Dublin quirk-rock fivesome Groom already have three albums and three EPs under their cummerbunds, but much to my chagrin, this is the first time they’ve taken me up the aisle. Alright. Enough. This album is far, far too good for wedding puns.
Marriage kicks off, aptly enough, with a love song. On ‘Don’t Park Your Heart Here’, songwriter Michael Stevens warns the listener, through a haze of ferocious guitar, not to bother getting romantically involved with him, because he is the “lowest form of life”. Next up is some textbook ‘90s grooves on plodding lament ‘My Bohemian Life Part 1’ and a sombre but lovely instrumental number, ‘Windows’.
Now here’s where Groom have it licked. Just when you start to think “God, this is all a bit glum, eh?” a tinker of a triangle or belt of a trumpet perks everything up nicely. It’s that same emotional juxtaposition you get from Badly Drawn Boy, with whom Groom have a lot in common. As well as recalling Bewilderbeast-era BDB, there’s also shades of Ocean Colour Scene and Paul Simon.
Stevens sings with a kind of careless hysteria and his boisterous croak is far from note-perfect. The only way to keep a voice like his from becoming monotonous after 50 minutes is to play around with it and songs like ‘Stairways’ and ‘Mysteries Of Life’ do precisely that, stretching Stevens to the precipice of his range. Lyrics, ranging from the regretful (“I’d sit through Napalm Death just to have you here again”) to the morose (“My soul’s been through the dark wash too many times”), are frequenty hilarious and always fresh.
Other great things: the repetitive refrains of ‘All The Bored People’, the dramatic horns on ‘Doorways’ and pretty much everything about ‘A Music Lesson’ – a phenomenal piece of shoopsome pop, propelled to the next level by a cascading troop of strings.
Marriage has a lot of flaws; it’s too long, it’s too busy, the vocals are all over the shop… But (much like the institution from which it gets its name) after a while, the shortcomings just don’t seem to matter any more. In fact, after 50 minutes of genre smashing, rule breaking pop, these lovely foibles are part of the charm.
Key Track: ‘A Music Lesson’