Margaux - More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin

By Abigail Clyne

Margaux’s folk-rock EP, More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin, sees a young artist coming into her own. This impressive debut of meticulously rendered love songs showcase an artist breaking free of authority and asserting her own. Complex but listenable, More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin is a beautifully crafted and triumphant proclamation from an artist who has much to say.

The grungy bass line of the first track, “Cave In,” threatens to beat the listener, if not Margaux, into submission. Detailing the feeling of being stuck in someone’s perception of you, Margaux does her best to break out of it, “Climbing out of somebody’s memory/ Clinging to what’s clung by family.” The increasing tempo of the chorus “Lay down/ This is your final offer/ Cave in/ Let go of what you wanted,” creates a pressure cooker to test Margaux’s mettle.

Track two, “Faced with Fire,” is a romantic folk gem. The snow globe-like track perfectly distills the overwhelming desire to hole up with a new lover. Ambient guitars, muffled horns, and Margaux’s soft but sweet vocals knit a sonic cashmere blanket to sink into. On the other end of the spectrum, her debut single, “Palm,” is an ambitious affair that pivots around a mid-song transition from one emotional landscape to another. The beginning is cerebral but upbeat, analyzing the complexities of her relationship. But then romantic love takes over, with Margaux singing “My blushing mind is dreaming when I see your face/ Only that I’d love to love you,” and the song blossoms into a lustful sonic bath. The slower tempo and dreamy electronica allow Margaux’s alluring vocals to take center stage, “Call me out/ Your guess is true/ My head and heels/ Are over you.”

“Hot Faced,” a feminist rallying cry against the trap that is politeness, continues Margaux’s journey towards autonomy. Building on themes presented in “Cave In” Margaux grows more comfortable using her voice to push against the bonds of gender norms. “Is it really safe to say/ If I calculate and sing it softly/ Why is yelling not okay/ A woman’s voice is possibly threatening” cheekily encapsulates and eviscerates the hysterical woman trope. Musically, the track is a push and pull, with Margaux’s lilting delivery of the spell-like chorus, “Please and thank you/ Come right in now/ The King will see you/ Let your guard down” contrasted against the free association verses.

The EP closes out with the meditative and musically subdued track, “Smaller Home.” A reflection on childhood and the changes adulthood brings, the song is a fitting end for the Seattle bred, but now New York-based, artist. Her low vocals and the swelling of low brass encapsulate the gravity of growing up. “Older stronger wiser think I am/ I think I am” she sings, a beautiful cap to an EP that’s seen Margaux find her power.

More Brilliant is the Hand that Throws the Coin is out now on Massif Records.

Melodie Stancato - 42.0209° N, 70.0370° W

By Gerard Marcus

The first time I heard the music of Melodie Stancato I was immediately entranced. Her music felt personal on an almost subconscious level. It’s musical portraiture, trying to capture a sense of place, time, personality, and experience. It’s like finding a stranger’s old journal, or notes left behind in the margins of a used book–a glimpse into the most personal headspace. We haven’t heard a lot from Melodie in a while–it’s been almost two years since the last release from Swoon Lake–but I’m happy to see that in her new single and video for “42.0209° N, 70.0370° W,” the touch of the personal hasn’t been lost.

If you google “42.0209° N, 70.0370° W” it will lead you to Truro, MA. Specifically, Hanging Valley on Longnook Beach, which appears to be where the music video was shot. The video is a simple movement piece performed by Stancato in a single take on the side of a sand dune. The song and dance weave a tale of personal exploration and a search for connection. But an internal one, where you analyze yourself within the world and not the world around you. The beauty of this piece lies there, in a reminder to look inwards every now and again, and to let the outside world just be.

REVIEW: Wilder Maker - Zion

Phillipe Roberts

Nestled in the sprawling intensity of New York City is a proud tradition of bands, from the hallowed Television to modern wiz Kevin Morby, who use their music as a portal to transcend the urban clamor for calmer pastures. After all, not everyone can be bothered to emulate the never-ending screeches and howls of city life with scuzzy alternate tunings and insistent, throbbing rhythms. Brooklyn supercrew Wilder Maker get their kicks painting rambling living portraits closer to the folk tradition, but the expansiveness of their instrumental ambitions and the clarity of their confessional, at times brooding, lyricism puts them in direct lineage with the giants that came before them. And with Gabriel Birnbaum as songwriter, that tradition is in some dangerously capable hands.

In full acknowledgement of the utter collapse of genre today, the term post-folk comes to mind when describing Wilder Maker’s swirling vortex of airy-textured, extended jam-rock music. However, the four-piece is careful to center vocals and guitar in all of these compositions. One of their greatest strengths is that any of the songs on their latest masterpiece, Zion, would sound phenomenal stripped down to just those elements. Indeed, when they bring the lights all the way down for penultimate track “Multiplied,” with Birnbaum and longtime collaborator Katie Von Schleicher’s voices twirling around delicate finger-picked guitar and minimal shaker-and-bass-drum percussion, their flawless precision is awe-inspiring. They know how to tear your head off with a saxophone solo, like they do on the electrified country of “Gonna Get My Money,” or throw caution to the wind with the hallelujah crescendos on “Women Dancing Immortal,” but this is a band of marvelous and mysterious restraint.

For the most part however, Wilder Maker focus on taking private crises and blowing them up to tremendous proportions. They aren’t about punchy statements, preferring gaping expanses that allow them to spin lyrical yarns packed with vivid imagery. Opener “Closer to God” recounts ditching a scummy landlord for Mexico in no fewer than five verses. The narrative is packed with details like “The new place was a canvas / And we were a brush heavy with paint,” and couches them between the dual guitar harmonies and maximalist, All Things Must Pass thunder of its six-minute runtime.

Von Schleicher’s turns on lead vocals contrast with Birnbaum’s bluesy twang—the soaring highs of “Impossible Summer” spark off the driving instrumentation like lightning. “Like a dreamer who's still dreaming / I just can’t stop fucking up,” she yelps, before being swallowed by a crashing, metallic breakdown, the whole band slowing to a stop as she repeats “I tried so hard” until she disappears into the ether. When she owns the mic again on “Drunk Driver,” she wears a post-traumatic grimace. The story unfolds gently, tumbling through drowned feelings at a bar into another chanted, theatrical climax: howls of “The band plays on” collapse into a single piano note as the drunk driver turns the key. The combination of her stately, stage-perfected prowess and Birnbaum’s rousing but casually introspective warmth makes for an inviting listen at every turn.

As far as folk records go, Zion is as empowering as they come, with two riveting storytellers at the helm armed to the teeth with inventive tunes. Don’t let those thick runtimes stand in your way—Wilder Maker have a knack for generously elevating the smallest of bitter details to grand scales and inviting you in as they process them. Catharsis is better when it’s shared.

PREMIERE: Relatives - Give It A Try

Will Shenton

By way of announcing their new LP, Strange We Fall (out August 31 on Figure & Ground), Relatives have released a truly lush track. "Give It A Try" showcases the group's signature smoky duets and softly cascading instrumentals, while capturing their approach to the record as a whole: dive in and don't overthink it.

Building off the songwriting duo's diverse backgrounds—Ian McLellan Davis' as a composer and string arranger for acts like Feist and Grizzly Bear, and Katie Vogel's as a self-taught bluegrass singer—"Give It A Try" feels effortless in its composition. Sultry double bass snakes along to form the backbone as it gradually builds from near-minimalism to a wall of shimmering guitars. The vocals are gorgeous throughout, simple yet mesmerizing, floating along like they're singing at your bedside.

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of Relatives, and their experience shows at every turn. To hear them tell it, writing Strange We Fall was an exercise in spontaneity, characterized by quick turnarounds and attempts to pare down the band's grandiose ideas. But even in this somewhat less deliberate environment, the final recordings feel eminently complete.

"Give It A Try," and Strange We Fall as a whole, sees Relatives "paring down and turning inwards, exploring what can be done with less." Quite a bit, as it turns out.

Pre-order Strange We Fall on Figure & Ground Records

REVIEW: Sam Evian - You, Forever

Will Shenton

Sam Evian's new LP, You, Forever, opens with a defiant statement that seems to underpin every following track: "I don't care / I don't care anymore / Not like before." The playfully titled "IDGAF" unfolds like a resolute love song, declaring the singer's intent to reunite with a partner, past indiscretions be damned. But in a twist that goes on to contextualize the whole album, the "you" Evian wants to run back to isn't a lover—it's himself.

There's a foundation of rambling Americana throughout You, Forever that recalls the whirlwind tour that inspired the record. "Country" is probably the most on-the-nose example ("Hold on tighter to me baby / Don't let go / We've got miles and miles of country / Before we're home"), but foot-tapping standout "Now I Feel It" conjures similar vignettes ("At night I'd fly down country roads and flip the lights off under the stars").

Finding oneself on the lonesome road isn't exactly a novel theme, but it's one Evian executes with aplomb. The energy and style of You, Forever ebbs and flows in a capricious stream of consciousness, darting from wistful, dreamy folk to infectious, upbeat pop and back at the drop of a hat. The introspective longing of "IDGAF" gives way to the dancey psych-pop of "Where Did You Go?," which in turn begets the crunchy ballad "Health Machine." It's a beautiful structure that mirror's the artist's vivid internal life.

You, Forever is an excellent follow-up to 2016's Premium in every way. Evian's keen songwriting instincts have always been there, but his latest work feels like a more thoughtful and fully realized collection. And perhaps most importantly, his hooks are as subtly irresistible as ever, threading the needle between summer hit machine and contemplative odyssey and making it look easy.