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LP
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FEELIT 127LP
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"Marcel Wave write eulogies for tragic actresses, ancient riverbeds and concrete obscenity. Their inaugural sonic instalment Something Looming is part trades club symphony, part itchy serenade, and part wistful lament. As their heady concoction of 'Meades meets Pat-E-Smith meets Kirklees Borough Council' gets prepped to be formally baptized on a dank stage near you, Upset the Rhythm and Feel It Records have dutifully stepped in to deliver its songbook to the masses on both sides of the pond. Formed when Lindsay Corstorphine and Christopher Murphy of Sauna Youth and brethren Oliver and Patrick Fisher of Cold Pumas were summoned by northern ink-slinger Maike Hale-Jones, Marcel Wave's debut offering is a walk through a smoke-filled pub with yellowing wallpaper and all eyes on you. It's a chronicle of the death of the docklands, the decline of industry, of the high street, of civic pride, of civilizations, of hopes and dreams. As Hale-Jones delivers the bad news in her low, West Yorkshire brogue, Corstorphine adds the bells and whistles via the frantic pulsations of a wheezing Hohner organ in tandem with Fisher O's rasping guitar. MW are completed by the throbbing basslines of Murphy and Fisher P's fervent rhythms. There's a sense of foreboding in Hale-Jones' lyrics which sit at the quintet's core -- elegiac, sardonic and piquant in equal measure. A mixture of narrative epilogues and inward paeans, her words weave tales across a broad thematic church. A snaking, existential dread also runs through the album, stated more obliquely in the otherwise poppier interludes of the title track 'Something Looming' and album opener 'Bent Out of Shape', and present too on the comparatively ramshackle 'Discount Centre', where Hale-Jones reports 'On a mini bus on the outskirts of Enfield, I'm losing all of my spark'. On the album closing weeper 'Linoleum Floor', it is laid barer still -- a keyboard-led reflection on the deflating nights out of early-twenties. Marcel Wave invites the listener to dance to society's decline, and then to later weep into its lukewarm pint."
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