Tag Archives: the mari on the beach

Osaka’s The Mari On The Beach put out a new album online last week called Play Music, Sing A Song, the follow-up to last year’s lovely lo-fi pop collection Get Out Of Making Music (advice they did not follow, thankfully). This album moves a bit away from the guitar-pop that dotted The Mari’s 2011 album, the group now exploring the sounds they can wring out of their guitars and keyboards. They still have a few instances of straightforward song goodness – see the “The World” or the indie-pop skipping of “Opening Theme,” the most conventional track on the album – but the bulk of Play Music focuses on instrumental (or at least, mostly instrumental) songs where the emphasis gets placed on the sounds themselves. “Commuting To Work Through The Woods” presents what The Mari can create using what sounds like a single keyboard, while “Mariko” touches on spoken-word moodiness. Elsewhere, they dive into cut-and-slice productions and hard-rock spectacles. The most intriguing element of the album, though, is the drum noises…whereas Get Out Of Making Music carried a lo-fi sheen that sometimes hurt the overall quality of the songs, Play Music sounds crisper, especially the drums which shift shapes from track to track. The great moments of pop remain, but The Mari are just as keen on experimenting with sounds here. Listen and buy the album here.

In an ideal world, bedroom projects could one day be spotted by the right people and given the opportunity to record somewhere allowing for more polish. In Japan, a few artists manage to rise above the bedroom-pop tag – Taquwami and Jesse Ruins could fool you with the quality of their recordings, and there are others too. Then there are bands like Osaka’s The Mari On The Beach. They’ve put an album up online called Get Out Of Making Music that shows an outfit capable of writing both catchy pop-rock and faster, more aggressive blasts of music. Tracks like “Is This A Love Or Not?” and “Mari On The Beach” flirt with bossa nova, and then a few tracks later gets pretty punky with “Poland Girl” and “Big Boredom In WWW.” Capping Get Out Of Making Music off is the ridiculous power pop of standout “AM Boy/FM Girl,” which opens with an effect mimicking switching radio stations and then jumps into gooey pop territory.

Thing is, The Mari On The Beach deserve a nice studio and a good producer. The musical smarts and ability to write a catchy tune are there, but as “bedroom music,” a tag they use, this sounds imperfect. The vocals sometimes sound too dusty, and on “Is This A Love Or Not?” they sound like they are being sung through an ancient Teddy Ruxpin. Other times the self-recorded fuzz distracts from the great melody. This style can work…Teen Runnings intentional decision stands out…but The Mari On The Beach deserve something better quality. Fingers crossed they get it. Listen to the album below.

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