Marine Research

Sounds from the Gulf Stream (K)
by Dave Liljengren

Buoyed by a languorous fluidity befitting a global undersea current, the warm, moist, melodies of Marine Research‘s Sounds From the Gulf Stream take listeners on a long distance float. MR is made up of four-fifth’s of Heavenly, the Oxfordshire, England band which spent the first half of the nineties recording ecstatic, upbeat, pop for K Records, the ultracool, Olympia, Washington indie label which has released this disc. Prior to that, the members of Heavenly were doing business as Tallulah Gosh, a punk outfit which also had a home on K Records. Heavenly came to an end in 1996 when the drummer took his own life. After a new drummer was added, MR was born. Melding the inviting, convivial vocals of Amelia Fletcher with a dense guitar and keys soundtrack which is unabashedly pop in its devilish, softcore accessibility, while structuring their open-ended and confessional songs in accordance with an unmistakably indie rock blueprint, MR may well have created something new under the sun. These songs are both catchy and real. This is Britpop of a different era. Foregoing the sonic bluster and emotional posturing of contempo-melodicists like Oasis and Blur, MR instead channels ancient spirits of long-forgotten, first-name-only duos like Chad & Jeremy or Peter & Gordon. Throw in a little Donovan and Kirsty MacColl and you’re getting closer. Sounds From the Gulf Stream is a fine, heartwarming disc, easily capable – like the oceanic phenomena in the title – of raising temperatures all the way from the sun-dappled palms of Florida to the icy fjords of Norway.
(PO Box 7154 Olympia, WA 98501)