Bubbling beneath the surface of the recent ska resurgence is upstart ska collective Ska Punk International. I say collective because what was once a podcast featuring international ska bands has morphed into a full-fledged distribution label for international ska musicians. The next logical progression from there is to put out official first run albums. Chris Reeves has since organized a benefit compilation, and is now working with ska wunderkind Kenny Malloy on the release of The Precure Album, an ambitious ska punk concept album released under Malloy’s alter ego, Kmoy.
Released on October 5, 2021, The Precure Album tells the story of Val, a narrator being used as a representation of Kmoy’s own life experiences. Much like life, the songs featured on the album have many layers, making them a dynamic and meaningful listen. Couple that with Malloy’s soulful voice, and you’re in for an absolute treat of an album. Kmoy’s The Precure Album continues the current trend of amazing modern ska albums, and one you should definitely listen to as soon as possible.
To help celebrate the release of the album, Malloy took some time to answer a few questions for us.
My first exposure to you was on the Mega Wave Twitch stream with Tape Girl. How did you and Beth get to know each other and team up on her project, and also on yours?
Beth and I met on the Skatune Network discord in March of 2020, just a bit before quarantine. She’d ask questions in the general chat about how to best play ska guitar or do harmonies, and I’m the type of person who will drop everything to teach the children well. And I could tell she was smart ‘cause she’d pick up on what I was teaching very quickly. Sometimes she’d DM me questions, often a couple weeks or months apart.
Anyway, one day in August 2020 I decided to check up on her (it had been two or three months since we last talked) and see if she added anything new to her soundcloud. And I heard “No Thoughts, Head Empty,” which elevated her from “smart ska student” to “genius in her own right who is pioneering a new sound, and I must now listen to this song repeatedly so I can A) enjoy it and B) study it and figure out how it works.”
So that’s the moment where we started to become real friends and talk to each other every day. She knew I played organ and asked me to play on a demo of hers, and then I’d just been collaborating with her ever since.
Your first official album as Kmoy came out this week. From what I understand, it’s been brewing since around 2015. What was your process for getting it from concept to concept album?
I wrote the first song, “Princess Precure,” in autumn of 2015 for a friend of mine as a jokey fake TV show theme in the vein of what YouTuber Hot Dad was doing at the time. It’s often my nature to play off my real emotions as part of a joke, and they found their way into the song. Anyway, four years down the road I was grappling with the fact that Princess Precure was still the best song I ever wrote, as much as I wanted to write serious songs for serious people. So I decided to lean into my tendency to need to use jokes as a medium for communicating my actual feelings, and I wrote “Celtic Precure” in summer 2019. And that’s what got the ball rolling on me deciding this should be a whole album.
As I mentioned above, The Precure Album is a concept album. Who is Princess Precure and what made you want to tell her story?
“Go! Princess Precure!” is the name of a show my friend Zackery was watching. Zack is obsessed with the Precure/Pretty Cure franchise. He was the one who said “write me a Precure theme,” probably as a joke, not realizing I’d actually do it. I was inspired by Hot Dad, whose fake TV show themes would be overly emotional and factually inaccurate. So to be funnier, I did zero research on the topic. There is actually no character called “Princess Precure” in that show.
Anyway in mid 2019, when thinking out the concept for this album, it dawned on me that Princess Precure should be her own distinct character, and that she would be a metaphor for addiction. Drug abuse, alcohol, overexercise, under eating, screen addiction, hell anything really. Those specifics are just stuff that apply to me (to a lesser degree now, but it’s all still there) but it could apply to any maladaptive coping mechanism you’ve made a habit out of.
So, it’s not Princess Precure’s story at all. It’s Val’s story. Val introduces themself at the beginning of “Delayed Green, NJ.” Val’s basically my author insert character, and Val was very helpful to me because using them let me talk about my life in a way where I didn’t have to be completely literal with every detail.
The album is ska punk at its core, but there are so many other layers. At times I hear folk. Other times, I hear the bombasity of Queen. Was it a challenge to blend so many influences into a cohesive production?
Yes it was, emphatically, explicitly. The arrangements were somewhat easy to come up with, but the mixing was a months long nightmare. I had never mixed anything before, so I spent such a long time watching YouTube tutorials and learning through trial and error just so I could make the album sound good. Because if the mix is off, all that effort you put into the project goes right down the drain.
I thought maybe it wouldn’t be possible to mix all these elements together, but if WATU, Slow Gherkin, Fishbone, and The Slackers could do these kind of maximalist arrangements on some of their albums, then so could I! So what if mine has Weezer guitar plus acoustic plus organ plus quadruple tracked three part harmony vocals plus call and response gang vocals plus left and right ska guitar plus bass plus drums all at once during the final section of the first song? I MADE IT FIT!! Took a long time but I figured it out!
You cover The Specials on this album. How influential is that band to you as a ska fan, and as a musician?
The first two Specials albums and the “Ghost Town” single are essential listening for any ska fan, as we all know. Obviously they’re immensely influential to me as a musician because it was the Specials who led the ska revival, and they not only fused ska with punk, but they fused it with reggae. A lot of people don’t realize that. The way we play bass in two-tone/third wave ska is influenced more by reggae bass lines than it is by traditional ska bass lines. Without The Specials pioneering that sound, we wouldn’t have The Toasters whose 1990’s era bassist Matt Malles is the biggest inspiration on my ska bass lines.
Also I really do love the experimental approach on the album More Specials. Even if sometimes the experiments don’t really land for me, there are certain tracks where it lands HARD, like “Stereotype.” That’s a brilliant Kmoy-style maximalist ska arrangement right there.
If you could only listen to one ska band for the rest of your life, who would it be and why?
Fishbone ‘cause they’re the greatest band that ever existed, specifically from 1990-1993. There was no band in the history of this planet that was ever that good (so far. there’s still hope.)
That answer, however, is cheating because ska really makes up a small portion of what Fishbone does (my favorite album is The Reality Of My Surroundings – no ska on that one.) So to be strictly strict, I’ll go with the Skatalites. Those dusty 1960’s recordings never get old for me.
Ska is seeing a big resurgence of late driven mainly by new voices and bands in the scene. What bands excite you these days?
Bad Operation made my favorite Ska album of the 2020s so far. Catbite is out here kickin’ ass on the daily. Their new record is so good. I especially love the drumming and the bass lines (plus the tape saturation on the record is such a nice touch.) Matamoska isn’t really a new band but I love their records. They always sound great and they know how to do arrangements that make the most of their sizable band. Girls Go Ska – killin’ it. And Tape Girl is going to be a certified genius bad ass in five years at the most.
I also like how We Are The Union abandoned their more I guess “traditional” ska punk sound in favor of adding some colorful synths and organs into the mix. Since Ordinary Life is such a popular record, I feel it will inspire a lot of new ska punk bands to not just follow the old Less Than Jake/Arrogant Sons Of Bitches formula and try something new.
That JER record isn’t out yet but y’know, I’ve got a feeling it’ll be good just based on them generally being a genius and having this initiative to push the genre forward sonically by infusing it with more of an indie punk vibe (and probably other influences we’ll all be aware of when the album actually drops.) Oh and last but not least, i wanna b like eichlers.
Looking back on the journey you went on to complete this album, what are you most proud of?
The mix. On eight of the songs, anyway.
What have you learned along the way that made you a better musician?
Come up with a more solidified arrangement in your head before recording, otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time muting and unmuting separate regions of tracks and doing cross fades when you could’ve just been like “okay and the organ comes in here, and the distorted guitar stops playing here” etc.
For folks who may be apprehensive about digging into a concept album, what’s your elevator pitch to get them to check it out?
Just listen to the first song all the way through. If you can hang with that, you’ll get the album. It’s like Evangelion, it’s not what it seems on the surface.
Any last words?
Wonderful Life.