Marble Raft (Sweden) – Rites of Passage (single/future album track)

“Exploration pop from the tundra of the Stockholm archipelago” is the unusual introduction to the duo Marble Raft (Olle Söderström and Gabrielle Werme Baker) on their Spotify account.

They’ve been on the scene since 2021 when they released the album ‘Geography A’– I hope they got a gold star for that mark – and now they return with a new single, ‘Rites of Passage’, the first cut from the album ‘Dear Infrastructure’, which will see the light of day in the spring of 2025.

With titles like that I immediately made a mental connection with 1980s Düsseldorf new wavers Propaganda but as it turns out Marble Raft’s sound and style are quite different and not that easy to pigeonhole. The best I can come up with is ‘Dream Rock’, which I was surprised to find does actually exist as a genre.

The press release mentions various reference points, artists that influence them, and the one that stands out to me is M83, especially in the final minute of the song when it ramps up into something of an electronic frenzy.

The melodies are strong but it’s that finale which defines the song.

The title ‘Dear Infrastructure’ is indicative of the meaning of the album – a trip into the dark recesses of a new to them and cold and unwelcoming city. Not only that, it is one where animals have taken over, where cars wander aimlessly like the animals used to, and where lush vegetation covers the skyscrapers.

A sort of sub-net zero I suppose.

Meanwhile in ‘Rites of Passage’ the two teenage arrivals are checking out the city, seeking out a starting point for their exploration.

I can’t get the classic Genesis prog album ‘The Lamb lies down on Broadway’ out of my mind when I read that, the story of the main character Rael’s (a deliberate anagram of ‘real’) epic journey through the New York underworld although I doubt that Marble Raft’s album will be anything like as dark as they seek a “haven of warmth in a ghostly city with no name; a cold metropolis of trash and concrete.”

Outside of Marble Raft Gabrielle is a singer and songwriter in the Gothenburg-based shoegaze band IBEN and Olle has previously been a member and songwriter in the Stockholm-based pop bands Nanook of the North and Pineforest Crunch.

Find them on:

Website: https://www.marbleraftband.com/