MARC TEAMAKER: Marc Teamaker

Marc Teamaker

Marc Teamaker

© 2003 Marc Teamaker (641444932924)

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While maintaining a fresh original sound, Teamaker's music is retro tinged rock pop and soul ala Lennon, Small Faces, Paul Weller, Neil Finn and Traffic.

notes

It is common Musicians of A Certain Age - particularly when they're tipping their hats to the past rather than flipping it the bird - to be lumped under the label "Adult Contemporary", where they can languish, presumably waiting for Listeners of A Certain Age to buy their albums. Certainly Marc Teamaker's new album, the eponymous Marc Teamaker, offers mature insight captured in expertly crafted songs, but there is also a boyish joy that runs through it. Boyish growth spurts, too. "I'm always coming of age," Teamaker says, and it sums up his take on the eternal theme of a man spending a lifetime trying to get it right. It helps that Teamaker's voice doesn't age. Its youthful timbre is the key to his accessibility, like an older brother or friend letting you sit in his bedroom and flip through his old LPs while he sits on the bed with his guitar and sings.

The joyful anthem, "Sunday's Coming On" kick-starts the album. It leads into the smooth "Montreal", whose eloquent flute and rich percussion add enough class to make The Style Council feel right at home. Just as TSC's songs often paired love with images of wet Parisian sidewalks or the tops of London buses, this song is also about being in love in a place you love, and perfectly evokes the feeling of a cosmic soundtrack playing as the two of you make that place your own.

It is Teamaker's ode to moodiness, "Weathervane", that begins the journey inward. Teamaker has said that he is unsure of himself singing the slower songs, but in what is one of my favourite tracks this is unnoticeable, as it is on the superb "As For The Time". Time is nipping at Teamaker's heels and making him question what went before - those growth spurts again - and he carries this thread in the swirling "Soul Burst" and the following track, "Whatever Happens" which begins as an afterthought with a ticking-clock guitar, and goes on to speak of shiny façades that bear no relation to the self-doubt beneath ("Whatever happens, I'm dressed to fail"). This echoing of the lyrics in the melody is something that reoccurs throughout the album, notably on one of the album's highlights, "Vacant Footsteps", whose limping rhythm carries the theme of always falling short with the surest of strides. Teamaker does more than look inwards and outwards. He also looks beside him, and the result, "Hold Me" is dedicated to fellow life travelers experiencing loss and grief. Its message of hope, delivered with emotive strings, is touching but not maudlin.

If this all sounds too grownup to be any fun, rest assured that Teamaker knows how to do thoughtful without getting precious or depressing. Dark literary allusion could be too impenetrable, but the saucy guitar and Latin rhythm on "Dorian" makes it a spicy treat. The Latin feel continues on "Where Your Luck Lands", and on "Shade of Trees", where Teamaker mourns the loss of slow days for the mad chase of The Dream, you almost expect The Family Stone to boogie in and get down and dirty with him. He even dispenses with introspection to salute his cocksure youth in the very mellow "Jelly Jar #2".

But it is the last song, the soulful "Change", that is his greatest departure, both lyrically and vocally. Delivered with an uncompromising snarl, the message is to get up, get a grip, and get real ("Don't have to take it out on me/ 'Cause you haven't had your coffee or your day in the sun").

It's a fitting end to the album. "Change is the only way", Teamaker declares, and in embracing change he also embraces us. - Violeta Balhas - Freelance writer and novelist

Marc Teamaker also co-fronts a group called The Badge. Check them out.

reviews

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  • Another Teamaker Classic
    author: Alex Stangl

    Well - just got the CD in my hands yesterday - took me almost 3 years to catch up with Marc - so, I apologize - I have the entire Teamaker collection now - as far as I know - another perfect addition - smooth as smooth can be - one of my favourite "indie" songwriters in a major way - Alex Stangl

  • Marc Comes Of Age
    author: Iain Clarke

    If Empress Polecat set out the stall for the new phase of Marc's songwriting, then this opens it for business. Usually eponymous titles suggest an artist hasn't been able to come up with a title for their disc, but in this case it is totally justified. Marc opens the door and lets us into his head, sometimes alarmingly so. The disc could be summed up in the words engraved on the back cover, 'Change is the only sound' which he also sneers in a tense spaced out performance of his song Change at the end of the disc. Indeed, apart from changes in music the lyrics have come even more personalin the nature of his lyrics; this is a man concious of time slipping away, of frustration that life can't go to any kind of plan, that we're all tied to petty tasks in concrete jungles, that love can have horrible downs as well as glorious ups. As for the music, this is the most diverse, yet strangely also the most coherent set of arrangements Marc has come up wioth to date. Gone are the flecks of country and in are the influences Marc has so long made public. The travelogue of Montreal is set to an airy acid jazz arrangement, aided by Ali Reyerson on flute, who also adds a gentle flute to As For The Time. This track, along with Hold Me, with its sublime string arrangement, both have a feel of the Island artist of the early seventies, and are deeply touching. Speaking of which, have a look at Soul Burst, which features one of Marc's best vocal performances. Bear bones here, just piano and guitar. There's also some seedy NYC jazz in here with Jelly Jar #2 (Marc using the Nick Drake trick of using one line in a lyric to base a new song around, rather than a Paul Weller trick of writing the same song with different lyrics) and Change. Please don't think that this album is all down though! Whatever Happens rollocks along at a cracking pace with Marc pulling off the impossible task of making him playing all the instruments sound like a band jamming spontaneously, Vacant Footsteps is one of Marc's best rockers and has Ray Hermann's best drum performances to savour. Where Your Luck Lands nods towards America, but is one of the most perfect individual songs on the album, breezy, accoustic and fun. A personal favourite would have to be The Shade of Trees, a musical nod to Stevie Wonder, funky, fantastically loose, and following the yearning of Sunday's.. for a simpler time and place. This was a tricky album to put together, so I gather, but the effort pays off. One of my absolute favourite albums of the moment. Look out for more soon!

  • Progression is what it's all about.
    author: CB

    Firstly may I declare that I don't give 5 out of 5 as nothing is perfect... BUT This is a VERY high 4 star rating. SUNDAY'S COMING ON introduces us to the album the same way Marcs previous offering (Empress Polecat) did with this upbeat summer shimmering song. We are then taken on a trip to MONTREAL with this jazzy flute speckled song about a vacation in (suprisingly) Montreal. WEATHERVANE leads us into track 3, one of the strongest songs on this album and indeed the Teamaker catalogue, the song soars and flows over the listener with a fluidity that relaxes. WHATEVER HAPPENS is another upbeat feeling song with some nice organ playing and a chorus that you won't stop singing. HOLD ME places perspective into place when you hear the haunting strings drifting in and the lyrics touching almost on desperation for love that we all need. Suddenly it's night time, and we are in an underground jazz bar with JELLY JAR #2, saxophone fills break through this sparsely arranged song taking again into a new direction. A latin feel starts this song named DORIAN and has a beat that you can't help but tap a foot along to. VACANT FOOTSTEPS reaches louder than anything else on the album and has an amazing impact within the first 10 seconds, the volume swelled guitars sounding almost like a cello at times. Onwards we stroll to most possibly the best song on the entire album, SOUL BURST is an acoustic song that slowly rises and rises to an exhilarating guitar solo with the vocals oozing emotion. THE SHADE OF TREES is a funky feeling Saxophone boogie that passes over us leaving a smile. Quiet and stillness are represented with AS FOR THE TIME, flute softly tip-toeing around the vocal like a fictional fairy a beautiful song that brings us to WHERE YOUR LUCK LANDS with it's European feel and great vocal delivery a song that lulls us into a false sense of security before we reach a CHANGE that flips us back to the blues/jazz style that the album has at it's centre, guitar fills bounce off bass fills as the organ holds a groove, a great ending to a greater album.

  • Mature sound compared to previous work.
    author: Carl

    A definite step into new territory for Teamaker, this album grooves along on a 70's trip that you just can't get over. It oozes class and style and the lyrical content has changed to a mature style... yet not in a bad way, still interesting lyrically as it is musically the self titled album has it all and then some. I wonder to myself whether or not Mr T will tour this one around?

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