by Ivy Skarda
On a second album of bedroom hypnagogia, Nourished by Time’s Marcus Brown channels the occult and the psychedelic for his most expansive, ambitious undertaking yet in the form of The Passionate Ones. Tales of the overworked, the spiritually troubled and the lovesick are threaded together by the Baltimore pop guru’s homespun, charmingly singular songcraft, underscored by a profound love of the game.
Brown’s addictive 2023 debut Erotic Probiotic 2 smudged textures of hazy R&B, snappy 80s freestyle, and retrofitted chillwave for a delightfully DIY vision of pop’s kaleidoscopic present, future, and past. He’s found unique ways to put his skills to test with each new release – for EP2, he learned Ableton and constructed the entire project within the software’s walls. The Passionate Ones sees him take on the art of sampling, bringing remnants of the past into his post-modern fold. The shuffling drum break on “It’s Time” sounds yanked straight from a dusty crate of vintage soul records, while a chipmunked Labi Siffre vocal run on lead single “Max Potential” cuts through the track’s roaring guitars into a searing lead melody.
The world-building aspects of a Nourished by Time record aren’t limited to Brown’s tendency to blur genre conventions, though – The Passionate Ones is just as concerned with shifting perspectives between a cast of working-class characters, who are all really just trying their best to navigate an oft-unforgiving climate. Brown meets a freelance psychic on the woozy “Idiot in the Park”, taking a spiritual detour as he reckons with a newfound sense of mortality. “9 2 5” pings between bouncy Baltimore club rhythms and shimmering piano stabs for a four-on-the-floor tale of an overworked and underpaid artist, an autobiographical narrative inspired by Brown’s own time working dead-end jobs during those interstitial periods of our lives. This is purely proletariat pop, as he coos “may they multiply you, let the river guide you / You won’t always be here, to be tricked and lied to,” mourning the perceived death of his individualism for the uncouth rise of grindset culture.
That being said, The Passionate Ones is at its very best when Brown taps into his truest calling: making love songs for the end of the world. The synth-laced waltz of “Tossed Away” flows solemnly into the downtempo keys of “When the War Is Over” – both are soul-scorching, somber musings that stir up haunting visions of romance in the end times. The Passionate Ones is inseparable from the world that it was brought into, an unstable landscape where the ground is constantly shifting underneath Brown’s feet. His world ends up looking a lot like ours. Maybe the album’s greatest achievement is its unwillingness to succumb to the dystopia that engulfs it, instead vying for the most radical route – one that heralds the exhilarating pursuit of passion above all else. The chorus of “Max Potential” almost serves as a mantra: “If I’m gonna go insane, at least I’m loved by you / If my heart should burst or break, it was overdue.” If Brown’s going out, he’s gonna go out swinging.