On February 28th the world was introduced to the debut album for New York’s Merry Malady. Completely self-released by singer and songwriter Christian Ang, this album initially slipped under my radar, but I’m thankful that it managed its way to my ears in less than a week.
The album is mostly punk, alternative rock, and perhaps some prog rock with some heavy ska adjacency and even a couple of ska tracks, and has features from several talented musicians from within the ska community, like Eric Daino (Holophonics), Bex Rose (Joystick), Tara Hahn (Half Past Two) and several others.
The band name, “Merry Malady” and the album title “Healthy Life” present a fun juxtaposition and an interesting theme that picks up occasionally throughout the album. I love the play on words from merry melodies to merry malady, and the idea of the first album of a band whose name injected malady into the title to be called healthy life. It just feels so perfectly ironic, and to top it off, the first lyric of the first track is “Everybody in this room is going to die”.
That lyric kicks off “Low Hanging Devil Fruit” as the first track, and leads into the solid uptempo drum rhythm, distorted electric guitar, and a nice horn rhythm. The song feels more alternative rock and possibly even a little grungy at times than most of the album, but the horns give it life that I love. At a short 2:14 seconds, the song about a failing relationship flows seamlessly into the second track so beautifully that you could easily think the drum fill to start “Two Step Verification” was a bridge to speed up the tempo.
Shavasana feels a little darker than the first two tracks and is the first track to not feature horns. The discordant primary guitar line through the song feels at odds with the more melodic undisturbed, cleaner guitars playing beneath the melody. While I didn’t mention the outstanding gang vocals in the first two tracks, this album really does a great job of mixing in additional vocalists. The backing vocals in the last third of this song do a great job of adding an additional texture and making the vocals feel a little more powerful. The rhythm in Shavasana feels pervasive, sticking with you after the track ends.
“Cocaine Bear vs Cocaine Shark” is a short, pithy, punk as fuck, track that feels like nonsense and stream of consciousness, and class awareness, dystopia, and a mental breakdown, yet somehow doesn’t feel chaotic, and I don’t know how that is possible. It definitely gives vibes of self-awareness of being a cog in a machine, a necessary cog, a machine that doesn’t operate without your job, but also, your existence being replaceable.
“Sweet Mellorine” is another failed relationship song, another personal peak in the windows of Christian Ang’s soul and personal life (real and personal, or fiction for art with a first-person narrator never matters) and this time her heartbreak is of her own making. A song where she falls out of love, through no fault of her partner, the natural fading of love. For some reason these songs always feel particularly heartbreaking to me- love given and received in unequal proportions, life webbing and flowing at incongruent rates. I love this song, not just for the lyrics, but the horns are back, and they add so much energy to the track, almost masking the sadness that lies in the lyrics.
“The Worst Ever Ska Punk Act On Long Island” is a full-on ska song, with great backing vocals throughout the track, and outstanding horn lines throughout, and is a masterclass on insecurity and self-loathing. One thing I love about these lyrics though is the hidden strength that I feel like the protagonist doesn’t even realize. The line is intended to show insecurity and failure- “I know I’ll fall back into those nasty habits and time”. What that tells me is that they have currently escaped those nasty habits, they’ve recognized them for what they are, and they have made a commitment to escape, to be better. Regardless of whether it’s just a song and not a true story, I feel like many people relate to the song, and it’s important for those people to know that progress isn’t linear, and if you’re afraid you’ll relapse into bad habits, you’ve already started the process of defeating them.
The album follows this ska track with a second, even catchier ska track in “Seek Validation Elsewhere”. With its incredibly catchy chorus, this is probably my favorite track on the album. The upstrokes get me hooked, I love a song that has a chorus to sing along with, and it’s an easy song to dance to. But I’ve discussed most of the songs on the album and I definitely want to talk about the final track. Every artist featured anywhere on the album sings a part on the final track, tying everything together. I think it’s a beautiful concept, to bring everyone out for a fairly grandiose final song. Outstanding gang vocals and backing vocals, more themes of mental health and health and medicine in general, but it also does something absolutely beautiful. The album begins with a lyric, “Everybody in this room is going to die”. The end of the album has hope (and outrage) instead. The final chorus “You call this living a healthy life? We’re not living a healthy life” is repeated, before finally ending with “I want to live a healthy life”. And while it feels somewhat hopeful and beautiful and promising, underneath, and at the very end, quietly, that first line from the album is repeated, bringing everything full circle. I want to live a healthy life (we’re all going to die).
Like I said at the beginning, this is a self-released debut album from Merry Malady. It’s smart, clever, well written. It slips in the cracks and falls between genres. It’s beautiful and sad and personal. It’s an endeavor of love. It is far from perfect, but it’s worth investing in and listening to. It’s worth experiencing.
Written by Gimp Leg
