Listen Without Prejudice. . . If someone told me that I’d spend the weekend humming a bunch of tunes by someone who’d written chart-topping material for the likes of Kylie Minogue American Idol the runner-up in 2003, Clay Aiken, never mind S Club 7 and Victoria Beckham, I would have punched them up the throat. And yet that’s exactly what happened.
Chris Braide, the songwriter responsible for those and others mentioned above first teamed up with Merseyside songwriter, Dean Johnson, back in the 90s when the pair met at a songwriter’s workshop run by Squeeze-geezer, Chris Difford.
Allowing for the fact that Johnson was busy recording his own albums and touring with Squeeze, whilst Braide was otherwise engaged with the time-consuming business of writing shedloads of hits for boy bands, torch singers, post-modern icons, pausing briefly to plonk an Ivor Novello award on top of his piano in 2003, it was quite a while before the pair finally sat down in the studio.
As Malmõ - the name is a kind of Indie-sounding camouflage to wheedle under the prejudice radar of people like me – The Upside is a collection of strong and often intriguing songs that move, if not quite in mysterious ways, then in engaging and surprisingly rewarding ones nevertheless.
The subject matter is primarily the ups and downs of relationships although there are some interesting diversions. Made Your Life Hell pays homage to Brian Wilson; modulating piano and rich velvet backing harmonies are mustered, as the song documents the descent into self-loathing of a once-successful songwriter. Who one earth can they mean?
The title track is spangling, crisp up-tempo pop harmonies against a driving four-to-the-floor, and like their first single, the iridescent We Don’t Know The People We Love, it possesses hooks so sharp that once inside they’re neigh on impossible to retract.
The Steps Of My Heart, is the very opposite to all the shiny happy power-play that populates The Upside. Dark descending piano instil a gravitas that mixes mournful Badfinger with a twist of sombre Seeds Of Love-era Tears For Fears. Its magisterial coda is especially powerful, and again, it’s a dead cert that you’ll be hitting the repeat button more than once.
Although the jangling chorus of Beside Myself evokes the stilted thump of Talking Heads’ And She Was, it falls short of the mark whilst I Can’t Keep It To Myself, despite being a lovingly constructed and perfectly executed ballad takes the prize as being the least effective out of the eleven tracks.
A million miles from the teen-idol rictus of Braide’s usual clientele, Malmõ tend towards the pomp-pop of Coldplay but emerge without too much of the collateral blandness associated with such stadium-friendly sounds. By contrast, The Upside has a warm, intimate quality devoid of gimmick and studio tricks. Polished perhaps but never lacking passion.
Released 28th November on Visible Records
More details at Malmo World
