Mae

A cancellation by headliner Yellowcard has booted this Virginia Beach quintet to the top of the bill and brought in local luminaries Lydia for added entertainment value. Mae is an acronym for Multisensory Aesthetic Experience, a study of how our senses perceive information and decipher it for the other senses. Guess the question that raises is, does Mae’s music stink? No, sir, it does not, and it tastes just like something you might see on The O.C. real soon. The band’s first album, Destination: Beautiful, and its follow-up, The Everglow, remain evocative, melodic emo, but never the coarse and brittle kind. While Mae may be content with using music as aromatherapy, Lydia adds a dollop more urgency to its ambiance and might give the senses an even greater aesthetic workout. In other news, how much you wanna bet that someone waiting in the Mae/Lydia merch line in front of you utters, “Dude, what’s with all the chick names?”