In making their third record, Hex Key, Mamalarky spent entire seasons hunched over guitars and obscure synthesizers, their long hair sweeping over strings or covering concentrated eyes. The band recorded takes in between the sounds of passing ice cream trucks and yowling stray cats in their LA home studio, a tight but prolific living room. Hex Key is a document of perseverance, of going for the gold while somehow remaining totally aware of one’s own vulnerabilities. These effervescent, swirling songs chronicle vivid desires crashing against real-life limitations but finding a way to keep burning anyway. That tension between anguish and resilience, between performed aloofness and brutal honesty, drives the music, imbues it with a compelling intensity. Over the last 8 years, the quartet’s members have lived in Austin, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, and have established a bond that they acknowledge is rare. “We have an unmatched level of trust in each other,” drummer Dylan Hill says. “There is no air of professionalism. It's literally just four friends hanging out and getting to the bottom of something.” Given their closeness, Mamalarky are able to fight like family, not necessarily with each other, but for the music, to make it the best it can be. Whereas their last album, Pocket Fantasy, was exploratory and free-flowing, the songs on Hex Key are the result of absolute devotion and fine tuning. It’s the kind of attention to detail that can only happen when the four bandmates are working alone together, uninterrupted by producers, engineers, or any outside influences. “It’s never ‘kick your feet up, let’s see what happens,” guitarist and singer Livvy Bennett says. “We’re always staring each other deeply in the eyes saying ‘Let’s make this next take incredible.’ We never settle.” The band is so committed to their craft that Hill even recorded the drums for “#1 Best of All Time” amidst an intense bout of poison ivy. The determination he felt in the moment manifested itself in the song’s frantic-but-focused percussion, he says.
Orange County’s Social Distortion returns with its first album in 15 years with Born to Kill. Armed with 11 urgent songs, Mike Ness continues to build on the mystique that Social Distortion is more than just a punk band. Throughout the collection, Ness revisits the sounds of the 1970s, his formative adolescent years. Born to Kill is a continuation of the bar of excellence that Social Distortion and, in turn, Ness has long been praised for. Born to Kill is a body of work that will live long in the Social Distortion catalog. Songs like the hard-charging title track that serves as the album’s mission statement, along with the riff-laden “Partners in Crime,” the nostalgic “The Way Things Were,” and rollicking “Tonight” are songs that fit in across any of Social Distortion’s various eras. Now nearly five decades into its career and with a remarkable catalog spanning nearly three generations, Social Distortion has no intention of slowing down any time soon.