From the archives: Paste Magazine Issue 1 featured an essay on Bill Mallonee as he left Vigilantes of Love to go solo.
This story originally appeared in Issue #1 of Paste Magazine in the summer of 2002, republished in celebration of Paste’s 20th Anniversary.
Leave it to Bill Mallonee to find the perfect metaphor for desperation and hope. At the end of 2001 the critically acclaimed singer/songwriter of Athens, Georgia’s roots rockers Vigilantes of Love found himself without a band, without a recording contract, and without a clear direction.
Mallonee stands in the tradition of great confessional romantics that runs from Dylan and Joni Mitchell through Ryan Adams and Steve Earle. There are a few missteps along the way. He’s occasionally guilty of settling for the sacrifice fly rather than swinging for the fences, as on the extended baseball metaphor of “You Give It All Your Heart,” where I want him to sing anything other than “It’s not whether you win or lose/It’s how you play the game.
If the lyrics reveal the map of the heart, then the soundtrack to the heart borrows liberally from musical touchstones from the sixties through the eighties. There’s a pinch of ’67 Beatles psychedelia here, as on the stellar opener “She’s So Liquid,” a dash of Springsteen bravado there, as on the incendiary rave up “All or Nothing,” some jangly REM guitars everywhere. There are Dylanesque acoustic guitar and harmonica ballads.
“Life On Other Planets” may be the best illustration of how the eclectic influences work together to form something far greater than the sum of the parts. To a buoyant pop melody that recalls-era Brian Wilson, Mallonee sings about his family, about days and years that have passed too quickly and can never be restored, about kids who have grown up too fast and are gone, about all that is left undone and unsaid.
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