Maripool

“Soundtracking days spent in increasingly sunny bedrooms, simultaneously bored but hopeful for the imminent freedom about to be restored.” DIY

“Her music doesn’t quite sound like anyone else…blending shoegaze aspects with 90s indie rock flavours, all pieced together amid a bedroom pop sensibility.” Clash

“The Best New Music” Crack Magazine

“Rippling with dark undertones…Maripool offer company in a world of solitude”. Hard of Hearing

“Captures the aerial melancholy that swirls between the delightful wonders of articulated shoegaze… a witching hour state of deep-blue dreaming.” So Young

Ahead of the release of sophomore EP a day that feels like nothing at all - due 7th June via Californian indie label Smoking Room (Island of Love, Hotline TNT), London-based ‘one girl band’ Maripool shares spidery second teaser ‘isn’t it funny’.

The follow-up to April single ‘not today’ - which counted Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber and Crack Magazine among its fans - ‘isn’t it funny’ once again sees Maripool elevate her scratchy DIY-rock into shimmering, magical realms, inviting comparisons to Galaxie 500 and Electrelane. Produced by Euan Hinshelwood - of Cate Le Bon’s band - mournful saxophones (courtesy Josh Evans-Jesra of Piglet and Lobby) and jangly guitars navigate a reluctant expression of grief, all its complex shocks and confusions borne within the track’s bittersweetness tone, as the songwriter herself illuminates:

“I wrote this song about a year after a friend passed away, I was scared of it for a really long time as it was a reminder that what happened was real. It’s funny because the song doesn’t even sound that sad, it’s just a really beautiful sounding song but at the end of it I just start screaming. Which is how grief felt to me at the time, some days you can pretend everything is fine and some days you can’t.”

More About Maripool:

Upon moving to London from her hometown of Lisbon aged 18, Natacha Simões got a job at Whole Foods and bought a guitar with her first paycheck. Having never played music before, she spent her evenings after work teaching herself the classics of 90s Midwest Emo. Eventually dubbing herself Maripool, the project came to blend her emo teachings with the scratchiness of jangle-pop and the washes of 90s shoegaze. Playing the majority of instruments on her records, Maripool is a DIY project through and through: Simões designs all her own artwork and gig posters, directs her own music videos, often performing solo sets in London, and other times with her backing band. 

Releasing debut single ‘Blindness’ in 2021, and its follow-up It All Comes at Once EP the following year (via Practise Music), Maripool’s latest collection sees Simões take her distinctive lo-fi sound into richer and more luxurious sonic realms. Garnering praise across the independent press from The Line of Best Fit, Crack Magazine, Clash, DIY, So Young, Beats Per Minute, Hard of Hearing, When The Horn Blows, The New Age Magazine, Scientists of Sound, The Most Radicalist and Mix It All Up, Maripool has also graced Left of the Dial, Supersonic Block Party and Wide Awake festivals, earning support slots along the way for the likes of Porridge Radio, Flat Party, Bleach Lab, Langkamer and Mandrake Handshake.