Maya's early LPs were essentially noisy, guitar pop explorations that elaborated on various motifs of expressionistic feedback and meditative textures of dreamy, bedroom pop that seemed like they were more interested in communing with abstract forms than dealing with the harsh reality and knife-like plunge of emotions that actually inspired them. Last year the project coalesced a little bit around familiar indie rock forms, such as jangly guitars, wistful melodies, and brushy percussion on the lush and expensive-sounding EP Tired and True, from which her latest EP Shima is a further deviation.
What I think leaps out at me about Shima is that it is actually less experimental than its predecessors. This is usually not something that wins an album points with me, mind you. However, the streamlining of Floating Room's aesthetic manages to give the project a clearer sense of direction and allows for a narrowing of focus which really pays dividends in terms of the strength and potency of the performances and songwriting.
Maya shows herself on this EP to be comfortable in the throws of increased propulsion, managing to wrangle a rolling rock beat and hitch it to some grungy and heatseeking guitars in order to raise an elevated platform for which she can project the passionate purr and clarion whistle of her voice and broadcast the calm, prodding invective to dream that is encapsulated in her lyrics.
It's simple, but effective, and forces a lasting impression on me in a way that her more ephemeral work hadn't previously. I'm particularly smitten with the Dilly Dally-esque fuzzy, freakout on the latter half of "I Wrote This Song For You" which is otherwise a sparring match between cooing vocal melodies and grumbling valleys of steep slopped distortion, as well as the surfy chop of the sandy and breezy "See You Around," which strikes a temperate balance between overheated guitars and cool lapping harmonies.
It all comes together on the final track "Shimanchu" which has some crazy strong chord progressions and high tension guitar tones that seem to kinetically charge Maya's vocal performance until it erupts into an ecstatic and unexpected horse chorus of evocative shouts, that seem to affirm a kind of desperate loneliness with one step only to defy it with the next. Shima demonstrates that you can say and do a lot when you're as direct as possible with your intentions.