Staff Pick: Maps & Atlases at The Basement
Maps & Atlases have left behind their comfortable math-rock home, venturing out on a path of more poppy, synthetic sounds. The time signatures on the Chicago quartet’s new album, “Beware and Be Grateful,” are simpler, the guitar-playing less virtuosic, but my guess is that the band’s current direction will earn them only more fans.
Now that the emphasis is no longer on the instrumentalists’ jealousy-inducing technical prowess, our ears have more reason to focus on Dave Davison’s versatile voice, which fluctuates from a Phil Collins-esque timbre to baritone tones a la The National’s Matt Berninger to the mountain-man, folky warbles you might expect out of someone with such a mane.
Yet when the band plays The Basement on Monday, there’ll be more than a few moments where their chops will have musicians in the audience thinking, “Dayum!” Just because they’re not flaunting it as much doesn’t mean they don’t still have it.
The Basement
7 p.m. Monday, May 14
391 Neil Ave., Arena District