Tom Lynch

Chicago bliss-popsters May or May Not released the "Bike" EP a few months ago, the band's follow-up to its promising full-length debut, "Colors Only Bees Can See." With musical ambitions that include horns, synths and a powerful china cymbal, "Bike" expanded on the band's slightly lo-fi, expressive sound, an improvement on the debut and a bubblegum dream.

"It was pretty scatterbrained," guitarist and vocalist Steve Reidell says of the conception of the EP. "We recorded with our friend Nick [Kraska, of Bang! Bang!], and we basically decided that it was going to be an EP."

He says that having a large roster--there are six members in the band--was the plan from the start. "That was sort of what we were conceptualizing," he says. "I wanted to have this huge band, with woven pop songs with lots of layers and melodies. We knew that we would need [at least] five people to make that happen. And we haven't closed the door on adding more members." As far as the band's direction, that was set as well. "That only works to a certain degree, though," Reidell says. "You have an idea, but once you get people, it could become either very similar to that idea or very different. We had a general concept--just to have a pop band and write some pop songs. Not in the Top 40 sense of the world `pop.' Not that we would be opposed to writing `Top 40' songs."

The band's two original members, Reidell and synth player Zaid Maxwell, played together in a band in Madison, where they attended school. They both moved here in 2002. I ask Reidell how he and the band keep the music relatively original, considering the explosion of indie-pop bands from all over the world in the last few years, let alone in this city. "A lot of reviews I've read say that we're not necessarily doing anything new or original, but we [do] try to make a conscious effort to not have this cookie-cutter formula," he says. "Once we have a skeleton [of a song], we try to mess up the arrangements, try new ideas. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel, but we are making the music we're doing as interesting as we can."

May or May Not plays November 30 at Double Door, 1572 North Milwaukee, (773)489-3160, at 9pm. $7.

(2006-11-28)

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