“Marble Halls” was a great introduction for me to the shimmering, dream-pop-infused world of “Marble Raft.” Like all good singles, it enticingly hinted enough about the band that I knew I would want to know more about them. And the more in question comes in the form of their second full-length album, Dear Infrastructure. And if that initial encounter suggested good things to follow, even its many musical charms didn’t prepare me for this!
The term dream-pop is a much-confused label, and these days, it is being applied to any pop-pap that has whispy vocals, ambient drifts, and softened edges. That, in my opinion, is not what dream-pop is all about. It is the music’s ability to blend pop structures with more kaleidoscopic sonics to create something big, anthemic even, but still fragile and gossamer, music that the light can shine through like the sun through a stained-glass window. That is everything that this album is about.
And it is everything that is summed up in the opening track, “To Have and to Hold and To Break.” As statements of intent go, it is perfect. And, having sign-posted their direction of travel, Marble Raft doesn’t disappoint.
“Here In Your Backyard” runs on the sort of post-punk-alt-pop drive that puts you in mind of Cocteau Twins (only with more discernable vocals), “Intersections, Alleyways and Freeways” ebbs between the grand and the spacious, and “Neon Signs of Life” is not only a cool title but a great song, one that takes a relaxed dancefloor groove and builds on it, upwards and outwards and downwards, it builds and builds and builds until you have a sky-scraping city of sound. Gorgeous.
Lyrically and thematically, it is fascinating too, the story of a pair of fictional teenagers wandering through an abandoned city, one falling into rui, each song describing the different areas and what they find there, from an overgrown botanical garden to withering concrete towers, from a zoo where nature has taken over and on into deeper and more diverse districts of that urban realm.
Dear Infrastructure is one of those rare albums in which you can choose any track at random and strike gold, which puts it in a very select and rarified company.
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