by Aly Muilenburg (@purityolympics)
“It’s not like that anymore.” Whatever may be sought, it will change the present, if not perform an eradication. Anything for “it” to not be like “that,” regardless of specifics. “I tell myself to ignore.” When change is revealed to be despair and ignorance in disguise, it doesn’t matter if the disintegration started at the roots or infected the nearly-blooming leaves. “It’s all for you.” The sun is gone, the room is empty, the stairwell is silent, all covered by the pungent rot of death. Hold your breath as long as you can. “It’s all for you.”
The second half of “untitled (for félix),” a farewell to the A-side of Malamiko’s all pleasant dreams, starts by falling away. A knotted riff unfurls over snare hits, threading the threatening hush together with a galloping rhythm section. For a song (and a band) that fluctuates between polarities, always overwhelming, the Minneapolis “sadgaze” trio manages to wring maximal space out of every note, like a glowing halo creating a separation in all directions. They want you eye-to-eye with the noise, not in an unloving embrace. From the separation comes a deliberate sense of longing, just out of reach and out of earshot and all the more enticing because of it. “untitled” is simmering one moment, with wind-swept sparseness, and descending like a thundercloud the next.
Guitarist/vocalist Daisy Swimmer, bassist Ryan Schneider, and drummer/vocalist Rhys Finnegan carved out a space in Minneapolis with an ambitious debut and some sold-out tapes. Seven tracks of heavy, tender, hopeful, breathless dreaming showcase their range and depth in one swoop. Opener “butterflies” hybridizes Explosions in the Sky and 90’s alt-rock with visceral lyrics; heat death creeps ever closer on the chiming “sunflowers”. “false vacuum decay” finds them untethered and seemingly resolute in the belief that a hopeful future is dissolving into myth. Swimmer sings that the “human psyche wasn’t built for this,” a more depressingly realistic assessment than memes of Victorian children being instantly vaporized by exposure to modernity would have us think. Reality has proven itself an absentee and maybe we’re simply too far afield.
Cynicism courses through all pleasant dreams. The anguish is deeper and more ancient than the powerlessness of the present can anticipate. Days pass above like clouds and they depart from our inert languor, totally unaware. Malamiko is uninterested in writing about a bright future, preferring to stay down in the dirt. They have abandoned their pursuit of control despite a world flailing to an end and turn their gaze inwards. In harmony, “there is nothing to decide / block the sun and stay inside” concludes “sunflowers,” cracked pavement and dead grass and accepting painful truth. Everything outside is on a broken Hot Wheels track, zooming towards freefall; there is nothing to decide, there is only something to be done.
Pure watts of power are made through action, whether crying out in warning or resistance, maiming tradition by repelling waves of hatred, or counting the days and refuting the end. Penultimate odyssey “loveless, tongue-tied” wields obtuse, oil-drenched melodies, fleeting synth, and scrying saxophone from Cole Pulice over nine minutes of resilient ambiance. “I want more / I want more,” Swimmer repeats, after collapsing inwards, past and present torn asunder. The act of defiance that resonates most is making music. It’s praxis for the soul, keeping the final death at bay by letting the little one in. Malamiko leaves with unanswered questions and a seed of hope that it will continue to comfort everyone within the vast, finite future. Keys ascend over wisps of acoustic guitar as all pleasant dreams drifts into memory. Our songs are carved into our bones so they can persist when all else has been swept away.