If you want to be counted
If you want to be seen
Then you can never be free
Not me
Black Marble, the long-running solo project of synth musician Chris Stewart, will return this summer with Life in Small Spaces, his first full-length album since 2021’s Fast Idol. The record is due on August 21, 2026, via Sacred Bones, and its announcement comes with a new single, “Jim Carol New Year,” alongside a 16mm video directed by Clayton Hunt.
The title carries a sly double meaning, nodding to author, poet, and musician Jim Carroll while brushing against the sing-song formality of holiday carols. The song itself is less festive than the name suggests, though it moves with a dry, almost buoyant touch. Stewart sets a rhythmic synth figure against a clipped, cool vocal delivery, letting the track drift between deadpan humour and a serious suspicion of authority, belief, approval, and all the social traps dressed up as advice.
Jim Carol New Year casts a skeptical eye on the voices that claim authority over modern life: teachers, preachers, critics, experts, and anyone else selling certainty as salvation. Stewart turns the repeated phrase “I forgot my money” into a dry punchline and a philosophical dodge, as if the speaker has wandered into the marketplace of bad advice and left his wallet at home on purpose. The song treats public approval, easy belief, and social belonging as traps dressed up as rewards, while its brighter melodic movement gives the critique a sly lift. Beneath the humour sits a more personal bruise, with failed intimacy and self-recognition slipping into the frame, deepening the song’s argument about freedom, compromise, and the cost of being seen.
“If you want to be free,” Stewart says, “you have to watch out for some of life’s classic pitfalls.”
Black Marble has a gift for making private unease feel oddly aerodynamic, and Stewart applies that instinct to a song about doubt as self-preservation. The arrangement glides with a melody that carries the critique in clean lines instead of forcing the point. Its charm works as camouflage for a tougher thought: the desire to be recognized can become its own quiet trap.
“Chris had an idea of a house in the distance with two travelers being drawn toward it,” director Clayton Hunt shares regarding the video. “We wanted each traveler to represent a different version of the journey. One traveler struggled unprotected against the landscape, the other was cautious, outfitted in an orange hazmat – type suit. I decided to shoot 16mm and capture everything against the green landscape, creating a vibrant contrast. That imagery helped guide the production and inform the story.”
Hunt’s video gives the single a spare, strange visual frame. Rather than crowding the song with plot, the clip follows two travelers drawn toward a distant house. One moves exposed through the open landscape, while the other proceeds with caution in an orange hazmat-type suit. The image is simple enough to read in several directions: risk and protection, instinct and fear, faith and armor, two ways of moving toward the same uncertain promise. The 16mm format suits Black Marble’s current turn toward a more physical band-room feel.
Watch the video for Jim Carol New Year below:
Black Marble’s Life in Small Spaces finds Stewart trading some of his usual synth density for staccato guitar lines inspired by early American left-of-the-dial college radio, with reference points including Pylon, The Necessaries, and R. Stevie Moore. Live drum samples, informed by Wire’s clean metronomic economy, help shift the project toward a leaner, more tactile sound. Stewart describes the album as a record about the music industry, authenticity, and the question of how independent artists survive without surrendering the private logic that made the work worth making in the first place.
“I always knew a lot of people in music struggled to make ends meet, but it surprised me to learn that the people you thought would be doing well often weren’t. For me, seeing the business from the inside like that changed how I looked at things. When I looked up to see a new artist on a billboard, I started to wonder, will I one day have to pretend to be something I’m not, in order to succeed? The life of an artist goes on after your moment ends, you know? So who do you want to be in the end and how do you want to be seen by the people that know you? I made Life In Small Spaces while thinking about that, and for me, it serves as my own ideal for living an artistic life. I’m doing it as a vocation, not some last ditch effort to escape to some other world. I made this record not only as a way of saying that, but as a way of saying it’s ok to feel that way. It’s ok for people to sacrifice some degree of creature comfort in order to live a life you believe in. And it doesn’t have to be an endless search for something just out of reach, it can be a permanent way of being and something that sustains you.”
In that sense, Jim Carol New Year makes for a pointed first dispatch. Its melody may turn lightly, but its message keeps its composure: beware the expert, distrust the sales pitch, and save your freedom for something worth more than being seen.
Pre-Order/Save Life in Small Spaces out August 21st on Sacred Bones HERE
Life in Small Spaces by Black Marble
Saturday, August 22 — Santa Ana, CA — Constellation Room at the Observatory
Sunday, August 23 — Los Angeles, CA — 1720
Tuesday, August 25 — San Francisco, CA — Rickshaw Stop
Wednesday, August 26 — Sacramento, CA — Harlow’s
Friday, August 28 — Seattle, WA — The Crocodile
Saturday, August 29 — Portland, OR — Wonder Ballroom
Sunday, August 30 — Boise, ID — Shrine Social Club
Monday, August 31 — Salt Lake City, UT — Urban Lounge
Tuesday, September 1 — Denver, CO — The Federal Theatre
Thursday, September 3 — Omaha, NE — Slowdown
Friday, September 4 — Minneapolis, MN — Fine Line
Saturday, September 5 — Chicago, IL — Thalia Hall
Sunday, September 6 — Detroit, MI — El Club
Monday, September 7 — Toronto, ON — Lee’s Palace
Tuesday, September 8 — Montreal, QC — La Sala Rosa
Thursday, September 10 — New York City, NY — Webster Hall
Friday, September 11 — Philadelphia, PA — Union Transfer
Saturday, September 12 — Baltimore, MD — Ottobar
Monday, September 14 — Raleigh, NC — Kings
Tuesday, September 15 — Atlanta, GA — The Earl
Thursday, September 17 — Houston, TX — White Oak Music Hall Upstairs
Friday, September 18 — Dallas, TX — Club Dada
Saturday, September 19 — Austin, TX — 29th Street Ballroom
* w/ The Serfs. # w/ Public Circuit. (and Jimmy Cicero for select shows)
Follow Black Marble:
Instagram
Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Bandcamp
The post Black Marble Returns With Video for “Jim Carol New Year” — New Album “Life in Small Spaces” Announced! appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
