Marriages - Skin

Disintegration by The Cure is one of our favourite, if not our absolute favourite albums of all time.

Why do we mention this? Because it gives an obvious explanation why we’re posting Skin by Marriages, a track that certainly shares a similar brother / sisterhood in terms of its gloomy tumbling drum sound, claustrophobic chiming guitar work and eerie desolate synths. There’s no Robert Smith here yelping as only Smith can about spiders, rain, Christmas, sadness and desperation though. Instead we get the impressive vocal prowess of Emma Ruth Rundle, her voice ranging from the tender and intimate to big lofty howls. To a large extent Skin sounds as if it has stepped straight out the late 80’s indie rock scene in its long grey overcoat or black leather jacket and we immediately found ourselves trying to draw from memory which dark, grey, rainy, gritty UK town Marriages hailed from. Bradford? Cardiff? Dundee? Our own home of Portsmouth? No, it’s Los Angeles, which in a way makes Skin even more remarkable.

Skin is taken from the band’s forthcoming LP Salome released on April 7th (which you can pre-order now, from here). It’s the follow up to their Kitsune EP released back in 2012. If the rest of Salome is anywhere near as good as Skin, then it has end of year list potential.

Marriages - Skin