Brawlin' Angels

Dave Bielanko on Marah's past and what's to come

by A.D. Amorosi

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I didn't care for Marah's first records, and frontman Dave Bielanko didn't care for my not caring and repeated harangues. Time passed, things sobered up, they moved to Brooklyn — and made the epic they always promised to make. If Angels of Destruction is any indication of things to come, their trajectory is upwardly poetic. It's time to kiss and make up, or at least not punch each other in the face.

City Paper: Ours is one of the worst relationships between journalist and artist. Real come-to-blows shit.

Dave Bielanko: We most definitely were losing the plot. And what was the point, anyway? But the very nature of this band I've had with my brother is that we play with our best friends — our only friends, really — and if and when that came into question, there was no safety zone. It's just like the nature of those first records and being landlocked in Philly — honest and reactionary. We're doing the only thing we know what and how to do. Can you find a balance of art and life to go forward? That was and is the question.

CP: Did you find the balance?

DB: I found the best balance I can for now. I'm fortunate to be here. Maybe we're not doing what's relevant in a pop music sense or maybe we made enemies with the wrong people, but we found ourselves still alive with our best work ahead of us.

CP: When you started, y'all got hailed, then lambasted, for the Asbury Park sound. Fast forward to the present and you've got Arcade Fire and the Killers. What say you?

DB: Growing up in Philly, Bruce's music seemed untouchable, larger than life. We didn't think we were necessarily doing anything like that. It's that East Coast thing. Even talking to Bruce, you find there's a mutual affection for the Ronettes and such — other cool and honest influences on both of us.

CP: I suspect their appropriation of Born to Run is something of a fashion statement.

DB: Bruce is cool now. But he was cool in 1975.

CP: You've been in a band forever with your brother. What's changed?

DB: There's a lot between us, of course, that's unspoken. But if I didn't get sober, there'd be no band. I was finding new ways to bottom out. But even now, I don't think I'm doing this healthy 12-step thing. I feel like an alcoholic that doesn't drink.

CP: So you're just replacing booze with work? How many songs did you come into this project with?

DB: Thirty-three songs — that's the sober thing. It was supposed to be a double album called A Sad Whore Wins the Lottery. But then I realized I'm on an independent label and that I might be out of my league. So this is the first movement of where we're going. Who knows where it leads — at the point where it's the only step to take, I took that one. It's a scary process.

CP: You moved to Brooklyn right when everybody from Brooklyn was moving to Philly and filled a song like "Angels on a Passing Train" with bits of both neighborhoods. What gives?

DB: Greenpoint, man. We thought we were bringing the banjo out of Philly and the Mummers tradition. Can we mock that? But fucking around with Eastern European influences … I guess it's more righteous feeling because we wrote that song in a Polish coffeehouse in Brooklyn.

CP: How does Greenpoint compare to where you come from, Point Breeze?

DB: When my girlfriend and I picked the spot, I was like, I could live here. It reminded me of Philly. I didn't want to live above the Cup o' Noodles on Times Square. But at that time, I had to get out of Philly. I was so depressed. I'm a pretty fucked-up person and I was really feeling sad and beat up. Thank God it happened because I met the other elements of the band there. Kirk's an idiot savant piano player who lived in a bus and got stabbed in a crack deal. We can relate to each other. When I was in Brooklyn and Serge was in Utah, Kirk and I worked out songs on piano. Christine doesn't know rock 'n' roll music. She knows how to play standards in hotels. That's amazing. But we've always been this band that, if we didn't have to take guitars with us, that'd be cool. Maybe we could read the songs. Musicianship wasn't the essence. Bring the natural talent and soul and let that be the star of the show. Now we've refined it just a little bit with her.

Marah Fri., Dec. 7, 9 p.m., $18-$20, Fillmore at the TLA, 334 South St., 215-336-2000