Marah, Out of a Philly Garage
Philadelphia. The claustrophobic, black-and-white wasteland of Eraserhead. With Veteran's Stadium, the blandest sports arena in America, filled with shithead fans who boo their own players and drunkenly brawl among themselves. Philly, home of big-hair new-wave wonders like the Hooters and lost gems like the A's. The town Hall & Oates fled after a pack of neighborhood guidos kicked John Oates' midget ass for being a longhaired pussy. The city of brotherly love? Tell it to John Africa.
From this place crawls Marah, a four-piece rock band whose last album, Kids in Philly, has driven critics to unheralded levels of fawning working-class envy. I guess Marah would be wise to take it where they can find it, but I'm also hoping they're smart enough to shun this shit like the plague. The only people more assholic than musicians are critics; some nights I go home and repeatedly punch myself in the face, a la Ed Norton in Fight Club. Besides, much of the praise has the tinge of middle-aged white men expressing a mildly offensive gratitude to Marah for playing good, traditional rock music that appeals to them at a time when they'll either feel or be accused of being "old" for pointing out what embarrassing, soulless horseshit most kids are listening to these days.
Simply stated, these guys rock, whatever year it is, whether or not they hopped the train a little late. Kids in Philly has the ring of truth about it, of a bunch of kids in a garage jamming out on the music they love. Brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko, Danny Metz and Ronnie Vance formed in the mid-90s and put out Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight in 1998, a great album that unfortunately didn't put them on the map. Perhaps Steve Earle signing them to his label E-Squared (distributed by Artemis) has helped Kids in Philly become the kind of album that will not be a hit in today's impossible pop market, but should guarantee them a well-deserved recording career for at least a few albums.
The Bielanko brothers write songs with small, honest details, like their description of urban fishing in "The Catfisherman": "I got my fat, sweet mama drop me off by the river/I got a joint, three Millers and 12 chicken livers." Their best song is "Round Eye Blues," wherein a Vietnam vet recalls his wartime horrors and connects them to the 60s pop music of his youth. The song starts with a surf-rock drum pattern, followed by a banjo and trumpet accenting the bittersweet melody as lead singer Dave Bielanko uses pop references ("I was shaking like Little Richard/I was sweating like old James Brown") to underscore the inextricable ways we fuse music and memory.
Marah has been both accused of and falsely praised for sounding too much like Springsteen. "Point Breeze" does come off like a great lost outtake from The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. Their bluegrass cover of "Streets of Philadelphia" does everything a cover should, i.e., puts the song in the band's context while losing none of the original's power. Besides, I can also hear hints of the Faces (Ronnie Lane in particular), Steely Dan, the Replacements, Phil Spector and Tom Waits in their sound. While pop fans may shrug at influences like that, it's wise to note how bizarre it is for a bunch of guys in their mid-20s not just to have these kind of influences, but to be able to put them across convincingly.
What happens to a band like this? If Marah is lucky, and they have been thus far, they go on doing whatever they want for their indie label, scrape by, get a few good bones thrown their way, like their recent opening slot on Steve Earle's European tour, and manage not to crack up when they tell someone, "I'm a musician." Rock 'n' roll stars? They're long gone, at least the kind Marah would like to be. But that doesn't mean the boys won't get their doorknobs polished after a good club show by some young honey still believing the myth. And that's not a bad life.