Black Marble
- bizzarre
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Black Marble shares new single/video "It Always Comes To Me" taken from the album 'Life in Small Spaces' out August 21st. via Sacred Bones Records.
Today Black Marble, aka Chris Stewart, shares “It Always Comes to Me” the third and final pre-release single from Life in Small Spaces, his first full-length album since 2021’s Fast Idol, out this Friday, August 21st, 2026 on Sacred Bones. Fans can get a sneak preview of the album via Bandcamp’s Listening Party, taking place tomorrow, Wednesday, August 19th at 2pm Eastern Time (RSVP).
Chris Stewart shares:
"’It Always Comes to Me’ is about a cool, calm, collected person who seems to always be able to get away with things other people can’t, either by charm or deceit. Like a modern version of The Kinks' ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion,’ the song doesn’t explicitly advocate for or condemn this kind of behavior, but takes a birds eye view of it as the protagonist moves through the world.
Ultimately, it leaves it up to the listener to judge for themselves. The subject of the song seems to be having fun but can it last? And how much does our judgement really matter either way?”
The release of “It Always Comes to Me” comes with an incredible video directed by Claes Nordwall that follows Chris Stewart as he roams around New York City; riding subways, over and under bridges, playing impromptu games of basketball and pool.
Director Claes Nordwall says:
"I was drawn to the idea of a character moving through the modern world on his own timeline. While everything around him races forward, he remains quietly rooted in who he is.
I was inspired by Chris's ideas behind the album which made me think of the dry stoicism of Aki Kaurismäki's films. I wanted to make something that celebrates resilience, character and the
beauty of refusing to chase the next thing.”
“It Always Comes to Me” follows July single “Anything” which came with a video directed by Scott Kiernan, shot at Various/Artists in New York City, which perfectly captures the song's themes of overstimulation by serving a barrage of vibrant images for the viewer to process, with a meditative Stewart flickering throughout the visual noise.
Chris Stewart says:
“‘Anything’ is basically a bedroom pop version of ‘Satisfaction’ but it trades the carnal undertones for more of a domestic pastiche.
With lyrics about leaving the bedroom window open, casual druggy friends popping by at all hours and other relationship annoyances, the center of the struggle is less about finding temporary satisfaction but that today’s glut of options and opportunities gives every relationship an expiration date, every encounter an easy off ramp and every minor annoyance a reason to move on.
The sentiment is the same from those old days, lack of fulfillment, but it’s due to modern circumstances.
It feels like we have every option at our fingertips but we’re somehow losing the ability to connect.”
The lead single “Jim Carol New Year” accompanied the album announcement in June with a video starring Chris Stewart, directed by Clayton Hunt.
“Jim Carol New Year” (its title a nod to both author, poet, and musician Jim Carroll, and holiday season carols) casts another critical eye on life, rejecting false promises of religion, advice from so-called experts, or easy answers in favor of self validation and independence of thought.
While drawing us in with a more rhythmic synth melody, twirling listeners into an illusion of joy, the phrase “I forgot my money” is used over and over to convey all the things the protagonist isn't buying. “If you want to be free,”
Stewart says,
“you have to watch out for some of life's classic pitfalls.”
Black Marble's Life in Small Spaces is an album of commentary, analysis of the music industry, discussion of authenticity, and a letter to all independent creatives in the world. Drawing on early American left-of-the-dial “college radio” staccato guitar lines (recalling Pylon, The Necessaries, and R. Stevie Moore), and live drum samples (a nod to Wire’s simple metronomic style), the album takes on more of a live sound, trading in Stewart’s usual walls of synths.
Black Marble hummed to life in the fall of 2012, switched on by the early aughts New York City synthwave revival. Today, fourteen years on and seven releases later, Chris Stewart continues to make records hunched over machines that warm to the touch when turned on and need to be coaxed to stay in tune. His albums, written, recorded, and delivered solely by Stewart, remain singular visions, with songs that seek to convey a diffuse pastiche, now shaped by a desire to wrap the whole thing in a message that speaks to where he’s been and where he wants to go.
His latest vision, Life in Small Spaces, sees Stewart comment on the music industry and his role within it, reflecting on how underground music has changed over time, and how a blueprint for keeping things simple and being true to oneself is the only ideal for living in this complicated landscape.
Stewart's desire to span time with his ideals intact shows up in the songwriting, which retains the project’s pop-sensibilities while adding new tricks to the bag. Life in Small Spaces trades walls of synths for more left-of-the-dial, “college radio”-inspired guitar. Stewart explains the reason for the change as a way to “create this chime-y hypnotic quality. Like a radio dial that is between two stations.”
On a first listen, the album lives up to this billing as sounds seem to come from some lost radio station during a Saturday night mix. However, on second listen, certain themes and characters emerge from Stewart's stories. Overarchingly, these are people expressing some of life's deepest dissatisfactions or labouring under some cartoonish delusion that affords them some immunity.
“It Always Comes to Me,” introduces a self obsessed and arrogant protagonist that believes they can talk their way into and out of anything. Lost in the delusion that looking out for oneself at the expense of others is a mantra, not knowing that ultimately, they are the architect of their own isolation and loneliness. A new sonic landscape is the backdrop here, with leading bass and guitar tones that hail in the warmth and personal touch of a live performance, guiding us into the album’s first chapter.
Stewart stands firm in his convictions on “Other Man's Dream” – “I could never go crazy, for the other man's dream, to be free of the sad life that's coming after me” he sings as he points out that people that we seek validation from aren't the people who have to live with the results of our decisions. In life's spaces, big and small, it's us who have to live out the lives we've chosen and only us who can determine its value.
“Anything,” sonically the most upbeat song on the record, is in its message anything but. “I want to dream us up. I’ll do anything, but it’s not enough!” is a lamentation full of snarling frustration with the gap between perceived and felt experience, and a message for anyone who’s ever felt like an imposter, unable to feel the joy that society tells us comes so easily to everyone else.
Through Black Marble’s entrancing electronic tones, Stewart further confronts difficult themes, “Missing History” with its more synth-centred clinical feel explores the idea of lacking a true cultural identity and heritage, and the lasting weight of a nation’s past. “Panopticon Calls” with its jivey beat and bouncing bass melody, shifts perspective to a paranoid, shut in person, pulled deeper under the influence of media and external pressure before breaking free.
Visually, Life in Small Spaces features Stewart alone on the cover in a sparse room, surrounded with an eruption of confetti – an image that reflects a self-contained world that may appear small, bleak and cluttered, but is fully his own. A fitting frame for a record that embraces limitation as a form of clarity, and one that tells the story of choosing a simple life, giving up stability and comfort for an existence of bold and engaging connections.
This further reflects Black Marble’s confidence in not only his artistry, but the community that has grown and evolved around the project over the years. “[Life in Small Spaces] is what I want to talk about as an artist. It's where I am at this exact moment and I know I'm not alone in how I feel.”
This sentiment isn’t a disclaimer. It’s the point. Life in Small Spaces, with its introspective lyricism disguised neatly within Black Marble’s radiant musicality, is an earnest analysis of the pressures that shape artists. It is an invitation to accept and consciously agree to a more minimal lifestyle for the sake of creative expression and freedom, and to never need to compromise your values for the tempting illusion of success.
Photo by Ashley Leahy
Tour dates
Aug 22 Constellation Room at the Observatory Santa Ana, CA *
Aug 23 1720 Los Angeles (LA), CA *
Aug 25 Rickshaw Stop San Francisco, CA *
Aug 26 Harlow's Sacramento, CA *
Aug 28 The Crocodile Seattle WA *
Aug 29 Wonder Ballroom Portland, OR *
Aug 30 Shrine Social Club Boise, ID *
Aug 31 Urban Lounge Salt Lake City UT *
Sep 1 The Federal Theatre Denver CO #
Sep 3 Slowdown Omaha, NE #
Sep 4 Fine Line Minneapolis, MN #
Sep 5 Thalia Hall Chicago, IL #
Sep 6 El Club Detroit Detroit, MI #
Sep 7 Lee's Palace Toronto, ON #
Sep 8 La Sala Rosa Montreal QC #
Sep 10 Webster Hall New York (NYC), NY #
Sep 11 Union Transfer Philadelphia, PA #
Sep 12 Ottobar Baltimore, MD #
Sep 14 Kings Raleigh, NC #
Sep 15 The Earl Atlanta GA #
Sep 17 White Oak Music Hall - Upstairs Houston, TX #
Sep 18 Club Dada Dallas TX #
Sep 19 29th Street Ballroom Austin, TX #
* w/ The Serfs
# w/ Public Circuit
(and Jimmy Cicero for select shows)
Pre-order album here
