If the last time you listened to The Maine was even just a few years ago, it's important that you cleanse your palette before digging in to the band's latest album, "Forever Halloween." It doesn't matter if you liked the band or didn't care for the band. What you're getting right now is a group of young men dedicated to the craft of songwriting and an attentiveness to the great American rock and roll canon that is helping these Arizonans on their way to being one of the most promising bands in the country.
The new album, produced by Brendan Benson of his solo and Raconteurs fame, is just another leap forward, as was "Pioneer," the band's first independent release. Songs like "Whoever She Is" and "White Walls," featured in this session here, are tales of living when it gets to the point where life really starts to sprawl, but you nonetheless get busy trying to reel it in more and more, while it all feels as if it were getting the most of you. Yeah, it's a lot to handle, to contend with, but there's no getting around it. When John O'Callaghan sings, "We bleed the same blood/You and me/We bleed the same blood/The way that the river runs through/I bleed for you," he gives us that connective feeling that makes it clear that there's no getting away from anything.