'this old house' is an immersive and emotional first collection.
Photo: Steve Gullick
'this old house,' the much-anticipated debut EP from London's mary in the junkyard, is an immersive opening statement, capturing the intensity and idiosyncrasy of one of the most exciting bands of the moment. The London trio, whose reputation is built on tireless gigging (more often than not at the Windmill), draw maximum impact from their three-piece setup with a sound that takes the rough-edged tempestuousness of Throwing Muses and combines it with an emotive expressiveness filtered through influences ranging from Big Thief to Radiohead.
The band's sound, captured across this EP's four tracks, captures emotional turmoil in all its foggy obliqueness. David Addison's drums are a big part of this, rumbling on throughout to give the whole thing a viscous, quicksand quality, with some natural parallels to the playing of Honeyglaze's Yuri Shibuichi, who in fact produced their debut single 'Tuesday.' Laid on top of this, Clari Freeman-Taylor's tubercular guitar sound adds to the irresolute quality, especially on 'ghost,' where fuzzy arpeggios provide a troubled adornment.
Freeman-Taylor's distinctive vocals are central to the pathos of mary in the junkyard's music. 'ghost' immediately sets the tone, the sighing vocal riff suggesting sung weeping. Yet even when singing her captivating lyrics, Freeman-Taylor manages to maintain this air of choking through tears, every moment invested with the impression of being on the edge of tragedy. The lyrics themselves often take a turn for the doleful, this EP set in a world where we "let sleeping dogs die," and where flies seem to become routinely fatally trapped in the "goop" of one's eyes.
In spite of this, the band do not settle for grimly marking such miserable impressions. The strength of this music comes from its humanity, which is composed not only of this sadness but also of a its defiant sense of resiliance. 'marble arch' is perhaps the best example of this, tending throughout its alienated lyrics towards a musically rousing chorus that slams through a growling staccato riff. The chorus line itself – "Your mother washed your mouth out / with the soap that she made for you" – captures the hope that is shined through the cracks of despair throughout 'this old house.' Here is a stacking of two images of nurturement, of care, centring around the constancy of maternal love. Contrasted with verses about bleak alienation in the capital, it offers the comforting assertion that we are never truly alone.
The band's inclusion of more whimsical elements to their music similarly serves to juxtapose its bleaker moments. As a group, they celebrate an innate urge to be playful, even in the face of adversity. The howling from the band to echo the lyric about "howling" is perhaps the best recorded example, distracting somewhat from the line's context of morbid devotion. This detail is always a fun highlight of the live show, where this underlying joy, borne of their music's catharsis, has also been known to play out in the slow motion collapsing of the band into a heap together at the final song.
'this old house' draws its power from the life with which each song is invested. Completing the trio, Saya Barbaglia is crucial to the force each track conveys. As 'goop' begins, her crucial versatility is shown off with the first prominent violin part of the EP emerging. Where the bass drives the murk of the band's sound, this violin compliments the vocals, its rich acoustic sound adding to the human rawness of the music. Her playing contrasting against the crunchy guitar and sloshing drums the band test the limits of the three-piece setup. With this unique sound in place, 'this old house' shows what the band is about: crystallising the human experience and finding pockets of hope, comfort or at the very least understanding, in the face of its bleaker moments.
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