Album Review: Malachai "Ugly Side of Love"

This group Malachai from the UK has haunted me for a while. A DJ friend had a copy of "Fading World" what seems like a year ago, and I heard it, couldn't place the era or the geographical origin - and new right away that I needed to have it. I searched far and wide and couldn't figure out where the hell he found that track, or any other info about the band (they changed the spelling of their name at some point). 

Fast forward to December, when I got a copy of "Fading World" that was leaked as a teaser to the album Ugly Side of Love, which came out Tuesday (2/2). I was at a Christmas party talking to someone about the awesomeness of the track, which I had forgotten I had ever heard, when the same friend who introduced it to me 'lo those many moons ago came up and said 'so you finally found that track.' 

It's only the 5th week of the year - just long enough that I have finally remembered to stop writing 2009 on my checks - but I can safely say that this will be in my top ten list of albums for the year when December rolls back around. That's not some critically excited hyperbole either. It's just a solid record.

It manages to be a lot of different things, and pulls them all off tastefully. There's no derivative feeling. No moments where I feel anxious or dissatisfied - it's immersive. Generally speaking - imagine the White Stripes if Jack White had listened to a lot more Kinks, gotten into crafty sampling, and then spent some quality time with Portishead mastermind Geoff Barrow. It's dusty and psychedelic, wandering from moody to raw powered effortlessly.

If you only heard "Fading World" - which is like a RZA take on the smoothest Jamaican nostalgia - temper your expectations (not because the rest of the album doesn't stand up to it, but because that track isn't representative of the record's feel as a whole). It goes from blunted to bar fight and back again.

This is an album you should buy. Don't even steal it or burn a copy from a friend who bought it and say that you'll catch these guys on tour when they come around. Just go right now and get a copy. Unless you're not into that sort of thing, in which case, you probably need to get music advice from a different blog.