In the era of information overload, the overabundance of concerts and festivals after two years of pandemic, the rap steamroller that flattens the charts in its path, hyperpop and heat waves, Marc invites us to take a step back.
There are eleven little songs to cherish on this first album from the Montrealer who, before going solo, put her hushed voice and synth atmospheres in the group TOPS, another wonderful purveyor of dreamy pop rock. “I wanted a fun, familiar and energetic album to chase away the air left by two years of confinement,” says the musician.
You guess it, Marc is a pure product of the pandemic. TOPS prevented from touring Europe and the United States, where the group has built a following since its debut album, Tender Opposites, launched ten years ago, Marta Cikojevic started writing songs, “because, what else was there to do, right? she says with a sneer, almost embarrassed to add her voice to all those of the other musicians who have chosen to momentarily extract themselves from a group to throw themselves into the void.
Goldsmith’s work
The truth is, Marta never thought about leaving TOPS, and even conceived Marc with the reassuring help of his musician friends. Jane Penny sings the choirs everywhere on the disc, and especially David Carrière, director, composer and multi-instrumentalist, puts his touch on the songs of the musician. “Obviously, with David in the portrait, my music will have similarities” with the work of TOPS, acknowledges Marta.
I wanted a fun, familiar and energetic album to chase away the air left by two years of confinement
“That’s why I put all my personality forward in my songs, to try to do something different. But I can’t lie to you, it’s going to look like TOPS, because working with them makes sense. We like each other a lot, we like the same kinds of music, we like writing songs that way. »
The comparison will therefore be inevitable, but above all, it is not lacking in the work of the singer-songwriter. There are eleven songs on this album, and each one borders on perfection. Craftsmanship, composition — these melodies will stick with you, guaranteed! — to light texts like the carelessness to which one would like to be able to abandon oneself when the planet goes adrift.
The tone of voice reminiscent of Sade, the vintage 1983 sax that hops on the sublime groove pop funkEntertainmentthe retro synths that light up the album, flowing All of Your Love opening up to the superannuated BB I Would Die in conclusion.
Marci’s debut album, “another version of Marta”, pays homage to the simplicity of soft rock, to songs that can be heard on their own, to the small details of a meticulous production, never flashy. It’s a record that you want to take on vacation, and the observation makes Mont-real singer-songwriter Marta Cikojevic smile, there at the end of the camera, joined in the middle of a creative residency somewhere in trendy Notting Hill, West London. “Yesterday David and I did a live webcast performance, it was my first time playing the songs from the album live, she says. It was the fun, I can’t wait to do it again, but with a full orchestra this time. »
Pop not “in your face”
Like her friend and collaborator Patrick Holland, who launched his new album last week, the young thirty-year-old steeps her songs in the era that praised Boz Scaggs, the Steve Miller Band, Air Supply, Fleetwood Mac and other figures of soft rock of the late 1970s-early 1980s. And so go the fashions, our era making cool these remnants of an outdated commercial radio…
“But it’s so good! Marta sneers again. What I like is the know-how of these musicians. The composition of the songs is so clever, and at the same time very catchy. They don’t try to do too much, and I think that’s the difference between that sound and today’s pop, never ‘in your face’, always relaxed and cool. And the realization of these old albums is magnificent, it’s quality music! insists Marci, who also specifies that she was inspired by the funk-pop of the 1970s.
“It’s music easy going : you can savor it at your own pace”, like the album Marc, announced with a first excerpt alluding to Madonna. The song Immaterial Girl, which mocks the consumer society. “I didn’t really write this song as a tribute to Madonna — whom I adore, by the way — nor in response to material girl. Honestly, it was just done with a good heart, and when we baptized her Immaterial Girl, it was joking, although the meaning of my text was the opposite of what Madonna was saying. And in truth, all the rest of the album was also composed without taking ourselves too seriously…”