MARBLED EYE – Leisure

Description

Debut LP from this Bay Area, California band whose EP we raved and released about a while back, and now that they’re on vinyl full lenght, we still love them. To me, Marbled Eye sound like the perfect mix of Total Control and Parquet Courts. Like both of those bands, Marbled Eye have a way of combining a Krautrock-style groove with angular, Wire-esque post-punk style riffing and wrapping the whole thing up in great pop songwriting.
While their hooks aren’t quite as big as the most memorable moments of the bands I just compared them to, I feel like that’s by design. Even though this is a LP, it’s so grooved out that it feels like a record you put on and get lost in the atmosphere of rather than putting on to pump your fist and sing along.
This band is absolutely killer, and I feel like it’s only a matter of time before they’re as big as the two bands I just compared them to, so grab this LP and get in on the ground floor. The Austin band Institute pairs numbing and rigid post-punk with a Krautrock vibe, and the pairing turns out to be perversely appealing.
Flouting Rockist conventions with equal doses of stark minimalism and plodding fury, these post-punks resolutely refuse the “post” prefix. MARBLED EYE slithers effortlessly across genre boundaries, drawing upon myriad eras and localities. The Units, Neu!, Wire, Television, CRISIS, and contemporary sounds from the Australian garage rock subterrain like TOTAL CONTROL or INSTITUTE and DIÄT all come to mind. If you are familiar with the MARBLED EYE demo, you will be fanatic about this new LP.
They lean towards the punk side of post-punk. They recall Crisis & Coitus Int. with a mix of anarcho bands thrown in there, too, and create a fascinating tension, a palpable struggle between their inner selves and their music that demands to be heard. As sharp as the band’s earlier work, but you can hear that they climbed the next step with this new EP. Expertly tight and catchy drumming, cold as ice, monotone, pitch perfect post-punk vocals and a rhythm section that would make anyone jealous.
This is just a captivating listen the whole way through, the kind of record I can put on and just watch the turntable spinning, getting lost in its intricacies.