Pitchfork

Maritime, the sparkling new pop project featuring The Promise Ring's Davey von Bohlen and Dan Didier, and Dismemberment Plan's Eric Axelson, are heading out on tour in support of their J. Robbins produced debut, Glass Floor, which is slated for a May 31 release on DeSoto Records. Given the players, one might expect overtly sentimental pop songs bolstered by elastic, hyper-kinetic bass grooves-- but one would be only half-right. Nothing against the songs, but having Axelson (whose bass skills-- and D-Plan fans will back me up on this-- are COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL) lay down these innocuous little licks is like having Georg Cantor tutor you in long division.

That said, Glass Floor treads the highwire between cloying sentiment and earnest, fleshed-out emoting, tottering precariously one way or the other from track to track. It's presumed that the album would like to be thought of as "mature," and often, at least in its restrained songcraft and effortlessly effective melodies, it is; although it does sometimes get a bit too giddy and toss of lyrics better left to junior high slam books. Listening to Maritime in the car with all the windows rolled up is the closest I'll ever come to digging Dashboard Confessional, even though when the disc is done I'm like, hey, where did my testicles go?

Oh, so the point was that Maritime is going on tour. I gathered some mud and sticks and tried to build myself a little helper monkey to do my chores, but I put it together wrong and it ended up being tourdates:

05-29 Milwaukee, WI - Mad Planet
06-01 St. Louis, MO - Rocketbar
06-07 Cambridge, MA - Middle East Upstairs
06-11 Dayton, OH - Elbows
06-13 Minneapolis, MN - Triple Rock Social Club
06-15 Omaha, NE - Sokol Underground
06-16 Denver, CO - Rock Island
06-23 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill