Over the past six years, Steve Marion has become something you didn’t know you even needed in this day and age: a guitar hero. And just as contemporary superhero franchise reboots tend to focus less on their protagonists’ powers and more on their flaws, Marion wields his ample talent with the humility of a mortal. On the (mostly) instrumental albums he’s released as Delicate Steve, Marion’s guitar playing is always in the spotlight, but never hogging it—rather, his luminous leads form the emotional undercurrent around which everything else flows. What makes Marion a guitar hero isn’t his technical wizardry, but his music’s mission to help you through dark times.
The home-brewed Afro-psych soundscapes of Marion’s previous releases made him a natural collaborator with contemporaries mining similar terrain, like Yeasayer and Dirty Projectors. Last year, he received the ultimate endorsement when he was invited to play on the latest album from the patron saint of worldly pop experimentation, Paul Simon. Though he makes primarily instrumental music, Marion’s never been shy about using his titles to telegraph his aesthetic, be it the Stevie salute of 2011’s Wondervisions or the nod to Sly Stone’s lo-fi funk masterwork There’s a Riot Goin’ On in “Afria Talks to You” (from 2012’s Positive Force). The track list to his new album, This Is Steve, features no such obvious call-outs, but one song title suggests a doozy of a defining statement: “Cartoon Rock.” This time out, Marion is less interested in rendering his inner visions than in animating rock ‘n’ roll’s most outrageous qualities, using his studio savvy to make it do all the things it can’t in real life.
This Is Steve may share its predecessors’ hermetic, self-made M.O. (with Marion once again performing all the instruments himself), but it’s the first Delicate Steve album that feels like it was designed to be performed in front of a crowd—and an inebriated one at that. The pan-cultural influences and meditative quality that permeated his previous records have given way to more carefree kicks: southern-rock choogle, country-funk fusion, and new-wave spazziness. They’re the sort of hazardous materials that, in less capable hands, could easily degenerate into schticky cliché. But Marion handles them with the same craft and sensitivity he approached his previous, more contemplative records, translating the cheeky into the charming.
The aforementioned “Cartoon Rock” is a case in point: what begins as an exercise in Eliminator-era ZZ Top robo-boogie eventually gives way to a joyous synth-pop coda that sounds like it’s being performed through a CalecoVision. Likewise, on the opening “Animals,” Marion revs up a greasy slide refrain in anticipation of an explosive rock-out eruption; instead, at the expected moment of detonation, it dissolves into a celestial disco daydream. In essence, the song plays out like an alternate-universe version of the 1979 Disco Demolition in Comiskey Park, where instead of blowing up Saturday Night Fever LPs, the raging long-haired ruffians storming the field suddenly break into the hustle.
Marion’s previous records occasionally used vocals for textural effect, but here, he lets his guitar do all the singing. And in light of This Is Steve’s more irreverent approach, those George Harrison-styled leads play an ever more crucial role. They invest otherwise frivolous tunes—like the murky boombox reggae of “Nightlife” and the fidgety, synth-buzzed “Together”—with unexpected pangs of poignancy, while on centerpiece track “Help,” he fashions a “My Sweet Lord” for atheists, its chirpy, cloud-parting guitar melody grounded by a gritty acoustic groove.
But Marion is also conscious of not overusing his string-bending skills for emotionally manipulative effect: one of the album’s most moving moments comes during the nocturnal reverie “Driving,” where the chilly, piano-sculpted post-rock atmospherics give way to a flurry of sunrise-summoning acoustic oscillations. Though it clocks in at just 28 minutes, This Is Steve is generously overstuffed—with gorgeous melodies, compositional quirks, sonic details, goofy ideas, and messy feelings. But if there’s a message Marion is trying to convey through the album’s jammed frequencies, it’s that you’re welcome to have a laugh while his guitar gently weeps.
