Marlovers trade in irresistible contrasts: joy and sorrow, jubilation and resignation, anticipation and trepidation. And they do it like anachronistic ‘90s indie slackers out to change the world.
There’s something disarming about Marlovers’ approach to the concept album. Case in point: their new release ‘16 Sunrises from the Soyuz,’ which, in a manner of speaking, is a duck that refuses to quack like one or walk like one. In Marlovers’ able hands, the concept record disarms simply because, well, it charms.
Nevertheless, being a sucker for allegory, it was a sweet thing to learn about their narrative frame for the record. The Mallorca, Spain-based band – Marina Mullor Morata, Simó Reus Mestre, Guillermo Bauzá Muñoz, Alberto Santolaria de Hevia – writes in a pre-release statement: “Astronauts aboard the Soyuz orbit Earth roughly every 90 minutes, witnessing about 16 sunrises and sunsets in a single 24-hour period. Our album uses the metaphor of 16 daily sunrises witnessed from a drifting spacecraft and explores how love, identity, and healing evolve [while] being far away from everything.”
But more than thesis or proof-of-concept, what the group triumphantly delivers is accumulation: of different kinds of light; of varying manners of motion and emotion; of multiple manifestations of shadow.
‘Sixteen Sunrises’ opens in a comforting afterglow via “Day and Night,” a jangle-fest in the Ash-Lemonheads vein, ironically driven by an affecting lack of affectation. In essence, Marlovers are earnest as earnest can be, but never inert; their emotional aimlessness becomes their paradoxical North Star.The track is a tone-setter for everything that follows: this idea that not knowing, in itself, manifests as a kind of knowledge.
From there, the band leans into their signature wheelhouse. “Lone Star” brings forth guitar shimmer and bittersweet harmony work, sounding (as I suggested in a previous review) like it’s cut from disparate ‘90s/early-aughts bits of cloth, yet stitched with a personality that’s “theirs and theirs alone.” You hear echoes of Teenage Fanclub and The New Pornographers, for sure, but also a Shonen Knife kind of playfulness and a Cranberries brand of earnestness.
It shouldn’t work, but it does.
“While our melodies and guitar lines are bright and catchy, they’re carefully layered with a quieter, lingering undertone of nostalgia and melancholy,” the band shares, adding, “It’s a deliberate contrast: music that feels like sunlight breaking through clouds, where the hook pulls you in but the emotional resonance stays with you long after the track ends.”
“A Rainy Day in the Moon” doubles down on all of this: there’s a hard-and-soft clash of a bed; there’s overdrive jangle; and there’s a smattering of angelic boy-girl unison singing. That push-pull dynamic recalls (but never quite apes) the dueling romanticism of the best of the boy-girl kind (Black Francis and Kim Deal, Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield, the dudes in Broken Social Scene trading barbs with Feist). What Marlovers offer instead is a light-hearted tug-of-war: something warm, welcome, occasionally goofy, and very much organic. Theirs are duets for the Apocalypse: when there is resignation, there is jubilation.
Then come the variations on a feeling. “A Cold Day” is sweet and awkward, sincere and starry-eyed, teetering on heroically optimistic, while “Omega” – same – lets a cloud of melancholy (regret, loss, misfortune in a heady vat) seep through. “Who’s to Blame” plants a flag in college-radio fare, all arpeggios and dual vocals, that ‘90s overdrive energy carrying abandon but also an ironic forward-march resolve. Even “Shelter,” with its understated Toad the Wet Sprocket, auxiliary-character energy – with a no-bombast, no-explosions sense of clarity – feels like part of the same emotional continuum: different shades, same sun.
The middle stretch is where the orbit metaphor really clicks. “Fallin’” and “Get the Job Done” ride rhythm-forward pseudo-riffage, with the amateur-tier guitar line (coupled with slacker-style singing) doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: grounding everything in indie pop’s beating, human core. “The 9th Sunrise” drifts by as a slice-of-life bit, sampled convos over sunkissed chord changes, while “Brothers” and “Tranquility Base” trade in mid-tempo sing-song reminiscence: echoes, callbacks, déjà vu in stereo.
And then the descent, or maybe just another turn. “I Can’t Look Back” is a downtempo roll-down-your-windows piano ballad, a marked departure in mood and tone but with their revitalizing spirit intact. “I Hate It, But I Like It” keeps the same jangle, but with a different dreaminess. “Inside Out” is a morose confessional sporting their signature happy-sad chorus and tender-tough volleying, while “How Could All This Happen” is saddled with the task of landing the whole thing: taking-stock and looking-back episodes handled with just the right amount of cheese and sap.
‘Sixteen Sunrises’ may not offer grand-eureka realizations, just the sense that somewhere between the dance and the drift, Marlovers have mapped a way to feel your way through the dark. “[A] bittersweet balance is at the heart of [it]; it’s pop that embraces warmth without shying away from complexity,” the band concludes.
Listen to ‘16 Sunrises from the Soyuz,’ out today via this humble little label.