Lou Hazel, Malena Cadiz - 10/1/26 - Fresno, CA - Tower Theater Lounge

Malena Cadiz was up first. She’s got a Joni Mitchell aesthetic, with long, straight hair parted in the middle and draped over her shoulders and a long, flowing, loose fitting dress with a floral print. A dress so long that she has to grab it and raise it up a little bit when walking up straits so that she doesn’t step on it and trip herself. 

She was all by herself on stage. No band. Just her and an electric guitar (which she is playing finger style ). Like Joni Mitchell. 

The standout feature of her performance was, by far, her voice and vocal delivery. To keep the recurring theme going, she sounds like Joni Mitchell. But with maybe the teeniest tiniest hint of Billie Holliday. She has a whispered, fragile, poignant delivery, like she’s letting you in on deeply personal secrets and barely keeping herself together. Like she’s on the verge of breaking apart at any second because of the emotional significance of what she’s singing about could devastate you if you let it. It feels deeply vulnerable and personal. But she’s got the courage to sing about it anyways. 

Lou Hazel came on next. He sounds like Ryan Bingham a little bit, with a raspy voice at times. Or War on Drugs, but if it was only Adam Granduciel on an acoustic guitar. Also kind of like Bob Dylan with staccato, mumbled, nasally singing. He has a good voice, but (similarly to Malena) it's his manner of singing, more than the quality of his voice, that is noteworthy (but Malena has a good voice too). 

The thing that he’s best at though is writing songs. They’re about the mundanity of life. The steady, unrelenting ticking of time in an existence that is mostly uneventful. Or about the hopeless, omnipresent poverty of northern Appalachia. Like a collection of narratives about forgotten places and people. And all of them are clever with fun wordplay. He’s a good writer. 

He’s a fingerstyle guitar player, playing melancholy melodies for his melancholy lyrics.