Formerly of The Drugs and Bowery Beasts fame, Marion Belle’s latest incarnation, Fatal Jamz, is a glam provocateur. Existing in a “sunlit inferno where today’s starlets and ravishing poor boys play for glory,” Belle creates narrative that glimmers under neon light, blending melancholy nostalgia with earworm pop. Lauded by the likes of Steve Jones, Kim Fowley and Don Bolles, there’s method in Belle’s madness, and it’s highly addictive.

This month, the LA-based musician releases Coverboy, the first part of his Lead Singer Trilogy and the follow up to his EP, 17 and Hung. Here, friend, flatmate and HERO 15 star Cullen Omori interviews Belle, in Cullen’s words: “On the Saturday before Labor Day, Marion and I sat down in a K-town spa to sweat out the tensions of the city and discuss his forthcoming album, Coverboy.”

Cullen Omori: On Instagram you’ve said you “make music for teens in thongs” and for “female sex addicts.” Are you writing more about innocence or sexual experience?
Marion Belle: I can’t think about it much, I just do it. What comes out is all I feel. And I feel very virginal and very experienced at once. People are thirsting for sex and fantasy every day, all the time. I’m trying to quench that thirst, mind and body. A lot of music leaves out one or the other and that music doesn’t do it for me.

CO: Do you think you could do your music, do you think Fatal Jamz would work if you lived in New York or Chicago or Austin as opposed to LA?
MB: It couldn’t have been anywhere else, LA’s where I found my voice. It’s like that Anthony Keidis line in Under the Bridge where he says “Sometimes I feel like my only friend is the city I live in.” He said he walks the streets of LA and that’s where he writes his lyrics and I feel that way. It’s like the city is talking to me, and sometimes the ghosts of the city come out to whisper to me to tell their stories.

CO: Yeah I think your approach songwriting-wise is really interesting and different. A lot of indie music, a lot of musicians that are from LA, use the fact that it’s always sunny to juxtapose how bad they feel and I think what you do is embrace it and celebrate the best parts of LA.
MB: With LA I’ve just always appreciated that’s it’s one of the most powerful places I’ve ever been. Here there is still a very real sense of mythology and fate that has a great pull on me. I don’t really see myself in the indie world at all. I relate much more these days to rappers and what I call thugs. I see Morrissey as a thug. Liam was a thug and Cobain was a thug and Lana is a thug – someone who cares about delivering messages of love and will fight for that.

CO: Yeah, I think lyrically you’re like Morrissey meets 50 Cent or Tupac. It’s super bold. The lyrical content honestly is something you don’t hear at all right now in guitar music in general. There’s this thing in rock music right now, the entree to being a successful indie rock guy is like you have to put on this humble guise, like ‘look how sad or look how working man I am.” If David Bowie or Iggy Pop came along right now they’d be labeled as kind of an out’n’out asshole.
MB: Definitely.

CO: For me Fatal Jamz has a cinematic quality to it, you as a performer and your whole vision. I don’t think that you are necessarily making a character as much as you are kind of portraying this real version of yourself that you’ve, like, curated. I think it’s a different and interesting way to show that you can be real and have this performance aspect which I think is lost today. Is there any divide between you as the person and you as the frontman?
MB: I don’t think so. I have to write and sing about my own demons in order to heal psychic pain for myself and to try to live to the fullest. Growing up, there were people who did that for me, like Axl, that are turning you on, and I feel I’m the same kind of creature, whatever you call that. I call that a lead singer. 

CO: Last question. Don’t you think the full nude whirlpool at Wi-spa is a good place to officially start a side project?
MB: Yes! First single: Highway 69.

Fatal Jamz: Coverboy is out 30th September via Lolipop Records.