Marah play things loose and easy on their self-produced fifth album, fusing folk-rock sincerity and garage-band recklessness with first-take immediacy. Since moving from Philadelphia to Brooklyn, they've put some musical distance between themselves and those frequent comparisons with a lower-rent (or at least younger and hungrier) Bruce Springsteen, though the harmonica that laces "Walt Whitman Bridge" conjures some familiar echoes. "City of Dreams" finds them channeling their inner Simon and Garfunkel, while the opening "The Closer" (go figure) sounds like Graham Parker fronting a neo-skiffle band. With "Out of Tune," songwriting brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko issue what amounts to a musical credo: "So what if we're out of tune with the rest of the world?" The go-for-the-throat vitality of the tracks makes the If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry sound less produced than unleashed. --Don McLeese
Marah
If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry
[Yep Roc; 2005]
Rating: 5.5
Buy it from Amp Camp
Can you really blame boomer fud-duds like Nick Hornby and Stephen King for fawning over these Philly-bred dad-rock roustabouts? After all, brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko have made a semi-career out of tapping into the same classic rock mainlines-- ramshackle glory, me-against-whatever loner rebellion-- that defined such aging pundits' youth.
"There is still a part of me that persists in thinking that rock music, and indeed all art, has an occasional role to play in the increasingly tricky art of making us glad we're alive," wrote Hornby in a sycophantic Marah-boosting 2004 New York Times editorial. For him, these unshowered schmucks are the benevolent ghosts of rock & roll past, nudging his mind back to a time when his heart pumped more diligently. When "alive" meant living-- not looking back with nostalgia clouding the frame. So If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry isn't a bad album in the same way a '70s homeless-beard Bruce recreation at Madam Tussaud's isn't a bad work of wax sculpture. Marah may be fun to take silly pictures with but their fifth album continues to prove they're hardly interested in expanding upon the genuine articles they so lovingly revere.
After a failed attempt to toy with their formula-- 2002's Britpop-a-go-go disaster Float Away With the Friday Night Gods-- the Bielankos and their rotating cast of shaggy placeholders again returned to the 70s with 20,000 Streets Under the Sky. IYDLYC, made of off-the-cuff live takes, is noticeably spunkier than its return-to-form predecessor, and the closest Marah have come to capturing the spontaneous energy of 2000's Kids in Philly.
Like their Asbury idol, over time these boys have grown more reliant on traditional song structure rather than endless rambles. But when Springsteen condensed his free-wielding local tangents, he did so with an ambition and gusto that made every song distinct. There's no such striving here. Alongside ready-made Miller beer jingles ("The Closer", "Sooner or Later") doleful, dumbed-down Dylan larceny ("The Dishwasher's Dream"), and the requisite tiresome underclass anthem ("Poor People"), Marah manage only two moments of transcendence.
"Walt Whitman Bridge" recalls about 357 other memorable acoustic guitar/harmonica ditties but trumps most of them. You know what's up-- a lonely walk across a storied Philadelphia passageway, wind whipping, nicotine and caffeine warming insides, restless, loveless. The track indulges in the group's best kept secret: carefully calibrated vocal harmonies that make slight lines like "Fall away from these winter streets/ On a cloudless day/ Your memory blows away from me" sound newly discovered and poignant. Meanwhile, winsome ballad "So What If We're Outta Tune (w/ The Rest Of The World)" recalls Extreme's "More Than Words" in the best way possible. Of course, the it's-just-you-and-me-honey outlook is overwrought, but its naivety is becoming. Many of the song's lines also double as a bittersweet acknowledgement of Marah's endearing underdog status ("Strainin' our voices to no consequence...Dreaming out our choruses and slow sad middle eights"). Both songs beg to be centerpieces for future pivotal scenes in Cameron Crowe films.
In a way, when Springsteen lent his guitar and vocal talents to Marah's "Float Away" four years ago, he fucked them. For a band whose existence is an exalted form of Boss worship, the guest spot seemed like a tribute band's final triumphant coup. Yet Marah go on singing sung songs while lifelong rock fans pretend not to remember them.
-Ryan Dombal, January 26, 2006
Review by Tim Sendra
On Marah's fifth album, If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry, the group casts aside the big and glossy productions of the last couple records and adopts a more intimate and loose feel. The album was recorded pretty much live in the studio and the sound is stripped down and very immediate. Stripped down but still rife with horns, strings, glockenspiels, percussion and handclaps and still filled with the kind of surprises (like the glittery disco beats on "The Hustle" or the Beach Boys-influenced vocal harmonies that begin "The Demon of White Sadness," to name but a couple) that have always helped separate the band from their over-earnest alt-country/Americana competition. Another thing that has always separated them has been David Bielanko's lyrics and vocals, and they are better than ever here. His loopy and wild-eyed vocals deliver his street poet lines with intense beauty throughout. He even restrains himself -- for a change -- on some of the ballads, especially "City of Dreams," on which he sounds almost angelic. The songs are among the band's best and most varied, whether they're rampaging rockers ("Fat Boy" or "Poor People"), wild lyrical flights of fancy ("The Closer"), emotional tours de force ("So What if We're Outta Tune [With the Rest of the World]"), heartbreaking character sketches ("The Dishwasher's Dream") or confessions ("The Apartment"). Every song is a direct punch to the heart, written and played with a fever that only the best rock & roll has. Their focus on the song and the performance, rather than the sound and the production, has proved to be a stroke of genius; the band has never sounded more honest or important. If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry is the kind of record Dylan might make in 2005 if he were still making records as good as Highway 61 Revisited, or the kind of record Springsteen might make if he were updating Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.. Marah will never make the widespread cultural impact of those two artists and this record won't make them rich or famous, but it is a monster rock & roll album that you flat-out need to hear, their best yet. And that is really saying something.
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