The synth-pop grammar that dictates Black Marble’s music is strict and specific. The project formed as a duo in 2012 but eventually pared down to lone member Chris Stewart; throughout, its output has been uniformly composed of the same carefully curated elements. The instruments are hulking hardware synths and drum machines that hum when they power up. Fluid, melodic bass lines immediately recall New Order, but only the dour churn of Movement, and nothing as bouncy as Power, Corruption and Lies or later albums. Hints of the Cure are limited to the floating whispers of Seventeen Seconds. The crumbling production values are inspired by obscure ’80s minimal-wave artists like Iron Curtain; a detached romanticism can be traced from choice moments in the early OMD catalog. Applying this rigid aesthetic to Stewart’s pop-minded songwriting makes Black Marble one of the more disarmingly catchy bands to bear the coldwave tag.
Each subsequent release has gradually stripped away a layer of lo-fi filth, and Bigger Than Life, Black Marble’s third album, is easily the cleanest, uncovering a previously buried accessibility. The understated percussion, plucked guitar leads, and bright chorus of “Grey Eyeliner” are given room to interact dynamically, while the anxiously buzzing arrangement of “One Eye Open” makes space for layers of twitchy hooks. Most strikingly, Stewart’s deadpan vocals rise out of their normally garbled catacombs, making for discernibly pretty harmonies and intelligible lyrics. Where earlier albums waded in ugly murk and occasionally broke out in tantrums of noise, Bigger Than Life sounds composed, almost polite in contrast.
Ascending from dungeon-grade fidelity doesn’t always work. The reverb coating 2016’s excellent It’s Immaterial submerged detail but also flattened potentially clashing countermelodies and curbed tangential ideas. Without tape hiss to hide behind, the competing synths of “Never Tell” feel cluttered, and meandering intros drag on. And while Stewart has a gift for crafting obtuse melodies, he also has a tendency to recycle bits of his best tracks. “Private Show” calls on variants of the insistent bass progression and elementary drum fills that drove It’s Immaterial high point “Iron Lung,” and familiar rudiments reappear throughout. The sound is less broken and several shades lighter, but the demo-like quality of earlier albums smoothed over crowded arrangements and forgave repetition.
The newly audible vocals also offer a better view of Stewart’s ambiguous, impressionistic lyrics. Inspired during the writing process by a car-less existence in his high-traffic home of Los Angeles, Stewart positions many of his characters as passengers observing the city from the window of a crosstown bus, freaky classmates keeping bones under their bed, or lonely introverts looking for salvation in consumerism.
The album’s strongest song, “Feels,” marks its most human moment. Hesitantly optimistic synth tones support a wash of memories from an imagined past: volunteering at a blood drive, waiting for summer to bring happier days, a late-night slot at a college radio station. Though vague, “Feels” succinctly communicates the soft isolation that the rest of the album reaches for but only delivers in fragments. Its friendly melancholy zeroes in on an unremarkable everyday loneliness, the kind felt by introverted DJs in stuffy basements and glimpsed on the silent faces of strangers on the bus.
Dialing down the gloom and upping production values is a logical step forward, and when these changes gel, Stewart’s studied goth-pop evolves. Bigger Than Life takes Black Marble aboveground, where some songs bloom, while others struggle to adjust to the daylight after so long in the shadows.
Buy: Rough Trade
