If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry

Marah | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 18, 2005)
• Original Release Date: 2005
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Yep Roc Records
• ASIN: B000B5KRS4
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #204,582 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A band that matters., November 3, 2005

By 

Brad Fleetwood "Prisoner of Rock and Roll" (Arlington, Va USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry (Audio CD)

I saw these guys live last summer and was blown away. I'd already heard "Kids in Philly" and "20,000 Streets," but their live show really pulled me in. I immediately located "Lets Cut the Crap," and anxiously awaited their new disc. "If you couldn't laugh, you'd cry" was worth the wait. If this disc is not on alot of best of lists and Xmas lists this year, well, we're screwed. I mean, look out over the rock and roll wasteland where your success is measured in units and where Rolling Stone magazine is a painted whore of a rag. Sadly, almost no one makes records that matter anymore, (remember the Clash)and it seems that if they do, no one listens. The airwaves are replete with bands that look like they came out of a gap commercials and play the same three chords with studied intensity, albeit while actually looking and sounding emotionally dead. Sadly, America is entirely taken up with this "30-second commercial" version of rock and roll. There aren't many who seem to be able to really connect the rock and roll dots from Jimmie Rogers to Hank Williams, Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones, Blind Willie McTell to Bob Dylan. There are too many bands that try to be derivative of something, but they don't have what every great rock and roll band has -- honesty, sincerity, hope and desparation -- all at the same time. Except Marah. If you're looking for answers, at least this band asks the right questions. They've laid it on the line here; their hearts are exposed and their souls are stripped naked. Listen to the opening riff of "Demon of White Sadness" and if you don't feel the pull, you've got no soul left to touch. If the muse doesn't touch you and make you smile while listening to "Sooner or Later," then you've been neutered. If you aren't swayed by the emotional courage of "Walt Whitman Bridge," you're just f!@#$d. Give yourself a chance and give these guys a listen. If it turns out that they don't grab you, I guess we're all screwed. Then all there'll be left to do is laugh, grab a beer and wait till Marah comes to town.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good One, November 12, 2005

By 

JPN (Amherst, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry (Audio CD)

I have long been an admirer of Marah's excellent Kids in Philly CD. Now, after repeated listenings, I'm giving this one the nod as this band's best. Focused, reckless, serious & fun all at the same time.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When to Laugh, When to Cry, When to Shut up and Sing, October 18, 2005

By 

Eric Reiberg (Indianapolis, IN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry (Audio CD)

Dylan went back down Highway 61, Marah walked back to an alley in Point Breeze, Philadelphia. It is an apt analogy for their entire fifth album If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry. Two white boys still searching for what the hell their beloved city means to them, and vice versa. Trying to find that invisible intersection where Mummers banjos meet Philly soul. Feeling along the Wall of Sound that Spector built, looking for any slight crevice or crack wide enough to let in all those hill songs just across the Mason Dixon line. And of course, there's that echo that started somewheres up in Asbury Park, comin' down the Jersey Shore to tie it all together.
If their quintessential second album, Kids in Philly, is an album so steeped in place that it almost drowns in the river it so frequently references, then IYDLYC is a stone skipped from bank to bank. It stays ever near the source of its material, Philadelphia, and everything that city connotes, but it also leaps up and down pointing towards the other locales that have been instrumental in shaping Marah, both the music and the band. In "The Closer", they make it clear right away they are not remaking KIP, nor are they shedding tears for halcyon days gone by as the narrator does in "East", the opener to 20,000 Streets Under the Sky (Album #4). No, in this song the singer is rambling down a Brooklyn street, drunk on beers, comraderie, and the possibility of seeing, "That girl." This is a song so un-self-conscious, that only a band perfectly comfortable in their own skin could make. This sentiment can honestly be applied to most of the record. From the "no more than three takes" approach to recording this album, to Serge Bielanko's threadbare, precarious vocals being placed front and center on three songs, daring the listener not to frigging love it. This album gambles and wins.
That said, the songs on the new album are not all new territory, but they are most certainly NOT comfortable retreads of old favorites. Every track on the album hangs in the balance. They are steadied and loosely bound by the steel piano of "Sooner or Later" which wends its way in and out of our ears in interludes throughout the record, as does the organ on Walt Whitman Bridge. In counterpoint to Serge's blind man on a high-wire vocal act, David Bielanko, the band's regular vocalist, gives a vocal performance that ranges from the angelic purity of "Out of Tune" to a school-boy spoiling for a tussle on "Fatboy". On "The Hustle", like its ancestor "Point Breeze", the vocal does a dance-like struggle with the syncopated rhythm, but whereas on latter, the singer seems nearly breathless by the end from trying to keep up, at the end of "The Hustle", the singer has clearly won the battle for the song and his senses. "Demon of White Sadness" has elements of the psychedelic lyrics found on Let's Cut the Crap, but a lucidity overtakes it and refuses to, "Dream about going back." Indeed dreams are perilous on this album. See "Dishwasher's Dream," a Dylan-esque riff on scrubbing pots in a restaurant dish tank, which ends with the title character rousting his lover from "The same awful dream," they've been sharing. And the ending refrain of "Demon", "Falling out of favor was my favorite thing," is one of the most confident, anti-nostalgia statements they make on this album. Perhaps the two most impressive cuts could have easily verged into the too cozy territory of past successes. "City of Dreams" could have been drawn out and overly lyricized to make it sound like "Barstool Boys", from KIP, but instead it conjures up Simon and Garfunkel overtones, without the preciousness. "Walt Whitman Bridge" might be the most accessible, but authentic song on the album. It almost sounds like a million other songs. It almost sounds like four other Marah songs. It almost sounds like it's just too damn good. Because there is nothing wrong with this heartbreakingly beautiful song. It's not perfect, but that's the point. There is a flawless Platonic version of this song hovering somewhere in the ether, and if you catch the band on the right night you might just hear it.
There is a command of the personal narrative displayed on this redord that is impressive. Marah has always been spectacular at empathizing with the various characters they portray in their songs. But rarely has the narrator/character been as close to the actual persona of the singer-songwriters as on this album. They may be dishwashers, truck drivers, or workaday Philly schlubs in the songs, but they all seem perfect analogs for the folk-rockers performing the songs. And yet we never feel encumbered or embarrassed by the singer's confession. We never feel sorry for anyone, we only feel like we've been there before.
If You Didn't Laugh You'd Cry has its trouble spots. "Poor People" needs more punch to its lyric to carry it through. "Fatboy" is relatively unintelligible in places and "The Closer" could have benefited from a cleaner mix. And the bedrock banjo jangle that is a motif on their earlier works seems starkly absent at a few points. But perfection was not the point, in fact it would have been anathema to the energy and urgency of this record. If they had spent weeks and months in the studio, this might have turned into Kids in Philly 2, or simply not gotten made at all. This is a new album, a band that's fresh and feisty, but fully aware of the things they are not so good at and the things they are altogether great at. If you stopped listening to Marah, this record says, "Come on back, have a drink." Sooner or later, this record, with its odd familiarity and rich new layers, will compel you to return to an old taproom in South Philly, and Marah will be waiting for you.