Philadelphia Freedom: Marah Comes Home

Last time we checked in with Marah, the brothers Bielanko and their rhythm section of the moment were making their play for world domination. Or, at least modern-rock airplay. You could see it in everything from the band photos to, most importantly, the band sound: gone was the scruffy Philly band's us-against-the-world-from-the-corner-bar approach, replaced by a supersonic and somewhat de-personalized assault that suggested, most obviously perhaps, a Yank version of Oasis. (Hiring that band's producer just might do that.) And for another sort of cred and perhaps marketability, the album even had Bielanko personal hero Bruce Springsteen on a track (not that you could really hear him there). Big time -- here we come!

The move failed, at least commercially, with the 2002 release, Float Away With The Friday Night Gods, which sold something like half of that of its predecessor, 2000's Kids In Philly, and made just about zero inroads toward that coveted modern-rock pot of gold. And artistically, well, the album had its share of doubters, no doubt, leaving many of the band's core audience -- they who'd grown to love Marah's little piece of the world on Kids In Philly and on its 1998 debut, Let's Cut The Crap And Hook Up Later On Tonight -- puzzled at best, alienated at worst.

In a way, Marah's latest, 20,000 Streets Under The Sky, makes amends to those who felt the sting of betrayal (justified or not). The group's first effort for Yep Roc after a two-CD stint with Artemis is a trip back home again to Philadelphia. Literally. Dave and Serge Bielanko and pals recorded in the same space that they recorded the first two albums and there are songs lyrically based in their beloved hometown -- a trait long-known to Marah but absent on Float Away With The Friday Night Gods. In fact, on cursory listens, 20,000 Streets…is more akin  Let's Cut The Crap… than anything the group has done since. Albeit a more mature and realized descendant, perhaps. It's dense, playful, literate and tips a cap to Phil Spector's landmark Wall Of Sound approach. It's soulful, super-dramatic, rocking and, yes, Springsteen-ish at points, while auxiliary musical parts play peek-a-boo throughout and are rife for discovery, lyrics explore (and sometimes celebrate) both in story and character-study the band's perennial state of an underdog existence, and ambient street sounds give the album an on overall sense place.

"In a lot of ways, maybe we got in over our heads" with Float Away, Serge Bielanko says from his hotel in St. Louis. "It was definitely soul wrenching and it took some time to move back and say, 'OK, what's our next move?' But then, once we just said 'Fuck it, let's write some songs,' it all felt really natural again. We went over that particular waterfall in a barrel and we're still here, so let's just do what we do."

-- Neal Weiss

 
MoMZine: One listener's opinion: If a band has a most natural artistic essence, 20,000 Streets is the sound of a band returning to it. It sounds as much like Let's Cut The Crap … as it does anything else. Comments?

SERGE BIELANKO: We actually recorded this record in the same exact place as the first two records [Let's Cut The Crap…, Kids In Philly], in a garage in South Philadelphia. So, naturally, if you go back to the physical place it sort of takes you back into a certain light as well. We made our third record in a big studio with a big producer and I think this time around we said, "OK, for the first time ever we know that we want to produce ourselves." It was the first time ever where we said we wanted to make our own record on our own credit card, without a record deal, and see how it goes. So in that light, I would say for certain that it's a return. We physically went back to Philadelphia and decided that's where we wanted to make our record, partially I guess because we had really enjoyed the process of making records there in the past, partially because we had nowhere else to turn. That was basically the one option that was staring us in the face.

MoMZine: Was this approach at all about Marah attempting to gain back some autonomy pertaining to the business of making music?

BIELANKO: I don't think so. I think it was steered by the first couple of songs that we wrote. That's the most important thing to us, the songs, for better or worse. Nowadays there's lots of music where the song really isn't the thing, a lot is what you look like, what you wear. For us, we're still fans of an era of music that was by and large about three minutes of music that could really move you. When we wrote the first couple songs, "East" and "Feather Boa," right away it indicated that they were in essence taking us back to Philadelphia. "East" is the first song that was written for the record and that was literally while standing on the banks of the Delaware River in Philadelphia and looking out at the world in the evening, and then spinning back into town and getting on with it. "Feather Boa," same thing, inspired by these people that we see on South Broad Street in Philly -- hard-ups, for lack of a better term, people at their wits' ends. It seems like that's a perfect combination to sort of encapsulate what I think Marah has always been about: all this sort of hope and optimism amidst all the fucking bullshit that we have to deal with every day -- basically, life in a nutshell. So we hope that we were able to put that onto a record. That's for other people to say, but I think that we did a pretty good job of it.

MoMZine: Any hesitation about making another Philly album? Float Away… boasted a broader, more accessible sound, and now you've coming home again to something smaller, more literate… more Philly.

BIELANKO: There wasn't. I think maybe one or two songs namedrop specific places in Philly. Dave and I are very inspired by big-city life, and that's a pretty universal thing. It doesn't really matter, I think people who live in London or Paris or Tokyo could listen to this and, if they like the kind of music that we play, then the lyrics could probably sink in, in some fashion. It definitely was not as specific as Kids In Philly, I don't think. That record was literally written by two guys who had never really traveled much outside Philadelphia. This is a record by two guys who have traveled quite a bit now and still have found a new way to appreciate where they're from.

MoMZine: What's your approach when you go into the studio? There is so much layering, is it hard to figure out when a song is done?

BIELANKO: Oh yeah, it really is hard. There are times when I literally have to pull my brother outside of the control room and say "Look, that's it. We can't go any further." We've taken things down to the wire so many times that it's like, no only do they need the fucking finished record but the artwork is supposed to be done and we're still trying to do a mix. It's such a great way to make a record if you can find a way to do it. We lived on a credit card for all of last year. Kirk [Henderson, now a member of the band] slept for months of the floor of our studio because we couldn't afford to put him anywhere else. It was just this sort of "three guys against the world" feeling. All we have is to prove ourselves. No one is paying attention to us anymore. So it was a really cool way to reconvene. To begin from the ground up with each song is really exciting. At times it can take you down roads where you wish you didn't end up going… we'd waste a lot of time, which in a studio would cost you millions of dollars but we have that privilege and that right because it's our studio. There's no rush. That's a freedom that I don't think, unfortunately, is allowed to many artists. I think certain artists are at that point where, like when Jeff Tweedy started producing Wilco albums, people like that ultimately find that "Oh wow, if I have this freedom to do it myself and fairly unlimited studio access and time, than anything is possible." And that's a really creative way to make a record.

MoMZine: Where'd you first get the idea for the ambient street sounds?

BIELANKO: We're both huge fans of movies. I think a lot of what we attempt to do with a record is just try and make it cinematic, especially a record that's filled with third-person stories and a few narratives. We wanted to tie it together. The concept of an album -- 11 songs that work well with each other and hopefully stand on their own as well -- that's important to us. It may be an archaic idea at this point, I don't know, but I do still hear it. Jesse Malin's first record blew me away with the writing and it was very cinematic in his capturing of New York. So, it's about being fans of that sort of thing and being very influenced by the urban world that we live in, which is sort of a microcosm for everyday life, struggle, whatever. Not to sound cliché, but I do the joy and the happiness and the sadness and the horror in everyday life in the city that I live in. Part of that is just walking down the street for us, or sitting on the stoop and having a coffee and listening to traffic and listening to people go by and watch girls and people getting into fights…everything. Sometimes if you try hard enough you can get these little sound bites. A friend of ours happened to have a MiniDisc recorder and said, "I'll go out and record all kinds of stuff." We waded through a lot of stuff. It's just a little something that I think adds to the record as a whole.

I'll probably just make a whole record of city sounds and that will be my last record [laughs].

MoMZine: "Feather Boa" has some pretty strong imagery about the actions of a drag queen. Any hesitancy on your part about running with a chorus that graphic?

BIELANKO: No. It definitely probably was the most graphic [lyric] that we've ever written but at the same time it's sort of like, when you sit down to write it, whether it's a song or you're writing a screenplay or a book or an article, we're not writing for Christian Science Monitor, we're writing for people to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I think that rock 'n' roll always has been that way. And sometimes, despite what some people may say, you've got to just cut to the nitty gritty. And there's no other way to say something. I would challenge anyone who would say, "Oh, that's a little harsh" -- is there another way I could have phrased it and made me feel the same way? I don't think that there is. And most of the people that I know in this world, for better or for worse, talked fairly graphically. When I sit down and have a beer with them we talk like sailors. So, I just think it was important. It never crossed our minds to not have it that way. We don't really think about radio or anything anymore. It's like, let's write as honest as we can and it will help paint the portrait better.

MoMZine: At this point, have you accepted that you're resigned to a lifetime of Springsteen comparisons?

BIELANKO: It's always an honor to me. I'm sort of blown away by the fact that he doesn't seem to inspire people as much as I would think he does. His name isn't dropped nearly enough, if you ask me. But like anything else, just like Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, there will be a time when a new set of people find him. He's one of the greatest if not the greatest that I've ever seen live and his records stand as monuments to what he represented. To have the opportunity to have him on one record was awesome.

But I've got to be honest with you. I think sometimes people even try to piss us off by saying Springsteen, but it could never piss me off. Bruce Springsteen is like my favorite rock artist ever. I've seen him [perform] at age 53 where he absolutely blows anyone away that I've ever seen. I don't care who it is. So, to be compared to someone like that, I'll take it. I'm sure it's cooler to be compared to Franz Ferdinand today but I'll take Bruce Springsteen forever, and that's fine with me. We've kind of cornered the market in being compared to him.

MoMZine: People forget about Springsteen's sense of dramatic, colorful instrumentation. I hear that in Marah.

BIELANKO: To me the biggest comparison I see is in writing with a sense of place. Bruce often did that and wrote about either himself or a set of characters who, even if they weren't in New Jersey, they were in some place that he had found himself either physically or mentally before. That's the sense of place that a lot of the best writers have done well -- Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Lou Reed. There are some great songwriters who don't cater to whatever the trends are, they write songs about people and their lives. That's why at times they're under the radar, at times they're well on top of it. But they don't go away and they continue to try and perfect what they recognize as something that the may be good at and something that's really important. And that's how I feel about our band. We have our ups and downs but what we do is a certain kind of record and a certain kind of live show that has its place, and probably will long after we're even gone and long after thousands of the bands that are really hot right now are gone as well.

MoMZine: Are there any influences that you hold dear that you also would like people to suss out?

BIELANKO: Dave and I are huge fans of so much music. We've both been huge Oasis fans through the years. We've both been huge fans of Badly Drawn Boy -- he's a guy that really builds records from the ground up, writing songs on acoustic guitar and makes these fantastic studio records. There's a huge amount of folk influence in our music. If anything else, if we unplugged everything and just sat down with acoustic guitars our songs hopefully could stand on their own because we wrote them that way. Bob Dylan, Townes Van Zant -- we were listening to that when we were 12 when other people were listening to Van Halen's 1984. Steve Earle, I've always been a huge fan. Even though we were on his label it's very rarely mentioned that we were influenced by him, it was more just that "they recorded on his label." We're such fans of just rock 'n' roll and music in general, Motown, I love dance stuff, we're huge fans of Daft Punk, that one record they made about two years ago was unbelievable. But we do know that we represent a certain thing, so if we turned around and said "Here's a Marah record that sounds like Daft Punk," it would fucking piss people off. Maybe down the road someday we'll take some grand left turn, but it wouldn't be as Marah.

MoMZine: Brings up a good point. When Float Away came out some people were taken aback by it and there was some negative reaction to that.

BIELANKO: There was tons of negative reaction. That was probably the record where we took the biggest turn. And I got to be honest, I'm so glad that we did that. We had an opportunity with a label that was giving us a budget unlike we had ever seen before and they said, "Look, you guys can pick out a producer." We wrote this list of record producers out that was like eight or 10 people. At the top of the list was Prince. And we were serious. And then down the list was Tony Visconti. In there was this guy Owen Morris. These are the people that aren't just making records that are really hot right now on the radio, these are people that we really admire for what they do. And in the end we wrote Owen Morris, he was the first that we ended up writing a letter to, and he said "Come visit me." He had never worked with an American band before. We really wanted to say, hey, let's utilize this studio time, let's utilize this producer, let's not make a record in our garage on our own and let's go far away and do a record with a guy that's made some incredible sounding records and let's have fun and see what happens. Wouldn't it be cool if we could take Marah to another level? I think some day that record people are gonna listen to in a new light where it's not new anymore and say, "Oh, you know what, it's actually not a bad record." I'm very proud of it. But I know it was a departure from Kids In Philly and that's exactly what it was meant to be.

MoMZine: Were you disappointed? Did you expect the band to break through with it?

BIELANKO: I don't think we thought that far ahead. We never do. I never expected our first record to even make it outside of Philadelphia, and it did. And here we are, in a hotel room in St. Louis. It's awesome. We're lucky people, so you never play it too far down the road. We definitely were in agreement that we made this record that sonically could be on the radio and when the label said, "We're gonna try and put it on the radio" we said OK. And then after about three months it was like OK, this is all wrong. We don't even have any money to tour with. Some things can die so quickly… It was a learning process.

MoMZine: Do you think Marah should be more popular?

BIELANKO: Um… I don't. In this world you get what you get. Whatever our fate may be, I don't know. We have a whole new philosophy on all of this. We really feel lucky to be able to do this. This is all that any of the guys in the band do, play music, we barely get by and I'd love to make more money but so would anybody at their job. I don't think we've ever really latched on to trends that may have made us more popular. I think when we made one attempt to sort of do something that might have changed us in a big way it felt in the end like it wasn't what we were about. We're not about playing the video game, we're not about trying to be on modern rock radio. Do I think that we could be? Yeah, I'd love to hear "Freedom Park" on modern rock radio, but it doesn't work like that and we fully understand that. Our goal is to play for as many people and have as many people hear our music as possible and then it's up to them to decide. We just feel really lucky to be able to tour around in our van and play shows and meet people and have a great time. It's a great life.