On their fifth album, Mal Blum reimagines the role of the villain for bad boys everywhere. Villainy here is personal — Blum made the record, appropriately called The Villain, about the unique exhaustion of being cast as the antagonist in a trans-for-trans breakup; it’s also political, in a society that vilifies gender non-conformity.
Here, Blum explores the friction of binary victim-villain thinking, challenging dehumanizing stereotypes with relatable nuance: “I was too willing/To make you the villain… Does it make me the villain?” they sing on the title track. But Blum’s villainy is mosaic, inviting listeners to question their complicity in searching for the “bad guy” in their own lives and rhetoric, too.
Gone is the jokey dysphoric flair of their earlier…

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