was hooked.

Now, don’t take me too much literally. Apart from the last release by Algiers last April, that album titled Shook that is a reprocessing for the modern times of the music created at the end of the 1970s by the likes of the Pop Group, I don’t have listened to so much original post punk bands in the last months. Someone would say post punk ended in 1982, or 1984, to be more precise, but the new wave from the various Interpol and similar during the last decades makes you simply ask youself if there’s the opportunity for a defined artistical shape to give life, if not to something new, at least to something good in the present times.

Anyway, Maruja are Harry Andrew Stanley Wilkinson (vocals, guitars), Joseph Alfred Carrol (alto saxophone, guitars), Matthew John Buonaccorsi (bass guitars) and Jackob Patrick Hayes (drums). A classic line up for a good ole punk rock band, with no use of electronics – a minus, I’d say, but not all of you would be with me in this – but with a discreet collective writing and a nice potential to be developed in the future, maybe with the help of a good label and producer.

For the moment we can enjoy these four tracks, the beginning of Thunder with its guitar drones and sax lines intertwining before the entering of nice syncopated drums and a killer groove, Blind Spot and its circular rhythms setting some interesting alto sax twirlings, The Tinker, an atmospheric track where the effected guitars and the saxophone are introducing a more classic dynamic piece, and finally the hymnodic and last Kakistocracy.

We don’t actually know if the promises will fluorish in the future into something more interesting – but the live act leave us with a nice feeling as far as high hopes – but is something we want to monitor is the future development of this four elements band. On their bandcamp page, where you can buy this self produce and self published digital EP, you can also find updates on their future live act in order not to miss what seems to me at every level a promising young ensemble.