On her third album, Maria BC managed to gather a sense of fragility with a hard, almost uncompromising certainty. Her songs are both fragile and assertive. Without there really being a sense of balance of forces, that's not quite it. It is something that arises from the need to look at the world, whether in a micro way, focused on oneself, or macro, displaced towards an idea of control of machines, little connected to science fiction, more to a certain post-industrial idea, revitalized for today. Listening to Marathon, one thinks a lot of Bruce Springsteen. Nebraska, of course, but not only. There is no novelty here. On the previous album, Spike Field, also released on Sacred Bones in 2023, there were hints of this potential. The surprise of Marathon is how it fills so many things, how Maria BC manages to connect intimacy to a general pain, how she manages to make a noisy grey all colors, and all of them matter, and how this oscillates between folk, light rock, 90s American indie, without championing any of them. Marathon is discreet in how it cries for this present, how it despairs for a future. It is not a cry for help, because it does not lament its existence, it is a test of the state of things today. And, as such, it is not afraid of one day being put to the test of time. It is likely to survive. Maria BC brings to Lisbon these songs that serve well as a soundtrack for 2026, at a time when, we speculate, her album will begin to be celebrated as one of the best of the year. In Marathon fits the whole world of now, our uncertainties, dissatisfactions and, also, everything that is missing. AS.