The Maytags

You build the history of your heart from a million pieces, starting with an idea of what a million
pieces look like when they’re not a heart. This is how a Maytags song works, as well: a
saxophone glissando passed out on a pile of unsent letters, a ride cymbal swinging around the
block in 6/8, a ghost note chain-smoking away from the bass.

Separately, they’re nothing but broken vignettes of soul and funk and jazz gone neither right nor
wrong. Together, the way we hear them, they’re the possibility of love. Is anything better?

Sure, fine, we can all admit that The Maytags could survive on “sheer vibrancy—there’s just
warmth lining every note.” (VICE) Somehow, there’s more than that—with “that” simply
(simply!) meaning instrumentation that binds to a vital, reverend-styled plea for life that’s not
too unlike a cigarette getting tossed into a 3:00 AM cup of coffee. You know, right before all the
good things happen.

The skill of the band, no matter if you’re talking about their instrumental fluency or modern take
on classic soul, can be traced back to a dozen good ears and the will to train them. They operate
out of Des Moines, but the individual pieces of The Maytags have roots in New York and St.
Louis. It sounds like it, too: the manic bustle of the big city thrums in bandleader Dustin Smith’s
croon, but the sentiments are as isolated and picturesque as a Midwest expanse.

The band’s newest release, 2019’s Meriweather—an English surname for sure, a pun on “merry
weather” for maybe, something you can’t describe but can feel for at least a little while—will be
released independently by the band on June 28th. Jon Locker and bandleader Dustin
Smith co-produced the album, splitting their time over two years recording it with the group
partially at The Sonic Factory in Des Moines, IA and Future Condo Studios in Minneapolis, MN.
The Maytags spent a week in a cabin outside of Panora, IA putting the bones in place for the
songs on Meriweather. It shows. The quiet sounds you only hear at night creep in where things
tend to creep in: the dark reverberating parts in the back, the light-up apparitions from some late-
70’s fever dream in the front.

If you’re smart, you’ll hear it in your town. If you’re lucky, you’ll build your own million piece
heart and hear it in there.