Throughout her career, Maylee Todd has delivered her outsider-pop quirks with heavy dose of whimsy, evident as early as her 2010 debut Choose Your Own Adventure, which brimmed with Stereolab-esque playfulness. Maloo, her fourth album and first for Peanut Butter Wolf's famed Stones Throw Records, is a collection of science fiction lullabies from the perspective of her digital avatar, after whom the album was named.
Formerly from Toronto and currently creating in Los Angeles, Todd became enamoured with the positive possibilities of virtual reality during the pandemic, envisioning a sort of social media alternative focused on amplifying our shared dreams rather than reinforcing status symbols. As such, she imbued Maloo with a utopian technological vision, the likes of which Grimes' AI girl group and the robots from Björk's "All is Full of Love" video might conceive if they dreamed about a children's album with Kid Koala instead of electric sheep.
While Maloo is Todd's most musically and conceptually sophisticated album to date, the hints of absurdity expressed in the lyrics and melodies harken back to Choose Your Own Adventure. The title of that album — sonically steeped in bossa nova, folk and soul — was a major clue as to her provocative style, taken from an interactive series of printed books where the reader makes choices on behalf of the stories' protagonists. As Todd walks listeners through the limitless possibilities of Maloo, she shows how that foundational idea has evolved from analog paper to the digital cloud.
Maloo trends more into late-'90s Björk territory with modern advancements, flush with jewelry box melodies that feel warm despite their obvious processing. The dreamy instrumental "Tiny Chiffon" sounds like the background music from a highly emotional Final Fantasy cutscene or a Mort Garson song inspired by an autogenerated houseplant. The sultry sway of "No Other" takes Erykah Badu to the outer space cuddle puddle, while the softness of "Dream with You" brings to mind Supersempfft's optimistic kosmiche-pop. All of the songs are distinct in style, yet the common threads in their sounds and imagery really tie the room together. Like a calmer alternative to King Gizzard's Nonagon Infinity, Maloo plays well on repeat, and it's so interesting that it is a joy to let it ride three or four times in a session, picking out different gestures and moments each time.
The lullaby concept is translated rather literally as well. Todd mentions lucid dreaming in "Age of Energy," the opening track that builds the world in which Maloo exists. Later on, she explicitly explores dreaming in "Dream with You," a trippy love ballad near the album's end. Those tracks bookend the record with the kind of 'existence is wrapped in a dream' feeling that arguably held together the surreal rotoscope-animated vignettes of Richard Linklater's Waking Life.
Further embracing technology, Todd directed a trippy 360-degree virtual reality video for "Infinite Program," created in collaboration with Kyvita. Set to a woozy, atmospheric, vaguely tropical tune, the lyrics speak of a sort of sentient planet like Stanisław Lem's Solaris, but less haunting and more empathetic. The health of Todd's planet is tapped into the psyche of its inhabitants, so when their mental health suffers, so does the environment. To heal oneself is to heal the world; to hate is to destroy it.
Though bathed in the fantasy of science fiction, her words contain the key for reality to move forward. In her dreams, technology brings people together rather than tearing them apart. As such, Maloo isn't just an avatar or an album. It's a path to a brighter future.
(Stones Throw)Formerly from Toronto and currently creating in Los Angeles, Todd became enamoured with the positive possibilities of virtual reality during the pandemic, envisioning a sort of social media alternative focused on amplifying our shared dreams rather than reinforcing status symbols. As such, she imbued Maloo with a utopian technological vision, the likes of which Grimes' AI girl group and the robots from Björk's "All is Full of Love" video might conceive if they dreamed about a children's album with Kid Koala instead of electric sheep.
While Maloo is Todd's most musically and conceptually sophisticated album to date, the hints of absurdity expressed in the lyrics and melodies harken back to Choose Your Own Adventure. The title of that album — sonically steeped in bossa nova, folk and soul — was a major clue as to her provocative style, taken from an interactive series of printed books where the reader makes choices on behalf of the stories' protagonists. As Todd walks listeners through the limitless possibilities of Maloo, she shows how that foundational idea has evolved from analog paper to the digital cloud.
Maloo trends more into late-'90s Björk territory with modern advancements, flush with jewelry box melodies that feel warm despite their obvious processing. The dreamy instrumental "Tiny Chiffon" sounds like the background music from a highly emotional Final Fantasy cutscene or a Mort Garson song inspired by an autogenerated houseplant. The sultry sway of "No Other" takes Erykah Badu to the outer space cuddle puddle, while the softness of "Dream with You" brings to mind Supersempfft's optimistic kosmiche-pop. All of the songs are distinct in style, yet the common threads in their sounds and imagery really tie the room together. Like a calmer alternative to King Gizzard's Nonagon Infinity, Maloo plays well on repeat, and it's so interesting that it is a joy to let it ride three or four times in a session, picking out different gestures and moments each time.
The lullaby concept is translated rather literally as well. Todd mentions lucid dreaming in "Age of Energy," the opening track that builds the world in which Maloo exists. Later on, she explicitly explores dreaming in "Dream with You," a trippy love ballad near the album's end. Those tracks bookend the record with the kind of 'existence is wrapped in a dream' feeling that arguably held together the surreal rotoscope-animated vignettes of Richard Linklater's Waking Life.
Further embracing technology, Todd directed a trippy 360-degree virtual reality video for "Infinite Program," created in collaboration with Kyvita. Set to a woozy, atmospheric, vaguely tropical tune, the lyrics speak of a sort of sentient planet like Stanisław Lem's Solaris, but less haunting and more empathetic. The health of Todd's planet is tapped into the psyche of its inhabitants, so when their mental health suffers, so does the environment. To heal oneself is to heal the world; to hate is to destroy it.
Though bathed in the fantasy of science fiction, her words contain the key for reality to move forward. In her dreams, technology brings people together rather than tearing them apart. As such, Maloo isn't just an avatar or an album. It's a path to a brighter future.