Over the last 5 years, the multi-instrumentalist duo Mariana Rivals (Brett Middleton & Chris Spada) have been honing and evolving their sound through the release of 3 EPs and a handful of singles.

Recorded during a span of 2 years across the US and Europe, the band’s first LP, Postcards, emphatically leaps ahead from where the band last left off. These songs feel like a band with a new sense of ownership over their sound. The title track, “Postcard” lays a foundation of warm yet delicate ambience with floating guitar riffs and string arrangements that seem to swell in perpetuity.

There is a level of brutal honesty on the songs “Get You Down”, “Take Me Back” and “Couldn’t Say” both in the straight ahead instrumentation and irrefutable hymns. With lyrics like “I’ll give you something better, someone else to blame” or “I want you to stay / I will stop nothing / all things I couldn’t say”, the band seems less concerned with evasive wordplay and more focused on not being misunderstood.

The last song on Postcards, “On My Wave” serves as a Marcel Proustian postcard for the album…conjuring up fond memories from years ago set to the sounds of a distant saxophone and soft jazz like guitar chords.

Postcards establishes a musical destination to send letters from.

The third release from Mariana Rivals, Take/Chroma, expands on the sonic territory that was established on 2016’s release, Monument. While this new set of songs are kindred spirits with their predecessors, the execution differs with its nod to 70s analog warmth and 80s synth textures. Take is a paranoid rocker that uses synths not guitars to be heavier than anything they've released before. The B-Side, Chroma builds from a simple progression to a fully expansive orchestra of synths, vocals and guitars to accompany an out-of-left-field ending that is both foreboding and uplifting.

After the long distance collaboration that was Wasting / Your Madness, the Mariana Rivals recorded much of Monument together in California during the summer of 2015. With the addition of Erin Middleton (The Secret History) on vocals and through taking inspiration from the hazy and brutal coast of Northern California, these songs represent a broad exploration into texture, ambience and loneliness.
 

Mariana Rivals' Wasting / Your Madness pairs post-rock guitar arrangements with a rich melodic perspective on the late quarter-life. These songs are written, performed and produced entirely by Chris Spada and Brett Middleton, in their respective homes in Connecticut and California. As such, the music has an undeniably American quality to it, evoking both open expanses and the escapism born out of life in suburbia.