Send "Malachai " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 I know what I want/ I want off this roundabout!" Given Malachai's apparent fondness for turn-of-the-1970s British music-- the Badfinger, schmaltzy AM-radio pop, or the grainy reggae imported by England's Jamaican immigrant class-- this lyric from the masked Bristol duo's debut could very well just be a colloquial reference to traffic congestion on UK motorways. But the manic, cut-and-paste aesthetic that members Gee Ealey and Scott Hendy exhibit on Ugly Side of Love also suggests that the lyric could be a rejection of the (re)cyclical nature of rock, what with the 80s post-punk resurrection that informed so much indie over the past decade now yielding to 90s alt-rock revivalism, like clockwork. For a band like Malachai, who are more interested in toying with unfashionable pop arcana than conforming to hipster-baiting trends, it's hard to tell what's more wearisome: the prevalence of genre-centric nostalgia, or the fact that it recurs at such predictable intervals.Now, Malachai-- previously Malakai, before a namesake California rapper claimed legal dibs on the "k"-- are hardly ones to present themselves as futurists; Ugly Side of Love seems deliberately designed to evoke the dusty-grooved ambience and freewheeling feel of a UK pirate-radio broadcast from 1973. But unlike so many Britpop bands who tried to recapture the spirit of a bygone era by writing and performing songs that sound like their favorite albums, Ealey and Hendy simply take the posturing out of the equation altogether and just sample them wholesale. Ugly Side of Love is thus a rock album pieced together by crate-diggers, one that's eager to undercut notions of authenticity to emphasize its own pastiche quality with obvious samples and abrupt edits....full text |
| Dustedmagazine |
| Bristol duo Malachai (né Malakai) have no particular respect for the form of the song, and, at first listen or two, the interest of Ugly Side of Love lies in trying to figure out whether that’s a deficiency or a statement. If the former, they get pretty lucky about a third of the time; if the latter, they could stand to do things with a little more conviction. The album assembles a lot of disparate traditions under a leaky rocktronica umbrella—stoned trip-hop, bleary hard-psych, yowling garage-soul — and for the most part leaves them to sort out their differences. Malachai’s master stroke is an absence of master stroke, either a principled refusal or a principled failure to make it all cohere. When it glosses as voluntary, it’s pretty cool. Take “Snowflake,” the most conventionally well put together track and the first where tape shear and audio wobble aren’t a distinct structural element. It’s got a great swagger of chainsaw guitar, tennis-ball drums, acid-washed piano, plus vocals that swing between slacker purr and whiskey hiss. “How Long” is sonically flimsy and structurally clumsy (see the needle-drop shift from guitar solo to verse), but both in a way that’s a little too manicured to be accidental. Ditto the vocals in feel-good ditty “Another Sun,” which are only just as out-of-tune as it takes to make it noticeable....full text |
| Popmatters |
| You know you’ve got a good thing going when one of Portishead’s own, namely Geoff Barrow, wants to take you under his wing. Such is the case of Malachai (formerly known as Malakai), the Bristol-based duo made up of Gee and Scott—no last names needed apparently. The Ugly Side of Love, the band’s first full length, manages to seize the band’s muddled artistic flurry in 13 relatively short tracks. “Warrior” is our first encounter with the band, and it’s nothing less than jarring. Like most songs on the record, it features a coarse finish wrapped around unclassifiable arbitrariness – in a good way. Gee’s distinctive voice tops off their sound as it carries intriguing lyrics that allude to an impending doom. “Shitkicker” then proves that the mind-bending chaos that is Malachai seems to work solely because of the strange synchronicity that results from Scott’s music and Gee’s vocals. To wit, during “Shitkicker” Scott indulges in western riffs and “more cowbell!” while Gee delights in Jack-White-styled vocals. I’m guessing that without either one of them, that craziness would all seem inane. Gee’s storytelling skills are worth a special mention. The imagery he conveys in songs like “Snake Charmer”, “Moonsurfin”, and especially “Another Sun” confers brilliant depth to their music. There is never a dull moment when Gee sings—or narrates—about the end of the world and our place in the matter. At the same time Scott seems to enjoy sampling to no end, and he does it well. And even though there is little homogeneity throughout, he manages to achieve an outstanding level of consistency, due in no small part to the duo’s open-mindedness when it comes to taking cues from different genres. Trip-hop, reggae, post-punk, rock, pop… it’s all there. The album also turns out to be an easy-listen as almost every track seamlessly morphs into the next, with practically no leeway in between....full text |
Malachai lyrics
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