Leave in Silence by Marsheaux

Marsheaux is one of my favorite bands these days, and have been for a couple of years now.  They do have an interesting habit of recording a lot of cover versions of 80s songs.  In fact, they are so into recording cover versions of 80s songs that they actually recorded a cover version of an entire album; Depeche Mode's A Broken Frame.  In fact, they apparently enjoyed this so much, that they covered three versions of it: one that's a "straight" version (UK tracklist, so it doesn't have "Further Extracts From: My Secret Garden") but then they also issued an instrumental version, and an Extended version with all extended remixes, plus the two b-sides that came out during that era by Depeche Mode.  Although the instrumental seems to have been a very rare promo release.

I thought about tagging Depeche Mode in this too, given the nature of this particular cover album, but I thought better of it.  This is Marsheaux's extended version of "Leave in Silence."

Secret Place by Marsheaux

Greek gals Marsheaux have just released a Depeche Mode cover album; they've essentially covered the entire A Broken Frame album song by song.  I've been a fan of theirs for a number of years, and I have most of their releases to date, including having just picked this one up.  I double checked my posts here, and it looks like the only time I've put Marsheaux on the board is when I added a completely different Depeche Mode cover (of "New Life" that time) so it was high time that I gave them some credit for their original work.  Marsheaux is very rooted in the 80s, and have in fact covered a lot of 80s material, including (obviously) Depeche Mode, When in Rome, Billy Idol, OMD, New Order, and actually quite a few more.  But they are really quite good on their own.  Their lyrics are often kind of strange; I chalk that up to them not being native English speakers.  But that doesn't really matter that much; what they do really well is evoke mood and tone with their songs, where the dream-like vocals become simply yet another instrument for them to work with.

I actually think Marsheaux has made some of the most romantic synthpop I've ever heard.  I don't mean that in a kind of bodice-ripper type sense, a la the romance genre of novels or the rom-com genre of movies.  But with an extremely airy, wistful, dream-like quality to much of their music, it reminds me, in mood at least, if nothing else, of the best of Book of Love's output (a point which I believe I mentioned last time.)

Marsheaux has been relatively productive; six original albums in 11 years is slightly better than one every other year, but they've also put out remixes, compilations, EPs, singles, and more.  I especially like that they sound different than the majority of my collection.  As much as I like De/Vision or Mesh, for instance, I have to admit that they're largely retreading (albeit very well) trails already blazed by Depeche Mode long before.  Depeche Mode casts such a long shadow over the genre that many bands, honestly, struggle to do anything that doesn't sound at least somewhat derivative.  Normally, I'm OK with that, since I'm a huge fan of classic line-up Depeche Mode (y'know, when the music that they made could still fairly be called synthpop instead of something else by a band that used to make electronic music back in the 80s and early 90s.)  I don't mind stuff that treads that same trail.  But because of that, I do really quite like the material that is more unique.  Marsheaux is cementing themselves as one of my favorites that does their own thing, seems to still be going strong, and has enough output to not be considered a flash in the pan.

I've got a lot of material that I could have picked for this particular entry, but I decided to go with probably my favorite song of their recentish (2013) Inhale release, "Secret Place."  This nicely encapsulates everything I've said about the band, I think, in one single track.

New Life by Marsheaux

Given that I'm a big fan of the modern crop of "girl synthpop" bands--folks like Parralox, the Ultrasonics, Emmon, and for that matter, even folks like Little Boots, La Rouge, duets with female vocalists by Martin Solveig or David Guetta, or much of the output of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, you'd think that I would have embraced Marsheaux much earlier.  I'd been vaguely aware of them, as they remixed my favorite Ultrasonics song ("Perfect Girl") as well as one of my favorite Mesh songs ("Crash") but I'd somehow not really investigated them per se.  For some reason, I recently did so, and now I find that I've been missing some great stuff.

I think Marsheaux's best work is there original songs, but curiously, they've covered an awful lot of 80s songs, by artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, OMD, The Lightning Seeds, New Order, The Human League, When in Rome and even Billy Idol.

For today, I'm going to link to their cover of Depeche Mode's "New Life"--it's pretty representative of their style in general.  Andy McClusky (of OMD fame) said that they have a "certain sort of wispy, melancholic charm."  In fact, as I listen to a lot of Marsheaux, I can't help but think that that's the direction I would have loved to see Book of Love mature into--but which they didn't, sadly.  But there are clear and obvious similarities.

Of course, they're not quite as clear in the cover songs, one of which I'm linking to today, but hopefully it's good enough to inspire you to seek out some of their other material.