There’s a skinny white stripe between cocky arrogance and a confident swagger. There’s an even skinnier one that marks the times and places where irony works. That thirty something New Yorker Ethan Marunas treads close to both, and still made a fabulous, eminently listenable record, may be a tribute to his training at NY’ FAME school, though it’s probably more to do with his background – he’s got to be the only coiffed, former garage rocker at Def Jux (he co-produced Blockhead’s instrumental hip-hop debut, Music By Cavelight). Confident, effortlessly hip and well schooled, Marunas draws on Dean Martin and Sinatra, and not just the sound. The emotional tone is up, like those classic crooners, even when the tempo’ down. Frank Bennett, however, he is not. Nor Louie Austen, for that matter, despite the superficial similarity to Patrick Pulsinger’s dirty electro backdrop for the Viennese singer – which Marunas’s self-produced tracks struggle to match. Critics Pass Away is far more interesting as an entire package for a few reasons. First, he’ authentic – Marunas threatens irony, but he doesn’ deliver, this is for real. Second, and this goes back to the first line of this review, he’ got charisma. That’s not to say Marunas never missteps. “Simon Sez’, for example, leans from Magnetic Fields towards Right Said Fred. But on ‘Silent Places’ – which should be a hit, probably already is – he references pop, punk, disco and hip-hop without sounding like anyone else at all. Even further out, ‘Breezy’ is the first time I’ve heard an indie take on southern hip-hop – and I like it. There’ something in Marunas’s bearing, his humour, in the way he holds a lyric, and in his turn of phrase that elevates this record. Someone bring him out here.
Matthew Levinson
