Maserati: Pyramid Of The Sun

Maserati’s Pyramid Of The Sun has an air of single-mindedness that’s hard to shake. The Athens, Georgia instrumental band allowed for a lot more quiet space on 2007’s Inventions For The New Season and 2002’s The Language Of Cities. Here, it sounds relentlessly obsessed with its collective rhythm, like a quartet of endurance runners on an endless straightaway. The guitars even float and glimmer like illusory pools in a desert. Drummer Jerry Fuchs (who died before the record was finished) grounds much of the album, especially “They’ll No More Suffer From Thirst” and “Oaxaca,” in beats whose graceful touch belies their dance-y muscle. The guitar that slashes across “We Got The System To Fight The System” is so much more taut than the average blurt of feedback. “Who Can Find The Beast” and “Ruins” bring sharpness and brevity to the grand tradition of milking instruments and gear for bizarre whirrs, warbles, and drones. Those who mistake the band’s discipline for simply too much repetition will miss the point. Maserati builds these songs from cuttingly precise parts, and doesn’t always tell its listeners exactly which ones to focus on. The pleasure of Pyramid comes from hearing the whole thrive on elegant friction among the parts. One of its makers is gone now, but he’d have plenty of reason to be proud.