Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko are the core of Marah, a band they started in the mid-'90s in Philadelphia. Over the course of their first three albums they wowed critics and audiences alike. They can be anthemic, like a cross between Bruce Springsteen and the Replacements. They can also be as acerbic as Graham Parker, as iconoclastic as Beck, and as ambitious as everyone from Pete Townshend to Stephin Merritt.
It is ambitiousness which fuels the overarching dramatic curve of their fourth album, 20,000 Streets Under the Sky. It's filled with details: individual narratives float through the songs, populated as they are with all manner of urban dwellers, met at eye level. One need not focus on these aspects and still be knocked out by the sheer catchy power of the songs. "Freedom Park," though rife with broken bottles and the remnants of drug deals, is nothing if not an audio celebration. Like the Ashcan School painters in the first half of the 20th century, Marah are finding beauty in the commonplace, the broken, and abandoned. --David Greenberger
Product Description
The fourth album from Philadelphia’s Marah and their first for Yep Roc, "20,000 Streets Under the Sky" is, by their own estimation, the album Dave & Serge Bielanko have always wanted to make. With songs about (in Serge’s words)"pigeons, cocaine, pizza, young love, bullets in the head, transvestites, a beautiful little baby, and the strange optimism one might feel watching jets take off in the evening at Newark Airport. "Streets" follows the Bielanko brothers’triumphant return to the road, energized by a dynamic new lineup (featuring Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster, multi-instrumentalist Kirk "the Barber" Henderson and lap steel whiz Mike "Slo-Mo" Brenner). This is the sound of a band gleefully taking their lives back into their own hands — or as Serge puts it, "I guess you could say "20,000 Streets Under the Sky" is our love letter to people everywhere who, just like us, keep waking up everyday hoping to turn it all around...." Digipak.
20,000 Streets Under the Sky
20,000 Streets Under the Sky,Marah,Yep Roc Records,American Trad Rock,Pop,Rock,Rock/Pop,Roots Rock
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