Inside the Marble, the debut album from Margaux Bouchegnies plunges you into moments of emotional pandemonium — the aftermath of a reeling heartache, the listless dread that materializes after life events like graduation — leaving you battered and nullified. But like the opaque, cloudy surface of a marble, that turmoil is both agitated and quelled by a deluge of instrumentals produced by the record’s orchestra-sized melodies.

A deeply touching defusion of heartbreak and unruly emotion

At the center of Inside the Marble is a desire to wrangle together all the “big feelings” that Margaux finds herself gripped by. Caught in the current of a break-up, she paddles through regret and longing, haunted by the dissipation and stagnation of romantic and platonic relationships alike. Yet she also gives equal weight to the seemingly trivial incidents that can derail your sanity — revealing how these proverbial last straws, like a gallon of perishable liquid in a broken-down car, leave you a hapless and exasperated mess.

Margaux’s lyrics create deftly piercing sketches of mourning: “I fall right through your heart / It tears me apart,” she admits with grim lucidity on “DNA.” On “I Wouldn’t Want it Any Other Way,” her anguish morphs into a crestfallen sadness as time and distance play their part in eroding the once raw wound. “I thought about you every night and day / Not talking’s pretty strange,” she coos, shifting between acceptance and a pining to be friends. “We’re on a different page / It’s healthier this way.”

That conciliatory, optimistic streak eventually wins out as she steals herself amidst the ethereal aspirations of “Ships,” her voice bobbing melodiously and unfaltering, “Now I’ll take the blow / Tempest and vast / Overboard, no I won’t go.”

A coming of age album that wrestles with life’s big questions

Written over a five-year period after receiving a degree from the New School in New York, Inside the Marble details more than just Margaux’s heartbreak; it also sees her wandering the liminal doldrums of post-graduate life. When the vast, lofty promises of the future leave you only with pestering doubts and icy indecision, any new beginning starts to eerily feel less like an open door and more like a ledge.

Stricken by a formidable paralysis, Margaux glides through dreamily foreboding lullabies, trapped in ambivalent, woe-begotten cycles that leave her with an overwhelming sense of time’s fleeting passage. While “I Can’t Decide,” with its quivering, exigent melody, serves as the synthesis of the record’s themes of dispirited floundering, “Sadie Something” extends those anxieties toward their inevitable end, exploring a young girl’s bedtime daunting but ultimately heartening consideration of death.

Margaux’s probing honesty toward life’s big questions — of purpose and mortality — only enriches the album’s startling, poetic intimacy. Her words offer an earnest reminder, too often dispelled or forgotten, amidst the grand expectations and disappointments obstructing our way forward: “Ride it out / You can take it slow.”

ARTISTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

BEST NEW MUSIC

Big, billowing moments of orchestral splendor

The sonic output of Inside the Marble is simultaneously sweeping and thunderous as it is intricately precise. Many of the album’s soul-seizing moments are made all the more electrifying by the instrumentals that surround Margaux’s revelatory lyricism.

Alongside producer Sahil Ansari, the pair produces a staggering eruption of orchestral beauty between them: the dizzying lilting of an acoustic guitar, rumblings of electric and upright bass, a gloomy mellotron, glimmering piano keys, a Wurlitzer, glockenspiel, nylon string, and twelve-string guitars, endless tape loops, and momentous percussion. That’s not even counting the other talented musicians — like Willem De Koch (trombone), Reid Jenkins (violin), Jahnvi Madan (clarinet), and others — who help weave together its luxuriant sonic tapestry.

You experience and hear every beautifully haunting note as it blends with the others in a magnificent surge of emotion created by waves of sound. The crescendos that flare at the end of “Picture It” or “Make the Move” rocket toward an anthemic catharsis. Others are more gradual, rising alongside the warbly echo of Margaux’s voice as fluttering strings before tangling with the volatile harmonic cacophony that seems to course throughout the record.

Nowhere is that disorienting juxtaposition more breathtaking than in “Dissolve / Resolve,” a melodic transition from dissonance to consonance, jutting guitar scrapes giving way to the twinkle of descending piano keys, warmly glowing horns, and gleaming electric tones.

Cool Gifts for Music Lovers 

The best concert earplugs to protect your hearing
This guitar is adorable! Aspiring musician?
Style & Function: Impress friends at your next party

Margaux could have hitched her poignant words to a simple acoustic melody, and they’d still be devastating. Lucky for all of us, she decided not to reign herself in for Inside the Marble, choosing instead to try and capture all the turbulent, cloudy, but immensely palpable sentiments that seethe inside her. Margaux delivers everything you could hope for in a debut — fiercely incisive, acutely honest, and soundscapes that enthrall, ignite, and leave your heart a bursting wreck.

Words: Steven Ward

Visit Margaux on her Bandcamp and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.