After three solo escapades, the time has come for Marcus King to return to the group. That of a new very “roots” album too.
Reconnect with more collective desires, Marcus King never completely lost sight of him. It was therefore quite natural that he decided to try it again with Darling Blue. Like a cocoon found in some way, which he confirms without detour: “I wanted to come back home, to return to something more familiar, more comfortable too, where the alchemy is instantaneous… To be completely frank, it was never a personal decision to try myself on solo albums (El Dorado in 2020, Young Blood in 2022, Mood Swings in 2024, editor's note), but rather the decision of producers around me. I can only thank them for these opportunities, these experiences, which I have learned a lot and am very proud of the result, but I felt like it was time to get back to basics.”
We would still have to agree on the notion of group in the present case, our man recognizing without needing to be pushed that the framework of the entity Marcus King Band was mainly about himself and drummer Jack Ryan. “I always liked to make the connection between us and the kind of relationship that I imagine Donald Fagen and Walter Becker (in Steely Dan) might have had, develops the person concerned. As for the rest, things have changed quite a bit within the group without anyone necessarily noticing it outside. Let's just say that there were sometimes personalities that were not aligned with my state of mind or that of Jack. When we got back into it with Jack, everything came back naturally even though we hadn't been together in a studio for a long time (2018 and the Carolina Confession sessions).”
Find the rest of this interview with Marcus King and many other papers in our issue 177. It is available on newsstands and for pre-order via Fnac.
