Mi Ami have a good idea, pairing groovy Latin and African rhythms with guitar noise. Unfortunately, the cherry on top of their fusion cake is really obnoxious vocals.
The music is reminiscent of the Pop Group, in which Bruce Smith and Simon Underwood would often go off on an African rhythm safari while John Waddington and Gareth Sager played bursts of noise and the occasional riff on top. But the Pop Group’s singer was Mark Stewart, who would with varied registers and amusing slogans convey humor and insanity. Mi Ami have Daniel Martin-McCormick, who in the emo tradition spends a lot of energy but is ineffectual.
His guitar playing is better: noisy and manic, but capable of short riffs that interplay with Jacob Long’s elastic bass playing. The bass is as much of an anchor as Watersports has; Damon Palermo’s energetic percussion plays around the beat even more than the guitar does. With guitar, bass, drums, and vocals so loose and unanchored, the band makes its rhythmic points by repetition. It’s neat how instrumental parts, that might quickly get mundane in a more rhythmically ordered song, maintain their appeal in this less tethered context.
In “White Whife,” they take a more conventional rhythmic approach, with a steady kick drum and thick, reverberating bass laying down a foundation for the song. Accordingly, the guitar playing stretches out. Although spastic and busy is their most impressive paradigm, it’d be cool to hear them play more down-tempo tunes. Long has a good approach to it, and Palermo’s buried drumming is a nice contrast to his staccato work on other tracks. Martin-McCormick also shows himself to be a good guitar droner, and his rough timbres cut through Long’s nicely.
Long and Martin-McCormick played in D.C.’s Black Eyes, which were also capable of sounding rhythmically untethered despite employing twice the usual number of drummers and bassists. One thing Mi Ami has on their previous band is that the smaller lineup seems to open up the channels of communication. The best passages on Watersports have constant, intuitive interplay between the three musicians, and it’s a pleasure to listen to it. That’s especially so when the vocals settle down on the last few songs. Martin-McCormick takes a more slight, Damo Suzuki-like approach, shrieking and crooning to provide an accent, not to exaggerate the mania that the instruments are already providing in spades.
