I'm Green by Mali Velasquez
Adolescence can be a wild menace trapped under an auspicious guise – like the boy calling wolf, life builds suspense until you drown in the unexpected; until a first loss, discomfort, or embarrassment shakes your body with unforgiving violence. And there’s no framework! There’s no past experience to help you through it. We stumble blind; it’s always new. From birth, everything is always new: a completely juvenile existence.
As a young woman undergoing humiliating newness, any female musician holds my heart in their hands. Mali Velasquez is my latest comfort, my latest forgiver, and my latest reason to stay curious about grief when I lack any framework to recover. Her debut album I’m Green is music created within, and about, that demeaning adolescent newness. Produced by Joseph Kuhn and released through Acrophase Records on October 13th, 2023, the record is a raw, desperate, clawing examination of sweltering loss.
Velasquez’s lyrics take center stage on the record. Exploring grief in the wake of her mother’s death, the songwriter persists in asking questions, even when she lacks answers. Through poetic specificity and uncomfortable imagery, Velasquez explores “the relationship of 'self' as a reflection of my relationships to other people,” as divulged in her artist statement. The comforting part of I’m Green is that the record isn’t trying to explain away uncertainties. When Velasquez shares her feelings with such unabashed urgency, the tracks are a welcoming solace. She sits inside her gloom and welcomes you to sit inside yours, too.
Almost every song is proof of the Nashville-based songwriter’s incredible skill for image-based storytelling. On the lead single “Tore,” Velasquez sings, “The grass that I hid all of my throwing up in / In your backyard by the front porch.” “Bobby,” the record’s opening track, depicts the artist “twitching my legs like a spider crawling from the bed to the bathroom.” These visceral and strange descriptions of hiding throw-up and embodying a spider lack disgust in how Velasquez sings them. She invites the listener to linger in the image and exist alongside it, without judgment. In this way, she builds solace out of the grotesque. “Clovers,” arguably the highlight of the album, intimately explores Velasquez’s reaction to her mother’s death. She writes, “Laying in the wetness / Of my grandma’s lawn / All the trash in the Universe will still be here when you’re not.” Again, that grotesque imagery kicks in to strengthen the singer’s emotions, and the listener’s connection to them. The examples are endless, and it’s amazing to find an album as rich in literary gems as I’m Green. It’s unabashed honesty. It’s the rich emotional urgency. It’s the grief-driven curiosity. All of it lures the listener to feel.
Velasquez compliments her narrative-driven, visceral lyrics with a mixture of folk and indie-pop/rock instrumentation. Whether it be intricate picking patterns, overwhelming surging drums, or mewling electronic elements, Velasquez and Joseph Kuhn's chosen accompaniments are almost perfect. The relentlessly surging drums on “Clovers” are a great example of this. They feel like your heart – not your heartbeat, but the way the physical thing flips and drowns when you cry. The guitar picking and bassline in “Shove” reflect that childish attempt to earn praise while being embarrassed in your body.
It’s rare to find an album as raw as this one – even rarer to find one that blends lyrics and instrumentation in such a complementary way. The whole record is an explosive exploration of when you feel so lost in your body that the only answer is expulsion, or so submerged in grief that the only answer is creation. So, no, there’s no framework for growing up. There’s almost no way to evade grief, embarrassment, or discomfort. But Velasquez says: feel, create, listen, indulge. Get guttural in your grief. Get feverish with your growth.
Our instagram/homepage graphic used photography by Reed Schick (reed schick photography)