CIAO MALZ is the solo project of Malia DelaCruz, a Brooklyn-based songwriter who has been making waves in her local scene for the last three years or so. Her debut EP, To Go (2022), paired clever, pithy and sometimes acerbic songs about small-town ennui with a cool, big-city slickness. Straight off the bat, she was creating the kind of dream pop worth staying awake for. Over the next couple of years, she collaborated freely (including a stint playing bass for local lo-fi legends Sister) and released a handful of singles, each one more assured, more interesting and more off-kilter than the last. She also found time to record a winning cover of Frog’s brilliant You Know I’m Down.
Fans of Frog will find much to love in her new EP, Safe Then Sorry: DelaCruz shares Frog frontman Daniel Bateman’s gift for an effortless melody, and the wonky, deliberately decentred feel of the music has something Frogish about it too. Opening track Two Feet Tall drinks at the same well as Men I Trust: slinky melodic progression, wobbly guitar lines, and a dreaminess that’s as satisfying as it is discombobulating. Bad for the Bad Guy starts life as more of a straight-up acoustic strum before entering a chorus which is both impossibly catchy and almost irresponsibly laid-back.
Take Me Out of Here has more of those distinctive wobbly guitars, and adds some disconcerting backing vocals, on the very edge of melody and intelligibility – at times, it sounds as if the song is haunting itself. Gold Rush is a quiet, profound ache of a song, its easy melody and folk-pop sound belying an emotional depth and musical resonance that makes itself known on repeated listens.
DelaCruz describes these songs as being about ‘the unlikely connections we make, how they’re simultaneously inexplicable and meaningful’. She clearly has a knack not just for recognising these strange and fleeting concepts but for capturing them in expertly crafted pop songs. This may only be the second CIAO MALZ EP but it’s a real gem, and it already seems likely that DelaCruz has a big future.
Safe Then Sorry (6th December 2024) Audio Antihero
Bandcamp: https://ciaomalz.bandcamp.com/album/safe-then-sorry