The Marble Vanity - "Assemble" (The Marble Vanity)
The Marble Vanity proves that time travel exists, and the forces of good are at the controls. How else can this LP be explained?
The Marble Vanity Bill and Lisa Roe of Cococoma, and Andrew Anderson of The Hipshakes; if you go by their earlier work, you might expect some energetic garage rock as functional and memorable as that last 15-pack you picked because it was the one on sale at the grocery store. And you’d be wrong. Instead, they’ve come up with a song cycle that channels the best of first-blush psychedelic pop and early Flying Nun.
They’ve not only gotten the sounds right, but the spirit. Some of it comes down to luck; whoever is singing on “Assemble” sounds just enough like David Kilgour that you can’t help but think of The Clean every time he leads the gang through a laconically shouted chorus, but different enough that you don’t think it’s someone trying very hard to be him. But it takes more than luck to come up with a brass break on the same song that not only sounds like Love c. Forever Changes, it sounds as eternally fresh as that record sounds. Likewise the earnest intoned singing and contrasting buzz and jangle on “Autumn Woods” sounds like something off of an early Chills EP. Not only does it have a similarly spacy atmosphere and killer hooks; it radiates a brightly scrubbed cheer that it sounds like the work of an outrageously precocious youngster rather than a band of parents and college graduates. But the forces of good have not yet established hegemony. No LP pressing of 300 will ever rule the airwaves.
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