Marineville diving the wreck
Salient review

Tessa prebble

3.5/5

diving the wreck is the second effort for local band marineville. It departs from the self-conscious romanticism of their debut, ready for the dance, and moves onto more abrasive and edgier landscapes.

Diving the wrecks main pull for me was the intelligent and all-consuming instrumental sections. On tracks like ‘kind to me’ the instrumental parts resemble the preserve lullaby style of the smashing pumpkins while ‘children of the ufo’ bass line padlocks you to the back of the car and makes you run along beside it. These guys are masters of their instruments.

The one problem I have with diving the wreck is in mark Williams vocals. Getting a balance between the beauty and the instruments and the harsh discordant vocals seems difficult to achieve.

Comparisons have been made between Williams vocals and the vocals of pavements Stephen malkmus. I can see the similarities- however, the differences are what matters. While malkmus’ style of half singing/half talking consistently works, sometimes Williams just gives the impression that he can’t sing.

In saying this, when marineville do get the balance right, like in the title tracks ‘diving the wreck’ , the hauntingly resonant ‘the fire’ (which is my favourite tracks on the album and for some reason always make me thinkg of car journey through the desert road) and the gripping ‘paranoid line of the figure 8” , you feel thankful they tried. When the balance is achieved the combination of william’s off kilter vocals and the instrumental escapism and exquistite Diving the wreck is like nothing else I have heard coming out of new Zealand and if these guys continue as they are going, I can’t wait to see what their next album is like.

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