- Marcus Brown signs to XL with an EP of riveting R&B-shoegaze-pop.
- Marcus Brown's music as Nourished By Time moves with a kind of radical vulnerability. It's not that their lyrics are particularly raw or revealing—clever and humourous is more often the case—but that their music is so resolutely DIY, so no-fucks-given, that it can feel like discovering your friend's TASCAM with a bunch of private songs recorded on it. His approach to genre is equally unique. It's easy to pick out the touchstones of Nourished By Time's musical mental map: '90s R&B, '80s Prince, shoegaze, dream pop are all there. Instead of a fashionable pastiche, the Baltimore artist swirls together these elements like creamy oil paints, ending up with something that feels out of time despite all its obvious references. After scoring a sleeper hit last year with their album Erotic Probiotic 2 on Scenic Route, Nourished By Time signs to XL Recordings for an EP of bigger, better—and more soul-baring—tracks that hint at the potential for cult status.
The most stunning moment on Catching Chickens comes at the beginning of "Romance In Me," where Brown plays searing, bluesy guitar licks along to a waltz with real finesse. After all, this is the artist who got into Berklee after less than two years of practice on the instrument. It reminds me of John Lee Hooker's sampled guitar on St. Germain's "Sure Thing," and it's a stunning descent back to earth after the previous four tracks' feverish race through genres.
"Poisoned-Soaked" is a desperate breakup song over a careening instrumental that sounds like something off My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album, Loveless. The syllables come out in slightly awkward but weirdly anthemic ways, like an accidental pop hit. ("I been going through it on no medication," he mewls from real rock bottom.) "Had Ya Called" pivots from Beach House indie to groovy Miami bass submerged in muck, while "Hell Of A Ride" sounds like Hall & Oates as produced by a vaporwave artist.
"Hell Of A Ride" also has one of the album's biggest hooks—a chorus of layered Browns who sing "Goodbye, baby / Goodbye"—capping off a strange but intuitive stream-of-consciousness narrative that moves from personal to environmental to political. The ending is a resignation to his own conflicted feelings about the USA—"To the red the blue the white / I don't know / I guess it never felt like mine," he sings, turning his yearning for his ex-girl into a yearning for patriotism as if it were a totally natural conclusion to land on.
When everything comes together, as it does on "Hell Of A Ride" or the rhythmic push and pull of "Hand On Me," there's a breathless quality to Brown's songs. This is music that thrives off of its peculiarities, but can also be obscured by them. The distortion on the vocals in "Hell Of A Ride," for example, would be much stronger without the veil of filters. Brown's words deserve to be heard more clearly. But I get the sense that he isn't making music for anyone else, and the quirks are what makes the project so unusually addictive. With Catching Chickens, Brown isn't merely making another throwback R&B record. Instead, he's giving us a view into a brilliant mind, his self-taught talents and the strangely captivating thoughts that roam through his brain. It's a place worth spending some time.
Tracklist01. Hell Of A Ride
02. Hand On Me
03. Poison-Soaked
04. Had Ya Called
05. Romance In Me