Magik Markers at The Grosvenor

Magik Markers at The Grosvenor

28 October, 2009
by: Domzig

Ever since they opened for Sonic Youth back in 2004, you get the feeling that Magik Markers are a band with some pretty big shoes to fill. Having taken the best bits of Teenage Jesus, The Contortionists and the Meat Puppets and thrown them into one Thurston Moore-espousing girl-fronted noise act, you would have thought they’d have torn up the underground rock scene by now, but bizarrely, reaction has been muted at best.
 
Still, new album: new chance to win hearts and minds. Both 2007’s 'Boss' and this year's 'Barf Quarry' have seen the band chill out on the noisier, angst-ridden shredding that used to be the Connecticut duo's calling card, and concentrate on writing experimental, space-filled jams designed more for the studio than for playing live.
 
It’s how this new direction pans out on stage that makes for the most intriguing part of tonight’s gig at the Grosvenor. Tucked away in some unassuming corner of Stockwell, this suburban-looking pub is a far cry from the dirty, tumble-down grit of the East End or Camden, and I half expect to find a table selling plastic cups of orange juice and home-made carrot cake rather than a room full of Hackney’s finest.

For their part, Magik Markers are looking more and more like the complete package. 'I Trust My Guitar'-era stuff caterwauls with experimental, almost stoner-rock intensity, whilst newer songs like 'Body Rot' bring short, sharp bursts of urgency that bitch slap you out of the stupor.
 
All things considered, it's a pretty virtuoso performance that seems to bring new twists with every passing moment. It's all too easy for a band doing the whole wall-of-sound thing to suffocate the audience by bludgeoning them into submission with relentless, one-tempo sludge. So it's a mark of how far Magik Markers have come that this show never feels stifled, monotonic or even a bit samey.
 
Now if they can only do it on record, they'll be on to a winner.

Magik Marker's new album 'Balf Quarry' is out now on Drag City Records. If you're into this, you'd also quite like to know that Upset the Rhythm have LA experimental indie act Foot Village playing at Barden's Boudoir.

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Domzig