The music of Marlin’s Dreaming exists in a perpetual fog of dream-pop vagaries, post-punk angularity and shoegaze ferocity. Their music is a blurry-eyed concoction of various influences which reveals the band’s affection for blending and reimagining genres.
Calling Dunedin, New Zealand home, the band formed in the middle of 2017 and would go on to release their debut record Lizard Tears in October of that year. Filtering their indie pop impulses through a haze of muscular indie rock distortion, the album attracted a sizable bit of interest and acclaim in their home country, leading to two sold-out tours and a desire to send their music out beyond the confines of their Dunedin surroundings.
They released an EP, Talk on Commic, in 2018, which found them embracing a darker post-punk aesthetic. A bit more ragged around the edges, it was proof that the band wasn’t afraid to evolve and move past the sounds of their past work. They would go on to share the stage with bands like The Chills, Kirin J Callinan, and Ocean Alley on subsequent tours in 2019. They then headed back into the studio and have recently announced the release of their forthcoming second LP, Quotidian, a collection of grunge-pop opuses and distorted psychedelics that finds them reveling in their own collective experimental creativities.
On their latest single, “Alike,” they band wanders the same tactile landscapes where bands like Aztec Camera, Magazine and X blended punk, art rock and pop to astonishing effect. Also bringing in a bit of Disintegration-era The Cure, they mold this amalgamate noise into a compelling whir of hard edges and smeared melodies. It’s a potent cascade of inspirations that underscores their ability to unearth musical commonalities in the strangest places and reshape them to fit their own needs.
“‘Alike’ is our most zestful single — very guitar and vocal driven,” singer-guitarist Semisi Maiai explains. “I wanted to personify two different characters, the bleating high pitched character, and the dark, arrogant character. Both characters are people in my life that… I guess piss me off enough that one day I decided to write about them; or should I say write for them. We wanted a big soaring chorus for this song, so we really layered the vocals in the chorus to make the melody thick.
I guess sort of an optimistic, catchy song, but digging deeper, I find that what it’s actually about is slightly disturbing.”
Make sure to check out Marlin’s Dreaming’s recent On Deck feature, where they told us what they’ve been listening to. You can follow the band on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
