Mike Marlin

 Former child prodigy defeats mid-life crisis to make brilliant, brooding rock record. 
Here’s a great, growling new rock voice, full of the perviness of Leonard Cohen, the bite of Luke Haines, and the chops of The Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler. Mike Marlin also has a biography to startle the horses. Blinded in one eye at 4, he was a teenage prodigy at Oxford before dropping out; he later invented stock market computer technology. On paper, this 51-year-old’s new career suggest mid-life crisis in excelsis, but on record, he’s deliciously persuasive.  Songs about serial killers, sex and death feel like lost late ‘70s classics, the guitars either sharpened up post-punkishly (War To Begin) or given room to brood in dimly-lit bars (Amazing). Romantic lyrics about blue eyes and a girl in “that dress” somehow sidestep cliché too, because the voice behind them yanks you in. Innocence be damned – it’s time to enjoy experience.

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