There are ghosts all across AVANTI, the debut album from Malice K. At points its howling and unhinged, a grungy layer atop a lush foundation of melodic capital-s Songwriting, but in other moments it dissolves into a gentle, wistful haunting. Malice Ks songs are blunt, uncomplicated and unflinching as he probes the interiority of memories, of mistakes saturated with an innate intensity that sucks you into his gnarled and visceral world, so barbed it could draw blood. Malice K is helmed by visual artist and songwriter Alex Konschuh, New York-based but born and raised in Olympia, Washington. Following a stint living in Los Angeles, where he became a member of the artist collective Death Proof Inc., a trip to New York resulted in him simply never leaving the city. A period of chaos ensued, Malice K exhausted and unmoored and ultimately, unwell. The record is unpredictable across its 11 songs. The album opens with a jarring scream on Halloween, Malice Ks breathless vocals buried beneath a grungy, roving Nineties riff. The track emanates a manic energy, enveloping. Its a fitting entrypoint for the record, and for the vividness of Malice K. The snarling and obsessive Youre My Girl has a swaggering paranoia: I got so high I thought my hand touching my hand was your hand. But AVANTI exists in quieter moments too; Radio, with its fluttering morose cello, moves at an almost glacial pace comparatively. The aching wistfulness of The Old House is an album stand-out, anchored in an acoustic guitar, an uneasy lullaby that never quite settles into itself: I think to myself I got the things that I wanted, but I cant help think theres something else that I forgot to do. A recent press interview called Malice K a shapeshifter, but hes not amorphous in that way. Hes decisive and intense, more concerned with carving his own path, and building his own world. Every part of Malice K is distinctly himself: from his sweaty high-octane shows to the high-flash high-contrast photos; from his gnarled and unsettling illustrations to the studio recordings that vacillate between grief and tenderness, theres an exceptional ferocity across everything Malice K touches. AVANTI feels lived in, like peering into an abandoned house through a window smeared with grimy fingerprints, relics of a life well-lived scattered inside despite being a debut, theres the sense that Malice K arrived fully-realized, imperfections and all.
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