LISTEN: With ‘Two Feet Tall,’ CIAO MALZ Carries the Weight of Unfinished Business
Is there something that you know would make your life better, but for whatever reason, you just can’t bring yourself to pull the trigger and get it done?
If that sounds like a familiar refrain, we have something hazy and wonderful from CIAO MALZ. The Connecticut native — real name Malia DelaCruz — has given us “Two Feet Tall,” an experimental indie rock single about our nagging need to get things done.
“Two Feet Tall is about the feeling of losing an inch every day you put off making that call you really need to make,” DelaCruz said. “It’s the pile of clothes growing bigger and feeling yourself getting smaller. Regardless of the overcompensation, the mountains to hide behind — that unsettling feeling persists. I wanted to evoke the feeling of stagnation while everything else is in motion, so the lead on this track quivers in front of the persistent drums that push the scene along.”
The track’s lo-fi sensibility hangs over a bright, intricately layered soundscape like the weight of half-finished ambitions; the foggy feeling that comes with knowing that better days are ahead — if only we would finally flip the switch.
If you dig this one, we have good news: more music from CIAO MALZ is coming, when she drops her EP, Safe Then Sorry, on December 6.
“Safe Then Sorry is a rest stop on the path most traveled. I wrote the bulk of the EP after work, (and) these stories and characters came to me subconsciously and asked to be spoken into existence,” DelaCruz said. “These songs are about the unlikely connections we make, how they’re simultaneously inexplicable and meaningful. I work through these contradictions with unpredictable melodies, explosive choruses, and with the recording process itself. We did everything on the fly to capture as much raw emotion as could fit in the four walls of the basement studio. I wanted the project to feel how it did when I was messing around on GarageBand on my first computer — unrestrained.”
