Mariage Blanc
It isn’t often that people head to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to see if there is a thriving music scene, but that might be partly due to lack of media attention. At least Mariage Blanc is making efforts to change that with such tunes as “off white noise” featuring a variety of forgotten instruments such as organ and trumpet (at least these instruments are rarely used in rock anymore).
Mariage Blanc does have a distinctly “pop” sound, if categories mean anything in 21st century music. Listeners new to this undiscovered Pittsburgh might want to take a listen to the band’s first EP Broken Record, which has been out for a few months now. “Famous Last Words” brings back a few memories, from the time when The Beatles and some of the other Brit bands from Liverpool were hard at work.
But Jeff Baker (trumpet, guitar, organ), Matt Ceraso (vocals, guitar), Josh Dotson (bass), Josh Kretzmer (vocals, guitar), Sam McUmber (keyboards) and Chris Williams (drums) have a different flavor, rather fresh actually. It would be hard to go wrong with influences such as the Fab Four and The Beach Boys, but including The Zombies pretty well seals the influence deal. The other, less famous groups on the “influences” list tell a lot about how these Steel City boys got to the musical place they are.
Question: Is “Sunken Ship” a song that could be included in a future soundtrack, perhaps for a movie like “The Deer Hunter?”
Tags: Mariage Blanc, independent music, music, indie, indie music
OK, so this is my son’s band. I’d expected Mariage Blanc to sound like many other garage rock bands but I was SO happily surprised. Josh Kretzmer is pretty low-key about his talent but really wants his musical creations to be perfect, and has such finesse with the arrangements. I couldn’t agree more with InBlaze that “Sunken Ship” would be a great soundtrack for a drama/tragedy type movie, but how about “Marquee” for a Hollywood related movie or “Concrete Face” for a love story? Come on Film producers–check out the potential here!