Marrow

Marrow doesn’t mind if you’re miserable. But they do want you to move your gloomy ass.

How does a trio of classically trained electro-rock musicians spread the word about their tightly crafted lyrics and meticulous production?

With a depressed puppet, a society that celebrates despair and offering their album “Sunshine Enema” in a prescription bottle, of course.

Called a “Top 40 Atari Teenage Riot” (SF Chronicle), to say that Marrow is not your typical electronic band is an understatement. And understatement is not what band members Jeremy Fortes, David Earl and Erin Fortes do.

“We’re serious musicians. We make the kind of music that makes sense to us,” says Erin, who shares the singing and songwriting duties. “But we’re also goofballs who want to surprise people into paying attention. So instead of printing fliers to leave at the record store, we’ll just stage a fake protest in the middle of Union Square with porn stars.”

With their first album, “Quiet Desperation,” Marrow used hard-edged electro-rock to let people embrace the lowest of lows. But with the band’s new album, when the band releases ‘Sunshine Enema,’ this March, they hope that eight tracks of misery with a dance beat add some energy to the dark side.

“You can dance to it, you can drive really fast to it, but you can also sit alone in your room and reflect to it," says Erin.

The track “Use Me” kicks the album off with a forceful backbeat and powerful synth stabs, as Jeremy and Erin’s anguished vocals float above the mix. “Tear You Apart” is an industrial-coated reinterpretation of the She Wants Revenge track, while “Impotent Hack” could easily have soundtracked a ‘Bladerunner’ chase scene.

“We’re clinically unable to do the same thing over and over again. I’m insanely proud of our shock-rock opera, ‘SCABARET!’, I considered ‘Quiet Desperation’ a total triumph, but we have to keep pushing what we do into new territories. With ‘Sunshine Enema,’ we kicked our comfort zones in the face,” says Jeremy Fortes.

The three first worked together on ‘SCABARET!’ in San Francisco’s performance art scene. There, they honed not only their musical talents, but also their knack for attracting attention, shocking and amusing audiences for five years.

Today, Marrow’s dichotomy is entirely between their professional musicianship and their attention getting antics – whether it’s a website and infomercials for their fake pet cause, The Society for the Advancement of Despair, or viral videos that attract the attention of pop culture blogs like Laughing Squid, Pirate Cat Radio or Tiny Nibbles.

While it may be all fun, games and marketing that first draws people in, it’s their strong classical and jazz roots, their shared fixation on industrial music and an inability to create anything less than 100% polished that keeps them motivated and keeps them gaining fans.

“Take three people who love electronic music, desperate to work with other performers who have serious musicianship and that thrive on surreal stage exploits and put us in the same situation and it just happens. Once Jeremy, Erin and I were around each other, forming Marrow was inevitable,” says keyboardist and producer David Earl.