MARCEL WAVE - “Something Looming“ (2024, full album)

Backed by two impeccable catalogs labels, one from each side of the pond, and absolute masters of the oblique, such as Cincinnati’s Feel It Records and London’s Upset The Rhythm, we get one of our favorite albums for this 2024, Marcel Wave’s debut full-length, which also includes among the wonderful dozen tracks that made it, one of the most impressive songs we have reached this year so far, “Barrow Boys“, a pearl of the best British post-punk that can be heard nowadays, that in spite of its disturbing title “Something Looming“, gives way to a fabulous string of gems, that show us a wide vision of this decadent world in the coolest possible way, from the most addictive minimalist and angular spoken-word, to the catchiest indie post-punk “made in UK“ by some absolute experts in the field. US - Feel It Records: UK - Upset the Rhythm: Support the band: Marcel Wave are Maike Hale Jones (wind-pipes), Lindsay Corstorphine (ivories), Oliver Fisher (axe), Christopher Murphy (throbs) and Patrick Fisher (pots ’n’ pans) 00:00 01. Bent Out of Shape 03:22 02. Barrow Boys 05:30 03. Something Looming 07:33 04. Peg 09:54 05. Mudlarks 12:29 06. Where There’s Muck There’s Brass 16:16 07. Discount Centre 19:30 08. Great British High St. 21:48 09. Elsie 24:36 10. Ides of March 25:59 11. Stop/Continue 28:53 12. Linoleum Floor “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 baptised 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 civilisations, 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. The title itself sets the tone for the listener. 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. Crooked tales of urban renewal and the voices left behind are probed in ‘Barrow Boys’ and ‘Stop/Continue’ and are at the fore in ‘Where There’s Muck There’s Brass’ with its refrain lamenting ‘Concrete and slate shine in the rain, cities destroyed, nothing to gain’. In these lyrics, tower blocks loom over terraced houses with the same shadows that the Hollywood sign casts over Peg Entwistle before she takes her tragic leap. ‘Peg’ and ‘Elsie’ are both meditations on two different actresses with different fates crushed by the cut-throat trappings of showbusiness: ‘The mad hopes break, fragile as glass. She traded it all, for the cutting room floor.’ 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 our early-twenties. Marcel Wave invites the listener to dance to society’s decline, and then to later weep into its lukewarm pint. “ All music by Marcel Wave. Lyrics by Maike Hale Jones Recorded and mixed at Head Cold 2022-23, with additional mixing by Lindsay Corstorphine at Devil’s Mango VI Mastering by Mikey Young Aleatoric piano on ’Mudlarks’ by Prudence Artwork by PF for Frontwards Design with napkin illustration by Dennis Foster Jones Many warm regards to Christ Tipton at Upset The Rhythm and Sam Richardson at Feel It Records Tremendo Garaje: IG: FB: Disclaimer: Uploaded thanks to my friend Sam