Philadelphia’s Marcelyn, the band Releases Debut Album, “Monstrous Existence”
By Brian Walker
Marcelyn, The Band, has released their first full length album today. Consisting of Marcelyn Lebovitz, Mike Lebovitz and Travis Martin I got to speak to the band about their process in recording their record. This band is an evolution from Marcelyn’s solo project where she had released two records before. The Philadelphia Globe is thankful to share their record today.
Sonically and Lyrically Monstrous, Existence is very different from Dignities and Depravities and This is Woman’s Lib? I hear guitars and a string section. What led to the sonic and folkier style of songwriting in contrast to theme driven writing in your back catalogue?
Travis: I can take some of the blame for that. I’m a guitar player playing drums. When we started recording, we kind of threw everything at the wall to see what would stick. So I ended up playing guitar on some stuff, and banjo, too. We also experimented with a lot of synths to fill out things sonically, and create a sort of mood for each song.
Marcelyn: Yeah, what Travis said. I’ve always wanted to sound like a huge band, we just didn’t have the know-how or the equipment and players to do it. As for the songwriting, I wanted to present a more mature writing style in this album. I love my first release, Indignities & Depravities, but listening to it now kind of feels like reading an old diary of mine and cringing at my naivety. I wanted to take the same raw emotions but approach them from a more practical and even somewhat optimistic viewpoint.
What was your recording experience like in the midst of the quarantine? How did you navigate creating with your band mates?
Travis: We did everything piecemeal. One of us would come up with a rough outline or a demo of a song and send it to each other. Once we had a full song written, I’d record drums with piano or guitar, and send it back to them to overdub their parts. Mixing took a lot of time once we got all the instrumentation down. We’d send the mixes back and forth and decide to add or subtract things here or there. But I feel like it gave us more freedom to experiment with things we might not normally try.
Marcelyn: Travis is mind-blowingly quick with producing! Mike and I would send him our parts and have a mix within a day. Having him on the team definitely made it an easier and quicker process than in the past. With our last album This is Woman’s Lib? Mike and I did all of it except the mastering and we’re not as trained or well-versed in this as Travis is, so it took a lot more time.
“Set it On Fire” is a stand out track that has Queen/MCR like vocals and seems to share a narrative on the current revolutionary climate of America? The drums march much like a protest, can you tell us more about what the song is about?
Travis: I got the idea for that song right after the 2016 election. I remember watching the news and people were protesting and rioting then, too. There were thousands of people in the streets everywhere, but it seemed no one had a clear message about what they were really trying to say. I thought if I wrote something that reflected that feeling, maybe I could help unify that message in some kind of way. After the protests and riots started this summer, that song came back up because it fit the times now more than ever. It’s about feeling cheated, stolen from – feeling like you don’t really count, and time is going to run out if you don’t act this very moment.
Marcelyn: I actually sat down to write a protest song specifically about the Black Lives Matter movement, but Set it On Fire was just so much better. I think Travis really captured the specific feelings that drive people to protest. And it was a fun challenge to sing in a new style for me! I had a lot of fun experimenting with this song during the recording process.
Your first single “Quarantine Song” that came in July, humanizes the experience of uncertainty from Quarantine. What led to the multi layered approach of writing this song? It can be heard lyrically and harmonically.
Marcelyn: I wrote this song a couple weeks into the quarantine. I felt the need to write something about it from the moment it all started, but it took some time to process my emotions and get over the shock. I lost several huge, career-shaping opportunities and went into a pretty deep depression right away. But once I started to come out of that, I looked around and realized I was certainly not alone and that everyone was and still is also struggling deeply with this. So those are the emotions I decided I wanted to capture for Quarantine Song, crippling loss but also unity. We’re all terrified, but at least we’re in this mess together.
This track started as a simple acoustic ukulele song, but Travis ran with my demo and created this driving, multilayered arrangement. I was really surprised the first time I heard what he’d done with the song, but it just felt right. It has so much more depth than what I could’ve achieved with my ukulele and voice alone. I love how it turned out.
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More About the Author: Brian Walker is a musician, writer, and podcaster. He is the songwriter behind A Day Without Love, podcaster for Dreams Not Memes and enjoys writing about Diversity and Inclusion, Food, Music and ways to make the community a better place. Twitter|Instagram|Email
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