Sydney’s MARVELL have offered up a trio of stunning tracks for the latest instalment of Rolling Stone’s ‘In My Room’, a series in which artists perform from home following a couple of years which have seen live shows become a rarity.
It was just a few weeks ago that MARVELL shared their stellar Comfort is King EP, showcasing a band at the top of their game, and capturing their live sound within a handful of powerful songs. As the group explained ahead of its release, the EP was initially envisioned as a “fun, energetic record”, before difficult situations soon arose, meaning that it needed to be a record that paired the sweet with the sour, without letting the latter overtake completely.
“We wanted to try and find the fun and the life amongst it all to keep us going and that’s what this record is about; acknowledging the shitty times but also remembering why we play and make music,” the group explained, “because it’s a blast and brings us all together despite anything else.”
With their new EP out in the world though, the Sydney outfit have now taken invited us into the studio as they perform a live set for our ‘In My Room’ series.
Kicking things off with the powerful “Needle”, MARVELL are quick to showcase just how intense both their performance style is when paired with such confronting subject matter.
“We wrote ‘Needle’ when our then-drummer BJ was battling testicular cancer,” Max Marvell explained upon the song’s release. “We wanted to write about how we felt, imagining ourselves in his shoes and really trying to understand what he was going through, rather than just telling his story.
“The track starts as something contemplative, going through the fear and the uncertainty then quickly evolving into a more powerful song, daring at the possibility of hope. We wanted to blend the visceral, contradictory feelings of such a devastating situation with the sterile, procedural reality that we saw BJ going through. All in all, this track aims to capture that feeling of staring down the barrel of something terrible, when all the odds are against you, and saying fuck it – I’m going to give all I’ve got to make it through.”
As the intensity of the track washes over the listener, MARVELL soon move into an immersive rendition of “19 Homes”, from their latest EP, before taking us back in time to close things out with 2018’s “Come a Little Closer”, and allowing us all to realise that MARVELL is a band you need to see live soon.
Check out MARVELL’s performance in the player above, or by heading over to Rolling Stone Australia’s Instagram page. In the meantime, their latest EP, Comfort is King, was released in October.
