Matt Malone, along with his band the Holy Spirits, bleeds pain, anguish and sorrow from every note in his new album ‘For The term Of His Natural Life’, and every track cuts with a visceral knife. And yet wallowing in such a dark shadowy world is utterly cathartic and immensely enjoyable. Whether this is some form of schadenfreude is hard to tell, but Malone’s mournful voice and dark tales are immersive and enveloping as a little light filters in and out over the dark and personal tales.
The album indeed came from a period of decline, survival and contemplation. Malone says:
I…took the opportunity to reassemble myself after years of drug / alcohol abuse and exploration through Thelema / occult practice by going back to my religious roots and developing a deeper communion with nature through long walks and prayerful meditation.
We premiered the title track here at Backseat Mafia, and observed that crisp acoustic guitars jangle and crystalline electric guitars shimmer in the ether as Malone’s sonorous and resonant voice recounts tales of woe and hardship in a barbed-wire baritone that bleeds with pain and regret. His voice seems to emanate from the bottom of a whiskey glass and provides a soundtrack to an Hieronymus Bosch portraiture of despair. In this delivery, Malone and his band exudes the characteristic hallmarks of Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave while wallowing in some swampy antipodean bayou with a filtered light and liver damage.
Malone says of the track:
…the song title and concept was inspired by the classic Australian novel by Marcus Clarke that tells the story of a young man unjustly convicted of a crime that he didn’t commit and his subsequent incarceration in the Tasmanian penal colonies where his experience of injustice is brutally meted out.
Malone read the book during the first Covid-19 lockdown and deeply related to the character and his story of unjust judgment and imprisonment:
When you received a life sentence in the 19th century, the judge would declare – ‘you will be imprisoned for the term of your natural life.’ I think that relates not only to a prison sentence but to life overall – we are here for the term of our ‘natural’ lives. As the perennial saying goes – life is suffering, the hope in it for me, is it also implies a life beyond this world, a supernatural or eternal life.
The darkness pours out in every note into something visceral and haunting.
‘The Best Day Of my Life’ lets a slightly sardonic form of light and humour into the darkness with its line that the day his lover left him was the best day in his life. A mournful violin scrapes across the canvas as Malone sings of the pain of a doomed relationship and the relief of a departure. But is it really relief? Malone almost breaks down as he sings with a degree of pathos and irony And now I’m the best in my life after the door slams as his lover leaves. Malone says of the track:
In a way it’s my unintentional take on one of those cruel / honest Bob Dylan break-up songs ‘Positively 4th Street’ or ‘Idiot Wind’, bedded with the intimacy of Merle Haggard’s ‘My Favorite Memory’. I always admired the humanity of those songs.
‘The Stranger’ features razor sharp pinpoint guitars that punctuate the air, with the scraping violins returning, weeping and vibrating and a background chorus providing a softening edge. The instrumentation ebbs and flows in an ominous drone.
‘The Unrepentant Thief’ prowls in like a shadowy figure with ill intent and, antithetically, almost a pop melody: a Johnny Cash delivery with Rowland S Howard guitar architecture. ‘Crazy Jane’ with its apocryphal tale of fortune telling and past travails is an almost spritely tale with a hint of irony and humour. ‘Love You’ve Given To Me’ has a woe-is-me bleakness wrapped in a shuffling pace as the protagonist regrets his past and behaviour in a relationship. Its expression seeps into the violin and guitars that cry throughout.
Final track ‘Judgement Day’ evokes the spiritualism and redemption that hovers at the edges of the album in an elegiac subdued tone over a scraping seven minutes. The music is another character in the tale – droning and caterwauling in the distance like a howling creature hungry for blood.
‘For The Term Of My Natural Life’ is not an easy journey but it is one that is fascinating and immersive. It is a dark and foreboding vessel with imperfections that let in a little light of hope and redemption and leak a little sorrow and pain into the universe. The instrumentation is precise and sharp – emotional, scything and eloquent and as poetic and dark as the vocals and the lyrics.
Indeed, Malone acknowledges the role of the band in the creation of the animalistic sounds.
I wanted to introduce different musical voices into the record to set it apart from my previous work. I recruited Ash Jones (violin), Henry Hugo (guitar), Adam Casey (bass), Katie Walsh (backing vocals) and Simon Edwards (drums) who brought their extensive experience and unique perspectives to their respective roles. Ash brought his classical / Gypsy expressiveness, Henry his Neil Young infused post-punk, Adam his Charlie Haden-laden openness, Katie her Hildegard von Bingen ethereality and Simon his Jim White inspired sensitivity. I think these elements make this record a really singular listening experience.
The result is something that is incredibly vivid and expressive.
‘For The Term Of My Natural Life is out now through ARS Records and available to download and stream here and through the link above.
Malone and his band will be launching the album on Saturday 29 July – details below.
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