B-Side Guys

“Scene” is built around a conversation that never happens. The narrator is hours away from it, then minutes, then seconds, and then the song ends without it. That structural countdown isn’t a gimmick; it’s the whole emotional logic of the track. Everything else in the song, the screen-scrolling, the dead cat at the side of the road, the ex-bandmate’s new project, exists in the space of someone killing time because they’re not ready to say what they need to say.

Southampton emo-punks MAXWELLTHEBAND take their cues from Jeff Rosenstock, PUP, and Jawbreaker, and “Scene” earns every one of those comparisons. Recorded over five days at Tidal Wave Recordings with producers Alessandro Cogolo and Sam Allen, it’s the centrepiece of MWTB, their first EP in two years, and it sounds like a band who spent that time accumulating things they needed to say.

The dead cat verse is the clearest illustration of how far inside his own head the narrator has gone. He can’t stop staring at it, which he acknowledges is morbid, but the real discomfort is what follows: “should it have been me or someone I love / a casualty or a sign from above.” Roadside death has become a referendum on his own life. That’s where avoidance takes you when the stakes are high enough.

Which makes the bandmate verse hit differently. “You’re in a new band, you never bothered to say / I hate it but I don’t hate you / and they sound good, really can’t complain.” The generosity is almost worse than anger would be. He’s worked through enough of it to mean that, and he still can’t pick up the phone. The conversation stays seconds away forever.