Review: Sin Desires Marie - Self-Titled

artist: sin desires marie album: self-titled label: released: by: ryan nee This record is incredibly honest. That’s probably not something you usually hear a reviewer say, but I assure you that it’s the biggest compliment I could ever give to a collection of songs. I feel like I really understood the three female members of the local band Sin Desires Marie after listening. The record starts out with the most dreary song on the album, which discusses what I assume is a personal experience of one of the members of the band being raped. The lyrics are cold and to the point without getting too overbearing on the listener: "Hush now / don’t move, don’t speak now / hush / hush now." They go on to say, "This is the sound of breaking / breaking in." The song is angry, but accepting of past events, and is an overall excellent introduction to the honesty of Sin Desires Marie. The album progresses onward from the first song into more comfortable intellectual ground, and progresses in the music aspect also. The music is something along the lines of a slowed down version of Q and not U, but has its own edge and exclusively female vocals. The music is beautifully written – It is calm and soothing in the sense that it has very little distorted guitar and is almost entirely single notes, as if they took bass lines and converted them into guitar parts. Despite it’s calm attitude, this is very direct and to the point. The third song on the record probably has the best instrumentation with what sounds like a slightly jazz/dance/funk influenced sound that really works out well and culminates in the end with a multi-layered vocal climax completed by consistency of the clanging bell of the ride cymbal. My absolute favorite moment of this record is probably what some people would view as the weakest area of the album, but I think it’s pretty incredible. In the seventh song something really amazing happens, where the two singers are singing over each other and you hear one of their voices start to shake and get out of key when she says, "This is the last time I wanted to talk to you anymore." As a singer, I find that it’s pretty tense to hear someone’s voice start to shake in a recording. Immediately, out of nowhere, the same singer comes in and booms out with unbelievable confidence, "I am done! / I am done / I am done." This is probably one of my favorite moments of a record that I’ve ever heard. It is human. It’s honest. It’s sincere. It’s beautiful. This album is definitely one of the best local records I’ve ever heard, and something that people will not regret having as a part of their collection. rating: 92%/100%