If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry

"Folk-punk". Blue collar rock, that touches on standard rock, alt-country punk, and rockabilly. Lots of engaging guitar riffs, and a good mix of slow ballads and uptempo rock. Singing duties are split between the brothers who make up the core of the band, with lots of endearing harmonies. These songs are all pretty catchy and pleasant. -- Apparently Marah puts on a great live show that they have never even come close to capturing that energy on a disc, so they recorded this live-in-studio in an apartment in Brooklyn with just one or two takes. It worked pretty well. FCC Clean. Picks: 3, 5, 1, 8. Label Picks: 1, 6, 9.

-Wicked Child

*1. Twangy opening, then straight rockabilly (Brian Setzer/Stray Cats), spoken phone-call section @ 1:45
2. Up-tempo rollicking rock, some harmonies and ba-ba-bas. Lots of guitars.
**3. Dainty fingerpicking throughout, nice vocal harmonies.
4. Rockabilly. Uptempo, handclaps. Harmonica breakdown @ end.
**5. Mid-tempo. Awesome slide guitar intro. Love the tap-taps. Fake-out ending with 1min left. Switches to mournful organ (wtf?).
6. Fingerpicked guitar, mid-tempo ballad. Cute & plaintive.
7. Electric Guitars, John Mayer vocals meets Wilco.
*8. Acoustic country-punk.
9. Tom-toms open. Up-tempo rock. Sounds like they're having fun recording it.
10. Very Dylan-esque harmonica intro & throughout. Acoustic & folky. Slow.
11. Slow, twangy electric folk. Summerteeth-era Wilco meets Calexico. Horns at end.
12. Opens with the instrumental from track 5. Silence 00:16-00:32. Then a pretty good uptempo number about love & smiling, with great guitars.