Marci

**Marci** When we last heard from Marci aka Marta Cikojevic, she was dancing the pain away on 2022’s Marci. A longtime member of Montreal soft-rock group TOPS, Marci established Cikojevic as a solo artist with an intuitive understanding of pop as a vehicle for emotional catharsis. Four years later, Cikojevic returns with Mask Lady and Late Night Girl, a record of party girl anthems for when the party is over, delivered with love and compassion for the good times and great memories. Collaborating again with TOPS bandmate David Carriere, Mask Lady has elements drawn from both the Y2k-era messy pop girlies like Uffie and Kesha and Cikojevic’s love of 80s power balladeers like White Snake and Def Leppard, along with the vintage synths that gave Marci a warmly futuristic aesthetic. Album opener “Stars Are Fake” calls back to funk-inflected synthwave with a tight drum pattern and a juicy synth line. “Butterfly Sticker” pulses with a melodic rhythm reminiscent of 90s classics like Savage Garden’s “I Want You.” Glam metal influences come to the fore on “Chaotic Princess,” written and produced with Mike Silver (CFCF), an over-the-top guitar-driven banger about a crazy night out on which Cikojevic begs an officer not to take her to jail—Eddie Van Halen riding shotgun in a car with Britney at the wheel. Of course, this is a Marci album, so there’s plenty of pure pop sugar, as on “99 Dimensional,” a bubbly Janet Jackson-esque dance track about a telepathic connection that lasts forever