Sometimes you go through a breakup and feel like you could just wither away; sometimes you read the news and are reminded that one day, the sun really will just wither away. Regardless of their respective scales, both problems can feel equally real. But the collision of these micro and macro heartaches can be destabilizing. “If I change my life/Will I die?” singer-songwriter Margaux Bouchegnies, who performs mononymously as Margaux, wonders on her debut album, Inside the Marble, pondering quandaries both personal and existential against dreamy, imaginative soundscapes.
Bouchegnies is a recent graduate of the New School; since finishing her studies, she’s become a fixture in the Brooklyn music scene, touring as a bassist with acts like Katy Kirby and Dougie Poole. Inside the Marble was crafted in the throes of that uncertain moment when the structures of academia fall away and you’re thrust into the so-called real world. It builds on her debut EP, 2019’s More Brilliant Is the Hand That Throws the Coin, which established her as an artist who could deftly capture the tumult of young love. You can hear the fruits of her coursework in her songwriting; she quotes Susan Sontag on More Brilliant’s “Faced With Fire,” and later released a set of songs inspired by the life and work of Emily Dickinson.
Bouchegnies has said that Inside the Marble is about “making sense of big feelings,” and she constructs appropriately cinematic backdrops for each of them. The moody “Midnight Contact” starts downbeat and minimalist, then builds to dizzying heights; it sounds like it could soundtrack the moment in a coming-of-age film where the wistful protagonist makes a life-altering decision. The songs are layered and dense—Bouchegnies plays guitar, bass, Mellotron, glockenspiel, Farfisa, Wurlitzer, and piano, while producer Sahil Ansari adds percussion and tape loops; other collaborators contribute trombone, violin, and clarinet. The arrangements are lush and naturalistic, filled with charming, well-placed details: the swooping strings on “Picture It,” a touch of pedal steel on “Dissolve / Resolve,” ghostly backing vocals on “Sadie Something.” The overall effect, though, remains surprisingly gentle, thanks in large part to Bouchegnies’ voice, which floats above the arrangements and rarely ever strays from its steady, self-assured delivery.
Her emotions range from the quotidian to the universal. On “Ships,” heartbreak is like a storm at sea, threatening to knock her overboard; later, on “Make the Move,” she’s reaching toward new love, sounding positively smitten over plucked acoustic guitar and steady percussion. On propulsive tracks like “Picture It” and “Sadie Something,” she contemplates time’s endless march towards oblivion: “Everybody/One by one takes/Off into the great unknown,” she declares on the latter. Intellectually, we might understand that not all anxieties (the social awkwardness she details on “What Could I Say?” or the what-am-I-doing-with-my-life paralysis of “I Can’t Decide”) are equally consequential. But it doesn’t always feel that way—especially in young adulthood, when our norms and values still have some settling in to do. It’s charming to hear Bouchegnies consider all these big feelings deeply, drawing an entire universe out of them before moving on, curiously and carefully, to the next.
