Maylee Todd's musical career has been a delightful voyage through an ever-expanding number of genres. The Canadian-born L.A. resident has tripped lightly through bossa nova, easy pop, disco, modern R&B, and electro-pop, singing each song with simple grace and style. Her 2022 album Maloo is yet another stylistic detour, this time inspired by time investigating virtual reality. While stuck at home during the 2020 lockdown, she created a VR avatar based on herself and imbued it with a utopian vision. The record is a series of ...
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Maylee Todd's musical career has been a delightful voyage through an ever-expanding number of genres. The Canadian-born L.A. resident has tripped lightly through bossa nova, easy pop, disco, modern R&B, and electro-pop, singing each song with simple grace and style. Her 2022 album Maloo is yet another stylistic detour, this time inspired by time investigating virtual reality. While stuck at home during the 2020 lockdown, she created a VR avatar based on herself and imbued it with a utopian vision. The record is a series of sparse electronic ballads built around bleeps and bloops crafted using old sequencers and modern applications. Working with co-producer Kyvita, Todd creates a warm and inviting world of sound, then populates it with her unadorned vocals and melodies that will stick with the listener as they float through inner space. There's a little bit of Broadcast-style space age pop in the mix, some smooth Sade-like dreaminess, a touch of giddy weirdness ā la Björk, and a steady dose of soft R&B too. Played end to end, the album conjures up a mood of introspection and peaceful meditation. The songs are built on similar structures, with the beats in the same bpm range for the most part, and Todd rarely raises her voice above a whisper. It's a truly immersive experience where it's super easy to set the controls to glide and let the album wash past like a soothing massage. A few tracks do stand out, though: "Grab Your Guts" ups the bpms a touch, Todd delivers a message of quiet empowerment, and the chorus delivers a lightweight punch. "No Other" shudders and shimmies like a vintage Timbaland production as Todd pushes the vocals past mellow to achingly romantic, conjuring up the hazy ghost of Aaliyah in the process. As far as the science fiction ballads go, it's hard to single any out since they all hit a similarly high level of success. Perhaps "Dream of You" with it's nice mix of wobbly beats, heartbreakingly sweet vocals, and sun-melted synths. Or maybe the bubbling "Age of Energy," which opens the album with a wide-eyed wonder, not to mention some fine glitchy drums, vast vocal harmonies, and humming keyboards. These are just a couple songs picked at random. Any of the others could have been highlighted; everything is close to perfect. Maloo is something of a pocket-size masterpiece. Between Todd's dreamlike vocals, the blend of very human melodies and very electronic sounds, and the way the album ebbs and flows like a calming sea, it's an alternate reality that sounds like an absolute dream to live in. ~ Tim Sendra, Rovi
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