Reviews

There’s a mystery surrounding Band Marino, a mystery so great I’m not even sure Nancy Drew could solve it. See, Band Marino has one vocalist. His name is Nathan Bond. He’s a dude. But in the first two tracks of The Sea and the Beast, the band’s release off their label Street Parade, I swear a girl is singing. Bond’s voice does shift, but in those opening tracks it sounds like a completely different singer.
 
This led to my complete and utter confusion and an entirely unnecessary amount of time spent searching the album, internet, and press release for evidence that there might be some uncredited female somewhere in the band. There isn’t.
 
So short of finding the band in Orlando and asking them, I’m going to assume it’s the same singer and he’s just really talented at sounding like a jazzy female and a folksy male singer.
 
Moving on. A list of the instruments used on this album should give you a pretty good idea what it sounds like: guitar, bass, banjo, keyboard, mandolin, harmonica, drums, jaw harp and train whistle. Real Appalachian kind of stuff.
 
The songs themselves are high quality; these guys are obviously talented and they spent time working on the album. The various instruments mesh well, no two tracks sound the same, and the overall sound is unique.
 
Some of the better tracks: “Feel It In The Air,” which builds to a nice instrumental breakout followed by some really cool electric guitar; the fun soldier ballad “Arlee Hayes” with its excellent use of “heys,” and “Someday We All Must Die,” which has a nice banjo/violin combo.
 
But this otherwise great album is marred with a few too many quirky-gone-wrong moments filled with undeniable cutesiness. See track four: “Elephants Are Grey (Elephants Are Blue),” which features the lines “Life can be hard/Life can be tough/Life can be an elephant’s tusk/I want to be an elephant’s tusk.” Uhhh…yeah. Okie dokie then. And there’s this song called “Chasing Rainbows;” enough said. Or in track nine, there’s some odd Michael Jackson “woo”/yodeling going on.
 
It may sound a little nit-picky, but the cutesy stuff really ruins the flow of an otherwise unique, cool and quality album. Since it’s their debut, I’m hoping they’ll grow out of it a bit for the next one. For now, they’re definitely a cure for niche musical boredom.