Search - Dom Mariani, Majestic Kelp :: Music to Chase Cars By

Australia's Best Kept Secret

Otto Luck | Detroit | 05/04/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I've been playing catch-up with Dom Mariani's back catalog ever since a friend steered me towards Citadel's Stems compilation "Mushroom Soup" a few years back, quickly realizing as I spun upward and outward through The Someloves and DM3 that resistance is futile. Not to mention very stupid.



Mariani's latest, his second with The Majestic Kelp (Robbie Scorer, Stu Loasby, and Tobias Gosfield) exposes him as a show-off, managing to lambaste the neurons without so much as opening his mouth via about a half-hour's worth of instro shamanism. Maybe I just haven't been paying attention like I should, but the guy sure knows his way around a fretboard and fuzz box, something that's probably been obscured by his knack for a flat-out, beautiful power pop hook.



This is impeccably arranged, played, and recorded stuff, Mariani slurping from a 50-year wellspring of reverb trailblazers like Dick Dale, Nokie Edwards, and Hank Marvin and spitting it right back in your face, one hand on the whammy bar and the other covering a yawn, vacillating widely between dreamy ("Drivin' South), shimmering ("Occhilupo"), menacing ("Run Cheetah Run") and waggish ("Traffic Jam City").



The fact that Mariani toils away in semi-obscurity, remaining virtually unknown outside of his native Australia, is an abomination. Majestic Kelp's very existence may be a sign that he's willing to live with it and simply get on with the business of making the music he loves, troubling the charts be damned."