Review & Full Album Premiere: Maragda, Tyrants
Posted in audiObelisk, Reviews on May 7th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
[Click play above to stream Maragda’s second album, Tyrants in full. It’s out tomorrow through Spinda Records. Preorders available here.]
In the parlance of our times, Tyrants might be Maragda entering the chat. And in this case, the “chat” in question is the broader European heavy psychedelic underground with which the eight tracks and 43 minutes so vividly engage, from the bass-underscored shuffle and chorus burst of the opening title-track (premiered here) through the expansive spacier jamming of “Godspeed,” and well beyond. For the Barcelona-based three-piece of bassist/vocalist/synthesist Marçal Itarte, guitarist/vocalist/synthesist Guillem Tora and drummer/vocalist Xavi Pasqual (who would probably play synth too if his hands weren’t already busy), Tyrants is the follow-up to 2021’s impressive full-length debut (review here), and it takes on modern cosmic prog, psych and space rocks from a variety of angles in the songwriting, with varied arrangements, howling solos, and memorable hooks in cuts like “Tyrants,” “Endless,” and “The Singing Mountain,” among others spread throughout that aren’t necessarily just catchy choruses. A keyboard line, a standout lyric (as with the debut, the lyrics are in English), the freneticism in the build of “Sunset Room,” on and on. It’s all fair game in imprinting itself on the mind of the listener, and moreover, it feels intentional in that.
A roiling dynamic is able to account for the wah-drenched rush in the second half of “Skirmish,” the righteous fuzz of “My Only Link,” the mellotron that sneaks into “Endless,” all the ensuing melodic and rhythmic turns and an overarching progression which, for the many pivots between and sometimes within the songs themselves, flows with a sense of purpose. Stylistically, Tyrants touches on classics from The Beatles to Hawkwind (thinking the jangly strums and vocal pattern of “My Only Link” for the latter, the later guitar solo in the same song for the former) while remaining aware of modern forerunners like Elder, King Gizzard or Slift, and has enough range so that when the twisting leads of closer “Loose” bring a particularly flamenco-rooted feel, rather than come across as out of place, it enriches the fleetfooted rhythm of “The Singing Mountain” and “Godspeed” just prior, adding to the context of the front-to-back listening experience. Especially when one factors in the production helmed by the much-respected Richard Behrens at Big Snuff Studio (Elder, front-of-house for Kadavar, much etc.) in Berlin, Germany, to which the band traveled from Spain to record, and the subsequent master by Peter Deimel at Black Box Studios — who also finalized the self-titled — Maragda seem to be upfront in their outreach to the Eurozone underground scene. They sound like they want to play all the festivals, in all the countries. Yes, that includes yours.
Yet, they’re not cloying in that. The howling scorch that begins “Skirmish” and the vocal layering of the verse that follow are an earnest clarion. Following the digging-in as represented by the verses and the way the chorus takes flight from there, those early moments of “Skirmish” make a bold callout to the converted — perhaps most of all to the heads who think they’ve heard it all before — but Tyrants goes deeper than superficially highlighting aspects of current-day psych-prog in this material, and it does not sacrifice the folkier aspects that have long typified Spanish psychedelia in order to fit with some idea of whatever a phrase like “current-day psych-prog” might evoke for a different listener.
They are themselves in it, however far outside Iberia their influences might reach stylistically or geographically, and even as Tyrants sends out dogwhistles in working with Behrens, putting the words in English, the lush vocal melodicism before “The Sleeping Mountain” gives over to its no-less-lush instrumental ending, and so on, the needs of the song are never measured as less than the message being sent by the album as a whole. As a collection, Tyrants ends up nowhere that Maragda don’t want it to go, and whether you have a background in Spain’s history in folk, psych or rock more generally — to be clear, I don’t — the songs are likewise accessible and encompassing.
If that makes Tyrants sound like it’s somehow educational, that’s part of it, at least on the hearing end. Even in the reverbed boogie of “Tyrants,” Maragda‘s efforts could be read as having an ambassadorial side, and I don’t think that’s a detriment. But, say you’re the type of listener who might just want to put a record on and enjoy it without delving into the social and aesthetic backdrop against which it arrives (madness, I say, but not unheard of), the energetic spirit captured in the recording, the chemistry shared between Pasqual, Tora and Itarte on the live-feeling performances branched in three dimensions to make the final versions of the songs, and the varying shapes that vitality takes are an accomplishment of craft ready to stand on their own. In the physical motion of the leadoff, the heft unveiled in “Skirmish” and the intricacies of tone and groove beneath the chorus in “Endless,” Maragda launch side A with an enticing salvo that holds the momentum amassed through shifts between longer and shorter runtimes and trades in volume, pace and tone, and a resounding sense of joy in both the build of tension and the freedom inherent in its release. And as much as Tyrants can be defined by its ambitious scope, that applies as much to the interplay of drift and push in “Sunset Room” as it does to the bridges it constructs between often-disparate interpretations of style, and the heart put into its execution cannot and should not be ignored.
Rather, the passion that comes through is pivotal to every level on which Tyrants meets what feel like its goals — and to that, it’s not as though Maragda have said they’re trying to give the countries east of their home peninsula a piece of what they’ve been missing; that’s what I hear happening in the songs separate from the lyrical storyline and at an ocean’s distance and I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth — and while not without its indulgent side as “Loose” reaches toward seven minutes in capping with revitalized mellow-heavy fluidity, Tyrants is nonetheless clearheaded and lets its movement or procession handle its own declarations.
In this, it remains about presence over pretense. Adding to rather than taking from. It is optimistic and forward-looking. What Maragda do on Tyrants expands the palette for themselves first and genre second, and whatever the future will bring for them, whatever they might do next, wherever they might tour, whatever whatever whatever comes of the potential this sophomore LP carries, it is a significant achievement by itself that distinguishes the band from the pigeonholes in which they might otherwise be placed. If they’re entering the chat, they’ve brought plenty to say.
