KALI On How To Be Good At Music
I talk to the Los Angeles songwriter about sticking to your vision in the algorithm age
I was sitting in my room, listening to the new EP by Los Angeles songwriter KALI, Maltman and Effie, and trying to figure out why it’s so damn good.
One would think that determining musical quality would be an easy endeavor for me. I am, I suppose, a music critic. But more than opining upon the actual nature of individual albums and songs, what I have really engaged been with is the meta-aesthetics of our moment; the mass sense that everything now is sort of good and thus nothing is actually that good and no one really cares that much about music even if they’re constantly listening to it.
But Kali’s Maltman and Effie, a highly ambitious collection of 6 songs with frenetic, surprising production choices, lush instrumentation, and incisive, specific lyrics, struck me as good in a way that so little music today is. It didn’t just sound good and set a nice vibe that anyone would be happy to have playing in the ambient background, but was engaging, and at times challenging, and was clearly made by someone with, you know, an artistic vision.
I met KALI briefly in Los Angeles through mutual friends and had since followed their career from afar. Their previous EP Circles is sonically tight, with compelling lyrics and a sound that is highly listenable. It has even produced a hit of sorts with the dream-pop number “I Just Wanna” having over 2 million streams on Spotify and 80 K views on Youtube. But Maltman and Effie feels like a real leap, it compels you to listen to it in its intended context, as a piece, to grapple with it in a rare and special way.
Speaking with KALI about their artistic growth on this latest EP, I found them to be highly aware of their evolution and was excited to find an artist that is critical of the environment in which we are forced to listen to music.
Speaking to me from their Santa Monica studio they discussed these dynamics candidly with me.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about music in the ‘80s, everything then was consumer-first. I feel like we’re in a similar time, where there are so many people making similar music and who have similar career arcs. I remember a few years ago there were a bunch of pieces talking about how the one-hit wonder is dead. I think that was definitely wrong.” After asking them about TikTok they replied, “You have people waiting to release songs until it blows up on TikTok. I mean, it’s the complete opposite of the traditional release structure.”
I had never thought of it in those exact terms, but “consumer first” does sound like an apt description for our moment. And possibly one reason why so much music that is recommended to us by algorithms often inspires a kind, quiet smile, but so rarely pushes us to find a new musical obsession. We, the consumers, are put first in that musicians and labels are highly aware of algorithms, and thus they make music for algorithms which have the intended consequence of giving us what we want. The thing is though, they may not be giving us what we need.
KALI is actively trying not to be consumer-first. It’s not that they don’t appreciate their listeners or want to please them, but they have a strong sense that their art is ultimately their’s, and it’s up to the audience to connect with it, not for them to cater to those imagined listeners.
“I wanted to make longer songs and have the songs work as a whole to force people to expand their attention spans,” they said to me, laughing. In other words, they would not optimize their art for the algorithm.
They noticed that while the songs off of CIRCLES were gaining traction on mood and vibe playlists, the songs off of Maltman and Effie were finding their homes on genre-based indie playlist. While those mood and vibe playlists may yield higher streaming engagement, avoiding the trap that is “vibe-music” may be what leads to longevity rather than the stuff of fleeting soundtracks. KALI wanted it this way, “I am clear with my team about the kind of playlists I want to get on,” they said to me. “I guess ‘Indie’ is fine, because to me, I make alternative music.”
A sort of unwavering artistic-vision also inspired them to shrug off the traditional song structure. “I was arguing with my producer [Tony Berg] who told me that my songs have no chorus,” they remembered, “but I didn’t want my songs to be predictable. I wanted them to be in a linear form.”
What’s interesting though is that the songs do have choruses, and they are actually very repetitive, so much so that they defy the traditional contours of a chorus. Rather than coming in with ABAB rhyming structure, they are more akin to AAAAAAAA. For example, EP highlight “Addicted” soars in the middle with the refrain “I know better/I know better/I know better that to feel the same.” The repetitive refrain though forgoes the poppy sweetness that would come with a more expansive chorus for the truth that KALI wishes to convey.
A similar motif runs through other songs on the EP. The gnarled teeth, doo-wop inflected “Anybody Else” ends on a building crescendo of KALI cooing “I wish I never.” And a personal favorite of mine, “Insomnia,” is centered by a shaking-voiced KALI repeating “Nothing’s gonna change,” like a negative self-affirmation.
“I wanted to express the mindstate I was in when writing the songs, and express my psychology,” they recalled. “My producer and I were going back and forth about the choruses, but ultimately I convinced him and we went with the refrains and the linear format.”
It’s that strength and focus which makes the music, well, good. It’s a quality I almost forgot I was missing from so many artists today. A stick-to-it-edness that has sadly drifted away from so many eager wannabe stars. When algorithms control popularity, a sense of gamification arises in the consciousness of artists and that sort of “fuck it, this is my art” ethos that has been so mystified by culture for centuries has gone by the wayside. Because what is art if not an expression of one’s interiority on some level? It’s not an optimized product like a multi-purpose pot or an app that let's you design a perfume, it’s ineffable.
KALI is sticking to their guns, and representing their inner world and their city in the process. I was honestly a bit emotional hearing them talk about the role that Los Angeles played in the EP. Though I’m 4 years older and have just finished college whereas they have recently finished high school, they described their experience making music as a teen in Los Angeles in the exact same manner as I remember it for myself.
For the past few years, they would make their demos, and listen to them in the car with their friends as they made the long trek from West Los Angeles to various parties and houses on the East Side. I used to take the same highways and listen to my demos as well, and there was always a dreamy, sunset sense to the experience of listening to my music with my friends in that sprawling, dirtied landscape as I traveled laughably far.
“Los Angeles is of course thought as being connected to cinema, but that makes sense. Because everything is so far, and you have to travel so far all time, every time you feel a feeling it feels like the last time you’ll ever feel it.”
There’s an isolation to a city that sprawling. And a drama that’s different from more compact locales. When you can see so far, when you are so far, everything feels distant and foreign. And maybe you feel lonely. And feel deeply. And maybe, you want to write songs that express that wandering, growing kind of feeling.
“Fuck, high school was tough,” I thought to myself. I hadn’t remember that dreary, lonesomeness, that meandering high way feeling in a long, long time. Thanks KALI, I remember it now.
Get tickets to KALI’s upcoming performance of “Maltman and Effie” at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles and listen to “Maltman and Effie” streaming on all platforms now.