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Written by Bryan A. Hollerbach Thursday, 20 April 2006 11:26

A raucous, sprawling symphony to city living, Marah’s 20,000 Streets Under the Sky alternately purrs and roars like a well-tuned muscle car, gunning the motor half a block before a yellow light, squealing through a turn on macadam slicked by falling drizzle and spilled oil, and then shooting down the straightaway to nowhere, anywhere, everywhere, going, going, gone.

As something like 99.99 percent of the press coverage of the band has noted, Marah rhymes with hurrah, and Marah serves as the artistic vehicle (pardon the phrase) for David and Serge Bielanko, two Philadelphia natives. The brothers, who share vocal duties and play multiple instruments, have previously released three CDs: Let’s Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight (Black Dog Records, 1998; PHIdelity Records, forthcoming), the splendid Kids in Philly (E-Squared, 2000), and Float Away With the Friday Night Gods (E-Squared, 2002). Backing the Bielankos on 20,000 Streets, a late June release from Yep Roc, are lap steel player Mike Brenner, multi-instrumentalist Kirk Henderson, and drummer Jon Wurster—and the five of them, quite simply, have produced a rock ’n’ roll tour de force.

By no means, however, have they produced a disc for the timid. “America is a dangerous place,” Greil Marcus once observed in Mystery Train, “and to find community demands as much as any of us can give.” With 20,000 Streets, the Bielankos & Co. have given all they’ve got, and potential listeners unwilling or unable to match their commitment should perhaps seek community elsewhere.

In their subjects, lyrics, and imagery, in truth, certain of the 11 tracks on Marah’s new CD border on the harrowing. “Body,” for instance, involves a coke deal gone wrong beside a river smelling “like a fishmonger’s hands”; “Soda,” a tragic interracial romance, a confluence of “Puerto Rican sunsets” and “Chinese snow.”

erhaps most painfully, “Feather Boa” focuses on a cross-dressing streetwalker who’s nobody’s darling; more than 30 years after “Walk on the Wild Side,” Lou Reed’s benumbed sang-froid can no longer shelter the song’s subject—or the listener—from the cold-blooded prospect of a wintry Sunday at 4 a.m. In its unflinching blend of the sacred and the profane, 20,000 Streets would likely appall the FCC’s Michael K. Powell, who recalls a line almost 170 years old: “when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and drowned all the blessed strain.”

Goodman Powell can go to hell, of course, while the rest of us seek redemption in the devil’s music—of which no more heavenly example may appear this year. If, in their choice of content on 20,000 Streets, the Bielankos have risked disquieting listeners, they’ve hedged their bets at a formal level. Virtually from start to finish, above and beyond the brothers’ not-quite-growled vocals and the deft instrumentation, the disc barrages those listeners with found music. Into its first few seconds, the opener, “East,” compresses the tattoo of a jackhammer, the trill of a flute, the cautionary whoop of a squad car. Then, aurally, all hell does break loose, on that song and its successors alike. A whistle shrills here and there, a trumpet wails yon, and hands clap elsewhere. On one track, the elegiac “Freedom Park,” a distaff chorus chants playground rhymes incorporating past pop standards; at the close of another, a doo-wop ditty called “Pizzeria,” a matron calls, “Thank you—and God bless you.” Meanwhile, everywhere resound background voices, murmuring and chattering, hooting and hollering—testifying (to use a suggestive term) not only that the brothers Bielanko recognize the danger cited by Marcus, but also that they’re striving toward his communital ideal. Exhilarating doesn’t begin to describe the disc.

Believe it, then: with 20,000 Streets Under the Sky, Marah’s burning nothing but the highest-octane stuff and firing on all cylinders. It’s a wild, wild ride; hop aboard.
— Bryan A. Hollerbach