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EBEN MALLORY
Against the Background
Independent Release
Local singer-songwriter Eben Mallory could probably fool you at first take with his boyish good looks and professional photographs that grace the cover of his album Against the Background. This record is a perfect example of how looks can be deceiving. Mallory practices no slight of hand, though; it's just that he looks so darn normal on the outside, yet his record has a dark, emotionally touching side that takes the listener by surprise.
The influences heard on Against the Background are many, but Mallory tends to use them only as auxiliary color for his thoughtful compositions and copies no one out of whole cloth. "Today" opens with a fairly normal, rhythmic acoustic guitar riff then Mallory's whispered vocals enter and plow through; there's a verse leading the song to a chorus that could easily have come straight from the Sunny Day Real Estate songbook. It lifts the song out of the straight-ahead, I-thought-I-knew-where-this-was-going preconception and breaks it open into an emotional climax.
"Finding You" is similar in that the music accompanying the verses is slightly less strong than the music that carries the chorus. This construction occurs often in pop music but if relied upon too often can lead writers to ignore the whole by depending upon one or two hooks. Mallory is far from bending under the weight of bad songs, however.
The music Mallory plays, generally speaking, alternates between furiously strummed guitar or gently touched piano. He seems to have a clear understanding of how music serves to carry the lyrics and how a simple chord change can alter the entire weight of a lyrical phrase. His songs are emotionally charged with personal experience that the listener finds himself in empathy with (i.e. relating to rather than merely accepting.)
Lyrically, he treads dark places that have hope on the horizon. Still, there's a consistent, somewhat melancholy presence in his lyrics ("Illusions melt around me like a candle dripping down / from a light that covers over everything to protect us from the darkness;" "I am waiting for the sun to come back down and shine down on me forever;" "In the end who will you love more / and will you wait until tomorrow to fade away").
There's nothing simple about Mallory's music, and while he mainly utilizes the acoustic guitar, the traditional favorite of singer-songwriters, he has built an album worth listening to repeatedly since it is thematically and musically multi-layered.
Gordon Lamb
- Flagpole Magazine
"smooth, Duncan Sheik/ Damien Rice-style moody vocals and poppy, poetic lyrics" - Ben Gerard - Flagpole Magazine
"Singer/songwriter Eben Mallory will be a special guest performer to close the summer gatherings" - Katie Crews - Red and Black
Out & About
EBEN MALLORY
Published , March 02, 2006, 06:00:01 AM EDT
New York City’s renowned club CBGB is closing its doors, but not before local musician Eben Mallory got to play the famous venue.
Before classes began this semester, Mallory took his music on the road and ended up in NYC.
“The Offspring was playing the same night next door, so we got to hang out with them after the show,” said Mallory, a junior from Basalt, Col.
Mallory said he hopes to widen his own group of fans in Athens with a performance tonight at Starbucks.
He is already a coffeehouse veteran, having played at Cups Coffee Café and Aromas, but he’s also played at larger venues like Tasty World.
Between shows, Mallory studies advertising but said he does not plan to ever get into the advertising business, instead counting on music.
“I play music and that’s what I’ll always do and that’s what I’ve always done,” he said. “As soon as I’m … out of school I’ll be back on the road because I miss it and I love it so much.”
He recently professionally recorded his first album, “Against the Background,” in Athens.
The show tonight will be “short and sweet,” and may include some surprises, he said.
“Some of the people that I play music with are hopefully going to show up at Starbucks, so it might not be an entirely acoustic show,” he said.
Students who miss the performance tonight will have other opportunities to see Mallory in concert — he’s not giving up his guitar any time soon.
“Music is so important to me because it can transcend barriers we face in life, whether they are social, cultural, economic, whatever,” Mallory writes on his Web site, www.ebenmallory.com. “Music gives me a purpose in life.”
— Rachel Webster
Playing with Maggie Smith
When: 8 tonight
Where: Starbucks
Price: Free
More Information: www.ebenmallory.com
- Red and Black
Discography
Against the Background - debut album
Chasing Down Sunlight EP
Photos
Bio
A high school girl is held at gunpoint in a school and is asked “Do you believe in God?” She replies “Yes” knowing the gunman will not like this answer. He pulls the trigger.
Men form beliefs that say they should drive a plane into the World Trade Center and into Washington, DC. The U.S. goes to war against an intangible enemy, and the next to die in it could be someone you know, could be a member of your family, could be you.
These are times of great uncertainty. The only thing that has really held true for me is coming to know God after falling while snowboarding, causing nerve damage which affects movement and sensation in my legs still to this day. Sometimes it takes a time of great uncertainty, such as being tossed around in a lightning storm in a two person jet in the middle of the night in morphine diluted pain, not knowing if you will see the ground again, to put life and God into perspective. And playing music.
Music has been the one thing in this world that I can connect with in a way unlike anything else. It has been there for me since I was young, and has shaped who I am. It is one certain thing in this temporal world in which we live. Music can inspire me and take me to a place set apart from all of the struggles and uncertainties of this life. I am here to reach out to people in this world to show God’s love through music.
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