Mal Not Bad’s Mal Hauser takes us track-by-track through their cinematic, stormy, and stirring debut album ‘This Is Your New Life’ – a cathartic coming-of-age record of grief and growth, life and death, that aches with the warmth and wonder of a soul coming to light and a heart beating anew.
for fans of Mk.gee, The xx, Radiohead
Stream: “Life” – Mal Not Bad
Find yourself inside a new life… Find yourself inside a different mind… It’s a hive mind (when you go) it’s not the first time…
Self-actualization doesn’t have a sound, but if it did, it might resemble the music on Mal Not Bad’s debut album.
As much an experience to be felt inside as it is a collection of songs to be played and heard aloud, This Is Your New Life aches with the warmth and wonder of a soul coming to light and a heart beating anew. Glitchy, ambient, and emotionally charged, Mal Hauser’s sonic and spiritual awakening is at once fragile and tender, impassioned and feverish – the product of an artist finding (and honing) their voice and their vision, embracing their truth, and out of all that, creating a space that is uniquely and truly their own.
Grief and growth, life and death all feed directly into a cathartic coming-of-age album that ultimately leans toward the light as Mal Not Bad revels in the journey – a road that is at once volatile and turbulent, yet full of hope and promise.
What direction are you headed?
Flashing lights between the branches
Got another time on my mind
It’s not the first time
Find yourself inside a new life
Find yourself inside a different mind
It’s a hive mind
It’s not the first time
No control is a hard win
When you go it’s a forfeit
I’m on the defense
I’m just trying to make sense
– “Mustang,” Mal Not Bad
Released August 9th, 2024 via Same Same, This Is Your New Life is a breathtaking record of raw humanity channeled through Mal Not Bad’s singular musical filter. Opening in the midst of a depression-induced existential crisis (“It’s like lying in the gutter, feeling so washed up, you’d think that you’d know better but it’s hard enough to recognize old cuts”), Mal Hauser’s first full-length studio album as Mal Not Bad finds the Los Angeles-based musician, producer and visual artist – previously best known for their work as a collaborator, producer and touring musician with acts including Jay Som, Mk.gee, Miya Folick, and NoSo – navigating their own mental health whilst simultaneously trying to make sense of their own identity, their own purpose, and their own place in a world so often marred by chaos, turmoil, and discord.
This Is Your New Life arrives following two stirring EPs – 2021’s indie folk-leaning In Free Fall and 2022’s ambient, experimental Continuous Short Feature Film – and sees Hauser continuing to push forward what has, since day one, been a malleable, ambitious, and ever-evolving project. 2024’s iteration of Mal Not Bad doesn’t fit neatly into a genre, but their intimate, unfiltered songwriting, their catchy, enveloping melodies, and their cinematic, and at times stormy, production style makes for a dreamy, lush, dramatic, and jarring listening experience.
“This project takes the world I am rooted in and stretches it,” Hauser tells Atwood Magazine. “It zooms in to different moments and pieces, slowing them down and stretching them even more before it zooms way out and boldly adds new color and dimension. It collides familiarity with new, aiming to keep the experience accessible but still unique and refreshing.”
In conversation, Hauser is an open book – both about this album, and about themselves. For them, This Is Your New Life expresses who they’ve been and who they’ve become in recent years.
“For me the piece of work is the story,” they explain. “Art has an amorphous nature that becomes shaped by a listener’s subjective experience – aligning with time and place, where they are emotionally and physically in that moment. That ambiguity is what gives a record the majestic, deep relational qualities we cling to when we find something we love. I love when a story remains partially open for the listener to create a world of their own.”
“I don’t think I had a specific moment where I marked its beginning – no ‘ok, here it goes. I am writing a record.’ The initial songs would come in pockets of stillness or pockets of chaos that drove me to make stillness through creating. What I do remember is the point of certainty I had with the last song to end this collection — knowing which songs belonged within the emotional through line that had naturally surfaced. Throughout that time there was so much movement in my life, bringing so much change — as I am sure the same for most 20-something year olds. A lot of layers were shed, and I was just trying to connect with what felt true and honest in that moment. Those last songs felt like the final arrival at a solid, grounded place.”
The album’s title “This Is Your New Life” is deliberate, provocative, and intentional – pulled from a lyric in the song “Mustang” (“find yourself inside a new life, find yourself inside a different mind”) and speaking to that sense of self-discovery permeating all twelve songs.
“For me this record, the art, and everything surrounding it feels like the moment when you open your eyes after a long, hard sleep and all of a sudden everything looks different but still feels the same,” Hauser reflects. “You see what’s familiar and you ground yourself in it – you love it, even if you want to change it. You also see what’s different or unsettling and instead of freezing or running away, you go toward it with curiosity and embrace it — you stretch it out and as a result, you grow. This feeling comes once you’ve shed enough layers that lead you to the start of a new chapter.”
Come on, come home
You’ve seen all this before
Don’t let it pull you under
Under, thunder
Shaking all four walls
Praying that you’ll be fine
And it’s fine, you’re alright
Sometimes it’s hard to fight
Sometimes you’re met with hard times
While this album is best listened in one full sitting – it is an experience, after all – certain songs inevitably stand out on the journey from the album’s hypnotic and churning opener “Far Gone” to the sweetly seductive finale, “Dodgeball.” Personal favorites include the aforementioned, shiver-inducing “Mustang,” the enchanting, all-consuming “Come On/Hard Times,” the breathtakingly delicate “Cycle,” and the propulsive, visceral “Life” – which Hauser starts by singing, “Death keeps coming up again, up from the grave and the coffin, guess it’s the change of the season.”
“I genuinely love every single one of these songs – they all feel like specific pieces that needed to come into existence,” Hauser says. “I’ve grown to have an ever-evolving relationship with all of them and am grateful to have been the conduit for them to exist.”
Hauser may not claim any single song as their “personal” favorite, but they do have lyrical highlights. “The overall emotion behind the lyrics in ‘Mustang’ contrasts with the song’s atmosphere and energy in an interesting way — the rub creates this palpable world where you feel like you’re on the freeway at night speeding through tunnels, headlights reflecting off broken lines and in between dividers,” they smile. “‘AP’ does a similar thing emotionally, though more from a still, matter-of-fact place.”
It’s a marvel to see what so much soul-searching, inner reckoning, introspection, and confrontation can ultimately create.
Mal Hauser is by no means done with their journey – This Is Your New Life is, of course, a snapshot of a much longer, winding road – but it is also an undeniable triumph, shining the artist’s inner light out into the world. Bold, bright, and beautiful, this life-affirming record is a reminder that we are not stuck in place; that we are more than our depression and pain, more than our situation and circumstances, and far greater than the sum of our individual parts.
“I hope listeners find a multidimensional relationship to the project — depending on where they are at and when they listen to it,” Hauser shares. “I hope it becomes a way to enhance their reality and also serves as an escape. I hope it grounds them and also lifts them to a light, curious place. I hope it can serve as a passive, easy listen and a deeper, more contemplative one whenever they want to go inward.”
“For me, whether it’s from the project itself or just general time passing, I have taken away an immense gratitude for life — all the people in it and everything we get to experience – the bad and the good.”
Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Mal Not Bad’s This Is Your New Life with Atwood Magazine as Mal Hauser goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of their debut album!
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:: stream/purchase This Is Your New Life here ::
:: connect with Mal Not Bad here ::
Stream: ‘This Is Your New Life’ – Mal Not Bad
:: Inside This Is Your New Life ::
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Album / non single tracks
This record is a blossoming of a new chapter. Instead of swimming under chaos it zooms out and above, coming from more of a settled state of knowing oneself – of seeing patterns and learning which ones are worth keeping, which ones define us, and which ones we want to change. It’s a blossoming of sonic universes for me – taking instruments and creative approaches that are comfortably rooted in me and pushing them to the places I want to go and see and hear. Similarly with the visuals – taking what I know and exploring what I want to learn more about, within myself as a creative and the art itself. The non-singles fill in those gaps of the past and the future. They serve as reminders of the familiar patterns I see, hear, and feel in myself but come from a more patient, grounded place. Sonically, they don’t seek to push so hard – instead embrace those comfortable, familiar roots and find a way to enhance what’s special about them – that’s where the blossoming lives.
Far Gone
“Far Gone” was written during – what I now see as – my final months in a long journey of struggling with depression. It thematically and personally acts as a bridge from the depths of the last EP ‘CSFF’ to the unearthing of a new project – ‘This Is Your New Life.’ It is the green sprout that breaks through the earth after digging and tending to soil after a rough winter. I have a hard time writing about my depression as the cliché of a “depressed artist” feels a bit stale and almost frivolous but, on the receiving end, I have only found comfort and respect in reading and hearing about other artists’ own journeys with it (Mac Miller, Anthony Bourdain, and Nick Cave to name a few). There is a reason why it’s written about so much and, therefore, there is a reason to write about it – it’s a complex, multidimensional personal snowflake that so many can relate to and spend their whole lives trying to identify. This song aims to zoom in on just one point of the snowflake and shed light on the loss that comes with growth.
AP
Song – Though technology and synthesized realities can enhance a human’s experience, their influence can also harm humanity’s originality and individuality. ‘AP’ attempts to touch on this concept – how humans can hide behind a false sense of identity that has been fed to them, rather than find and develop one on their own and be supported societally to do so.
Visual – I wanted to start in a copy-paste / robotic feeling – almost dystopian like stormtroopers, playing with how many faceless people there are (through mirrors and projected feedback loops). Slowly the performance and visuals add humanity and return to individualism.
No Worries
‘No Worries’ is this convergence of a protest song and a reflection of the difficulty of communication. I wrote it around mid-pandemic during the chaos of our previous presidency, police brutality, riots, and the pandemic itself – this constant cycle of horrible headlines and events that always exists, though the landscape/names might shift. It points to the disarray that happens when words and photos/documentation lose their power and meaning – an intense cycle that feels almost impossible to shake and can be dwindled down to everyday conversations we have with the people immediately around us. Understanding this hopefully can slow ourselves down to listen and speak with intention and patience.
Cycle, Cycle (outro)
‘Cycle’ is the peak of zooming out – the point where you are so high up, you’re guessing where your next step should be and hoping you don’t fall. You learn to trust the process, trust the hard times, trust the good ones – they are all part of life and they all shape who you are.
Come On / Hard Times
This song is an unwinding of thoughts – like an endless string of silk being pulled from a pocket. It circles around, it weaves between reflections and cycles, and it tries to uncover what parts are no longer beneficial. It slows down to take pause and observe what is happening in real time – the feelings that come up in the middle of intense and all-consuming emotions.
Inst II Pt. I, Inst II Pt. II
This song originally started as a voice memo of an acoustic guitar piece I improvised at my parent’s house – you can hear their fish water tank in the background. Pt. I is an expanded version of that voice memo in reverse, swimming in stormier, more chaotic emotions. Pt. II brings the release and breath of fresh air, though still holding a melancholic, yet peaceful sentiment. My good friend Henry Solomon’s performance beautifully blended in with the spontaneity of the voice memo – like he was in the room with me when I first recorded it. He ended up sending me the first take of him navigating the song with just a room mic and his bari sax.
Life
Loss makes room for growth in a way that the two feel one-in-the same — that point of the circle that starts again. The lyrics reflect on relationships — to ones we love, to our own inner turmoil and mental health, to our relationship with death and life itself.
My good friend and collaborator, Madi Vogt, who changed the trajectory of ‘Life’ with their drum performance on the track, described these concepts so beautifully – ‘You’re hearing this person battle and all along there’s nothing they can do except decide how much they let it dictate their inner chaos. They can try to run away from it or toward it but it’s always there. It’s the relationship *to* it that matters and that they have a say not in the situation itself, but the emotions surrounding it.’
Visually, similar to the artistic process of turning sketches into studies and ultimately into the final piece, I feel like this video had a similar journey — adding to the spirit of the song, reshaping itself and growing deeper with every iteration. The original idea came from slow shutter photos I took of my friend Nate climbing on some rocks [the sketch]. That turned into a slow shutter-based abstract piece I made with Seannie in my driveway [the study] with some climbing holds on a reflective surface. The final video remains simple — it intentionally leaves meanings open-ended for the viewer to reflect based on where they are currently at. For example – the outfit can symbolize what one might wear for their wedding, at a funeral, for a baby shower, in their casket, etc. The backpack can be a symbol of generational trauma, emotional weight, etc. The running can be toward or away from your problems, fears, etc. The climbing could be the in-between of working through it all and feeling stuck at times but hopefully climbing to new points that are higher up.
Mustang
Mustang was written with my good friends Junaco across several beautiful, dry October days. The song felt charged from the beginning, sonically and emotionally matching the energy of a still summer-like buzz winding down. The lyrics ‘find yourself inside a new life’ unintentionally nudge toward the album title and theme of the record, “This Is Your New Life.” Mustang feels like the emotional release of Come On/Hard Times – though both songs remain in moments of reflection and stillness.
Inst I
I wrote this song in a van somewhere between Atlanta and Jacksonville on a tour, hoping to expand my knowledge and love for electronic music. It guides the listener from the glitchy, angular world of Mustang into the more bouncy, contemplative energy of Dodgeball.
Dodgeball
‘Dodgeball’ feels like an extension of the song and music video ‘Sports’ from the previous EP. Both songs/videos have a serious, darker tone in the lyrics that contrast with lighter, more playful visuals and song titles. At the time of writing ‘Dodgeball’ I was struggling to learn how to love myself – the concept of dodgeball felt fitting to express that struggle where you feel like you are working on yourself and want to grow / feel good but keep dodging the main parts of you that are inflicting pain (like self hate) which prevents the growth from happening. For ‘Dodgeball’ specifically, we discovered that the team captains could be thought of as two versions of the same person – the actual person themself and the part of them that hates. The teammates can be thought of the beautiful and uglier parts of you that you might develop and/or work on/with along the way.
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:: stream/purchase This Is Your New Life here ::
:: connect with Mal Not Bad here ::
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© Jacob Ball
© Jacob BallThis Is Your New Life
an album by Mal Not Bad
