Marion
This World And Body

THE REVIEW

I don't know what happened to Marion, a quintet born in Manchester in 1992 and immediately labeled by the specialized press as a sort of compromise between the Smiths and Joy Division. Maybe they got lost. However, "This World And Body", their debut album, released by London in 1995, is a great album and, in my opinion, deserves a DeReview. It's an album that will appeal to those who consider U2's "Boy" a masterpiece, but also to those who are enjoying the Editors' "The Back Room".

In "This World And Body", the predominant sound is the dry and precise electric guitars, accompanied by a powerful rhythm section. In this sense, the comparison to early U2 is perhaps more fitting than that to Joy Division and the Smiths, with whom Marion share more of a certain emotional tension, a despair present in some of their tracks. Of the twelve songs that make up the album, some are gems: "Sleep", also released as a single, is permeated by a sense of anger and introduced by an unusual harmonica solo. Here, Jamie Harding's voice, the leader and lyricist, closely resembles Bono's. "Time" - another single - is bright, dominated by a shimmer of guitars and a pleasant chorus. "Fallen Through" and "I Stopped Dancing" are two very intense tracks, in Muse style (the more immediate ones from "Plug In Baby", to be clear). The high point of the album, however, is "Let's All Go Together": a dark beginning, a wall of electric guitars outlining the structure of the song in a continuous crescendo.

In conclusion, "This World And Body" is an album that impresses with its emotional charge and freshness.