On the Rise
MRCH

It’s 6am in Phoenix, Arizona and Mickey, alongside drummer Jesse Pangburn, sit dazed in front of the backdrop of their home studio. “Apparently this is our wheelhouse?” he laughs. Their music, a glistening blend of alt, electro-pop, wall of sound guitars and close vocals touches influences from Metric to Purity Ring and just feels cinematic, even if the footage it accompanies isn’t always tonally aligned.

Calling in before heading to work to talk about their new EP,TV Bliss, the married duo get more animated once talk turns to the box, although that could be the coffee kicking in. Across their previous releases, MRCH (pronounced March) have enjoyed success getting their music used in a broad range of shows, including Thirteen Reasons Why, The Twilight Zone and Search Party.

The small screen is also the inspiration for their new EP. Growing up, Mickey’s mother moved her across the country from Tennessee to Arizona, trying to hide from her father. Keeping a low profile and lying about her background felt isolating, and it was through the TV that she formed connections and found escape.

Her mum wasn’t musical, but had a passion for old school country and rock n roll. Originally from Sevierville, Tennessee, near where Dolly Parton was raised, her music was an absolute in Mickey’s youth. “She’s like a goddess. You’re not allowed to not listen to Dolly,” she laughs. “It has a special place in my heart, that time of my life, listening to Guns n Roses with my mom and watching November Rain. She was a country-rocker chick.”

Quite the opposite, Jesse grew up on metal. “In small town USA, you either default to country or somehow you go to the metal stuff. Somehow I found myself in the metal stuff.” he laughs.

Born in Colorado, Jesse moved to Prescott, Arizona at the age of three. He was homeschooled for a while, drums taking precedence over anything else. “I had a very musical family, which is great,” he smiles. “Neighbours would come over and complain and my dad loved playing guitar and jamming with his sons, so he would occasionally tell them, ‘I don’t know what you mean! It’s not that loud to me! Why don’t you come back at 9pm if it’s still too loud!’”

Mickey grew up an hour or so away in the mining town of Bagdad before moving to Prescott to finish high school. The pair met in a record shop and quickly became friends. At the time, Mickey was making music inspired by the likes of Alanis Morissette, while Jesse had other ideas. “When Mickey and I first started hanging out and talking about jamming I would play her the most obnoxious death metal and then Sammy Davis Jr. ‘The Candy Man’ and just be like, I’m kinda thinking somewhere in here,” he laughs. “She’s like, ‘What? Who are you?’”

It wasn’t until after their wedding that they actually started making music together. In an effort to improve in their trade, they moved to Phoenix to studio jazz at the local college. “Growing up in Prescott, any time you mentioned that you wanted to be an artist it was really like, ‘That’s cute - what are you gonna do for real?’ I think it was our attempt to take it seriously and we didn’t know what else to do.”

At first they formed a band, but found managing the expectations and behaviours of their fellow members to be an unwanted challenge. So instead, they turned to Ableton. “It’s always on time for band practice, it shows up, it knows its parts,” laughs Jesse.

They began releasing music and building a name for themselves around the city, but the burden of being completely DIY became too heavy. In late 2019, MRCH went on hiatus and Mickey and Jesse began working with local label Fervor Records on a new project, Violet Choir.

But just as they were about to get underway with the release, the pandemic kicked in and tabled all their plans. “It’s this weird time of you’re trying to be creative, you’re trying to finish this thing but also it’s early 2020 and even at that point we’d started gearing up,” says Jesse. “Your schedule gets wiped clean once the realities set in of what was going on.”

The pair returned to MRCH and began writing. Even though their experience with Violet Choir hadn’t gone to plan, one big takeaway was the benefit of collaborating with others, especially a producer. “I think that was eye-opening for us,” Jesse says. “We wanted to collaborate, we wanted someone pushing us and giving us different ideas and we definitely got that.”

They began to write with local musician Jim Adkins from the band Jimmy Eat World. Simultaneously, Mickey was in touch with Wolf Alice’s manager Stephen Taverner having previously reached out to him about potentially supporting the band. “I knew it wouldn’t happen, but I was like, let’s try,” she smiles. “I emailed Stephen and he was so nice and actually got back and was like, I like what I’m hearing. If you want to send more feel free. So when we started getting the EP stuff written he was a sounding board.”

The result is TV Bliss, a rush of cinematic soundscapes and gloriously dense pop moments that carry you away like a season finale. EP opener “Cherry Painted Eyes” kicks off with a burst of bright melody before shimmering into a timeless chorus while recent single “Easiest To Bend” teases with a staccato loop before exploding into a galaxy of encapsulating synths. Lead track “Stars Align” is a driving pulse of alt-rock that playfully lingers then explodes. Across the EP, Mickey’s hushed vocal is both delicate and commanding, drawing on her 90s influences and morphing them with Jesse’s strident sonics.

Working with others helped MRCH not only push their sonic boundaries and develop their writing, it also left them with enough free time for TV. “Have you seenThe Bear? I just think, currently, they’re getting a lot of solid syncs,” smiles Mickey. “I grew up watching Dawson's Creek or Gilmore Girls and there’s all this great music in those. I’d go to the library and get those compilation discs. The first time I heard Tegan and Sara was because it was on a CD of Grey’s Anatomy season three. That’s truly what did it for me. I just want to have that shot at the end of the show, like, today’s music was… and they’ll show the CD cover. That was so cool.”