by LORRAINE CARPENTER

"We saw the face of God." A heavier than thou statement from Marlowe's songwriter/guitarist Joseph Donovan, and a side effect of the magical mushroom trip that inspired the title of the band's new album, He Is There and He's Funny. In describing the physical sensation and psychological impact of their shared fungal high, Donovan and lyricist/singer/keyboardist Alex Olsen liken themselves to babies being lifted up and tickled by a laughing Buddha-type deity, leaving them with a fresh sense of wonder and an appreciation for the lighter things in life.

"I think art plays that role," says Donovan. "Even if [an artist is] dealing with dark and nasty and sorrowful things, it can still be funny in the sense that it becomes this beautiful dance that enables us to deal with the darkness."

"Blues is bittersweet," adds Olsen, a Billie Holiday buff. "It acknowledges all the shit of life but tries to elevate it by bringing it into light and singing about it."

Marlowe may not sing the blues, but their experiments in post-pop don't fail to address shadow-bound thoughts and sounds, along with hopeful, sunlit ones. Recorded at the Stock Market Audio Centre, the studio Donovan operates with Tricky Woo guitarist Adrian Popovich, the new record is bolder and more refined than the band's 1998 debut, Galax-sea, an album they regard as an ill-conceived teenage effort crafted in cahoots with the wrong producer, the wrong label and, to some degree, the wrong band.

"It's difficult to work with other people when they try to pull your ideas in different directions," says Donovan, "but if they get where you're going, it's amazing. It's like adding new spices to the soup."

After Marlowe's more rock-oriented members migrated to the Dears and to Sam Roberts' band, Donovan and Olsen got to cooking with keyboardist Nicolas Côté, bassist Howard Martin and drummer Kevin Laing. Between day jobs, Donovan studied sound recording and built the studio, amassing the gear and the expertise to manoeuvre the band's integral process.

"We realized that a large part of our songwriting is sounds and subtleties, that recording is part of the composition for us, and therefore we have to do it ourselves," says Olsen.

And DIY they did, taking over a year to produce nine tracks, fusing their shoegazing and space-age pop influences with ambient and minimal ones, minus the sometimes alienating, elitist gauze of "experimental" music.

"We're trying to take that otherwordly, transcendental feeling and bring a more human, personal side to it," Donovan explains, admitting that one of his favourite tracks is the least minimal and most majestic piece, the only song featuring the full new lineup, "Roman Empire."

"That song feels so exciting to us," he gushes. "It's not perfect. I'll never be totally happy - I hope I'm never happy - but this is it, this is what we wanted."

And, after six years under construction, Marlowe is up and running and wanting more. Half of the next album is written and parts of it are already in demo form, so expect new material sometime this side of 2005.

"Now we're at that stage where we have a vision, we've got the line-up, the gear, the skills and we've got the aesthetic background chiselled out for what we want do," he says. "We're really on fire."

With guests at le Swimming on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 10pm, $6

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