Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Track Of The Day :: Marsicans - Someone Else's Touch





Words: Linn Branson 

If you feel like you may have already heard a lot of Marsicans' upcoming debut album 'Ursa Major', well here's another! The sixth and final preview of the record - which is out on August 14 - the wonderfully sombre 'Someone Else's Touch'.

The song is shared via a video shot by long-term visual collaborators Sodium Films, which is a monochrome headshot of vocalist James Newbigging, all sad, puppy dog eyes, as he spends three and a half minutes on reflection on this heartstrings-tugger of a love gone wrong.

"I know in time you'll find a better me / Someone who has what I hope to achieve / I'll force a smile and try to laugh on queue / It all means nothing now that I'm not with you," says the man, which will surely leave many a young lady wishing they could bring a smile back to that face!

The track is a rather unusual one for the band as they depart from their usual bright and upbeat direction for something far more raw and emotional. It's a good move too, as 'Someone Else's Touch' is both musically and visually stirring.

"'[It] started its life a long time ago, and is the oldest song to make it onto our debut album," reveals bassist/vocalist Rob Brander of the song. "It's also probably the most adventurous song on the record in terms of production. Like many of the things we write, it started life on an acoustic guitar, but at a time when we were trying to push ourselves a little further than six strings. So we borrowed a couple of old keyboards and started building loops and textures that sounded exciting to us. We got so far down a rabbit hole that the first time we played the song to our manager, he laughed. We knew it wasn't the finished article, but were confident there was something special in the noise, so we committed it to a demo and continued to write new music.

"After a few years on a hard drive, some fresh perspective, and some crystallizing lyrical additions, we came back to that demo with renewed excitement. Much of the original version still exists within the song, but a magical evening at Rockfield Studios last summer saw the finishing touches to the musical landscaping. Our producer, Mickey Dale, and I came together after a few beers to become a kind of Bradford-Bon Iver for the evening, followed by the only tears of the album sessions as James delivered a beautiful vocal in a darkened corner of the legendary studio. It's a moment, and an evening that we will always remember very fondly, and we are incredibly proud of 'Someone Else's Touch' as a song, and a marker of our perseverance as a band."

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