As the Secretly Canadian story goes, Marmoset member Jorma Whittaker is the son of "Whitey" Whittaker, the official tour bus driver for the non-secretly Canadian band Rush for about twenty years. Legend has it that Geddy Lee played the rough mix of their album Signals for Jorma before it was released. Maybe thankfully, the Ayn-noying individualist fetish of "New World Man" and "The Analog Kid" doesn't seem to have rubbed off at all. Like Geddy Lee, though, Jorma Whittaker does happen to be the bassist and lead singer of his band. But don't expect a castrated screech-- we've been spared such torture.
Marmoset seems to have blissfully missed the 80s, actually, to be influenced by every other decade. Take "Golden Cloak," one of the band's catchier songs. It sounds similar to the Velvet Underground's "Ocean," an outtake from Loaded: the organ swirls like vintage Cale while Whittaker sings in pure Reed pre-glam fashion, as if filled with wonderment at the things he's discovering in his own song. He describes the features of the cloak (which "makes you high"), and then he pulls the indie-rawk kiss-off-- they're features, you see, that he's "so fucking sick of." The song builds up all this psych-rock mystique just to end almost indifferently half a minute later.
Record in Red cycles through a grab-bag of styles. The opener, "Eyes Are Looking," is pure Beat Happening pop with its fey "da da da" male/female harmonies and jangly, lo-fi guitar. Then, two tracks later, "Winter" rips into wild guitar theatrics that'll have you asking, "The Who?" The driving drums and tight rhythm track on "The City" recalls the Doors or the Zombies' "Don't Cry For Me," and its echoing, overdubbed vox might catch you doing the swim, arms waving past your head like it's the 60s all over again. And just when you expect the entire album to be a pastiche of trendy genres, "December 4th" drops the drums and the pretense for an acoustic number that's equal parts Elliott Smith and Kurt Cobain.
In this case, it isn't an insult that you can easily come up with comparisons for the band; if anything, Marmoset make a virtue out of neurotic decade-hopping. Their erratic talent might seem a bit unfocused at times, since song-length averages about two minutes, but Whittaker ties it all together with his charm. His self-obsessed and sexxee vocal swoons turn each track into an anthem, even on little vignettes like "Artmaker" when he adopts a mock-Germanic accent, repeating the phrase, "Artmaker, strangulator," into absurdity. The album gives off a slightly dark, druggy vibe, especially when the handclaps and piano jabs of "Summertime Is Easy" sink under the morbid, endless repetition of Whittaker's chorus. But rather than drown in affectations, overall, Record in Red's coy fascination with itself reminds me of why pop music is so much fun.
