As warm and boisterous as an eager summer day yet but one lined with intimate shadows carrying their own magnetic melancholy, the new album from Marshmallow Coast is little short of pure captivation. Across near on thirty minutes and eight cheerfully swinging tracks, Memory Girl is a fresh electro pop rock lover very easy to take in the imaginative arms and boisterously dance with.
Hailing out of Athens, Georgia, Marshmallow Coast is the brainchild of Andy Gonzales (The Music Tapes, of Montreal, Mind Brains).With Sara Kirkpatrick, Jim Hix, and Steven Trimmer alongside the band has conjured a release which embraces the senses like the rising morning sun. It is rich in warmth and hope, suggestive in knowing intimacy and understanding yet as mentioned has that darker intimation which haunts everyday life and new experiences.
Memory Girl begins with Warm Bodies and immediately the song’s balmy air and comfy touch hugs the senses. Its buoyant stroll is boisterous yet has a restraint which has hips swaying rather than the body bouncing but movement as inescapable as it is eager. There is an eighties synth pop glow to the track, a bright and engaging hue spilling across the whole of the release as swiftly confirmed by next up Take You On. With a gentler urgency to its gait as firm beats pounce with metronome like insistency, the song is a hazier affair compared to its predecessor. Indeed keys bring an almost dirty breeze to their otherwise crystalline shimmer at times, Gonzales’s tones falsetto similarly kissed whilst providing a warmly affectionate proposition to song and listener within the embrace.
Lover’s Leap follows, sauntering in with a bold funk nurtured swagger as guitars melodically tease around it. Again the body was manipulated into involvement as the resourcefully infectious track cheerfully strolled along though once again a raw mist of sonic intimation rears its suggestive head throughout the captivation before making way for the equally inviting K. Freeman Enslaved with its Orange Juice-esque jangle and that eighties synth pop exuberance which itself brings a further XTC like imagination.
Through the electro pop exploits of Sinz Of My Father, a track which is something akin to a meeting of Thomas Dolby and Devo, and Shooting Star with its tantalising celestial glide, the album just accentuated its hold on ears and appetite with the first of the two emerging as a real favourite play by play. They are in turn matched in success by the funk pop waltz of the increasingly compelling Foxy Boy, a track which almost stalks the listener with an infectious smile on its face and a seductive tease in its movement.
The album’s title track brings things to a close and though it is a song which did not grip our ears as tightly and dramatically as its predecessors, it left a warm glow and a taste for more of its mellow, thoughtful, and sultry intimation.
It is a fine end to a release which just grew in presence and temptation by the play; its summery haze a real but knowing escape to the shadows of daily life.
Memory Girl is out now through Happy Happy Birthday To Me Records.
https://www.facebook.com/marshmallowcoast/
Pete RingMaster 8/01/2019
Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright
What Endless Rituals quickly establishes is the diversity across the sound and creative enterprise of Lee and Simmonds; songs ranging from simply synth pop to industrial, dark electro, ambient and much more. As expectations and assumptions of what comes next arise they are quickly shot down and left floundering as song by song the release persistently presents a new facet to its swiftly captivating presence. For all its twists and new sides though, there is a coherency to it all which links it all as something truly individual to Snuttock.
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