Given her background in theater and stand-up comedy, Jazz Adam’s musical output as Old Maybe has always contained an element of extra-musical performance. Originally a solo-project built around wonky guitar / voice tracks and karaoke-style loop-based songs, the concept expanded into a trio in the fall of 2015 with the addition of drummer Nina Ryser (Palberta) and bassist Ricardo Balmaseda. After the band spent three months workshopping tracks, Oblio was recorded by Hugo Stanley (Palm) in his basement in late February 2016. The resulting 7 tracks are a playful dive into Old Maybe’s dadaist vision. The band draft a sketch-comedy hour in off-kilter guitar riffs and ametric grooves, exploring themes of miscommunication and alienation over a backdrop of absurdist imagery. Oblio takes its name from the central character in Harry Nilsson’s 1971 narrative / concept-album The Point!. In the fable, Obilo, the nonconforming hero, discovers that everything, even the pointless things, have a point. Like Obilio, finding meaning in the meaningless, Old Maybe utilize concise, pithy tracks to express the comedy and futility they find in life’s irrationality.

"Oblio is what you hear when you watch glitchy versions of old cartoons, it’s what you hear when you pop a scratched CD-ROM of a childhood PC game into your computer. The opening bass riff of “No Fun” begins with an incessant Red Hot Chili Peppers inspired bass riff and a correspondingly repetitive lyric, “you’ve got a weird idea of fun.” “Nuh” features circus-like sampled music getting warped with effect pedals. Cow bell is sprinkled throughout the album and stretches of dark dissonance make the melodic parts feel like a treat. It’s all put through a low-fi crunchy, garage filter. Think “pre-Grammy Beck,” says Adam."
Alysse Rorke, S