“Skin”, is the first track to surface from Marriages’ debut full-length album Salome. The band is currently out on a co-headlining tour with label mates Helms Alee where they are playing new songs from Salome in a live setting before its release on April 7th via Sargent House. You check out the full list of tour dates and the track below.

The Los Angeles-based trio first began in 2011 as a collaborative effort between former Red Sparowes members Emma Ruth Rundle (guitar, vocals) and Greg Burns (bass, keyboards). Showcasing Rundle’s exceptional playing more vividly than the dense architecture of the Sparowes could allow, Marriages’ departure from purely instrumental rock, too, helped bring her to the forefront, revealing a voice equally fragile and ferocious. Enlisting Sparowes drummer Dave Clifford, they recorded Kitsune, released on Sargent House in 2012. Subsequent touring with Russian Circles, Deafheaven and others honed their vision while introducing the band to a broad cross-section of heavy music fans. Full time drummer Andrew Clinco (Drab Majesty) completed the equation in late 2012, the final component in Marriages’ frequently epic postpunk-by-way-of-stoner-rock sound. While the group busied themselves writing the songs that would become Salome, Rundle issued solo album Some Heavy Ocean in early 2014. Promoting that record found her touring the US as direct support to King Buzzo of The Melvins, immediately after which Marriages set out on tour once more, this time with the legendary Boris.

Back in Los Angeles, Marriages spent the end of 2014 completing Salome, their 9-song debut LP. Their shoegaze aesthetic combined with Rundle’s crushing riffs make Marriages unique among their contemporaries. The tumbling urgency of “Southern Eye” could fit comfortably on Echo and the Bunnymen’s Heaven Up Here yet somehow sits squarely within the realm of Sargent House labelmates Russian Circles. Elsewhere, Marriages toy with a pop approach before invariably releasing a torrent of cascading noise, though never enough to bury the hook they’ve so cleverly constructed. Title track “Salome” is the album’s centerpiece. An ominous, otherworldly swell of emotional waxing and waning, it finds Rundle at her most vulnerable, strokes of Kate Bush and Sinead O’Connor writ large over a canvas of brooding, fuzz-pedal density. Comparatively subdued, though by no means anemic, “Contender” closes the album on a tentative note, its unresolved final chord a sobering wake-up suddenly casting doubt on the probability of the previous 43 minutes.

SALOME TRACK LISTING:

1. The Liar
2. Skin
3. Santa Sangre
4. Southern Eye
5. Binge
6. Salome
7. Less Than
8. Love, Texas
9. Contender

MARRIAGES – ON TOUR
January 23 Los Angeles, CA @ Jewels Catch One w/ Helms Alee
January 24 San Diego, CA @ The Hideout w/ Helms Alee
January 26 Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom w/ Helms Alee
January 27 Las Vegas, NV @ Bunkhouse w/ Helms Alee
January 28 San Francisco, CA @ Hemlock Tavern w/ Helms Alee
January 30 Portland, OR @ Bunk Bar w/ Helms Alee
January 31 Seattle, WA @ Neumos w/ Helms Alee