Eternal Death: Violence (SacredSacred Remix, 2015)

The Mary Onettes remezclan Violence, un tema original de Eternal Death.

“I wanted to make something more cinematic. My thought was to make something could be a lead theme for a movie. Also that the song have a more cinematic structure, that It tells a story from the beginning to end. But still be a good pop song at the same time. 
Fun fact: The keyboard in the beginning is used in a famous soundtrack. Im not gonna say which one 🙂” (Philip, The Mary Onettes)

The Mary Onettes: Portico (Labrador, 2014)

Mopey Melodies

Día dedicado hoy al Pop escandinavo. Durante estos últimos años, por esos lares han tenido a bien facturar algunos de los sonidos más elegantes, refinados y atractivos. Es cierto también que algunas de esas bandas han optado por tomar algunas vías de escape más cercanas al Ambient o incluso a la Electrónica.
Algo así ha ocurrido con The Mary Onettes. Su sonido es algo así como una recreación de ciertos sonidos de los ochenta: guitarras atemperadas, teclados en primer plano, ambientes algo melancólicos e incluso fríos. Y también es cierto que un trabajo como Portico (Labrador, 2014), si no fuera por banderines de enganche como Naive Dream, quizás caería en su interés. El resto de cortes no están a la altura de este sencillo extraído para ser continuación de su exitoso Hit the Waves (Labrador, 2013).

 

“After making the best record of their career in 2013 with Hit the Waves, the Mary Onettes returned quickly with the Portico EP. Rather than sounding like a stopgap between full albums as many EPs do, the set is a fully realized, tightly constructed work that scales back some of the sonic explorations of Waves while still retaining the punchy, hooky songs. Starting off with one of the best songs they’ve written, “Silence Is a Gun,” the Ekström brothers showcase their ever improving songwriting skills and their way with a synthy, gloomy hook. The best moments are when they hook their mopey melodies to a fast-moving rhythm track, as on “Silence” and the pulsing “Naive Dream,” and hit a kind of New Order-in-a-snowstorm sweet spot. There are also a couple of moments where the brothers aim for something more glacially epic (“Bells for Stranger”) and majestically sad (“Ritual Mind”) and they hit the mark there, too. Portico is another nice step in the band’s progression and shows that Hit the Waves wasn’t a lucky fluke; they have the goods to make some truly great modern synth pop and come very close again here” (All Music)

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The Mary Onettes: Love´s taking strange ways (Single, 2012)

Los suecos The Mary Onettes publican un nuevo Ep este próximo 28 de Febrero. Se titulará Love forever. Para celebrarlo, Labrador nos obsequia con el Mp3 correspondiente a su single de adelanto, este Love´s taking strange ways, en el que la influencia ochentera es más que palpable. ¡A disfrutarlo!

The Mary Onettes – Love´s taking strange ways (Single, 2012)

“The Mary Onettes have worked with an outside producer, Dan Lissvik, for the first time. Gone are the echoing reverbs, the 80’s guitars and the big, splashing drums. “Love Forever” is a wonder of genre-blurring fearlessness drawing on ambient textures, avant-garde rhythms and intricate arrangements” (labrador.se)

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The Mary Onettes: Puzzles (Live performing, from Islands, 2009, Labrador)

The Mary Onettes: Islands (2009), Labrador

The Mary Onettes están de enhorabuena. Acaban de editar su segundo larga duración y su tema Puzzles es candidato a estar entre los lugares privilegiados de muchas plataformas musicales como Elbo, blogs musicales, revistas, etc. Alguna de sus canciones seguro que aparecerán en breve en series tipo Lost, Anatomía de Grey… No seremos demasiado prolijos en hablar de este Islands. Tan sólo deciros que si os gusta la onda sonora cercana a los ochenta más ampulosa, recargada, de producción grandilocuente y arreglos de teclados-metales inverosímiles… éste es sin duda vuestro disco. Si aberráis de todo lo dicho anteriormente y pensáis que gentes como Duran Duran o lo más comercial de The Cure le hicieron un daño irreparable a la música, pues entonces no se os ocurra oírlo más de dos veces, como nos ha ocurrido a nosotros. Conservaremos nuestras energías para producciones más saludables para nuestros oídos.
“When we last left the Mary Onettes, the Swedish quartet was diligently channeling the sounds of the 1980s without a lick of the irony that often imbues such revivalism. Their retro moves seemed less about building upon the decade’s musical legacy as encapsulating its finer points for consumption by a new generation. Which, hey, was a perfectly cool way to go about things. At their best, the band positively nailed the bruised romanticism and exquisite melancholy that marked a certain strain of that decade’s best pop, and besides, most of the signature propagators of said pop were by then long gone or, worse yet, distant shadows of their former selves. Plus it’s not like you’ll catch any of the old guard in the tiny-ish clubs and early-afternoon festival slots the Mary Onettes are used to playing, so for those seeking stadium-sized grandeur in parlor-intimate spaces, the band has something relatively unique to offer. The self-titled The Mary Onettes from 2007, in fact, turned out not unlike many records from the era it emulated: several excellent singles or would-be singles (“Lost”, “Slow”, “Void”, “Under the Guillotine”), the token slow jam (“The Laughter”), an effective opener and closer (“Pleasure Songs” and “Still”, respectively), and, well, some not terribly memorable stuff in between. All of which makes Islands, the Mary Onettes’ follow-up, an at once enchanting and frustrating listen. Yes, the high points of the previous record are duplicated here– but so too are the same problems that occasionally bogged down that record.
Opener “Puzzles” actually betters The Mary Onettes’ lead track, the great-tune-with-questionable-lyrics “Pleasure Songs”, galloping along on a spritely keyboard riff and setting an appropriate tone for the nine tracks to follow. “Let’s talk about what feels strange on the inside,” vocalist Philip Ekström offers, an apt enough invitation to the scores of disaffected youngsters with which this sort of music has always resonated best. “Dare”, “Symmetry”, and “The Disappearance of My Youth”, then, are the hot singlez here, and each has the band showing off a few new tricks. “Symmetry” gets extra sentimental with the strings, “Dare” soars near the heights of “Lost” on the strength of plenty of “ooohs” and “ahhhs”, and “Disappearance” features– what else?– a children’s choir joining in to sing the title line. Their brief major label dalliance a half decade behind them, it’s clear the Mary Onettes’ ambitions haven’t wavered in the least. Elsewhere, a few numbers– notably the slow jam (“Cry for Love”) and the closer (“Bricks”)– fall short of their counterparts on LP1. The former lacks the poise and grace of “The Laughter”, while the latter generally sounds like a limp rehash of several earlier tracks on Islands, very much in want of a distinguishing feature. At least “Still” settled on a strident march beat that evoked a spirited departure off into the sunset (or, better yet, the rain); “Bricks” just kind of meanders off in a mid-tempo haze.
Indeed, distinction would serve the rest of the tracks on Islands well; as on The Mary Onettes, the stuff in between here tends to drift by largely unnoticed. Ekström has stated that the title Islands refers to how “every song is like a record of its very own,” and ironically this is perhaps the biggest snare this time around: without a sonic story arc of sorts to create continuity across Islands, we’re encouraged to hold the tracks against one another (hence the partitioning above into “great” and “just okay” camps) rather than consider them in relation to the whole of the album. In short, somebody needs to introduce these guys to transitions, interludes, intros, outros, deliberate sketches, ambience, that sort of thing (although, in fairness, Islands does open with a nice bit of panoramic, cloud-parting feedbackery)– a means to more effectively tie all these so-called “islands” together. The otherwise unremarkable “Century” includes a telling line: “I’ve never been good at holding back,” Ekström declares there. Until he is, the Mary Onettes will likely remain a killer singles band that makes just pretty good albums” (pitchfork.com)
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The Mary Onettes: Islands (2009), Labrador

Se acaba de editar el segundo trabajo de los suecos The Mary Onettes. Si te gusta la onda sonora cercana a los ochenta más recargada, ampulosa, llena de arreglos de teclados-metales inverosímiles, amanerada… éste es tu disco. Si por el contrario piensas que gentes como Duran Duran o lo más comercial de The Cure le hicieron un daño irreparable a la música, pues entonces ni se te ocurra oír este Islands más de dos veces como hemos hecho nosotros. Guarda tus energías para producciones menos nocivas para tus oídos. Más información en The JangleBox.