According to local legend, deep in the heart of Marquette, Michigan, there lies a particularly skilled blacksmith. Hardworking and humble, this blacksmith is perhaps most celebrated for one specialty: hooks. He makes the finest hooks in the north, so sharp you’d cut yourself by merely glancing in the direction of one. Walk into Liquid Mike’s shop, and you’re guaranteed to get caught.
In reality, Liquid Mike’s primary songwriter Mike Maple isn’t a blacksmith, but a mailman who writes songs in between deliveries (John Prine would like a word). His hooks, though, are indeed as sharp as any blacksmith could manage on this earthly plane; it’s why last year’s S/T suddenly took off in certain power-pop-loving online circles. As prolific as he is skilled, Maple and his band are quickly capitalizing on their buzzy DIY notoriety with a brand new record, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot.
The album is no great left turn, no grand reinvention. Instead, it’s another step towards Maple’s goal of achieving power-pop perfection, a goal he’s been chipping away at since before the Liquid Mike moniker ever existed. The songs of Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot pull from the same toolbox as S/T or even 2021’s Stuntman — upbeat tempos, loud guitars, killer melodies, and a strict three minute cap when it comes to song length. What sets the new effort apart isn’t necessarily higher-end production or fancy new sounds, it’s simply that Liquid Mike has gotten even better at being Liquid Mike.
The most overt point of comparison is “USPS,” a reworking of a song that originally landed on 2021’s You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth. The tune is, effectively, the same, but the intensity of the performances and subtle compositional differences (like saving the Cars-esque synth line for the backend of the track) make a world of difference. They’re small but important changes, ones that prove Maple and company’s aim is getting more and more accurate.
Alternatively, take the trio of singles “Mouse Trap,” “K2,” and “American Caveman,” as each presents a slightly different flavor of Liquid Mike’s power-pop. “K2” rips out of the gate with charging guitars before giving way to a closing refrain powerful enough to level a 40-story building, while “American Caveman” finds fist-pumping success through slightly twinkly riffs and dynamic shifts. “Mouse Trap,” with its one-two guitar stabs, almost comes across like if Weezer’s “Beverly Hills” was actually good. Instead of Rivers Cuomo’s romanticization of living the California life, however, Maple pens a tongue-in-cheek ode to small-town, midwestern America. “Given what you know/ The American Dream is a Michigan hoax.”
The middle-American sentiments of “Mouse Trap” quickly emerge as a primary theme of Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot. Behind the sing-along nature of these half-drunken anthems lie tales that will strike listeners who root for [insert any NFC North football team here] as strikingly real. There’s the mundanity and hometown boredom of “Town Ease,” the delusional hope of big-city stardom baked into “AM,” and the tricky solace found at the end of a sixer that pervades “Drinking and Driving.”
These stories are then packaged into bite-sized ragers — call it the Joyce Manor approach or, to be more accurate to Liquid Mike’s geographical hemisphere, the Guided By Voices tactic. Liquid Mike gets in and out as quickly as they can, letting earworms and hooks fly by at breakneck speed instead of relying on them for chorus after chorus. “-,” low-fi and 30 seconds in length, takes the notion the furthest. Claim it’s a lost Guided by Voices tune, and even some of the most hardcore GBV fans might buy it.
The result is a profoundly immediate album that makes the most out of every second it has. It’s endlessly replayable and works as the soundtrack for everything from a backyard get-together to a drive down the turnpike to an ‘up-and-at-’em’ morning routine. Somehow, Liquid Mike has continued their streak of one-upping themselves with every subsequent release.
And, perhaps most importantly, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot proves that it’d be a blast to share a beer with Liquid Mike. Just make sure to pick a bar with pull-tabs.
Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot is out on February 2nd. Pre-orders are ongoing.