Maz Totterdell Sweep

Marianne Elizabeth Totterdell—just call her Maz, she’s still only 15—has over six years of performing under her belt and over four years of writing music—again, still just 15. The beneficiary of musical parents and enough talent to teach herself piano, guitar, and ukulele, you can certainly hear the confidence in Maz’s voice and music. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that her music has been picked up by BBC Radio 2. Her youth and her confidence, however, are as much a weakness as a strongpoint, but where Sweep fails, it at least fails admirably.

On the upside, there is just enough variety of sound to be promising. Through 10 songs, we hear fingerpicked guitar riffs and bouncy piano parts lead a mid-tempo pop song or slower ballad through a standard pop structure, but there are enough string arrangements and backing bands to stop Sweep from ever growing monotonous. Willow (Angel Child) sees Totterdell as ambitious as Laura Marling on an album that tends toward the more relaxed and affirmed nature Kate Nash, while Heart In Your Pocket is a silly little love song stripped of its silliness but all the more adorable as a result. While it’s hard to take lyrics like “You’re dreams of love on a sunny afternoon” and “I’ll treasure your picture in my heart for the locket/but I’m so forgetful I left my heart in your pocket” seriously, it’s also hard not to smile when you know that it’s such a young girl singing them. So in many ways, Sweep sounds exactly like you would expect it to: There are hints of ambition, but nothing too radical; signs of versatility but not enough adventurism to let it stand out. Age is perhaps a larger factor than one would care to admit.

Certainly, youth and naivety do not equate to genius, but then, youth and naivety do not permeate the album, either. And while there is certainly no lyrical genius here, it is quite an understatement to say that Totterdell’s approach seems to mature as the album goes on, and the Lazy Days and Smile on Sunshines that sound too much like commercial jingles make way for honest and more grounded—and subsequently more moving—ballads and introspections that reach a peak with The Leaver’s Song. Here, Totterdell challenges her sunny vision of the world in a serious way, and her broken heart is less apparent than the honest understanding that love hurts. With her most moving riff on the album, the entrance of a bit of distortion, and a chorus whose intensity escalates every time. The strings and the extra guitars add a punch and make up for the fact that lyrical ability still does not equal the understanding that she seems to want to articulate.

Leaver’s Song is also where Totterdell puts her still-developing voice to the test. She gives her all on the final chorus, and although there is a clear sense of yearning and a bit of power, she is still overreaching her abilities, and the result is a bit too thin, a bit too trying to truly be emotional. Still, it’s easy to be swept along by the sunshine and rainbows of the sweet chorus of Delirious and to smile knowingly at the lament on the verses. It’s much more compelling, however, to look for the potential for growth on Willow or Leaver’s Song. The sweet commercial jingles make up most of Sweep, and theyare precisely that: sweet, likable jingles. There is certainly better, more compelling folk music, but there are also reasons to believe that in a few years  we’ll be saying the same thing about a different album and be pointing at a Maz Totterdell release as proof, and that’s the best kind of failure you could ever record.