Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist CIAO MALZ (Malia DelaCruz) has announced her debut EP, Safe Then Sorry, to be released via Audio Antihero Records (Frog / Magana / Nosferatu D2 / Cloud) on December 6th. Today it’s preceded by the free/pay-what-you-want ‘Two Feet Tall‘ single that’s out on Friday, and we are debuting below. It ripples with glistening guitar motifs, twitchy percussion, and bittersweet vocals melodies that bristle with an undercurrent of longing and frustration. Its a delicious earworm, ripe with glowing homespun melodies that approach tender feelings at a cautious angle. Her music first reached the Audio Antihero label when she issued a cover of Frog’s ‘You Know I’m Down‘ sleeper hit in 2023, and the label then offered to work with her on this debut.
Inspired by artists like Elliot Smith, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Men I Trust, she combines witty introspection, informed by her experience as a young woman of colour, with a layered musical bounce. While her self-released demos earned supporters at NPR: WFUV, Loud Women, and others, this is her most mature, eclectic, and complete work to date.
‘Safe Then Sorry’ ranges from the breakneck Indie Rock frustration of ‘Two Feet Tall’ (“Drinking all the milk and missing all the three-pointers / Think about it still, find new ways to disappoint her”) to Alt. Country on ‘Bad for the Bad Guy‘ (“I feel like Mary Shelley in 1818 / Getting bored and do something extraordinary / Strike the pen to the paper, making sense of it later”) and aching Folk Pop for ‘Take Me Out of Here‘, (“Occasionally my patience leaves the room / Here comes that busted attitude / That I can’t stand how the sky’s blue / But what I would do, to give it to you”) and ‘Gold Rush‘ (“Got no temptation, to sit around have the same conversation / Going in circles, going berserk / There’s nothing that I have not heard”).
In addition to numerous other collaborations at her Lower East Side studio, Malia DelaCruz has also been seen playing bass for the acclaimed Sister Group (with Hannah Pruzinsky, Ceci Sturman, and James Chrisman) since 2023.
She says: “Safe Then Sorry is a rest stop on the path most traveled. I wrote the bulk of the EP after work, these stories and characters came to me subconsciously and asked to be spoken into existence. These songs are about the unlikely connections we make, how they’re simultaneously inexplicable and meaningful. I work through these contradictions with unpredictable melodies, explosive choruses, and with the recording process itself. We did everything on the fly to capture as much raw emotion as could fit in the four walls of the basement studio. I wanted the project to feel how it did when I was messing around on GarageBand on my first computer — unrestrained“.
