Record in Red

Marmoset's second release, Record in Red, stands as a breakthrough for Midwestern anglophile pop, a subgenre that had been mostly stagnant since the mid-'90s heyday of Guided By Voices. While GBV always had grand designs on rock stardom and believed in the pure, world-changing potential of rock, this Indianapolis quartet dwells in the bleak, sometimes nihilistic space where rock is simultaneously self-destructive and self-sustaining, and its worth, on even a personal level, is constantly questioned. This dynamic is most explicitly spelled out on "Art-Maker," where bassist/vocalist Jorma Whittaker intones "art-maker, strangulator" in a whispery howl over and over, and the album closer, "Walking Through the Lake," where he is living "off dust." Elsewhere, a general feeling of ambivalence prevails — toward music, relationships, life in general — and the music throughout remains minor key and melancholic, yet catchy and staunchly poppy, bringing to mind the Cure, the Smiths, or even Syd Barrett's more introspective moments ("Dark Globe"). With such inner contradictions, the drive to resolve matters lends an intense, vital necessity to Record in Red, pulling the listener toward the end in fatalistic fashion.