Artist: Marla Mase (backed by Tomás Doncker Band)
CD: Half Life (Feb 25, 2014)
Label: True Groove Records
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There are musicians, there are multi-talented artists, and there are rebels with a cause. New York native Marla Mase comfortably fits all three categories and many more. Besides also being a fierce advocate for women empowerment, this energetic mother of two is an accomplished playwright. In fact, writing for the stage is what Mase is trained to do: her healthy résumé features an MA in Writing and Performance from the New York University. She put her mastery of this particular form of art to good use, scripting a number of plays, including The Canarsie Line, a sold-out show performed at the beginning of 2002 at the Bank Street Theatre. Another of her pieces, ‘A Brief Night Out’ (BNO), metamorphosed into the album that heralded Marla’s arrival on the 
music scene. It is when, on the recommendation of a friend, she began focusing her energies on penning lyrics. Not long after that she hooked up with guitar maestro and genius producer Tomás Doncker, a fellow New Yorker, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Which is not to say that BNO is where it all began for Mase musically. By the time they were pulling out her milk teeth she had sang in a local talent show and was falling in love with the piano, but the meeting with Doncker marked the start of Marla’s journey as a recording artist and the first-fruits of this relationship was Speak. This angry, unapologetically eclectic offering hit the streets in February 2013 and immediately cast Mase as a crusader who would not be restrained by the boundaries of genre. One of the defining cuts on this album was “Piece of Peace”, a cry for peace which she wrote for a UN Global Peace Day concert in Linzhou, China. Speak had critics describing her as a “complicated artist, but one who is very human and easy to relate to” and set the tone perfectly for her follow-up Half-Life. Like its predecessor, Half-Life was released on Doncker’s True Groove production house.
The opener of this eight-track offering, “Drown In Blue” tears its way into your conscience with snarling guitars and frenzied drums. After you’re sufficiently primed for frantic moshing, Marla begins to purr about her efforts to flee from the blues by living life on the fast lane. You can catch your breath on the title track, a jazzy, downtempo cut designed to induce a bit of introspection. Perhaps there should be a highway sign to warn you of the punk flare-up on minute 1:30. But there is none, and the guitars subside just as suddenly as they started, giving way to a brief spoken word session. Marla then bares her soul in theatrical reflections of her life over a quirky track that could have qualified as pop-rock were it not for the horns and all the chaotic sound effects stirred into it. The results probably would have been dismal if the author and performer was not Marla Mase. But in the NY native’s hands this conglomeration of sounds comes out as a fun accompaniment for banal chores.
Again you’re called to meditation and reflection on “The Heart Beats” and you can feel the bonfire crackling and coyotes whining as Marla recites her poetry in a haunting, breathy tone. Bass drums are pounded in a hypnotic rhythm, interrupted only by faded guitar notes distorted almost beyond recognition. You might want to have some marshmallows handy for this one.
Of the octet of songs, the most readily classifiable as radio fodder is “Gaping Hole”. Even here, Marla stays true to herself with deeply personal lyrics depicting a dissatisfied soul searching for something to fill a gaping void. If Marla wished to close out this album with a reminder of her versatility, she couldn’t have done it better than with the jazz-infused “Hold Fast Your Dreams”. Buoyed by gently caressed cymbals, a subdued baseline and dollops of nostalgic piano, Mase whispers words derived from Louise Driscoll’s poem with which the song also shares a title.
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By: Phil Kimm, RockRevolt Magazine Contributor
