Marah: 20,000 Streets Under the Sky : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

20,000 Streets Under The Sky is the sound of a serious band trying to write serious songs about the seriously transforming power of lost youth and mean-streets rock & roll. Like Bruce Springsteen, a much-cited role model and former collaborator, Philadelphia's Marah synthesize soul, doo-wop, Phil Spector and various strains of roots rock into densely detailed street stories laced with hand claps, background chatter, harmonica solos and "shimmy shimmy ko ko pops." The best of the bunch is "Feather Boa," a song about a cocaine-addled drag queen that would fit snugly on Lou Reed's Transformer. But singer-songwriters Dave and Serge Bielanko mostly sound like they're trying too hard. Lines such as "Underneath invisible stars/These dirty streets will forever be ours" flow without irony. The brothers suggest that if "we're only goin' through the motions," they'd rather be dead. But these true believers never quite escape the trap of their own nostalgia.