When the Rolling Stones recorded “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in 1965, dissatisfaction came crackling through transistor radios amid advertising pitches, postwar consumer plenty, sexual frustration, and the suspicion that modern life was selling desires it could never fulfill. But what if the song were written now? It very well might confront a stranger predicament: every conceivable choice within reach, every connection replaceable, and the growing fear that access to anything and everything has left us satisfied by almost nothing. Brooklyn-based artist Black Marble answers that “What If?” with Anything, carrying the old complaint into an era of endless options and easy exits.
Anything begins with a clipped guitar figure that could have slipped out of a college station at 2 a.m., back when radio still felt like a clubhouse run by sleep-deprived obsessives with bad posture and excellent record collections. Chris Stewart has spent fourteen years making pop music with machines that hum, wobble, and occasionally seem ready to electrocute the landlord, yet this track carries a springy immediacy, a small-room bounce built from dry drums, chiming guitar, and keyboards that hover at the edge of the frame. You can hear the dust on the knobs, which is far more persuasive than another immaculate digital coffin.
The tune moves fast enough to suggest pleasure, while Stewart’s voice drifts through it with the calm of a man discovering that every available exit leads to another room full of way too many possibilities. The new guitar emphasis gives Black Marble a leaner body. Pylon and Wire hover nearby as useful ancestors, though Stewart avoids museum polish. The instruments feel handled, bumped, and left with fingerprints.
“I want to dream us up. I’ll do anything, but it’s not enough!” This line lands with the blunt embarrassment of admitting that abundance can feel like starvation. Everybody has options, everybody has a profile, everybody can vanish before breakfast, and somehow the modern romance has become a customer-service portal where nobody can find the button marked “human being.”
“Anything is basically a bedroom pop version of Satisfaction but it trades the carnal undertones for more of a domestic pastiche,” says Stewart. “…the center of the struggle is less about finding temporary satisfaction, but that today’s glut of options and opportunities gives every relationship an expiration date, every encounter an easy off ramp and every minor annoyance a reason to move on. The sentiment is the same from those old days, lack of fulfillment, but it’s due to modern circumstances. It feels like we have every option at our fingertips but we’re somehow losing the ability to connect.”
Stewart follows the idea into the apartment, where resentment breeds beside the open window and friendship keeps showing up unannounced. His revolution is domestic, cramped, and slightly ridiculous, which makes it believable. Mick Jagger wanted release; Stewart sounds trapped inside the endless menu, scrolling past intimacy until the screen goes dim.
Scott Kiernan’s video, shot at Various/Artists in New York City, converts that unease into visual overload. Images pile up with the appetite of a browser containing forty tabs, while Stewart remains meditative at the center, present yet swallowed by the barrage. The clip makes overstimulation feel comic and exhausting, a public carnival staged around private disconnection.
Watch Anything below:
Anything is pop for people who suspect convenience has made them lonelier. Its hook smiles with one side of its mouth, its rhythm keeps moving, and its central ache stays lodged beneath the floorboards. Stewart has made a fine little machine for dancing around the knowledge that freedom, multiplied without limit, can become another form of confinement.
Listen to Anything below. You can pre-order Life in Small Spaces, out August 21st on Sacred Bones, here.
Life in Small Spaces by Black Marble
Tour Dates:
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:
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The post “It’s Not Enough” — Black Marble Has Too Many Options, But No Satisfaction in Video for “Anything” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
