Like an aged whisky, the depth of Puts Marie’s flavor is the result of a lengthy maturation process. Since its founding in Biel, Switzerland, over twenty years ago, the band has never stopped reinventing itself. From their early days as van-dwelling buskers to their years on the European festival circuit, Puts Marie drew freely from alternative rock, jazz, and hip-hop idioms, all without pigeonholing themselves. On Pigeons, Politicians & Pin-Ups During the Endtime of Mankind, the five band members continue their sonic experiment while honing in on a very particular and profound genre-defying sound.
Puts Marie’s previous album, from 2022, was completely improvised. Their albums that preceded that all consisted of traditionally structured songs. Here, the focus returns to artful compositions, but without any anxiety over verse-chorus-verse schemes, radio suitability or other time-tested recipes for success. Instead: innovation. Slowly and inexorably, sonic landscapes form; sounds and rhythms merge and build into a powerful current. Sometimes the raging stream spills out into a peaceful lake. Sometimes dangerous currents lurk within those seemingly placid bodies of waters—submerged currents that emerge upon successive listenings.
The defining ingredients of this refined new sound are a decentered guitar presence, the anachronistic shrieks of a Farfisa organ, pulsating bass and drums, and, on top of that, haunting stories, which appear initially as spoken, then are retold and reimagined via soaring, polyphonic harmonies. No single instrument or sound is in the foreground; the music has space to unfold, resulting in a hypnotic quality with layer upon layer of nuanced interplay.