The album art, by Bo Bartlett, is the perfect visual representation of the multi-layered themes on Marriage. The songs, like the epics, move in cycles - from the first blush of a thrilling new thing to the 'underworld moment' of the 'The Well''s dirge-like crawl to the woozy singing saw and blistered toes of closer 'The Road,' which tips its hat at - who else? - Cormac McCarthy.

But Rebekah - who did her masters work in epics - helped give it structure in the well-worn fashion of the classics. Such big sounds, themes and richness of detail could have made the record sag under its own weight. This is thanks in large part to strings form Matt Jarrard (cello) and Karyn Lu (violin), as well as Ryan's sound design tinkerings with audio both 'found' around the house and created. Tracks like 'The World Will Take Care of Me' show off the group's range, beginning with nothing but a voice and a guitar and gradually sneaking in layer after layer of sound, creating a sense of something rich and organic, which permeates the album.Ĭrafted in the Goode-Peoples home over the course of four years (and blooming with little intimate Easter eggs, like a recording of their friends sining at a Christmas party, or the voices of the their children), Marriage sounds much bigger than the rooms it was made in.

Marriage displays the grandeur of Arcade Fire's finer moments with the lyrical and emotional heft of Sufjan Steven's more personal cuts. Marriage is also about ambivalence.įor an album to tackle such big and slippery themes, it almost has to be cinematic, and in that regard, Oryx & Crake do not disappoint. Ostensibly, Marriage is about commitment - in a broad sense, not just between romantic partners - but it's even bigger than that. But knowing and seeing are two different things entirely, and Oryx & Crake make hay of the tension that lies between the two loading on Patterson Hood's 'duality of the Southern thing,' abandoned religion and nods to more than one of the great post-apolcalyptic novels of our time for good measure. 'There's a beast in me/and I know you know this,' Ryan sings on 'Strange as You Are,' the opener of the band's latest album, Marriage. Though, chances are they mean it in a totally different way. So, too, do husband and wife Ryan Peoples and Rebekah Goode-Peoples of Atlanta's Oryx & Crake.

Peoples use these words all the time in relation to marriage, in vows and explanations and elegies.

Oryx and crake maddaddam