Malakai – The Ugly Side of Love

In an era with almost limitless accessibility to music, it’s hardly a surprise to see genres fusing and distilling at the rates we, the children of alt-rock, seem to be mixing them at. Nevertheless, it’s an alarming trend for music reviewers, whose job generally demands some sort of labeling. How does one use a universally recognized music vocabulary in the post-CD age? Whatever terms I toss around with confidence here will probably be passé, laughable, and perhaps condemning, by the time this gets posted. I can hear you now: “Bwahahaha… ‘glam-infused horrorcore.’ Get a load of this guy! HaHAHAHAHAAA!! I CAN’T BREATHE!!!”

So, it is with extreme trepidation that I set out to describe the Frankenstein’s monster of genres that is Malakai. Their debut, The Ugly Side of Love conjures such disparate acts as Beck, Go Team!, the Who, and Red Hot Chili Peppers – but Malakai is a far stranger animal than any of those (well, maybe not stranger than Beck). It’s the music these guys grew up with, but the samples, distortion and lo-fi mix makes it unquestionably a product of the Myspace age. It’s too scattered to be great, too contemporary to be timeless (more on that in a minute) but it’s charming enough.

The vibe on the album is largely one of surrender. With most of their peers running around, trying to rally the troops against a coming apocalypse, Malakai’s dancing naked in the streets. On “Warrior,” the paranoia thumps with reckless abandon, daring you to dance on hot coals. The next track, “Shitkicker,” works as a soundtrack for both your next surfing video and your next Mexican stand-off. It’s good, but the album’s strongest (and, at three and a half minutes, the longest) is probably “Snowflake.” The refreshing lack of clutter adds a necessity to what instruments are employed. If groovy doesn’t sound too fuddy-duddy a word for a song with so much urgency, then I call “Snowflake” groovy.

Alas, urgency is not a word that one could safely use for much of this. While Malakai gets a lot right, that sense of lasting value, a quality that today’s musicians seem to find most elusive, never once rears her winsome little head on any of these tracks. Malakai is easy to like but hard to love – they have that unfortunate flash-in-the-pan quality about them. And, though it’s a great way to kill thirty-two minutes, here’s guessing that by the time the last song fades, nothing much will stand out.

Related posts:

1. Four Tet – There Is Love In You
2. Malachai- Fading World

Tagged as: Bristol, UK

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