The Post Punk Nightmare

Next, from France, I present Mary Goes Round (Jérôme Avril, Cécile Balladino) another group who found themselves associated with the Touching Pop movement, which was the loose label and association given to a movement of cold wave, and alternative French rock bands who sprang about in the late 1980's whose styles were influenced from the new wave, alternative rock, and post punk spirit from the many European music scenes

The touching pop label as some of you may well known featured a number of artists including two previously featured on this blog. Among the more popular acts were Little Nemo, Asylum Party, Babel 17, Mary Goes Round including others all of whom were signed to the Lively Art label which was the largest independent French label at the time.

Mary Goes Round were perhaps in their own small way forerunners to the Touching Pop label. According to the group's website, the then nameless band came together in 1986 as Jérôme Avril (guitars/vocals), Cécile Balladino (keyboards), Maurice (bass guitar), and Gilbert Correy (drums) performing at a venue known as the Rex Club opening for alternative thrash pioneers Sonic Youth. The group with no real project at hand were given the chance to record for the compilation Unreleased Volume I and thus the band was born. From that period on the band would mature to a later stage, deciding to forgo their drummer, who had been absent, and on to recording their first mini-LP titled Sunset.

The album here is Seventy Suns in the Sky, which was there first full length LP, and what you'll find here are more of the ice cold keyboard lines so prominent in French cold-wave, dulled stony vocals, and a forceful bass attack but what separated Mary Goes Round from the Touching Pop tribe, if you will, were the psychedelia influences which permeate as shining, sprightly slashes of the guitar that pierce par excellence and the blend of the ghostly, haunting sprites of goth rock, as they evoke The Cure, and the hazy soulfulness of classic rock. You'll also notice that much of the band's lyrics seem to drone on the stories of unknown (mysterious?) multiple Mary's; who are sometimes the marred passions of past loves, other times the eternal, elusive, and fantastical goddesses of lore.

Enjoy.


Mary Goes Round - 70 Suns in the Sky (1989)