On their third album, Maria BC has managed to blend a sense of fragility with a hard, almost uncompromising certainty. Their songs are both fragile and assertive. It’s not exactly a balance of forces, though—it’s not quite that. It’s something that arises from the need to look at the world, whether in a micro way, focused on oneself, or in a macro way, shifted toward an idea of machine control—not so much tied to science fiction, but more to a certain post-industrial concept, revitalized for today. Listening to Marathon brings Bruce Springsteen to mind. Nebraska, of course, but not only that.
There’s nothing new here. On the previous album, Spike Field, also released on Sacred Bones in 2023, there were hints of this potential.
The surprise of Marathon is how it fills so many gaps, how Maria BC manages to link intimacy to a general pain, how they manage to turn a noisy gray into every color—and make them all matter—and how this oscillates between folk, soft rock, and 90s American indie, without championing any one of them.
Marathon is understated in the way it mourns the present, in how it despairs for the future. It is not a cry for help, because it does not lament its existence; it is a test of the state of things today. And, as such, it is not afraid of one day being put to the test of time. It is likely to survive.
Maria BC brings these songs to Lisbon—songs that would serve well as a soundtrack for 2026, at a time when, we speculate, people will begin to celebrate this album as one of the best of the year. Marathon encompasses the whole world of today—our uncertainties, our dissatisfactions, and also everything that is missing.
AS