One Song At A Time

"It's funny,” Marlow drummer Kiel Van Daal says, “We've got probably got about eight songs in the bag that are, you know, actually done and finished, complete. So if we were in a position to have to release an album, we could quite easily do it, and obviously in between that we're still writing. It's just whether we do it now basically, because the last thing we want is to release an album and have no one listen to it and have it collect dust. So our momentum at the moment is to just push as much music out there as possible as frequently as possible.”

That said, the Sydney four-piece haven't been pumping out songs that frequently. It's nearly a year since they released their last single, I Can't Breathe, which hooked airplay through the Austereo radio network: 41 stations across the country, for starters; 350 spins all up over the year in Perth; and it's still getting played. No mean feat in a commercial radio landscape that isn't exactly geared to supporting local independent acts.

There was a debut EP before that, back in 2007, but the Marlow that produced that – Van Daal, guitarist Travis Wall, bass player Matt Grosbernd and singer Blake Galera-Holliss – went through a major re-evaluation of their musical priorities, retaining the epic rock format but embracing the fine art of editing out the fat from what were often seven- to eight-minute tracks to a more manageable four or five max, at least when it came to recording, without compromising their musical vision. A year on from I Can't Breathe, they've finally released the follow-up single, Always There, and it's this song that the band see as the beginning of a more concerted effort to sustain a more consistent presence.

“It was a conscious decision, to release another single,” Van Daal tells. “Especially in today's market, where everybody wants things now, the quicker the better. So our plan for next year is to release an EP or an album, but it's interesting – we work with Shock [though still essentially independent; the band are signed to Difrnt Music] for distribution and we're quite close to Scott Crawford, who's the GM, and I was having a beer with him the other night and we were talking about the complexities of the music industry now and whether going forward to release an album or to release ten tracks individually. So it's kind of a 'watch this space' situation.”

Recorded once again with Sydney producer Stevie Knight and mixed and mastered in Melbourne by Forrester Savell – whose credits include records for Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus and The Butterfly Effect – Always There is, as Van Daal paraphrases Galera-Holliss, about “the influence of the female on everyone. And his angle is quite spiritual – goddesses like Gaia and all that type of stuff. But whatever your interpretation is, whether it's religious or emotional or mental or whatever it would be, it's about that connection with the female and talking about that interaction on a daily basis. And that's something we've all experienced.”

Don't expect it all to be as you hear on the radio when you check Marlow out live. “People often feel confronted when they come to shows,” Van Daal admits, “and they see the other songs in our repertoire, sort of how… not different, but how they can vary quite substantially to the stuff that's released. For us, it's about a really strong song, but at the same time we've also got some stuff that's a bit more challenging. It's quite, I guess, experimental, some of the sounds that we put forward.”

Marlow will be playing the following shows:

Wednesday 17 October - Lizotte's, Central Coast NSW
Saturday 20 October - Annandale Hotel, Sydney NSW