About Me
The pairing of Tucson-based musicians Mike Bagesse, guitar, and Emilie Marchand, vocals, delivers to its audience the unique opportunity to luxuriate in a delicate yet powerful intersection of musical past and musical future. Marchand, a New Yorker by birth, and Bagesse, a native Arizonan, are a husband and wife duo who seamlessly blend their talents and aesthetic influences to create an atmosphere evocative of moody eras long retreated into dreamy nostalgia, while fiercely pushing forward the boundaries of their equally visible punk influences. Having shared the stage both individually and as a team with a wide array of performers that include Calexico, Neko Case, Exene Cervenka, Dick Dale, Howe Gelb, Lydia Lunch, Liz Phair, and Cat Power, Marchand and Bagesse pay homage to a diverse collection of musical predecessors and contemporaries such as the Cowboy Junkies, Marlene Deitrich, PJ Harvey, Peggy Lee, Loretta Lynn, Tom Waits, and Kurt Weill cabaret. Marchand and Bagesse are classic yet modern, coiffed yet jagged. They are reverently entrenched in the traditions of blues, jazz, country, and folk, while forcefully asserting their own distinct brand of punk edginess. Their music blends Bagesse's deeply crafted and fervent guitar with Marchand's dark, impassioned, and insistent vocals to tell stories that are laced, sometimes cryptically, but always feverishly, with mourning, memory, and a sweet - if slightly savvy - flirtation with hope.
- Julianna Spallholz
" Vocalist Emilie Marchand injects moody nostalgia into Pearl Handled Pistol's impassioned, lounge-y slowcore, while her guitarist/husband Mike Bagesse fills the background with deft, darkly dreamy touches of folk-jazz."
- THE ONION
"Marchand's deep, breathy and sultry vocals consumed the room...Pearl Handled Pistol created Southwestern lullabies for a long midnight drive in a pickup truck to the middle of nowhere."
-Kevin Smith (Arizona Daily Star)
"Bagesses distorted, echoing guitar chords are as sensuous and hypnotic as Marchands vocals. The duo artistically create a gentle, slowcore sound - each track filled with longing and beautiful, melodic sonic textures. Their music is soothing but at the same time detached.
Both Sabatinos cello and Walbanks harmonica glide into the mix as if they were additional sultry vocalists."
- Laurie Starr (KXCI)
"Mike Bagesse's lush jazz chording and distorted leads would please both Marc Ribot and Nils Cline."
-Tomcat Walbank (President of the Tucson Blues Clubhouse)
"... the vocalist commands the audience with a wide-ranging alto that has the grace and balance of a professional tightrope walker... Every dire emotional strait is sung through controlled, silky angst wherein the protagonist may be holding the short end of the stick, but not toeing the line of ' Woe is me'. "
-Jamie Manser, Downtown Tucsonan
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