I love Ryan Adams - in a musical way. When I heard that Ryan Adams's partner in crime, Jesse Malin, was releasing a second album, I was excited. They are not only cohorts in the Finger (shh...they don't want you to know), but they also share the same roots. Boy falls in love with the punk scene, but then matures only to find solace in soft melodies and melancholy lyrics. Maybe Malin deserves some sort of a break; I should spare him the Ryan Adams comparison, because he falls short of it. After all, Adams has been in touch with his sensitive side longer with his alt-country band Whiskeytown, while Malin was still fronting the glam-punk band D Generation.
Malin doesn't use obscure metaphors in his lyrics on his sophomore album The Heat; he just writes stories about people. New York City is probably his main, if not sole muse, because in the City there are so many diverse and fascinating people. He writes about Steven, Paulie, Bobbie, Jenny, Mary, Britney, Johnny, and a countless number of unnamed people that you and I do not know. However, Malin is able to blur the distinction between the listeners and the subjects so we can peer into the lives of the unknown.
In a seemingly drunken haze, Malin stumbles over a mouthful of listless lyrics in "Mona Lisa." He performed this song live on Conan O'Brien and it took six people to emulate the recording, granted that one person was only playing the tambourine. Speaking of a mouthful of lyrics, Malin was grimacing at the end of each arduous phrase, because he was all out of breath. As Buddy Holly said, "You can't save rock-n-roll/it's only for the lonely boys and girls," and Malin follows the advice by writing a mediocre and slightly gloomy song in "Swinging Man." The dizzying track "Silver Manhattan" proves that he is still in the doldrums with the slow tempo and dispirited lyrics. The song sounds like a metal ballad, because of all the distortion in the guitars.
"Arrested" sounds like another downer, opening with soft strumming, but the pace picks up and the notes become more distinct. Any song about being arrested can't sound that positive, but Malin tries his best to make the song as light as possible. Malin's lyrics in "Since You're in Love" captures Adams's lovelorn misery pretty well: "gonna sleep away all my sunny days/and in another year well I won't be here/hoping that you'll change your mind/since you're in love/I'm still sad over you." Malin marks the song with his own brand, adding his relatively aggressive guitars and distinctive voice.
Malin throws away all his guitars, basses, and drums away for a quaint piano number accompanied by a cello. Probably the most intense song lyrically on this album, "Basement Home" touches on a personal matter instead of just rattling on about strangers. The positive lyrics "I'll be okay/you'll be okay" and the supercharged guitars make "Hotel Columbia" the most upbeat track on the record.
Just because Ryan Adams guests on the album does not necessarily mean it's going to sound like him, especially since Malin took the role of producer this time around. Malin shares Adams's heartbreak, but his musicality differs with a focus more on guitars than anything else; he has seven guest electric guitarists on this one record. I expected to find more of an Adams sound, but Jesse Malin is developing his own sound instead of hiding in his buddy's shadow.
