This weekend, I’ll be playing in Kevin Micka’s Animal Hospital Ensemble, a 30-member interpretation of his solo looping project. We’ll perform three of his pieces in a circle surrounding the audience for real live surround sound. Don’t miss out. It should be magical.
Read a feature on the project in the Boston Globe here.
The kind gentlemen at the Bodies of Water blog just wrote this really nice post about our album. We’re very excited about it. Here’s what they had to say…
Boston’s MARCONI released a record called MINUTES TO MANIFEST DESTINY a little while ago. And it is one beautiful pop record. The record is full of crooned melodies, and tongue twisting lyrics draped skillfully over droning repetitive riffs, and the results are stirring. This is majestic pop, at a majestic pace, often with melancholic overtones. Shimmering guitars (and the occasional acoustic (perhaps ukelele) strumming) spread forth throughout the proceedings, recalling MARCONI’s main man, Luke Kirkland’s, former band the wonderful NIGHT RALLY. And it all works. Kirkland’s elastic vocal delivery and flow are very refreshing within the context of the “rock” sounds found on this record. The record’s best track is called “Chaise Lounge”. And it’s a WHOA. Soaring. Constantly shifting chord progression. And then the chorus shows up and knocks you right down. Had that one on repeat for a while. And just when you thought those shimmering guitars have taken a break on this track they show up to close the door on the song. One of the better Boston area releases of the year. See them live soon and pick up this record!
Thanks guys! Our next show is at Great Scott on Thursday, March 24 for Battle House’s record release show. Hope to see you there!
Thanks C.D. for the Christmas spirited write-up on the Boston Band Crush blog. “This track doesn’t go softly into the whirling snow, it plods headlong in, barely noticing the wind that bites at its face.” Sweet. Word life.
The Weekly Dig ran a complimentary review of our album in anticipation of the release this weekend. They say: “It’s refreshing to see someone release a disc without trying too hard to brand the band or create the latest multi-adjective subgenre. The bob-yer-head quality of “Narrow Gauge,” the meditative pace of “Another Man’s Rhubarb,” the slightly discordant melodies of “The Cold War is an Ice Age”: Whichever track strikes your fancy the most, Minutes to Manifest is comfortably likeable and easy listening for any ear.” Read it in full here.
The Boston Phoenix have chosen the first track off of our new album, “Grady Calloway’s Heart Of Gold”, to be their MP3 of the Week. They call it “serious business, teeming with spiraling melodies, split-screen narrative and wordplay, shag-carpet organ chords, and a motley percussion crew Tom Waits could be proud of.” That’s real nice. Thanks! Check it out here.
Boston Band Crush ain’t a player. They just crush a lot. Count Marconi among the ranks. We’re blushing. They’ve posted an interview and feature for your reading pleasure here.
We have press! In advance of our album release, here’s an article about us in today’s Boston Globe:
The debut album from Marconi, “Minutes to Manifest Destiny,’’ opens with the line “Coast to coast by phone’’ and ends up dropping us off somewhere in the Ice Age. Its thickly layered indie-rock fades away into a foggy classroom window view of Bering Strait migrations frozen in time. A surreal gathering of bells and quivering electronic dissonance echoes across the frost-bitten acoustic guitars, trailing off on one last unfinished note. You get the feeling that this band still has a lot more ground to cover — and that we have a lot of catching up to do.
Marconi’s ringleader, Luke Kirkland, probably feels the same way.
Cultivating these kaleidoscopic road songs for the better part of seven years, he’s carried them through several cross-country moves, giving the music a strong, if ever-changing, sense of place. It’s rich territory in the hands of this songwriter, as a few close listens to the long-form melodies on “Destiny’’ reveal. The record (on the Diamond Igloo label) goes public at a release show next Saturday at Great Scott in Allston.
“Marconi’s about traveling and distance and places,’’ he says, parked in the shade on the lawn of the Cambridge Public Library, where he works part time. “The short-term perspective that you have on your own life in whatever condition you’re in placed against the condition you see historically. Comparing the two. Seeing the ways that they make sense to each other and illuminate each other.’’
Kirkland originally moved to Boston from Santa Fe in 2003 with what became one of the city’s most beloved underground bands, Night Rally, a trio with electric chemistry who traded vocals like a baton and enjoyed a shining run of DIY brilliance. They disbanded in 2006, Kirkland heading back to Santa Fe to finish his bachelor’s degree at St. John’s College.
All the while, though, Kirkland was also working patiently on Marconi, and was starting to track an album as early as 2004. Parts of the record evolved in Boston, other parts back in Santa Fe, as he performed, recorded, and mixed everything himself. Despite how fractured the process was, a definitive style took shape, at times reflecting dreamy echoes of Roy Orbison’s balladry and the shrugging majesty of the Walkmen, with David Bowie providing textural artistic mortar. The project grew into a cross-referencing travelogue rich with stories of gold rushes and transcontinental railroads.
“They’re really personal moments that become developed lyrically through larger lenses,’’ he says.
He wrapped up the album a year and a half ago, then waited for real life to play catch-up to the recording.
Now back in Boston, he’s been gearing up for a full-tilt go at it. Last year, he recruited a hodgepodge of friends and associates from several eras and locales from his past — Chris Hislop (of Piles) on guitar, Andrew Dole (of Mystery Roar and the Bon Savants) on drums, James Towlson (of Campaign for Real Time) on bass, and fellow St. John’s grad Robert Peckham on keyboards, who moved to Boston in order to join up with the live band.
Peckham knew Kirkland during much of the project’s gestation. “Luke’s always been coherent,’’ he says later, lounging among several box fans in the band’s Central Square practice space. “Taken unto itself, there are some absurd moments. But it does a really good job of establishing a context in which things like kismet and a narration of miners in the West make sense.’’
Peckham was there for the quiet days in practice spaces with guitars and a piano as Kirkland worked on initial recordings. Slowly, overlapping textures grew over the skeletons. On “Narrow Gauge,’’ airy synths and creaking feedback swirl over the gnarled acoustic core, giving Kirkland’s lopsided croon and sidestepping falsetto some wings. It’s the character of the whole album — a sprawling orchestral lens zooming in and out on intimate guitar moments like a slider on Google Maps. It was a process of exploration, discovery, and constant questioning. Peckham even calls it “maieutic.’’
Hislop agrees, remembering a rare early solo performance of the material by Kirkland at the Midway Cafe in 2005. “It was evident that you didn’t even need a band playing that song,’’ he tells Kirkland. “You standing there, 6-foot-huge, with a ukulele, and the way you sang it just implied all these other parts that came to be, eventually.’’
They played their first show together in April — and next week’s release marks only their fifth, but by the sounds of things, it could mark the beginning of an auspicious next chapter in this band’s voyage.
“I’m not planning on selling out or anything,’’ he says. “But I don’t feel like I’m anywhere near as good at anything in the world as I am at music, and I feel like that’s what I want to be pursuing professionally.’’
Thanks to Matt Parish for the kind words.