Marah

Any other fans around here? new album out tuesday. here's one of the many many raving reviews

Those who work in the film industry know that most quality films will be released in the final three months of the year. Reviewers spend the rest of the time searching for a beacon in the darkness and resting up for the marathon that kicks off after Labor Day and doesn’t end until the waning days of the year.

The music industry is different. The best albums of the year could hit store shelves in June (Fountains of Wayne’s Welcome Interstate Managers), or March (Idlewild’s The Remote Part), or August (John Wesley Harding’s The Confessions of St. Ace). The best album of a given year could be released on January 1 or December 31.

This year is a perfect example of that point. The best album of the year to date hits store shelves June 29 and when we take a step back and review the year’s best, this writer suspects that June 29 will also mark the date that the best album of 2004 hit store shelves. And the more this disc repeats in my headphones, the more certain I am that Marah’s fourth album, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky is deserving of such accolades.

After a two-year break between discs, the band has returned with an album that is as reverent of the music that has been released over the past four decades as it is forward-thinking and original. It draws from the most popular sounds of the past 40 years, from doo-wop to punk, from the virtuoso songwriting and moving harmonica playing of Springsteen and Dylan to the soulful rhythms of Marvin Gaye and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. It layers melody and rhythms in a glorious pastiche of sound.

A good writer hooks an audience immediately, leaving no opportunity to lose their attentions. Marah does this on the opening track, “East,� a tale about Philadelphia that contains melodic echoes from a pair of Springsteen tracks (“Frankie� and “Waiting on a Sunny Day�) as well as thematic echoes from a pair of tracks from Born to Run (“Night� and “Jungleland�).

(That these themes are prevalent becomes entirely less surprising when one considers that the band members have made clear their desire to make 20,000 Streets a rock and roll narrative -- something that many music fans argue that Born to Run did better than any other rock and roll disc ever released.)

Lest anyone accuse them of attempting to imitate Springsteen exclusively, the next song, “Freedom Park,� opens with a piano/drum entrance that hearkens to the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.� and somehow morphs into a buoyant and breezy reminiscence of a favorite childhood haunt. The chorus includes a “shimmy shimmy coco pop, shimmy shimmy right� backing track that borrows from Daphne & Celeste’s “Roll Call.� The girl group influence only adds to the timelessness of the track.

The life of “Feather Boa� is the topic of the next track and here, the band relies on twangy guitars to tell a tale of a man who is “Born to be a witness/Born to doubt the cross/Born to suck a man off/And sleep upon his loss.� (Think Jim Croce’s “Bad Bad Leroy Brown� with a southern accent and a pile of cocaine.)

“Going Through the Motions� opens with a disco beat, and yet, like they do throughout the album, the members of the band return to the rock and roll realm. Here, the influences of T Rex and “Bang a Gong� appear but don’t overwhelm. Instead, the chorus of “we’re only going through the motions� propels this song of inevitability.

That the album has no clunkers is admirable, but not as remarkable as the fact that the members of Marah have managed to craft a disc as bold as this one is. They are not afraid to downshift on tracks like “Sure Thing� that are carried by on a wave gentle melody and tasteful rhythm.

Their narrative efforts pay off on tracks like “Soda,� a love song about a Puerto Rican boy enamored with the girl working behind the bulletproof glass at a local Chinese restaurant. The chorus of this song is a thing of beauty and the entire track will give a listener the chills.

And one cannot overlook the way in which the boys can evoke a smile on tracks like “Pizzeria,� which has no right to work, but does. Oh how it does. Starting as a doo-wop song in which the narrator reminiscences about a local hangout the track’s rocking chorus is both poignant and amusing, from Star Trek rolling “up your shit TV� to the way in which they accept that the transformation of the bistro from pizzeria to Chinese food restaurant -- a sentiment best echoed when they sing “Your pizza boxes under halogen lights/Stood like a castle in my eyes tonight/Then it all collapsed when I took one bit/Of sweet and sour #9.�

“Body� is a visually stunning narrative, a piano driven song that shifts, speeds up, slows down, and doesn’t abandon the listener during its journey. It proves to be a perfect setup to the instrumental title track, which closes the disc.

If Bruce Springsteen had released The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle in 2004, it would have been titled 20,000 Streets Under the Sky. This disc is a carnival ride; the tilt-a-whirl on the South Beach drag. It is the ideal soundtrack for those who enjoy nothing more than spending their summer days at the beach and their steamy nights at the boardwalk clubs. It is a rock and roll dream that demands to be savored and anointed. Quite simply, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky is a classic. No more, no less.


Marah
'20,000 Streets Under the Sky'
Yep Roc
Rating: A+
RELEASED DATE:
June 29, 2004
CD REVIEWED BY:
Roy Opochinski
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