Collin Marx

Some records announce themselves at full volume. Collin Marx made one that waits for the lights to go down. Something Wicked, the album he wrote and produced and released on August 22, 2025, is built for the hours when the house has gone quiet and the mind refuses to. It is a rock and roll record grounded not in certainty but in atmosphere, a set of songs that hum, in his own framing, with the electric thrill of the unknown. Marx calls it a record for insomniacs, skeptics, and seekers, and that is exactly the company it keeps.

The reference points he reaches for tell you a lot about where his ear lives. There is the raw, fuzzed-out spirit of 1960s garage rock and American proto-punk, the Nuggets lineage, the haunted howl of Roky Erickson and the primal stomp of The Stooges. But Marx is a melodist first, and he weds that grit to the high-lonesome melodrama of Roy Orbison and the clean songwriting architecture of Tom Petty. The result is music that can lurk and ache in the same breath. These are short, sharp songs that work as love songs and ghost stories at once, sometimes both inside a single verse.

Across its thirteen tracks, Something Wicked moves with the confidence of a writer who knows what he wants a song to feel like. "Quiet Please" opens the door into that late-night world, and from there the album threads through the spectral swing of "Spook Show Blues," the slow-burning dread of "The Lateness of the Hour," and the gospel-tinged lift of "Bless My Soul." Marx handles vocals, guitar, and keyboards throughout, and he does not carry it alone: Mason Hadley anchors the low end on bass while Michael Plahm drives the rhythms on drums, with additional engineering from Brian Fusco. It plays like a real band record, loose where it should be loose and tight where the hook needs to land.

What makes Marx worth following is how naturally he balances mood and craft. Plenty of artists can conjure a noir atmosphere, all reverb and shadow, and plenty can write a clean three-minute pop song, but it is rarer to find someone doing both at once and making it sound effortless. Something Wicked never sacrifices a melody for the sake of a vibe, and it never lets a tidy chorus flatten the strangeness underneath. The skepticism and the seeking he names in his own liner notes are baked right into the songs.

This is not his first time out, either. Something Wicked follows earlier work including A Little More Heart, and the trajectory points to a songwriter steadily sharpening his voice. Taken together, the catalog suggests an artist building something with intention, record by record, rather than chasing a moment. Put Something Wicked on after midnight, let it fill the room, and it rewards the kind of close, patient listening it was clearly made for. Collin Marx has made a genuinely engrossing record, and it deserves to be heard.