Today, Chicago based five-piece Marital Bed have announced their self-titled debut album which is set for release on 4 December.
Having met through a random encounter at a bar, Marital Bed assembled as essentially strangers. Honing their sound in singer/songwriter Charissa Jene Lindquist tiny 2nd floor apartment in the Chicago’s Ukrainian Village district, the band’s sound echoes their name, evoking innocence, repression, and holy matrimony, but also something sinister, erotic, and archaic. Often labelled “art rock”, “new wave”, or “post-punk”, the band pride themselves on drawing from “whatever the song calls for”. All those genre tags are fair deductions on the face of things but on Marital Bed the band augment this with TV and radio samples, noise, Wurlitzer, analogue and digital synth, and saxophone, while manipulating their traditionally recorded drum tracks to create an uncanny effect.
To mark the announcement of their album the band have shared new single ‘Ghost’. A demented spin on a 60’s girl group style pop song, the track perfectly encapsulates Marital Bed’s free-form approach to songwriting. At once exhilarating and disconcerting, the ‘Ghost’ sees discordant guitars twist and warp around shuffled vocal layers, as the palpitating beat repeatedly races and stumbles.
Speaking on the single, Lindquist says:
“Instead of it focusing on heart break or boys, the lyrics explore a young woman uncovering the fact that a rich powerful man she is having an affair with is in communion with a dark, sinister force. I wrote it after having a vivid nightmare about Elon Musk and Grimes. This was during the peak of the Jeffrey Epstein drama surrounding Trump’s 2nd election, which I assume was a major subconscious influence on the lyrics.”
The single is accompanied by a new short film-style video, where a young woman (played by Lindquist) spends a night with a vampiric old man and is later ritualistically murdered by his three undead wives only to be resurrected as a mindless trophy wife.
For more information on Marital Bed please check their instagram.