Album Review: Rachel Mallin and the Wild Type’s Degenerate Matters
The irony wasn’t lost on Rachel Mallin as she listened Kanye West’s The College Dropout on vinyl one evening in April 2015. In a month, she’d walk out of her last college class at the University of Missouri. Mallin, once a fixture of the Columbia, Missouri, music scene with her band, Dangerfield (in addition to her budding solo career), had made the decision to pursue music full time.
So it’s no surprise that the first single released from Rachel Mallin and the Wild Type’s, new EP, Degenerate Matters, was “Dropout,” an ode to the insouciance that only 20-somethings possess:
The collegiate congregation
Cast me out into the point of passive deviation
Cause I don’t cry for the home team
When they don’t carry home the glory
I don’t cry and I don’t scream
I don’t feel compelled to cheer for anything
It sits second on the EP, preceded by “White Girls,” whose video focuses on a single Starbucks cup, the accessory of choice for the archetypical white girl.
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In a nod to the famous Madeleine Albright quote, Mallin declares “there’s a special place in hell” for women who spend their days creating inane drama. She sings over twee guitars and synths in a winking nod to the indie-pop starlets beloved by those same young women.
It’s also not a surprise that Mallin has no time for collegiate frippery. She has the business acumen (and smoker’s rasp) of a seasoned professional. While her Mizzou classmates crowded Bengal’s, the college town’s designated boat-shoes bar, Mallin sat 15 minutes away in the Aspen Heights neighborhood, toiling away in her makeshift studio.
The EP’s third track, “Cash4Gold,” is another expression of disillusionment, this time with wealth. O
ver a folksy rhythm, Mallin sings of the ultimate futility of accumulating wealth.
Cause money comes and money goes … Let’s trade our baby, get rich fast/Spin our gold back into cash/Just so long as it lasts, she sings with a sardonic lilt.
Mallin knows the industry is fickle; she’s not naïve. The music business takes away as easily as it gives. All she can do is sit back and watch, her mouth perpetually turned into a smirk.
The EP closes out with “Dance Card,” a midtempo, Sheryl Crow–like song about young and reckless love.
I smoke too much, you smoke too much/We’ll probably die before our friends/But if we don’t we could grow old/And read newspapers in our beds, sings Mallin.
She again draws a contrast between her and “all the debutante girls.” Mallin isn’t a Barbie doll who lives in a plastic pink box. She’s a tiny, profane spitfire with tattoos, and she gives zero fucks about her image.
Degenerate Matters is ultimately a breakup album, though not in any romantic sense. Rather, it’s about a growing rift between the Old Rachel and the New Rachel. Old Rachel played small venues in small towns. New Rachel opened for the Cold War Kids and played South by Southwest. Old Rachel was a college student hoping to transfer to a school in Nashville. New Rachel dropped out of college, and she’s doing just fine.
