by live crowds feels incongruous with its content – about family dysfunction and domestic dreams – but it’s also testament to Mallrat’s unique sleight of hand: a disarming charm which paints all things, even pain and heartbreak, as merely facts of life.
Thematically, though, the album reads less like a complete metamorphosis than a quiet progression of Shaw’s persona. It’s clear she’s moved on from teenage disdain, across the 11 tracks that circle the contours of love in all its forms – unrequited, all-consuming, fleeting. . But the shrugging nonchalance is still there, as she dispenses cutting home truths as offhand remarks.
Mundanity – and its coexistence with the sublime – remains a core fixation. Heart Guitar begins with Mallrat listing the trivial observations underscoring a great love: “I hear your footsteps / Know how your keys sound when you’re getting close.” Meanwhile, on To You, she makes a simple plea sound transcendent. “Holding on to you,” it goes, her voice melting into a rare, gauzy falsetto, “is all I want to do.
There’s also a new throughline to her work: a fuzzy, blown-out guitar that pulls from dream pop and pop-punk to colour tales of giddy crushes and shattering break-ups with the Vaseline-lensed blur of recollection.