Remarkably, this is as punk as any laddish guitar-band from the era. Marine Girls took the DIY ethos of the age and put out their music on their own terms. Collected here by Cherry Red Records, these seminal Marine Girls recordings are available again.
Structured with their second album coming first, this new Cherry Red set eases a listener into the "gentle" bedsit indie of Tracey Thorn, Jane Fox, and Gina Hartmann. "A Place in the Sun" purrs with nervous energy, despite its down-tempo pleasures, while "Love to Know" prefigures the kind of material Thorn would sing with Everything But The Girl not too long after this. It's still astounding that something this genuine could be made in an era when everyone else seemed to be running to buy a synth. Thorn and crew did things so simply that the directness of the approach seems downright radical. More lilting than the music of Young Marble Giants, there are similarities. The stark settings seem almost a reaction to what their peers were doing in the early Eighties, but maybe that's just musical hindsight.
Thankfully the tunes on Beach Party, their first album, are just as good as what's on Lazy Ways. "In Love" is furtive and full of a quiet kind of nervous energy, while "Tonight?" is sharply observed and funny. Nearly everything here is subtle and persuasive. The performances are intimate, yet not precious, and the emotional heft here comes from the maturity of the approach. There's nothing here that sounds like a youthful misstep. And if the tunes are simple and pure, they're also focused and concise. Marine Girls were special, their music even more so, and this set really hits the same spots in a listener's soul as Margo Gruyan recordings do, or records from Young Marble Giants.
Lazy Ways / Beach Party is out now via Cherry Red Records.
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