At 1:51, “Advantage Out” is the third-longest song on the Mall‘s debut full-length, Emergency at the Everyday. The longest is the drawn-out untitled closer, which clocks a full two-and-a-quarter minutes. That oughta tell you something: The Mall doesn’t write “songs” so much as choppy segments of a whole (a mere twenty-minute whole, in this case). One-to-two-minute noise/math-rock blasts don’t exactly get the chance to spread their wings. Instead, the Mall layers melodic keyboards on top of drums on top of guitars on top of distorted, distant vocals on top of noise, then chops it all up. This hyper, condensed mix can be alternatingly grating and irresistible. “Advantage Out” tends toward the latter, but offers hints of the band’s penchant for squall.
FOLLOW US