Boss
Label: Ecstatic Peace!
Length: LP
Media: CD
Format: Album
WorkNameSort: Boss
Judging by this release, the Magik Markers are finding that no wave has its limits. In shrinking from a trio down to a duo, their sound has evolved from sewer Rorschach blots to scuzz blues with unusually coherent foreground vocals. It’s just singer/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio and jack-of-all-trades Pete Nolan since bassist Leah Quimby took off. Now former mumbler Ambrogio is a swaggering bad-ass, skinsman Nolan’s a textural multi-instrumental wizard, and the Markers is more serious-as-a-heart-attack force than Wire magazine wet dream. Some of this – probably – is due to the involvement of overbearing producer Lee Ranaldo, but it’s equally possible that the duo’s ambitions and writing skills are growing. Check for those guitar fits seizing up the psychosexual “Taste,” the jagged STD punk of “Body Rot” and the soothing drift of “Bad Dream/Hartford Beat Suite,” or skip to delectable noise-collage concessions like “Circle.”
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 2, 2007.