Maria BC – Marathon

Maria BC releases their third full-length album, Marathon, on Sacred Bones Records.

Marathon includes the singles “Marathon” and “Night & day.”

Where Spike Field felt like one long breath, Marathon is a dynamic exploration of endurance, of pushing forward, resisting, observing and surviving. “For this record I decided to spend less time on production and recording and more time on songwriting,” Maria BC explains. “The result, I think, is more thematically consistent, lyrically speaking, and more concise… I set out to make something more dynamic and varied.”

On a micro level, Marathon dissects our existence – how it’s driven by personal ambitions, determination, and our desires to make the most of our life. On a macro level, Maria BC analyzes the destructive, extractive energy systems that drive our world: “machines that, at all costs, will keep running until they run themselves into the ground,” as they describe.

Written and recorded throughout the West Coast, the album is both expansive and immediate, ranging sonically from aerial acoustic songs, to glitchy distorted tracks channeling chaos and disillusionment, all while maintaining a lyrical through line. The record opens up with “Marathon,” a fuzzy, distorted guitar-driven track with airy vocals commanding the melody. The title track introduces us into their new world, one rooted in nostalgia and shadowed by critique. Inspired by a childhood landmark, a gas station with a bright “M” greeting them on their drive home, the song captures the tension between innocence and exploitation, as it rings in the feeling of homecoming while having to face the reality of greed and destruction caused by oil companies. “That this logo, even with all the evil it connotes, can invoke nostalgia – can be a beacon – is very sinister to me,” Maria BC reflects. “Safety” takes on a softer tone, with gentle guitar strumming, but carries foreboding lyricism – “If safety is freedom  you can’t trust no one” they sing, embodying a foreshadowed warning from the fates. “Rare” and “Sabotage” are love songs for someone who never sleeps – “Rare” carries skittering percussion and the discordant twang of an ancient zither, overall a chaotic arrangement that channels restless energy; while “Sabotage” reflects a more eloquent persona, consisting of a slow, dreamy finger plucked melody and vocals delving into their deeper register singing “My love – have you been up all night?”. In the distance of “Sabotage,” you can make out the rattling of a window pane during a windstorm, adding a surreal effect of unease while listening to the song. “Night & day” describes a lonesome cowboy longing for the night, when he can be with the one he loves: “The dream gets so vivid just before it ends, I’m hanging on your voice, hanging on your words, hanging ‘round your neck.” This song takes on a different form from the others, it indulges listeners with the falling pitch of a saxophone, lulling us into a landscape of equal shame and desperation.

Across its thirteen songs Marathon doesn’t shy away from difficult topics, cruelty and complicity, loss and destruction. But it holds out hopefully for connection, intimacy and interference. “Sometimes when I write songs, I imagine the voice that’s singing is a kind of spirit,” they say. “Someone from up above or down below calling out to us in warning – ‘You can’t go on like this.’” Ultimately Marathon tells a story of persistence, of not just one life, but many unfolding across space and time on a fragile Earth.

#mariab4christ