There is a uniqueness in Marban, which even his likely detractors would have to admit. A singularity that prevails even over the familiarity that unites them with the workshopthe other group from Getxo with which they share a couple of elements and a certain musical and vital philosophy.
The fact is that the young quintet far exceeds what happened in their first eps of 2017 and 2020 (“Leviathan” and “Magna Moralia”) to create that own cosmos, which as I say can captivate you or not, but never discuss. “Marble” It is one of those albums that were called conceptual. It is fueled by a taste for radical and vehement pop, poetic and ardent, so much so that it can sometimes be confused with the brittleness of post-punk and with that subgenre of songs that are danced to with tears in the eyes. Let’s say more The Cure than The Smiths, although there is both, perhaps because of the drive to wrap oneself in emphatic and misty keyboards, with spiral guitars.
At the same time, Marban have created a subtext full of classic references with the Mediterranean and Greece as hot spots, which fits with their rhetoric to be honest about what they do (many times also radical and very against). It may be the transgressive melancholy they speak of.
The eleven songs show an elaborate and concentrated conception, a taste for baroque detail with Guillermo’s pompous singing, bordering on a kind of suggestive histrionics. He also perfects a symbology where the “Statue” is an image of exemplarity, the “Snake” represents envy, or “A dagger” is associated with the sword to create a dichotomy between meanness and virtue. And the generic “Marble” is constituted as a symbol and pillar of purity and eternity. Athena or Penelope appear in the same way as an evocation of nostalgia and longing, while they also martyr themselves with images of pain and/or find relief in the acceptance of their own vulnerability. It’s not exactly common speech for guys in their twenties. It is clear that, as they confess to Olivia at the album’s conclusion, they are not made of marble.