[This review was first published in Badaboom Gramophone #3 and appears here with permission.]
Guitarists Richard Conway Jones and Michael Beard create lulling, non-distorted instrumental music that drifts through a variety of techniques on The Marilyn Decade. The song titles from a poem on the inner sleeve are emblematic of The Marilyn Decade’s intended effect, that being meditation and relaxation. “Dawn Chorus” is full of slow volume swells and ambience. “Where Angels Walk” loses the hard strumming in a flood of effects. “Hafted Arthen” has slide guitar and folksy picking over two repeated chords. “You and the Rest of the Day” could be played during a love scene from a Hawaiian Elvis movie — a guitar slowly ascends to charming highs, then slips back down. The album ultimately delivers on its promise, as stated in the liner notes, to “improve your life in some way.” So long as you consider it an improvement to feel heavy-lidded time-displacement.