Marmoset
's second release,
Record in Red
, stands as a breakthrough for Midwestern anglophile
pop
, a subgenre that had been mostly stagnant since the mid-'90s heyday of
Guided By Voices
. While
GBV
always had grand designs on
rock
stardom and believed in the pure, world-changing potential of
, this Indianapolis quartet dwells in the bleak, sometimes nihilistic space where
is simultaneously self-destructive and self-sustaining, and its worth, on even a personal level, is constantly questioned. This dynamic is most explicitly spelled out on
"Art-Maker,"
where bassist/vocalist
Jorma Whittaker
intones "art-maker, strangulator" in a whispery howl over and over, and the album closer,
"Walking Through the Lake,"
where he is living "off dust." Elsewhere, a general feeling of ambivalence prevails -- toward music, relationships, life in general -- and the music throughout remains minor key and melancholic, yet catchy and staunchly poppy, bringing to mind
the Cure
,
the Smiths
, or even
Syd Barrett
's more introspective moments (
"Dark Globe"
). With such inner contradictions, the drive to resolve matters lends an intense, vital necessity to
, pulling the listener toward the end in fatalistic fashion. ~ Jason Nickey