Maritime .:. Heresy & the Hotel Choir

Maritime plays a pleasant, airy batch of intellectually-minded pop songs on Heresy and the Hotel Choir, their third full-length. I mean, how many other bands’ press releases would note that their former bassist left to pursue a career teaching high school English?

Not to worry. Despite the loss of that bassist — former Dismemberment Plan bassist and general mischief maker Eric Axelson — singer/guitarists Davey and Dan from the Promise Ring, along with a new rhythm section, put forth all their characteristic charm, wit, and good-natured pop-tinged rawk on Heresy.

The album’s opener, “Guns of Navarone,” with its feel-good chorus “Sticks and stones may break my skin/but...” named after the Alistair MacLean novel, drops us instantly in and out of the emotional tumult, half shake-your-ass dancey and half first-day-of-a-crush jubilant, that give you the emotional surge that the Promise Ring was so expert at delivering.

The rest of the album follows suit, with songs like the low-end jam of “For Science Fiction” and the surprisingly beautiful drone and static of “First Night on Earth” rounding out a bill of songs that capture the emotional range of getting older, of walking down a busy late-night street, and everything that comes between. It won’t change your life, but it’ll make you feel good about it.