With her third studio album Marathon, Maria BC shifts the melancholic breath of Spike Field into a harder, more sharply contoured form. The album translates a feeling of present-day overwhelm into plain songs whose beauty is always also a by-product of the themes they address. Resistance, environmental destruction and personal upheavals are woven into Marathon with musical hardness and force.
Accordingly, a great deal happens: mechanical beeps and a distorted bass drive »The Sound« forwards. In »As the Earth Turns«, the percussion clatters away in an indifferent rhythm. In »Rare«, the acoustic foundation initially seems delicate and manageable, yet the rattling, almost bony percussion places an unrest beneath the melody. Maria BC’s voice holds the song together, without, however, bringing any form of reassurance – the tenderness of the perspective stands opposite an environment already marked by fatigue and exhaustion.
The album’s clear strength lies in the ambivalence of the lyrics. Maria BC creates, in her fragile spaces of resonance, not a consoling escape, but a quiet insistence that traces of home, love and wonder can still be found under capitalism. In this way, Marathon becomes an unusually beautiful album about struggling against circumstances that have long since been working against us.
