Malakai – Ugly Side Of Love (Domino)
4/5
By: Hayley Sleigh
It is perhaps a little too early to say, but I am almost certain that Ugly Side of Love by Bristol two-piece Malakai is to be the greatest album to be released this year which contains the phrase ‘Judy Finnegan’s vinegar umbrella’.
Don’t worry – Ugly Side of Love isn’t crammed full of super cryptic metaphors of the type that will lead me to embarrass myself by telling you that ‘vanilla manilla whatever Camilla giving Cilla’s cinema cinnamon Judy Finnegan’s vinegar umbrella’ is obviously a cynical sideways glance at our shallow, celebrity obsessed culture, when in fact it’s clearly a vicious attack on the British monarchy, or something. Despite some cryptic lyrics and some pretty off-the-wall influences (do you enjoy very short, warped lute nursery rhyme ballads? Boy, do I have the song for you! ‘[Snake Charmer]’), Ugly Side of Love is characterised by a profoundly affecting lyrical clarity. The majority of tracks on the album are honest and to-the-point, both when they’re as warm and inviting as Cilla’s cinema cinnamon (warm and fuzzy ‘Feel Good Inc’-alike ‘Moonsurfin’’), and as sharp and raw as Judy Finnegan’s vinegar umbrella (environmental protest song ‘Fading World)’.
That said, I still don’t understand what the ‘it’ is in the climax of ‘Lay Down Stay Down’ - ‘now it’s there and I don’t fear it’ – however, judging by the track’s gloriously manic brass backing, not fearing ‘it’ sounds pretty damn good. Every time I listen to ‘Another Sun’, I hear the mood and the message completely differently: sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes optimistic, sometimes pragmatic, sometimes bitter. I can’t decide if ‘oh let’s remain friends until it hurts/you keep the sun and I’ll hold the rain’ is the sweetest lyric I’ve ever heard in a break-up song, or the most sarcastic.
But perhaps the song on the Ugly Side of Love with the most powerfully unambiguous meaning is the irresistible ‘Snowflake’, with its sinister, creeping bass, in which our heroes fight for the noble cause of raising awareness about blue balls, and the serious medical condition it clearly is (‘so many times I’ve seen my shadow/hovering over that sweetness I know/when all of a sudden I’ve needs from below/who’s there for me now, I’m hungering?’).
I am right, aren’t I?
Artists in this article: Malakai
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