The Marsh Family – “Hollow Chapters”

The album cover caught me first. A massive old tree rising out of a canyon, a bench sitting at its base next to an hourglass, a bird overhead, and a hollow cut into the trunk like an entrance to somewhere. It’s a strange image, quiet and a bit eerie, it fits the record.

Hollow Chapters is The Marsh Family’s debut album, and it goes to some genuinely heavy places. Songs about grief, anger, Alexei Navalny, the protests in Iran. Not what you’d necessarily expect, and they don’t handle any of it lightly. “You Were Gone” is a grief song that actually gets it right, no cheap uplift, just the feeling of missing someone specific. “Zan Zendegi Azadi” has real weight behind it. The six of them sing together in a way that’s hard to fake, and the record moves across styles, folk, reggae rock, bigger orchestral builds, without losing the thread. My favorite track is “Turn That Groove Around”.

A family group funding their debut on crowdfunding and writing about Russian dissidents is not a normal story. I keep thinking about that. This is an album made by people who clearly had things they needed to say, and they took their time saying them. Worth your full attention. Go back and find their earlier work too, the viral videos are where this all started, and following them now makes sense.