Marble Index: Watch Your Candles Watch Your Knives

A few months back, I brought you the unfortunate story of The Marble Index, who made a great debut record sometime last decade, and are now no longer together. I lauded that one for its direct, bracing rock attack. The instruments sweep up and overflow the sound, drowning out vocals and letting whatever hooks emerge through the din, rather than be finely crafted around them. It was a great way of boiling down exactly what guitar music can be, without sounding stark or stripped. Very full, in fact.

But nothing on that record could have prepared me for their follow-up, Watch Your Candles Watch Your Knives. Here, they step up their game and level up to the standards of the greatest popular rock acts of the past decade. And that's when it becomes a fucking travesty that nobody you know owns this record (except, I suppose, me.) While the last one was pretty stonewalled, take-it-or-leave-it cellar rock, this music was meant to reach ears.

It begins modestly, with the toe-tapping Morse code riff of "Everyone Else," with a bit of call-and-answer lyrics. It wiggles up and down chord progressions subtle, getting a weird, secretly ingratiating hook and a refreshing no-bullshit chorus, much like the previous album. But immediately there's a difference. The instrumental aspects separate themselves out pretty clearly, and Brad St. Germain's vocals are pushed to the fore. Rather than seeming to sing along with the guitars, the guitars are now following his vocals' lead. Note that St. Germain is both the signer and guitarist for the band, doing a great job with both.

While that opening track hints at a bit of growth, they really let loose with the second track, the raucous "All That I Know," which swings an easy-breezy twisting British Invasion swagger. The song is an immediate call to attention, building to an intense climax. What this song signifies, which is borne out on the rest of the album, is that as proficient as the band was with its instruments on the debut, here they have totally refined their songwriting. While those earlier songs had a purity that must have emerged from garage type jams , here we have a real sense of songwriting logic pulling each track through hooks and refrains that really ingrain themselves to the listener. "Couldn't Do Without" has a particularly interesting one, with its spiking guitars creating tension and a chorus that seems to descend just a half-note too little (I don't know theory so good so bear with me if that's not correct) which seems to stretch it out, prolonging the angst, before finally resolving in the last pass.

Other great songs dotting the album, which might have been exemplary tracks on the previous, are the dreamy ode "Let Me Be The One," the lavalike "What We Need" and a couple of venomous late-album cuts, "Not Impressed" and "Same Old Lie," which really catch fire. Here, they're merely decent goes, fleshing out the twelve tracks with character and spirit without stealing the show. After the excellent "All That I Know," there are five other tracks that compete for best of the album. So that means half the twelve tracks are great, and the other half are as excellent as anything I've heard all in my 6 months of blog-musicking.

"Same Schools" hits this awesome anthemic riff that perfectly invokes nostalgia and hope for the future. There's something really great about the way the lyrics are delivered, "We went to the same schools / Were told to follow all of the same old rules", wondering how people diverge over time. At least I assume so, since no lyrics available. In any case, that's my interpretation. It rings out like a souped-up Big Star. (Drummer Adam Knickle, whom you may recall I worked with for a while, convinced me to buy their first two albums, so I don't think it's a stretch to call them an influence.)

I think "Same Schools" is a great song, but even that can't prepare for the pure roaring hookiness of "We Always Complain," whose only flaw is that there isn't another chorus or two. It's one of those great songs you feel like you know, not because it's cliche but because it works in a classic sense and renews what you like about those similar songs. And lurking just around the corner after that is the wicked wild west disco of "I Don't Want To Try To Change Your Life," which unwinds in such a sinister way before erupting in another blaze. Its chugging bassline and shout-along middle eight proves exactly how interested the band had become in wrapping its songs into new forms that still set comfortable in the roaring rock of the album. And this leads right to the roaring, stomping "Anytime," which is as joyful and celebratory as it gets for this band, and asks "Now that you've filled your heart with blood / Is there any room for love?"

The set draws to a close with the skillfully-built "Never Ends," winding around a riff that seems like a burning fuse leading to a glorious cut-loose vocal that blends punk screaming with smooth crooning. Eventually it brings the record to its close with a refrain that winds out into echoing darkness, pounding with drums and guitars all right on. It's a great cap off to an album that starts like a brick wall and then allows itself to crumble brick by brick and it devises new ways to reach the listener.

My issue with the first album was that as strong as the music was, it was a bit willfully reckless and obscure. It lacked those ear-catching hooks that most listeners need to be drawn into a song, that will get it pushed out on the radio. Perplexingly, this album has those in spades, with tight songcraft and energetic musicianship, singalong choruses and muscly riffs, way more substantial than what you typically get on a hit "modern rock" record, crafted from vintage plans yet with the spirit and energy of the new. And it still went mostly unheard.

The legend of Big Star's first album, #1 Record, was that any song on it could have been a hit, but the record company dropped the ball on actually getting the album in stores, so it remained undiscovered. This may turn out to be the case of this record, which is a shame. This is sort of the reason I started doing this blog, to catch the music I'd been missing out on all along. I hope that, even if not with this album in particular, then at some point I steer you toward something you wouldn't otherwise have heard. Every time that happens, I feel like I'm doing it right.

Buy this album from iTunes now!

Marble Index: Marble Index

In "Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)" Neil Young famously warbled, over rough-clanging Crazy Horse guitars that "Rock and roll will never die," and after all these years, that's still true. No matter what happens, there will always be a fresh crop of young rock and rollers. There's just something so appealing about picking up a guitar in your garage, fingers on the frets, pick hammering strings, that generation after generation of suburban youths keep discovering how to make it work for them -- even as rebellious coolness shifts over to hip hop. I think the difference is, to be an MC, you have to be good with words. To be a rocker, you've really just got to be loud.

That said, if you are good at guitars, and loud and pissed off enough at the world and yourself, you might come up with something as good as Marble Index's self-titled debut from 2005.

For 42 minutes, this longplayer brings fresh, pulse-pounding, undiluted rock to your ears. Despite boasting an incredibly lush guitar sound, it manages to sound very stripped down, avoiding lame production tricks a lot of hot radio acts use to disguise the fact that they can't craft a hook -- you know them when you hear them. Marble Index never has to strain, and gets maximum mileage out of their work. Take the head-bobbingly simple wail of the opening track "I Believe," the burbling bass intro to "We Can Make It," or the blustery "On The Phone." Any number of these tracks, you'll swear have been around for years longer than they have. The band manages the unlikely feat of putting together a number of great songs that sound like they've just spontaneously formed themselves from a jam. Bloody hell, does it work. This is what rock sounds like when you imagine it, yet far too rarely when you actually hear it.

The album contains a great sense of urgency, never forgetting that it exists in the present tense. They play with great rhythm, driven by Adam Knickle's killer drums, but with a hell of an overtime shift by Brad Germain on vocals and guitars. I find it difficult to believe there's only one person playing guitar on here, although it's probably the bass is just that good too. Germain's vocals have a real charm. He sounds defiant yet optimistic on "I Believe" and "We Can Make It," weak and wanting on "Not So Bright" and the breathless "This Book," (killer lyric: "You don't ever call but I suspect you really want to",) defeated and frustrated on "Days Seem Longer" (which you may feel you vaguely already remember as a classic with its "Weakling for your love" refrain,) and "I Die." He adds the right amount of angst to the proceedings, effortless (and lordy do I ever hate fakey-sounding pretend-angst) and unafraid to let himself get ridiculously sloppy with his own lyrics. Seriously, you can only make out about half, maybe a third of the lyrics here. The rest are virtually unarticulated due to losing control of his own larynx. I chalk it up to a Joe Strummer influence, which can't be a bad thing. He sounds utterly committed to expressing himself, so that the words aren't always as important as the tone. The guitars back this up, foregoing simple, easily-hummed hooks for great rocky noise.

What we have here then, is a 12-song set that is most definitely meant to be played live, to be physically interacted with. A lot of the time, it feels like the guys in the band are right there next to you, you can hear the crackle in the air near the amps on songs like "On The Phone." Excellent production to match the supercharged playing, that's for sure. And although they don't shy away from the crash-bang assault music, they're really a nimble bunch of musicians, tweaking the balance of hooks and riffs and jangles and chords, playing the vocals up or down according to their importance. As it was released during the changeover between "neo-garage" (Strokes, White Stripes) and "Britrock" (Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand,) it doesn't seem like it came out of a trend, or like it depends on being heard at a certain place or time (*although ideally, you are a pissed-off teenager or twentysomething.) This type of music has a low ceiling/high floor type of quality. If it seems too basic, then it's really not gonna work for you, but for guys like me that just like awesome-sounding loud music, it can't go wrong.

If there are problems with the record, they're the dark side of its selling points. Despite each individual song's quality, the constant sonic assault may wear thin on the listener and cause them to tune out of some of the better mid- or late-album tracks. Everything between "This Book" and "I Die" might fall into wallpaper, despite being a solid collection of tracks. The album, surprisingly, rewards a lot of repeat listening to correct this, as you begin to anticipate the early tracks, you let yourself gain interest in the later tracks. It makes for good driving music. It's gritty and it's powerful, and it isn't desperate to go out of its way to show you how deep it's meant to be... which is actually pretty deep.

The annoying thing is, as good as the record is, quality may not be a recipe for a hit. "I Believe" maybe have been a great tune, but it doesn't have that radio-ready sound that has helped lesser bands attain multitudes more popularity than Marble Index ever had. The fact that they managed to get more of that sound on their second record, without sacrificing any awesomeness, and it doesn't seem to have worked, proves how unjust the music world can be sometimes.

Enjoy good bands, people.

Buy this album from iTunes now!