True to midwestern roots, MaLT began life in San Francisco in 1989 as Darke County, performing a curious mélange of highly styled, rusticated indie pop. Moving toward a more expansive, lyrically acute sound, the band swerved direction and identity in fall 1991. After much consternation and debate — and increasingly louder rehearsals — singer Jeffrey Bright, guitarist Eric Schulz, bassist Chris Troy Green (each from Dayton, Ohio) and drummer Christopher Fisher (Oakland, California native) re-introduced themselves as Myself a Living Torch.

Among the first recordings to be presented as MaLT material was a set of four songs captured at 350 Bryant Studio, owned and operated by the late Tom Mallon (known for engineering work with numerous San Francisco indie acts, notably on a series of records with American Music Club). Of these four, "Do Big Men Really Run the World?" and "The Future So Bright and Gold" were perhaps most emblematic of the band's shift from Americana-at-midnight troubadours to more broadly awake-aware existential adventurers — as if drifting to the continent's edge had also drawn them nearer to a musical, emotional and thematic precipice. The remaining two songs, “Between Me and My Grave” and “Fear of Velvet,” offer more perplexing and elusive flavors. Both were carry-overs from the Darke County catalog, and show that the seeds for MaLT were sown at least a year before the band’s re-identification.

“Fear of Velvet,” while not offering any true or deep insight on a peculiar and likely uncertified clinical psychosis, does deliver a seductive aural meme for that very thing — and despite all possible kitschy connotations, cries out for at least a cursory academic dissection:

Musically, Schulz’s composition takes the form of a “pulp theme,” a la Henry Mancini’s "Peter Gunn Theme," or of primary music from any number of 1950’s/early 1960’s TV detective/secret agent shows, or Hollywood’s catalog of mid-century film noir. Accordingly, “Fear of Velvet,” is tense and episodic, constructed in a mode descended more from hard-boiled, urban jazz and bebop than suburban rock and roll — more representative of an adult breakdown than any model of swooning teenage angst. Though the use of guitars, rather than brass and woodwinds, shifts the mood to something less formal and more primal, there's a sophisticated nuance, even a kind of glamorous ennui, in the song's bi-polar, two-chord pedaling, its understated modulations and in the dramatic punctuations of the middle bridge. All this, it should be noted, foreshadows and presages a surge of interest in cocktail culture and lounge music in the young adult American demographic of the mid-90’ and early 2000’s.

But, perhaps the key to appreciating “Fear of Velvet’s” quirky value and attraction — a song quite popular among the band’s following — lies in the authenticity of its inspiration:

Purportedly, a co-worker (and avid MaLT follower) at Bright’s market research day job in the early 1990's once described to him — possibly as a visceral reaction to his predilection for wearing velvet pants on stage during a certain theatrical phase of the band’s development — her very real fear of, and frightful aversion to, touching velvet. Apparently, even the thought repulsed her. Throughout the history of textiles and garmentry, the iconic fabric known as velvet has been associated with nobility and privilege. But on more than one occasion, the downy creation has been assigned or associated with a somewhat devilish, rakish, or nefarious character or quality. It is clearly a fabric of decadent and deceptive personality. And plainly, the allure of such a fabric, whose nap is so luxuriously seductive to the fingertips, has no doubt caused an unspoken, repressed stir throughout the ages. How strange that conversation must have been!

In sum, “Fear of Velvet” poses a set of preposterous, but nonetheless titillating, questions — notions to ponder in the lost hour between three and four AM: Is the wearing of velvet, by anyone, a subtle act of sexual proposition? Can the behavior of a person actually be strongly affected by repulsion to the feel of one particular fabric over others, say that of suede, or silk? If so, what could that mean? What could be the source of this repulsion? How did it begin? What is it that velvet, or the feel of velvet, might actually represent, both to Bright’s co-worker and in the song’s surrealistic interpretation and portrayal of psychosomatic behavior? Could it be that fear is the attraction, and attraction is the fear? And what exactly is there to fear, ultimately, but death? Is velvet a metaphor for death, or sex, or both? Is sex, the act of inception, also an act of near-death? And finally, should the song be viewed as a representation of temptation incarnate, as some oddly shaped warning? Or, inversely, as a dreamscape of freedom from suppressed desires. So many questions. If only The Great Dali were here to explain.

“The night is made of nothing / There is nothing left to fear / Not the thief, the clown, nor Cupid / But the fear of velvet.”

In the tradition of the early 20th Century surrealists, Myself a Living Torch nurtured and cultivated an absurdist streak; they employed it as a form of protest. In the late 20th Century this typically meant they painted themselves in a box in a corner of a seldom used room — one which no one else could enter, and one from which they could not climb out or escape. Fittingly, “Fear of Velvet,” with its devil’s proposition, is paired here with a recording rescued from the band's scrapheap, and one with a similarly devious attitude. “Ever Young,” written sometime in the late 1990-early1991 window (music from Schulz, lyrics from Bright) was never given its due with a proper studio recording. However, the song was captured in several demos committed to 4-track cassette in spring of 1991, one of which has recently been restored to at least a semblance of its initially intended punchy, acerbic self.

Operating on the ludicrous conceit that if one could travel continuously by air with the rotation of the earth, one would never age, “Ever Young” is, beyond the guise, a trumped-up, bratty tantrum bemoaning the encroachment of domesticity — of “life insurance and family.” If “Fear of Velvet” shudders at the unknowable, on the flipside, “Ever Young” is a plea, rendered in pathos, for escape from very knowable middle class realities and the lure of comfortable mediocrity. What stands out, beyond the track’s ultimately futile protestations, is Schulz’s expressive guitar work. Short bursts and quick figures act in reply to Bright’s lyrics and vocal phrases to create a vivid, staccato call and response — and in some ways speak even louder than the words. And, by all means, don't miss the marimba. The mix is murky, but its use in the second verse lends an aptly cartoonish flair to the developing "plot."

Through the luggage detector, with your Walkman way up loud, stay sharp for more convolutions, parlor tricks and death-cheating stratagems from Myself a Living Torch.