Song You Need: Malice K distills nostalgia to its bare essentials

The FADER’s “Songs You Need” are the tracks we can’t stop playing. Check back every day for new music and follow along on our Spotify playlist.

Malice K has a sneaky way of taking the tropiest of tropes and shaking them by the ankles until only the good bits — the things that made them worthy of repetition in the first place — remain. On his new single, “Changes,” he draws on the sort of brooding nostalgia mined ad nauseam in contemporary pop and boils it down to its essence.

Over a woozy, six-chord, six-bar progression that loops for the track’s entire two-minute run time, the mercurial Pacific Northwest native slurs out an impression of a rudderless singer-songwriter mourning his old self as he reflects on the irrevocable changes time has wrought. Like the rest of his tongue-in-cheek miniatures, which range from proto-punk sketches to baroque laments and beyond, “Changes” is sneeringly self-aware.

Pivoting easily from an Elliot Smith croon to an Isaac Brock bark, Malice K pushes past the usual pop pleasantries. He shows a cool disdain for the vibe he’s encapsulated so effortlessly, but his structures are studiously rendered. It’s clear he’s a disciple of the genres he seemingly scoffs at, always taking the time to read the book before he throws it away.