Far Out There Character Sountrack: Marshall

Okay, this is another soundtrack I was a little iffy about whether or not to do right now. I THOUGHT that by this point in 2020, Marshall would have made enough appearances in the comic for everybody would have a clear idea of, ya know, who he even IS. As it happens, though, everything everywhere went and fell apart RIGHT as he was starting to make regular appearances. Of course, “regular” is the key word here. Late 2019 may have been the first time Marshall was addressed by name, but it was FAAAAR from the first time he’d been teased in the comic. Heck, as I write this, I just finished re-posting a page from 2015 where Marshall made an early bird cameo… and that wasn’t even his first. In fact, May was appearing exactly those same early cameos, and I posted HER soundtrack months ago. The thing is, though, May’s a pretty easy character to get a handle on right away, so it’s not hard to see why punchy, excitable British Invasion pop works for her. Marshall’s most defining character trait in the appearances we’ve seen so far is his tendency to shrink into the background behind the more noisy characters. There’s more to the kid, but I dunno if anyone other than me can pick up on it from what little evidence has been made public so far.

So why go ahead with posting his soundtrack? …meh, I just felt like it.  Aunt Dominoes got a soundtrack blog, and she’s made even fewer appearances; I just liked the soundtrack enough that I wanted to do something nice for myself. That’s kind of what’s going on here. Marshall’s soundtrack is one of the ones I worked out YEARS before his official debut, and it’s also one of the ones I pull out the most, just for casual listening. I LOVE how the song sequencing on this one turned out, it’s got some of the most natural transitions between tracks of any Far Out There, and it’s just a super chill, relaxing experience overall. So you know what? Screw it! I’ve got enough to stress out about right now! I’m gonna give myself another treat and write about another set of songs I really like. AND GET PAID FOR IT! (Thanks as always for that, by the way)

The fact that this is a supremely chill set of tunes DOES tell you a lot about Marshall on it’s own, of course. Marshall’s a shy, gentle, unassuming soul, so his soundtrack is of course going to lean heavily on soft, peaceful background music. In particular, Marshal favors the smoother side of early 00s-era Indie Pop, with more than a little Downtempo thrown in. Actually, there’s more than a little overlap with Mariska’s Indie/Trip-Hop style, which is one of those things that makes WAY too much sense to have ever been deliberate. Mariska is Marshall’s Nitpicking mentor, of COURSE some of her tastes would rub off on the kid! Marshall leans more on the softer side though, with less of the drum tracks and more of an emphasis on airy harmonies.  As with Mariska’s soundtrack, I’ve got a lot of nostalgia wrapped up in a lot of these songs, but even people without my warm fuzzy bias will hopefully get the same calming, toned-down vibe from the soundtrack that I do, and in the process experience the modest essence of what it is to be Marshall. (What a WEIRD sentence)

The MVP of Marshall’s soundtrack is Air, who sure enough were on Mariska’s soundtrack too, though I’ve been good about avoiding repeat tracks so far. The whole playlist kicks off with “Cherry Blossom Girl,” then take a little journey all across their discography with “J’ai Dormi Sous L’eau,” “Sing Sang Sung,” and “New Star In The Sky” (they’re off Talkie Walkie, Premiers Symptomes, Love 2, and Moon Safari respectively).  Air just might be one of the most appropriately-named musical acts in history, because these songs feel like they’re about to float away into the aether at a moment’s notice. Air has long been a popular pick for soundtracks (as of my writing this, their last original album has been a collection of ambient music for play in an art museum) and all of these songs are prime musical wallpaper… in a good way, I mean. Comforting and tranquil, not, ya know, boring.

Another familiar face from Mariska’s playlist is The Flaming Lips, who make three appearances here. Arguably their most famous song, “Do You Realize??” off Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, is the climactic song on Marshall’s soundtrack. The less successful but probably better regarded The Soft Bulletin is further represented by “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and “Sleeping On The Roof.” All three songs find The Flaming Lips at their must lush and ethereal, not as polished as Air’s songs but surpassing them in pure spaciness. Also, it just now hits me that the two songs with lyrics, “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate” and “Do You Realize??” (“Sleeping On The Roof” is an instrumental) are two of me many, many songs Wayne Coyne has written about the inevitability of death. Sort of a morbid subject matter for a character I’ve been putting over as calm and gentle and what have you. Then again, Coyne is all about the whole “peace and positivity by means of nihilism” mindset, and since we’ve ALSO seen Marshall being a rare voice of reason in the midst of all these raving weirdos, maybe it does make sense for him to listen to songs that strive to find the positive in the most depressing topic ever.

Another artist with three tracks is Jim Noir, with “All Right” and “Ships and Clouds” off his self-titled debut and “Key of C” from Tower of Love. Jim Noir is a bit less spacy than The Flaming Lips and a LOT more Lo-Fi than Air, sort of like early Tame Impala with a huge injection of Brian Wilson whimsy. Actually, Noir’s habit of building entire songs out of single, repeating verses DOES evoke the same comfortable grooves as Air’s looping beats and samples, even if getting there by more ramshackle means. It makes sense to ME when I’M listening to it, anyway, and does a good job of establishing that Marshall isn’t TOTALLY joyless.

And speaking of Brian Wilson, the final artist to appear more than once on Marshall’s soundtrack is The Beach Boys… but not the Sun, Surf & Hot Rods Beach Boys you’re thinking of. No, this the early 70s Beach Boys, at the height of their too-little-too-late attempt to finally be hip and counter-culture and relevant again, which they never truly pulled off (prompting them to give up, spend decades as overlords of the oldies show hermit kingdom, and start paling around with John Stamos). There’s still some good music in that period, though, twisting the classic Beach Boys sound in weird, Prog-y directions. The two songs on Marshall’s soundtrack both hail from the ironically titled Surf’s Up: Carl Wilson’s breakout composition “Feel Flows” and Brian’s uncharacteristicly existential “’Til I Die” (represented here in a 2019 remix). Honestly, both songs fit amid the Chillout and Indie Pop songs here then they do any collection of familiar Beach Boys oldies.

Then again, there IS a pretty strong Beach Boys influence amid the songs all over this playlist, even down to the one-song artists who make up the remainder of the soundtrack. The Apples In Stereo, headed up by Brian Wilson superfan Robert Schneider, contributes the weird vocorder/a capella track “Strange Solar System,” which is basically what The Beach Boys would sound like if they were assimilated by The Borg. Meanwhile, “Tracy Hide” by The Wondermints sounds so much like something off of Pet Sounds that Brian Wilson actually hired The Wondermints to be his backing band.

Moving away from sounding like The Beach Boys, we have Zero 7, who basically established an entire career out of sounding just like Air. Not that that’s a bad thing, mind you. Their featured song here, “Destiny” just might be one of my favorite songs ever, and is definitely a better Air song than half the songs Air themselves ever recorded.

Existing in their own little bubbles in this playlist, influence-wise, Indie darlings provide “Les Bon Bons Des Raisons,” which closes off their Sound-Dust album and comes CLOSE to wrapping up this soundtrack. Donovan’s “Celeste” is the actual last full song, which again was the climactic final chapter of his Sunshine Superman album, and a gentle flower power anthem that could easily have been on Trigger’s playlist if I hadn’t already included several different Donovan songs there. The FINAL final track on Marshall’s soundtrack, though, is by City Pop artist EPO (a.k.a. Eiko Sato): “See You Next Side Again.” Ironically, it’s NOT the last track of it’s particular record, only the end of side one of the JOEPO~1981KHz EP. It does, however, mean I MANAGED TO SLIP ONE JAPANESE SONG IN RIGHT THERE AT THE END! GO ME!

(For a soundtrack that keep putting over as being calm and relaxing, Marshall’s was one of the more frustrating YouTube Playlists to put together in a while. There may not be any Beatles tracks to worry about this time, but I definitely had trouble finding accessible versions of several songs here. For one thing, “Les Bon Bons Des Raisons” just doesn’t seem to exist on YouTube outside of the autoposts for Music, at least not in any post that I could find from my region. I seem to recall Stereolab being in that awkward grey area of no longer being that hip but still being on a big label with harsh copyright defense by the time Sound-Dust came out, so I guess it’s not surprising there’s no fan postings to be found. Point is, anybody in the usual suspects of disallowed countries will have to be using a proxy to hear that one. Sorry. Speaking of the usual, “See You Next Side Again” is blocked in Japan because, you know, Japan. Much more unexpected is the two Beach Boys tracks, both of which are consistently, absolutely block in all forms… in Denmark. Nowhere else, just Denmark, but it’s THOROUGH. I tried four or five postings of both songs, and they were ALL blocked in Denmark and Denmark alone. I can’t even BEGIN to speculate what bizarre copyright hiccup caused that, but the Beach Boys WERE in the midst of that “hey, let’s just start out OWN record label!” phase that all big bands go through when Surf’s Up was released. There’s no limit to the wonky legal wrangling that can occur when artists try to play businessman, but even by those standards I can’t imagine how a SCREW YOU DENMARK clause would end up emerging. On the happier side, Donovan’s “Celeste” was quite easy to find unblocked, despite previous attempts suggesting that Donovan was another one of those artists heavily blocked in certain regions. Then again, “Celeste” is one of those songs everybody seems to forget is even on Sunshine Superman, so maybe even the copyright bots don’t remember it?)

Marshall's YouTube Playlist