Mali Mali new single 'The Sentence'
‘The Sentence’ is the lead single from Auckland singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Ben Tolich, aka Mali Mali’s forthcoming fifth album, Spirit Tide.
Inspired by a story he heard that left a profound impression, ‘The Sentence’ is about, as Tolich puts it, “Family, lineage, old age, looking back on a lifetime, dying with dignity and the sadness of an elderly person wrestling with this in solitude.”
Expressed through sunset guitar figures, strident drums and poetic prose in the mode of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen, ‘The Sentence’ isn’t about moral judgment, it’s simply a documentation of a tragic event, tempered by an acknowledgement of the triumph of having existed at all.
Mali Mali makes for inspired, disarming listening. With flowing piano melodies and delicately constructed layers of texture, Mali Mali elegantly tows a line between classic pop-songwriting and aural experimentation.
