Goth is a spectrum that goes something like eyeliner dad – Edgar Allan Poe – wearing bondage gear while washing the dishes. We see an example of the latter extreme in the video for Mareux’s viral version of ‘The Perfect Girl‘. The Cure original is a meandering ditty about falling in love with a strange girl. It’s a song you could play in the background while eating Sunday roast with the family. Mareux bends it backwards and shakes it around so much, it’ll put your nan off her main. His second album of darkwave bangers Nonstop Romance is steamier than a pan of boiling potatoes.
‘Blackmail’ is an impeccably seedy title for the opening track, which makes M83’s ‘Midnight City’ sound as thrilling as a self-assessment tax return. Mareux likes a mixtape, and it shows: ‘Blackmail’ fizzes and crackles and thrashes about in distorted bliss. The kick drum plus the screeching melody that weaves in and out like a searchlight will make you fantasise that you’re a vengeful terminator tearing through a neon wilderness to right deep and grotesque wrongs. The sort of track you’ll want played on a tannoy as you stride into the office with a resignation letter, making a beeline for the boss.
On ‘Radio Club’, an autotuned Mareux sounds drunk and morose, alone in a burnt-out diner while government helicopters circle above, ready to pounce on our wounded hero. Having made his escape, he feels like dancing – his subdued, almost-whispered vocals on ‘Nonstop Romance’ are belied by the bright keyboard riff and more joyously stomping kick drum. If Lebanon Hanover and Scissor Sisters teamed up, then something like ‘Wild At Heart’ would exist. It perfectly captures the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ bailiff-reluctantly-does-disco vibe.
‘Ébène Fumé’ is both a fragrance and a Mareux track featuring Kiki, who in the video looks lustily into a dressing room mirror and drapes herself across cinema chairs. Both the track and video are so in thrall to the 80s, it’s a wonder they didn’t wheel out Reagan’s corpse. The synth-drenched ‘Toy Soldiers’-like intro is sublime, then the volume strangely dips before the first verse. I’m sure this was to convey a mood and not because a sound engineer sat on a button.
The beat on ‘Prodigy’ has much more in common with ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ than ‘Firestarter’. Mareux sings with the weary, detached acceptance of someone locked in the club alone while the last security guard makes their way to the kebab van. With its real drums, guitar riff, and crystal-clear lyrics, ‘Blue’ sees Mareux transformed from renegade synth lord into Interpol contender. If you slow down and reverb ‘Enjoy The Silence’ (as someone has inevitably already done), you will ‘create’ something only a tenth as good as ‘Laugh Now, Cry Later’ by Mareux. Album closer ‘Snake Eyes’ is a slithering, stealthy, doomy soundtrack to a Stranger Things scene in which our young Americans contemplate their implausible victory over Satan’s cousin.
Like the aforementioned hugely popular Netflix series, Nonstop Romance is a dark and profoundly enjoyable trip back to the 80s. It’s a sequence of love songs, yet it’ll make you feel like Robocop about to single-handedly smash the Berlin Wall.
Nonstop Romance is out now via Revolution/Warner Records
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Review by Neil Laurenson