The art of the break-up and reunion for bands is a cash cow. All those differences that seemed so real in the 90s are being ritually washed clean for a price. There's no such thing as the last show. Not for The Replacements. Not for The Postal Service. Not for My Bloody Valentine. Not even when you're stoked its over for Passion Pit and Foxygen. Bands get back together because there's money in that sort of thing—that thing being the fully-loaded re-issue, the festival set recreating the classic record, and if all goes well the tour.
Then there's The Mallard's break-up; a band whose wax wings melted before it barely left the ground. No matter how much critical lauding we do, the report from fractured San Francisco four-piece has no air of hoax nor reunion ploy. No matter how much we beg, The Mallard is most likely done. We will hear Finding Meaning In Deference, and we'll want it really really bad. Listen to “Crystals & Candles” below, our guess is you'll be just as confused as us how a band could walk away from it all.
No one throws out the words post-punk when it comes to San Francisco bands, but on “Crystals & Candles”, The Mallard alienate themselves as the blank degenerates of California. Restless and wrecked, “Crystal Candles” mutates like the scowls of strangers in a bad trip. The psychedelia clocks in, but resides in the fringes of something akin to The Raincoats on the rainiest of days.
The Mallard, “Crystals & Candles”
The Mallard's Finding Meaning In Deference is out July 29 on Castleface.
