Music made at the harder-hitting end of the music spectrum is more often about punch and power, big music designed to make a significant impact via volume and velocity. Occasionally, it trades that sonic weight for something more ambiently anthemic…if that isn’t too much of a contradiction in terms. And on rare occasions, it manages to do both, and that is a place where Mikhail Daken finds himself with his latest single, “Marionettes.”
It’s a single that walks that almost impossible line between the grit and groove of the rock world and the more graceful aesthetics of perhaps the heavier end of the dreampop spectrum, just at the point where it is subsumed by shoegaze’s bigger sound. The guitar dynamics, the bass, and the backbeat deliver power when it is required, but the song’s dynamics also feature hazy, cinematic soundscaping.
The vocals being pushed slightly down in the mix, a whispered conversation rather than the genre’s usual primal scream, also helps turn this into something different from most of Daken’s rock and metal peers.
The result is rather pleasing, a neat blend of the big and the clever, volume and artistry, a place where post-rock freedoms and shoegaze intensities are beautifully fashioned into a singular and often subtler sonic journey. (The fact that I have rattled off half a dozen generic tags and am not entirely convinced that any are really a close fit tells me just how unique and unusual this track is. And we do like unique and unusual around here.)
