‘The Movement of Waves and Tides…’ - Angie McMahon
Many artists have written about depression, trying to put to words and music how this very lowest of low feels. What we don’t often see are artists who write about emerging from the grip of depression. Featuring a concluding Q&A in this piece, Angie McMahon has written an album about the grounding sense of clarity that follows this desolate period.
She’s called it ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’.
Image Credit: Marcelle Bradbeer.
Naarm/Melbourne, Australia multi-instrumentalist Angie McMahon came to our attention in 2018 as she performed a solo gig at London’s Bushstock festival. There she was appearing on the same line-up as Maisie Peters, Freya Ridings, Sam Fender and Aurora, most of whom were up and coming at the time. We were immediately taken by her bluesy vocal delivery and her ability to hold an audience in the palm of her hand. At the end, she packed her guitar in its case and walked out without a backwards glance, as if she hadn’t just blown the audience away with a rendition of her spine-tingling track, ‘And I Am A Woman’.
With only a handful of singles released at the time, we caught her again a year later for a full-band performance at The Lexington, where she balanced more light-hearted crowd interaction with the serious nature of her songwriting. These songs would be collected together to form her debut album ‘Salt’, released in July 2019.
‘Salt’ cover photo by Alex O’Gorman, ‘Piano Salt’ cover photo by Alyssa Austin.
In October 2020, we celebrated the release of Angie’s follow-up entitled ‘Piano Salt’. The seven-track companion to her debut album featured reworkings of some of the songs on piano, covers of Bruce Springsteen and Lana Del Rey with some assistance from Canadian songwriter Leif Vollebekk.
In our piece, we used anecdotes from her show at The Lexington to tell the story of some of the songs on the EP. Concluding with a rare interview during a period of isolation for McMahon, we got to ask her about making ‘Piano Salt’, playing live and the possibility of new music:
‘I've just been taking lots of time to ramble into my iPhone and make lots of weird demos, there's almost no full songs yet, I'm in a really drawn out writing and creating stage. So I'm not sure when they'll be finished, but I'm just hoping it comes together soon into a second album. We're not allowed to rehearse or record together in Melbourne at the moment, we're having to stay very isolated, so it's going to be a while before we can do any playing. Just writing a lot in my room!’ – Salt On The Keys with Angie McMahon (Moths and Giraffes, October 2020)
A little over three years later, Angie McMahon released her second album, entitled ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’, preceded by the lead single ‘Saturn Returning’ in June.
‘Baby, I forgive ya, angel in the mirror, here we are now, that you quit being a quitter…’
Beginning with a gentle field recording, ‘Saturn Returning’ picks up where Angie McMahon’s ‘Piano Salt’ left off, a soft piano texture holding acoustic instruments together in a delicate balance. Where the lyrics are concerned, there is an immediately apparent shift from Angie’s previous work. ‘Saturn Returning’ reads like a mission statement for the way Angie wants to live the rest of her life:
‘I’m gonna love every inch of this body, the limbs that are writing each day of this story. I’m gonna surrender my keys to the Universe, please, always catch me the way that you caught me. I’m gonna let Saturn Returning distort me, just wanna be wide awake when I’m forty.’
The concept of a ‘Saturn Return’ is an astrological description, the idea of the planet Saturn returning to the same positioning it was when you were born. This only happens once every 27 to 29.5 years and is said to bring about a period of healing to an individual. This makes ‘Saturn Returning’ the perfect first single and way to open ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’.
The flourishes in this track are like your eyes being opened to the same world Angie McMahon now inhabits. It’s enlightenment in song. ‘Saturn Returning’ assures the listener that what they’re about to hear in this album is heavy, but the experience will change you, if you listen closely.
The music video, made by McMahon and Bridgette Winten, features a refreshing opening:
‘This video was filmed on Bunurong and Barapa Barapa land.
We pay our respects to the Traditional Owners, the Bunurong and Barapa Barapa people, who have been custodians of this land for many centuries.
Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.’
The history of Australia of course is an uneasy one. But in the music videos made for this album, Angie is transparent about her gratefulness to be able to experience this land in the way its indigenous people have. A similar message can be seen in the liner notes for the album. The location of the video is situated around McMahon’s home of Melbourne, Victoria - Australia’s most southerly mainland state. Just as ‘Saturn Returning’ builds up with drums and a wash of colour, nature and this songwriter’s very real emotion, so you find it holding you in its arms, the ‘flow of the river…’
With most of the album being co-produced in the United States with Brad Cook at North Carolina’s Puff City, ‘Fireball Whiskey’ is more of Angie’s work in Melbourne with Alex O’Gorman. Alex co-produced ‘Salt’ and would later mix the companion EP.
‘Fireball Whiskey’ is a break-up song that doesn’t go kicking and screaming, but contains absolutely gut wrenching moments in Angie’s lyrics. The way the line, ‘I can see a face in the upholstery, I can get anxiety from an inanimate object,’ is rolled and repeated really highlights the cycles in which anxiety works. Her analogy to eating food that’s gone bad making you vomit and then applying that to a relationship where it’s ok is a sliver of how we do ourselves harm:
‘I really hate to vomit, except the one time I drank too much Fireball Whiskey cause I wanted you to kiss me, so I threw it up, washed my mouth and sat back out on the couch with you.’
A field recording sets the opening tone for the track, of which all the instruments are played with a light hand. Acoustic guitars drift in the stereo mix, piano by Olivia Hally is passive but vital, the backing vocals are muted and the drums by Lachlan O’Kane are sparse.
The footage in the ‘Fireball Whiskey’ video is shot by an ensemble cast, with a similar feel to ‘Saturn Returning’. This time the locations are shared between Melbourne and California, with more emphasis on McMahon’s words, though she chooses not to hit the viewer on the nose with them. Instead, Angie opts to reflect the music through the visuals, with more of an uplifting approach than their words would suggest.
‘Fish’ is the first song on the album that sounds as if it could’ve been on ‘Salt’, with more of a traditional band arrangement. One of the tracks produced in North Carolina, it features drums by Matt McCaughan, with guitars and keys by Angie and bass played by Alex O’Gorman.
A continuation of the thoughts in ‘Fireball Whiskey’, ‘Fish’ is the sound of someone coming to terms with the idea that their relationship is holding them back:
‘I sometimes felt stronger with someone at home who was sending me all this desire, but I started to feel like a fish in the ocean, who knows that it’s caught on a wire.’
‘Fish’ is neither ferocious nor is it wallowing. This song is the sound of a songwriter who has realised what she wants and assuredly puts this to paper, sliding it across the table for its recipient. Next to Angie’s voice, McCaughan’s drums are a sonic driving force in this song, making way for McMahon’s layered vocal outpouring that brings this shifting tide to a close. With the vocal power she has, we know this is a move she can easily pull off single-handedly live.
‘Letting Go’ is the obvious single from ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’, just as ‘Pasta’ was from ‘Salt’. But where the latter builds momentum, ‘Letting Go’ goes right from the get-go. This track is the other one produced by Alex O’Gorman at Treehouse Studio, a place McMahon later shot a series of performance videos with her band, including this fun one for ‘Letting Go’.
Acoustic guitars are shared on this track by McMahon, Olivia Hally (who also plays synth) and drummer Lachlan O’Kane. Electric guitar is a joint effort between Angie and Bec Goring, with Alex O’Gorman on bass and those bright piano lines by McMahon and Hally. All this talent comes together as everyone in the room pitches in for backing vocals.
Lyrically, this song points towards Angie’s post-‘Salt’ struggles, but mostly this song is about their aftermath: ‘I might’ve spent six months lying on my living room floor, I might’ve been sick then well then sick some more, I might be prouder of me than I ever have been.’ It’s this last line that really shines through on this album - songwriting with a sense of optimism.
And this reaches a peak on ‘Letting Go’ with Angie’s exclamation point of ‘It’s ok! Make mistakes, make mistakes!’ She might be shouting the words, but not without an air of musicality. Above all, it’s Angie’s genuine delivery, of feeling and believing every word she’s saying that makes this one of the highest points on ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’. Only someone who has been through so much could truly implore action from a person in this way.
All of this really comes across in the music video, splitting between the claustrophobic interior and the beauty of the natural world outside. Unlike the collage feel of the ‘Saturn’ and ‘Fireball’ videos, ‘Letting Go’ is more traditional, of Angie bringing the story of the lyric to life. The video was directed by Mike Ridley and Angie, while the all-important door prop into her world is by Darcy Shilton.
‘I’m learning to love my skin, I’m learning to dive right in, I think it’s time to sweep the eggshells clean…’
‘Divine Fault Line’ comes earlier in the timeline, between the event and the aftermath, but closer to the latter. Here, Angie is willing herself to break out of the unhealthy cycles that keep her down and the difficulty in achieving that goal.
The heroine of this piece is McMahon’s vocal and its arrangement, overlapping the distinct bursts of, ‘Don’t, get, cold, feet,’ with the more pacey ‘I’ve been slow and so trepidatious, and not knowing if I could make it.’ It’s this cluster of lyrics where Angie continues to highlight the overwhelming nature of anxiety, often arriving with more voices in the brain than one and describing the concept of ‘Get up, do the thing’ and the body’s refusal to comply.
In a way, ‘Divine Fault Line’ describes the tipping point of Angie McMahon getting better, ‘You’re on your own dark side of the border tonight, and you’re all fucked up and you’re wanting to die, and that’s the place where the breaking out begins, it’s the Divine Fault Line opening.’
This is where the brilliance in the sequencing of this album comes into play. ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ does not arrive at the beginning or the end. We start with the clarity moment, and here on track five do we find the turning point.
‘I’m the dirt on the ground at your property line, mouth wide open waiting for a drop of the sky, and I give what I have while you’re here…’
Like ‘Fish’, ‘Mother Nature’ takes Angie’s sound back to the basics of this album’s predecessor. The shortest track on the album is built on the band sound of McMahon and a returning Leif Vollebekk on electric guitars and synths, with Matt McCaughan on drums and producer Brad Cook on bass.
Conceptually we take a break from McMahon’s personal growth and focus on the subject of nature, a topic Angie is passionate about. On its own, her lyric reads like poetry, ‘Flocks of birds changing form, from a wave, to a fist, to a storm,’ brilliantly combined with the ferocious sound of the studio band in cymbals, guitar distortion and soaring vocals. Either side, the band reinforces Angie’s, ‘Hi-ya!’, a moment you could see easily rallying audiences in her shows.
The line, ‘The pulse of the future is in Mother Nature,’ is one that sticks with the listener as you consider its ramifications, how this will only become more and more important with every passing year. In her words, Angie McMahon is able to make you see the obvious without preaching, patronising or belittling her audience. ‘The pulse of the future is in Mother Nature.’ Yep.
For ‘Black Eye’, Angie returns to acoustic guitar. Listen carefully for the gorgeous and warm textured organ playing of Phill Cook, while Leif Vollebekk plays the bass almost as if it were a cello part. ‘Black Eye’ embodies the bluesy sound and expression we first experienced when walking into that Library in 2018.
This song is Angie McMahon feeling her way through a situation, ‘Trying to find the language where I relate to you,’ and the trouble of wanting to or needing to be someone’s crutch. The second verse points towards this direction, ‘I’m trying to insert myself like a vaccine into your arm, I didn’t know I was doing harm, but I don’t know what I am if I’m not your medicine.’
The prevailing line, ‘I’m trying to balance everything,’ and the stillness with which she sings it is a moment captured, a window into the time it was inspired by. In the chorus especially, you can hear her love and influence of Bruce Springsteen’s simpler songwriting and arrangements. ‘Black Eye’ succeeds in combining the intimacy of ‘Piano Salt’, with the mood of her debut album and the imagery of ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’.
If you were to spin ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ on vinyl, ‘Exploding’ would begin the album’s second side, which sees this listener increasingly more invested in the record with each successive song. Released as the fourth single, ‘Exploding’ pairs well with ‘Letting Go’ in its burst of energy, a songwriter throwing her arms wide to the world. Like ‘Saturn Returning’, this song has a celestial lyric, ‘I see the stars, they’re supernoving, I hope that I’m always Exploding.’ The Universe is a continuing explosion, ever expanding.
The concept of ‘Exploding’ could well be that letting it all out is preferable to holding in all your emotions, which does more damage in the long run. Referring to a drive, the first verse reads, ‘I was fuming by the exit, now I got all this space, so I can finally digest it.’ The music by the studio band does well to soundtrack the lyric, with drums by Matt McCaughan, and electric guitars by Leif Vollebekk in addition to acoustic and baritone guitars by McMahon with some synth sprinkled in.
The music video is part of the collaboration between McMahon and Bridgette Winten, with all the dazzling projections by Spencer Rose. Like most of the visuals so far, this one was filmed outside of Melbourne on Wadawurrung and Wurundjeri land. What’s wonderful about these videos is that they have a unifying look that ties them to the album artwork. Each video is different enough, but not so far astray as to alienate themselves from the overarching theme of ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’.
No field recordings here, ‘I Am Already Enough’ begins with feedback and a guitar sound made up by Leif Vollebekk, Meg Duffy and co-producer Brad Cook. Drummer Matt McCaughan plays the bold synth lines with McMahon, adding a new flavour to this record.
Lyrically, Angie combines both her story of personal growth with her passion for climate change reform, if taken literally. The latter can be seen in the first verse, ‘I was drowning out the sounding of the warning, the warning bout the trash that I threw while I was climbing, everything that I’d do to get to lightning striking.’ Then the following words are some of her most painfully honest, ‘I didn’t know how to love my life, I didn’t know how to join the fight.’ Listen for the thick distorted bassline propelling the first half of this song, played by Brad Cook.
There are many moments in her career where Angie belts her voice, and the chorus of ‘I Am Already Enough’ might be our favourite of them all. ‘I am a living, breathing, earthling, I Am Already Enough, I Am Already Enough!’ It’s a stake in the ground, a person sticking up for themselves even if they’re their own worst enemy.
In moments away from this record, we find ourselves repeating the chorus of this track over and over as something of a mantra. Isn’t that wonderful? Undoubtedly, ‘I Am Already Enough’ has the anthemic potential to be the next single from this album.
‘Hey, I got real low on Serotonin, everything was thrown into shadow.’
Angie samples her breath to bring a biological element into the beat for ‘Serotonin’. Guitars are subtle, and the hands on the keys are light. The focus here are Angie’s words and right from the first verse, it’s clear this is about McMahon’s experience with depression, approached in the most direct way among this album’s music.
Like all of this record though, ‘Serotonin’ has an optimistic angle, ‘I will run to lift the levels, I will dance at the same time as breakfast.’ It’s Angie’s will to get better that finishes off the song, ‘It’s just something I am trying, have to change it up a while, might be futile…’ Can we also highlight this rhyming couplet? ‘I will schedule my friends in, and I’ll eat more tryptophan.’ Superb.
Above all, the honesty in this track is refreshing. It’s easy to write in riddles about depression. But what’s harder for a songwriter is raw truth, ‘Start to wean off medication, keeping track, might try again, it feels like losing heroin, when you halt anti-depressants.’ Somewhere out there, people are hearing this record and feeling comforted by it. Knowing you aren’t alone in these circumstances is key to managing such an illness. Artists like Angie McMahon writing songs like ‘Serotonin’ almost certainly keeps some people out there alive.
‘The house is quiet, not sure if you’re in your room. Sometimes you’re inside there to see five whole days through.’
Like ‘Serotonin’ and ‘Divine Fault Line’, ‘Staying Down Low’ is about Angie’s willingness to break out of depression and make positive change. Here, McMahon returns to piano for a soulful track with Phill Cook on organ and Leif Vollebekk on synth in a near-full keyboard piece. That steady plucking to your left is Angie on baritone guitar.
What McMahon does well on this album is writing about picking yourself up when being depressed is no longer an option. She also does it in such a way that isn’t assigning blame – it simply just is. ‘Staying Down Low’ is full of great wordplay, ‘You could take up running or something, to break you out of your sweat. I could keep you company, and stop choking on the things I haven’t done yet.’ There’s reassurance for the listener too, ‘I know that you’re tired,’ but also a hand resting on your shoulder, ‘This Staying Down Low is no longer fitting you.’
The way Angie and Leif Vollebekk layer their vocals in the song’s second half is pure musical majick, interpreting the words in a multitude of ways to sweep their voices across this arrangement. ‘Staying Down Low’ is perfectly positioned on this album to set up its final tracks.
‘Okay, you can take a break now, okay, you are healing again, remember when you weren’t dreaming.’
The most comforting track on ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ is ‘Music’s Coming In’. This session was special in that it was produced neither with Brad Cook or Alex O’Gorman, nor does it feature most of the musicians that play on the rest of the album. Statistically, the recording studio is largely a man’s world, but not for ‘Music’s Coming In’.
Co-produced by Bonnie Knight, this track features Alex Lahey drummer Jess Ellwood, with Angie playing electric guitar, piano, and surprisingly…flugelhorn! The beautiful array of vocals are performed by Olivia Hally, Hannah McKittrick, Ruby Gill, Tori Zietsch (aka Maple Glider) and Georgia Knight.
‘Music’s Coming In’ is like being held by a song, by melody, voice and rhythm. It’s never more apparent than when the vocalists join together to sing the song’s soft self-care chorus, ‘You can stroke your own skin, rub your feet, pull yourself back into your own love…’ In these lines, nobody is a lead vocalist, and yet all of them are. We also get our heavenly backing vocal moment that drapes across the fine line between breath and pitch.
There’s atmosphere, and depth to be swept away by. The music here needs nothing more - breathe it in, breathe it out. The final piece of the puzzle would be getting all these artists together for a music video of the song. Or even a live performance. Wouldn’t that be something?
A more assertive beat from Matt McCaughan kicks off the album’s final track, with piano from McMahon. This song is all about going back to basics, it says, don’t be so hard on yourself, ‘Just Making It Through is okay.’
There’s a closeness in the first verse, like Angie has woken up and is hiding from life under the covers. The beat is dry, as is the vocal and piano, ‘Morning, I woke up with a view of the moon, to untangle my shoulders, a sleepy balloon.’ There’s a dreamy quality to some of the lyrics on this album, some of which are in this verse, ‘When I grow up, I wanna be like a tree, and change with the seasons, helping people breathe.’
This closeness is short-lived, and gives way to one of the most explosive moments on ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’. A burst of sound sees Angie almost shouting the words, ‘I froze on the spot where you left me, to hold everything still worth protecting,’ the emotional introspection going back to tracks like ‘Fireball Whiskey’ and ‘Fish’. Electric guitars here are by Leif Vollebekk with synths by McCaughan and co-producer Brad Cook.
McMahon also addresses her debilitating anxiety in the second verse, ‘I didn’t know then out of ash and destruction, the ground will grow things. I was trying so hard to stay still, terrified that I’d kill something.’ If you spend your life being scared of everything, nothing will ever change. But after the second chorus is the biggest revelation of them all.
‘Time is supposed to run out, time is supposed to, sun is supposed to go down, sun is supposed to. Like your mood, like your power, like your battery. Rise, fall, rise…’
Suddenly, the reality of the album hits. Slumps do not last forever. Nothing is permanent, in the most wonderful way. You’ll fall, but you’ll come back. ‘Life, death, life again.’ Everything moves in cycles. ‘Day, night, day again.’ You were happy once. ‘Sky, ground, sky.’ Rain falls, and returns to fall again. ‘Time to release every breath I held in.’ You can be happy again. ‘Light, Dark, Light Again. Light, Dark, Light Again…’
Even in the album’s liner notes, the lyrics fade just as they do on the track. You can hear birdsong, everything is going to be ok.
Image Credit: Marcelle Bradbeer.
'Light, Dark, Light Again' is an album to shout from the rooftops. Whether it's, 'I'm gonna love every inch of this body,' or exclaiming 'Make mistakes!' or telling someone 'The pulse of the future is in Mother Nature,' this is an album about life. Vibrant, wonderful, passionate, cherished life. It's an album that takes a stand against our bleakest moments and says, 'I Am Already Enough!' It’s about picking yourself up to work through the hardest times.
Angie McMahon takes the past in her stride and looks forward to all the exciting things that might happen instead of all the awful things that have already come to pass. This is a record that every wandering human in their twenties should hear as they step into the light of their thirties. Life runs in cycles and it’s ok to meet them as they come round, ‘Dance with nothing to prove, dance now, dance, Light, Dark, Light Again…’
Continue reading for our Q&A with Angie McMahon. We talk about the very beginnings of this record, picking up where we left off in 2020. We ask about shooting music videos on indigenous lands, the climate crisis, the session that produced ‘Music’s Coming In’ and going forward in life. All this and more below!
‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ cover photo by Bridgette Winten.
1. After the comedown from 'Salt' and its follow-up 'Piano Salt', it must've been a daunting task to begin writing the songs for 'Light, Dark, Light Again'. What was the first song that came to you in this new round of writing?
It was! The first was ‘Staying Down Low’ which was already written when Salt came out, but didn’t make it in time for the recording. Then there was a big gap, I think Fireball Whiskey and then Fish - the two break up songs on the record - were next. I was realising through those ones that I wanted to be careful about projecting my emotions onto other people or blaming them for pain, and the songs were becoming a space to examine my patterns and relationship with myself, which became more of a focus as time went on.
2. At what point did you think 'Yes, we're on a roll now' and you had the confidence to call your new songs your next album?
I made a demo for ‘Fish’ that I really loved, and felt like the sonic seed had been planted, but my confidence was really low through a lot of the process - it would rise up in some moments of flow, and I relied on my instinct otherwise. It took more than 2 years to write the record, and maybe when I wrote Saturn Returning I felt like the pillars had been built and I could just fill in the details - like I knew I had an opening song for the record, and where I wanted it to get to by the end. That was the start of 2022, a few months before starting recording.
Image Credit: Evan Bacchus (@evansxposures).
3. You're back co-producing on this album, this time working with Brad Cook for a lot of the record in North Carolina, what were those sessions like? What starting point did you have from the work done in Victoria?
I pushed myself to do the scary thing - go overseas and record with people I didn’t know - because I had been perpetually making decisions out of fear. I love working locally with my friends, but I also couldn’t shift the negative mindset I was in and it was stifling. Eventually I took a leap into the unknown just to see if I could do it. I learnt a lot, we made a bulk of the record in 15 days, and for a perfectionist who is slow at making decisions, that was pretty challenging. It was a good way to practice self-compassion and build my confidence.
4. It's refreshing to see the acknowledgement of the Aboriginal and Indigenous lands you shot the 'Saturn Returning' and 'Fireball Whiskey' music videos on. What about those locations connect with the themes in those songs?
Firstly - there should also be an acknowledgement of country at the start of the Letting Go video, I just forgot to put it there! Chaotic. This is such a beautiful country, there is incredible life and history in the land, and also huge pain and a largely ignored genocide that I benefit from every day that I work here. It feels wrong to take advantage of the land without calling attention to the reality behind it. And there’s a lot of work to do there - I think it’s performative if that is all I’m doing, but that acknowledgement is bare minimum and hopefully just becomes industry standard.
In terms of the songs, I spent a lot of time thinking about the movement of waves and tides, and learning about myself in relation to those rhythms. I think I was just lucky to say ‘hey let's drive a couple hours to an incredible beach and I can cry next to the ocean’. In ‘Saturn Returning’ we’re on Phillip Island, where I have been going all my life. I think my skin and my nose remember childhood a bit more when I get to go there.
Image Credit: Zoe Sher for Pass The Aux.
5. There are some field recordings on this record, where were those made? What inspired adding those into the album?
All over the place! There are some birds from Victoria, some cicadas from Croatia, a creek from Upstate New York and I think a sneaky internet sample of some water too. It felt important to physically bring in the textures that were energetically moving through the songs for me. We’ve been putting them in the live show too. I just want reminders all the time that incredible life is all around us, especially with music consumption being so tied to phones and computers now. Nature has become so spiritual to me, I can’t really make music without tying it in somehow now.
6. It's great to see you working with Leif Vollebekk again! What do you enjoy most about working with Leif?
I really admire Leif’s work, and I like leaning into his musicianship - it was easy to trust that he’d lay down something great and feel his way in naturally. We have loved singing together whenever there’s a chance, and luckily he was free to drop into the studio when we were tracking. Leif is good at channelling energy, like letting intensity move through and come back out, and he’s confident with his instruments - I love that.
7. 'Letting Go' and its accompanying music video is such a liberating piece of art. How did it feel to cut THAT vocal in the final moments of this song?
Ah thanks! It was really fun. I spent a lot of the recording process in my head, but there were a couple moments like that where I had to just go fully into body-mode. I probably realised that I want to do more of that, and it will probably inform some of what I’m writing after this record. Sometimes I take it all too seriously, and then there’s those moments, which end up being the most meaningful anyway.
Image Credit: Young Ha Kim.
8. The climate anxiety conveyed in 'Mother Nature' is real. What in your opinion is the single biggest issue in the climate crisis?
I mean we know it’s corporations, capitalist greed, etc, right - and I guess I think that the people running the big companies and burning the world to the ground are so disconnected from life. Like, why aren’t they acknowledging the ultimate paradox, that the money and power driving the drills into the ground is only possible as long as they’re able to breathe clean air and drink clean water? I guess people become so powerful that they think they’re invincible, and will ignore the fire until it’s at their feet. Which then makes me think, we’re all lacking compassion for ourselves. I think the root of fear and greed and desperation for power is this fundamental belief we all develop that we’re not enough, and we need more - and if you run a big company, or gain political power, and you’re not unlearning your self loathing, then instead you’re burning the world down.
9. 'I Am Already Enough' is exactly the kind of song we all need to hear, was there a particular moment that sparked the writing of that song?
Well yeah, I guess it relates to my answer just before - part of my activism and political cry has become self love, this desperation to recognise how often we hate on ourselves, and what that causes us to do. We talk negatively to ourselves like 80% of the time, subconsciously, on auto pilot. I was driving one day and caught myself doing that, and I tend to scream and yell in the car because (I think) no one can hear it. So I just started yelling this line over and over again, trying to convince myself, rewire my head, rip up whatever weeds were taking over.
10. The array of voices on 'Music's Coming In' are heavenly. Were these all done in one session or was it something of a pilgrimage to get everyone involved in that? What was this experience like?
It was a really special session run by Bonnie Knight, a producer in Melbourne who invited me into the studio to make a song with them. I didn’t have much at the time, but this idea about trying to invite songwriting back in gently, and I asked a few songwriter friends who I knew would connect with the feeling. It was the first day for most of us in our whole careers where there wasn’t a cis man in the studio. It was a one day session, really raw and special, and at the end we sat in a circle on the floor and I cried. Everyone on that song is a really special musician, it’s so cool to have worked with them like that.
11. Your experiences with mental health are a big factor in 'Light, Dark, Light Again'. Was it ever a struggle to put those feelings into words?
Yes! That’s probably why it took me 4 years to make the record, ha! I was trying to be intentional along the way about finding a hopeful direction and finding the beauty and lessons in the really hard stuff. I needed music that was hopeful, so that’s what I was trying to make. And sometimes I just didn’t have that in me. I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t put it in, and I’d step away until I felt like I could access it again. I’m practicing letting struggles come out of my body in other ways - dancing, running, etc - because sometimes I just don’t have the words and I can tear myself up trying to find them, and sometimes they can just be in the energy of the music and not the lyrics.
12. Making 'Light, Dark, Light Again' has been an incredibly long road. Is there anyone you'd like to thank who was part of the journey?
So many people gave love and energy along the way, it’s hard to pick a name from the list. Top of my mind is my friend Olivia Hally, who I saw today and handed a copy of the record to. She is one of my favourite songwriters and closest friends, and she held so much space for me in some of the hardest months of my life. I don’t think the record would exist without Liv’s friendship. She’s also singing and playing on some of the tracks, which is a dream, because she’s incredible.
13. 'Making It Through' is such a cathartic end to this album, embracing things we cannot change. Has this period of your life changed how you'll live the rest of your life?
Ah - thank you! Yeah, that is one of my favourite songs on the record, I think it captures my belief system and the big lessons that have come out of the last couple of years. I feel hopeful and grounded in that song. I hope I keep remembering to see the world that way.
--------
Purchase or listen to Angie McMahon’s ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ in your preferred format.
See Angie McMahon on tour, tickets are available here.
For more information about Angie and her music, visit her official website.
Follow Angie McMahon on Facebook @angiemcmahonmusic, on Instagram @angiemcmahon and on TikTok and Twitter @angie_mcmahon.
--------
Follow and interact with Moths and Giraffes on Instagram and Facebook @mothsandgiraffes, and on Twitter @mothsgiraffes.
We have a Spotify Playlist! Featuring almost every artist we've written about on Moths and Giraffes, find some new music here.
Submissions are currently closed, but if you’d just like to send us your thoughts, don’t hesitate to contact us via our social media accounts, our contact page, or via email at mothsandgiraffes@outlook.com. We receive a lot of emails though, so please bear with us!
--------
Do you like what you heard here? Then check out the music from these artists we’ve written about!
