The title of this record – also lyrics in the hip-hop-infused song Pavement – references Mallrat’s penchant for kickboxing and light is treated like a character throughout.
Mallrat’s Alice Ivy collab, Horses – this album’s closer – is breathy, nostalgic sweetness delivered over fingerpicked guitar, strummed bass and occasional percussive piano detail.
The opening verse of this career-defining masterpiece sees Mallrat (aka Grace Shaw) recalling train journeys home from school alongside her little sister Liv, who died last May aged 21.
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“And if I sat down on platform two/ Could that bring back you?” – there’s a cry in Shaw’s voice in parts and we feel her heartache (even though writing this song predated her tragic loss).
Shaw has admitted that sampling is her “favourite thing about making music” and rates DJ Zirk’s Born 2 Lose so highly she incorporates into not one but two of these tracks: Pavement (which also features a snippet of Cub Sport’s Beg U) and Hocus Pocus – a club banger.
The latter features a forlorn hook, which sounds like a crestfallen robot shepherd searching for his long-lost mechanised flock. Shaw also inhales sharply and deliberately here, using breath as a percussive element, before it all dissolves into sonic stardust.
Did you know? While dancing excitedly to the Hocus Pocus demo during a walk home, Shaw fell over and fractured her arm.
As if savouring a visual, Shaw sings “Mmm-mmm-mmm” before “My angel” during opener My Darling, My Angel – embodying the heart-eyes emoji. Of Something For Somebody – a delicate, introspective moment – Shaw enthuses, “I love disguising disturbed stories and messages in really sweet melodies and I think I did that in a really clever way here” – hmmm, is the protagonist being careless with someone’s heart?
Virtue’s floating-in-outer space vocals (sampled from Butterfly by the Finnish folk choir, Rajaton) propel listeners into an animated landscape of infinite wonder. That 3/4 time garage breakbeat is genius.
With its extended a cappella chorus, Defibrillator is “more emo” than Shaw usually allows herself to be and The Worst Thing I Would Ever Do dabbles in shoegaze.
The staccato, loved-up Hideaway (“Think I’m gonna miss ya when it’s time to go on tour)” jogs along at a jaunty pace. Designed for pumping through subwoofers, Love Songs/Heart Strings maxes out the BPMs until its warped outro – like digital whalesong – brings The Prodigy’s ‘90s rave banger, Charly, to mind.
Fascinatingly, the reverb-drenched Ray Of Light draws inspo from Golden Orb Weaving Spiders, which are native to Shaw’s hometown of Brisbane.
Light hit my face like a straight right is one for the dreamers. We’re left feeling airbourne, suspended “on a number nine cloud” in Mallrat’s expansive musical galaxy.
LABEL: DEW PROCESS/UNIVERSAL
RELEASE: 14 FEBRUARY
