Currently comprised of founding member Long Island-born, Brooklyn-based Sarik Kumar (vocals, guitar) with Wes Wynne (guitar), Craig Stauber (drums) and Justin Lieberthal (bass), the Brooklyn-based dream pop act Mars Motel can trace its origins to a series of psych rock and Brit Pop demos Kumar wrote and recorded during his senior year of high school. As the story goes, those early demos were forgotten for quite some time with Kumar eventually moving to Greenpoint. where he began writing and performing with local indie pop act Twin Wave for about a three year period between 2013 and 2016. Interestingly enough, Kumar rediscovered those old demos while visiting his childhood home and was inspired to embark on a new creative venture as the lead singer and primary songwriter.
To flesh out the band’s sound, Kumar recruited his current bandmates and since their formation they’ve received attention for a sound that draws from 90s Britpop and early 2000s NYC post-punk. The band’s latest effort, The Eclipse Sessions is a five song live EP filmed and recorded at Mission Sound on August 21, 2017, during the first solar eclipse across the contiguous US in 38 years and the EP features a handful of their first singles — “The Enemy,” “Green,” “It’s Here Tonight” and two previously unreleased B-sides “Hit The Floor” and “City Streets” The band’s latest single from the sessions “Green,” was the second single the band ever released, and the song is an atmospheric and moodily mid-tempo track centered around shimmering guitar chords played through delay and effects pedals, a propulsive rhythm section and a soaring hook. And while clearly indebted to 120 Minutes era alt rock, the song thematically focuses on a profound emotional connection between lovers — in this case, one that has just died and the other, who is mourning their partner’s loss. Interestingly, the lover who died is stuck in purgatory, watching their living partner moving through life in despair and chaos, trapped in a different sort of purgatory.
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