Magik Markers
Balf Quarry
(Drag City, 2009)

I loved the Magik Markers’ 2007 full-length Boss, and I’m not ashamed to say why: It sounded like Sylvia Plath fronting Sonic Youth. Rife with allusions both musical and literary (John Updike!), a myriad of old-fashioned amp noises that were sucked dry back when Pavement made them, and a dry stance between avant-garde sound-blattering and blistering garage, the art-enveloped duo seemed like they had it together and would move onto something else pretty soon.

The big surprise with Balf Quarry is that they’ve stagnated and seem pretty comfortable in no-chord purgatory. There are less spiky moves though; only one of the new tracks exceeds six minutes, and rather than testing their audience with a minute of feedback like Boss opener “Axis Mundi”, they settle into a Neil Young-style lumber just out the gate with the low-rent fuzz chug of “Risperdal.” Elisa Ambrogio lurks behind this track, opting for droning grind-blues rather than a witchy spell. Her slightly off-key howling is more on keel with the Kills’ Alison Mosshart than a distinct iconoclast like PJ Harvey or Karen O. Here she’s content to repeat herself, with her most PJ-like track yet, the swampy “Don’t Talk in Your Sleep”, which rides a mutated wah vamp and a rudimentary hip-hop beat.

Sounding like a duo has worked for Quasi and the White Stripes, and the Markers sound dangerous enough already without being divorced. When Ambrogio screams “Scream!” on the two-minute Ramones jam “Jerks”, she unleashes more hooky sparks, immediately followed by the discordantly catchy “Psychosomatic”, which, even with Tom Zé-style breakdown sounds and Kim Gordon tone-speak, is a reasonable single for such a forbidding band that would do nothing of the kind. It’s not a barnburner like Boss‘ dementedly twanging “Taste”, but that’s Balf Quarry in a nutshell. “Psychosomatic” has some keyboard notes and the pretty, sing-songy clatter of “7/23” that you’ll remember despite the meltdown drum machines.

Unlike the Kills or Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this band very much gathers warmth in their live sound, stray snare fills and guitar squeals all over the place, and songs that sound patched together and improvised from reels on the floor. It’s surprising for art rockers though, and somewhat rebellious, when most indie rockers are going the stacked-keyboards-and-strings route. The songs could be better, but if they continue in this vein, they won’t get worse but rather quite nuanced, like rich Crazy Horse indeed. It’s a long road, but keeping the same beat forever has its charms.

Listen: “Don’t Talk in Your Sleep” [at dragcity.com]