Description:
Mal Not Bad – This Is Your New Life (2024)
Review:
Even when we’re old enough to understand that many things are out of our control, it doesn’t make it easy to accept that life is simply happening to us. Allowing ourselves grace is far from easy, but This Is Your New Life, the debut project from Mal Hauser as Mal Not Bad, instills that it doesn’t have to be so difficult. “You’ve seen all this before / Don’t let it pull you under,” Hauser sings on “Come On / Hard Times,” over a steady acoustic guitar/drum pulse that feels like putting one foot in front of the other. Despite the ache, despite the hard times, despite the question of self-evolution, the vocal delivery is a series of settling deep breaths, reminding us to “go easy.” The L.A. musician’s first album displays a skill for soft compositions, imbued with the tenderness of a lifelong friend eager to sit down for a cathartic vent session. “Rewind for a moment, go back to that feeling / It hurts for a moment, just hurts for a moment,” Hauser sings on “No Worries.” The music feels like a meditation to acknowledge one’s inner chaos without indulging in extremes of denial or self-destruction. Hauser’s detailed awareness of obscuring song structure or album norms is what really locks these songs into place. “AP” drops into AutoTune unexpectedly to emphasize robotic tendencies; three electronic-ambient tracks breathe in a bit of serene weirdness; the highest moments (“Dodgeball,” “Life”) are not-quite synth-pop that feels like a memory, adding metallic glitches and vocal snags. Mal Not Bad carves out a sacred space: marrying live, warm instrumentation and experimental electronic embellishments. Although Hauser always stays true to the feeling, it sounds like they’re just about to push the boundaries. — SPIN
Track List:
01 - Far Gone
02 - AP
03 - No Worries
04 - Cycle
05 - Cycle (outro)
06 - Come On ⁄ Hard Times
07 - Inst II Pt. I
08 - Inst II Pt. II
09 - Life
10 - Mustang
11 - Inst I
12 - Dodgeball
Media Report:
Genre: art pop, indie-pop
Origin: Los Angeles, California, USA 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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