Description
There are ghosts all across AVANTI, the debut album from
Malice K. At points it”s howling and unhinged, a grungy layer atop a lush foundation of melodic capital-s Songwriting, but in other moments it dissolves into a gentle, wistful haunting. Malice K”s songs are blunt, uncomplicated and unflinching as he probes the interiority of memories, of mistakes – saturated with an innate intensity that sucks you into his gnarled and visceral world, so barbed it could draw blood. Malice K is helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh, New York-based but born and raised in Olympia, Washington. Following a stint living in Los Angeles, where he became a member of the artist collective Death Proof Inc., a trip to New York resulted in him simply never leaving the city. A period of chaos ensued, Malice K exhausted and unmoored and ultimately, unwell. The record is unpredictable across it”s 11 songs. The album opens with a jarring scream on “”Halloween,”” Malice K”s breathless vocals buried beneath a grungy, roving Nineties riff. The track emanates a manic energy, enveloping. It”s a fitting entrypoint for the record, and for the vividness of Malice K. The snarling and obsessive “”You”re My Girl”” has a swaggering paranoia: “”I got so high I thought my hand touching my hand was your hand.”” But AVANTI exists in quieter moments too; “”Radio,”” with it”s fluttering morose cello, moves at an almost glacial pace comparatively. The aching wistfulness of “”The Old House”” is an album stand-out, anchored in an acoustic guitar, an uneasy lullaby that never quite settles into itself: “”I think to myself I got the things that I wanted, but I can”t help think there”s something else that I forgot to do.”” A recent press interview called Malice K a shapeshifter, but he”s not amorphous in that way. He”s decisive and intense, more concerned with carving his own path, and building his own world. Every part of Malice K is distinctly himself: from his sweaty high-octane shows to the high-flash high-contrast photos; from his gnarled and unsettling illustrations to the studio recordings that vacillate between grief and tenderness, there”s an exceptional ferocity across everything Malice K touches. AVANTI feels lived in, like peering into an abandoned house through a window smeared with grimy fingerprints, relics of a life well-lived scattered inside – despite being a debut, there”s the sense that Malice K arrived fully-realized, imperfections and all.
- 1 Halloween
- 2 Hold Me Up
- 3 Song for My Baby
- 4 The Old House
- 5 Weed
- 6 Radio
- 7 You”re My Girl
- 8 Concrete Angel
- 9 Fade
- 10 Raining
- 11 Blue Monday
