Apparently, every young actress in the business wishes she'd become a musician when she was making those all-important career decisions when she was thirteen. Some content themselves with a few weeks in the recording studio with top indie talent and the Tom Waits songbook, but Jena Malone has other ideas. The 23-year-old Malone, who made her acting debut at twelve in 1996's Bastard Out of Carolina and has since appeared in Donnie Darko, Into the Wild, and, most recently, The Ruins, has looking to make her mark in the mad-inventor-genius category, making her the Harry Partch of young indie starlets. Malone, who performs with a band called the Shoe, has built what she calls "a one woman instrument". (As opposed to what, exactly? Is she also working on a banjo that takes six women to strum it?) The instrument is also called the Shoe, indicating that Malone is either really devoted to that word or that she prefers to channel her inspiration into areas other then naming things. Pitchfork Media reports that the band the Shoe, which consists of Malone and pianist Lem Jay Ignacio, "recently embarked on a busking tour of sorts around Los Angeles, one which finds them 'only play[ing] on street corners and underpasses and on rooftops and living rooms,' according to Malone." They've also recorded a six-song EP that they've been selling at gigs.
Malone, who may or may not still be working with her group Jena Malone and Her Bloodstains, clearly takes her music seriously, and if she takes it seriously in kind of an unusual way, well, it's unusual in a different, more cerebral way than, say, Juliette "Let's kill a snake and drink its blood so we'll be creatively inspired" Lewis. Reviewing a recent Shoe show in Los Angeles, Melissa Bobbitt described Shoe (the band), as a "beguiling" platform for Malone's "insular, folksy, and wonderfully weird oeuvre" and also described the Shoe (the instrument) as a "curious contraption she built from random samplers, keyboards, and an old-fashioned steamer trunk. From it emerge squelches, squeaks, and other perplexing noises that suggest Malone isn’t content to play it safe in a town where Dogstar and the ilk are practically punch lines." Whatever Malone's up to, she's smart enough to know that her film career is more likely to hurt her chances of being taken seriously at it, at least if she betrays any sense of entitlement, which may be why she's favoring such limited-room venues as, in Bobbitt's words, "a field alongside the depleted Los Angeles River, a rooftop, some dude’s living room … Just two 20-somethings, their musical wares and the hum of a generator — no pretense, just art." It's of a piece with the unaffected naturalness she's brought to her movie roles. Walk on.
