July 11th marked the release of Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Mal Blum’s sixth full-length album, The Villain. The album explores villainy as the multidimensional concept it is, and leaves no stone unturned. Blum discusses dysfunctional relationship dynamics, transness, masculinity, and what it means to reclaim the villainy cast upon the trans community.
For the third straight summer, Mal Blum returns to SPACE on Friday, July 25, supported by Charlie Mtn., the alt-country moniker of longtime folk-punk artist John-Allison Weiss. Tickets are available here.
SPACE intern Courtney Burnett spoke with Mal on the road before they left for tour.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Your album title, “the villain,” can be examined from many different angles — you as the villain, someone else as the villain, or a larger establishment/construct being the villain. What would you say the album title means to you, and how is this reflected in the music on this record?
It’s kind of a trick. I thought the singular villain was a more compelling title because it asks the listener a question almost immediately. You see a single villain and you’re like, well, who is it? It’s kind of a trick question, because there is no one villain. Not that it’s a linear story , but I feel like over the course of the album, you’re like, oh, there is no hero, there is no villain — there’s aspects of all of these things and all of us.
At one point it was gonna be named plural, like “Villains.” I thought it was more compelling for it to be just the one, because it grabs your ear and asks you to try to solve the puzzle.
I definitely heard that on the album. What you said reminded me of the song “Cancer v. Gemini”!
Yeah, that’s definitely one of the brattier ones. I heard another song that was a pretty popular breakup song at the time and was like, oh, it’s pretty clear that actually, the narrator of the song is the toxic ex. I was like, what if there’s a breakup song where both exes were the toxic ex? And they both thought the other one was wrong and they were right?
You’ve discussed this album in relation to transness, and the way that trans people have historically been cast as the villain. Could you speak more to that aspect of the album?
Historically — and currently, for sure — I didn’t plan this album release to coincide with the extreme ramp up of our faces in the political crosshairs in the United States. But it certainly is not lost on me that it ended up being a very unfortunately timely release date because it was a week or two after the Supreme Court case, and it was a couple months after they took away our identification stuff federally. The rhetoric is nothing new, and it’s part of a very old playbook of scapegoating certain marginalized communities when you’re trying to use them to get your base to not look at what you’re doing.
I guess I was trying to reclaim it in a way, with songs like “Killer,” especially. Like, you’ve been telling me my whole life that me and my community are this cartoonish caricature of villainy. So, okay, fine – if you think I’m the villain, then think I’m the villain and I’ll be a villain. Let’s all enter our villain eras and at least have some fun with it.
What has your songwriting process been like for this album? Are these a collection of songs that you wrote around the same period of time, or are there some that you’ve been holding onto for a while?
I probably wrote about half the album thinking in terms of trans identity and masculinity, who’s good/who’s bad, or feeling inherently good or bad — these sorts of concepts. Then I went through a really big life breakup. I had a broken engagement — which is crazy to think about now — a couple years ago. It was probably over the course of a year that I wrote a lot of songs on the record, and then it was two weeks where I wrote like 10 more songs. I went through and picked which ones I wanted to live together.
Once I had identified the themes of the album, I was like, oh, there’s this other song that I started many years ago, and I never finished, and picked that back up. It’s kind of funny that way. You can write towards a concept, right? You can be like, okay, I’m writing an album about this thing, and you can do it all at once. Or you can start writing songs and then look at what they have in common and be like, oh, what am I gesturing towards? Then you can solve the puzzle of what else wants to live in that emotional world.
And would you say that you have particular musical influences for this album, and are they different from your previous works?
There were definitely a couple songs where I was like, here’s my reference for what I had in mind for this thing. Mostly though, I would say sonic references were heavily influenced by the producer, my friend Jessica Boudreaux. She used to be in a rock band called Summer Cannibals, but she’s an incredible pop producer as well, and I feel like her pop and indie rock sensibility together really influenced the sound of the album.
Then there were certain songs where I had a mixing reference or an arrangement reference, and they’re very, very random and not always contemporary. I think it was “A Small Request,” or “Must Get Lonely,” or maybe even “I’m So Bored.” When we were mixing it, I was like, okay, bear with me — the reference that I want this to sound like is Marcy Playground. And then, for “Gabriel,” where it’s mostly stripped back…there’s this one song by Noah Cyrus called “July” and it’s just her and a guitar and other voices harmonizing with her. This is what I wanted it to sound like.
Certain songs I want to keep in mind when we’re mixing, but mostly I let the music stuff get influenced by people better at it than me. It’s weird because I know what I don’t like. I feel like it’s probably very frustrating for most music producers, but me and Jessica have the same sorts of impulses. If we didn’t, it would be completely frustrating.
Is there a song or two on this record that are particularly meaningful to you or were difficult to write?
The last one on the record, “Husbands and Other Strangers,” was difficult for a lot of reasons. It’s about my neighbor who passed away and it has audio clips of her in it. I don’t often write songs like that and the subject matter is a little tough. “Too Soon” was one of those where you sit down to write a song and it comes out in one sitting, where you don’t feel like you’ve written it so much as extracted it. And “The Villain” was meaningful because I went back and wrote it after the fact. Somebody was like, I think that you need a song on this album that looks at the narrator of the album in an earnest way. I think that song really rounded out the album in a meaningful way.
Are you excited to tour?!
I am! It’s always stressful before you leave and then it’s usually fun once you get on the road. I’m in the pre-tour stage right now. I hope people come out to the SPACE show. It’s my first band tour in a while, so we’re gonna see how it goes.
Bands often skip over Maine on their tour routes, but you’ve made a point to play Portland regularly over your career. Do you have any favorite shows, memories or things you enjoy about touring through Maine?”
I’ve always loved Maine. In college, I dated somebody who lived in Scarborough, so I spent a lot of time in Portland and just really fell in love with it. I was probably 23 or 24 running around Portland — at that time I was playing at coffee shops and stuff. It’s been cool to get to a place where SPACE is the go-to room for me, and to open for other people at the State Theatre.
I don’t drink anymore — so let me just preface this story with that — but I used to get drunk in Portland when I was younger and with my ex (who I’m good friends with now) and fake propose to her all over and then other drunk people on the street would be like, woo! There’s a non-zero amount of people in Portland who probably think that they saw me get engaged but it wasn’t true. Anyway, I have very fond memories of Portland. When I come through and play, it makes me nostalgic. And I’m a Cancer, so I like that.
Mal Blum plays with Charlie Mtn. on Friday, July 25 at 8 pm at SPACE, 538 Congress St. in Portland, Maine. Tickets are $18 advance and $22 day of show, with $2 off for SPACE members, and available here.