Quiet Marauder
The Crack And What It Meant
Following on from their 111-song debut album, MEN (2013), and its considerably shorter follow-up, 11 Shades Of Love (2015), Quiet Marauders third full album for Bubblewrap Collective is a conceptual narrative collaboration with Mathias Kom of Canadian indie-pop wordsmiths The Burning Hell. The Crack And What It Meant describes the emergence of a Crack in time and space in the rural suburbs of Kent and the subsequent social panics, economic posturing, divisional blame games and global belief systems that arrive as a consequence. Narrated by the deep drawl of Kom, the albums 30 tracks veer between short War Of The World synthscapes, pop-folk balladry, post-ironic show tunes and shuffling indie-rock; all tied together by the multiple underlying storylines. These include the death (and rebirth) of science, mass media antagonists, the ambivalent progress of global capitalism, the opening (and closure) of The Cracks Costa Coffee franchise and the rise (and fall) of tramp-turned-soothsayer Daniel alongside his burgeoning, prospering belief system. Intertwining the complex high-concepts and broad instrumentation of Arcade Fire, with the warm, spiky melodicism of The Wave Pictures and the wide-eyed, quick-witted lyricism of Vivian Stanshall, The Crack And What It Meant comes as a limited edition CD with illustrated booklet and cut-out sleeve.