Black Marble's Chris Stewarts recently tweeted his and I couldn't help but laugh. It's true. Stewarts' dark wave sound is immediately reminiscent of New Order and quite frankly that IS awesome, although I would argue that they've got a lot of uniqueness to their sound. I had followed him on Twitter to get news about the new album, but was so pleased to instead find just a sarcastic guy throwing out some weird, witty one-offs. A few days ago it was opinions on Lexus, before that some words of wisdom to Republicans on GrubHub.

I was mad somebody flamed me by saying my band sounds like “New Order played through a trash can” till I realized how awesome that is.

— BLACK MARBLE (@blackmarblenyc) January 6, 2017

Stewarts, who recently relocated from New York City to LA, released It's Immaterial on October 14th of last year, and the album seems to be about this major change, or perhaps anticipating it. His fans have been waiting for about 4 years since his last album, A Different Arrangement, released in 2012, and It's Immaterial does not disappoint. Its much warmer sound is a change but, in my opinion, a cool one – it sounds much less like it's been played through a trash can and instead much fuller. Stewarts seems to float between a sense of displacement and feelings of joy, especially evident in songs like “Frisk” and “Collene”, while the listener is caught up in this emotional back and forth, and (at least in my case) then sucked into it for the rest of the day because these songs are catchy as hell.