ANGiE McMAHON - LiGHT, DARK, LiGHT AGAiN

ROUTES & BRANCHES

featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music

November 12, 2023

Scott Foley, being of light

Even as we near that dreaded time of the year when the release schedule slows and announcements can be few and farther between, we continue to add new stuff to A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster. Holiday albums seem to be at a minimum so far this year. One potentially notable exception is a seasonal collab between Alela Diane & the Hackles. It's Always Christmas Somewhere alights upon your rooftop on December 1 (Rusted Blue). JJ Grey & Mofro return from a long hiatus with Olustee. A product of Alligator Records, the album is scheduled for a February 23 release. Alynda Segarra's Navigator earned Hurray For the Riff Raff a raft of new attention. Her followup, The Past Is Still Alive, has been announced for a February 23 shelf date (Nonesuch). Following a trickle of singles and one-offs, Shane Smith & the Saints have pulled together their next eagerly-awaited full-length. Norther is expected to appear wherever music matters on March 1 (Geronimo West). Finally, Sophie & the Broken Things released an exceptional debut with last year's Delusions of Grandeur. Now recording under her own name, Sophie Gault's second LP, Baltic Street is set for an April 12 appearance (Petaluma).  

I used to work in a new age bookstore. I worked there for several years, and over time I worked to evolve it into a literary bookstore (with an unexpectedly large new age collection). We sold new age music, along with incense (some of my books still carry a slight smell of nag champa), Zuni fetishes, tarot decks, etc. The store also carried affirmations - pithy, positive statements that often came with suction cups you might use to affix them to a mirror, read them everytime you looked at yourself. But eventually we were more Chuck Palahniuk than Shakti Gawain; more Buena Vista Social Club than Enya. 

At the bottom of the landing page of Angie McMahon's website, there is a small button encouraging you to pull an affirmation card. I received the following: you have so much to give yourself now ... then, i'm trying to balance everything, and, okay you can take a break now (don't have to tell me twice). The Melbourne artist's second full-length solo collection, Light, Dark, Light Again, is far more nuanced than these little affirmations, but the spirit is much the same. 

2019's Salt was a darkhorse among our top five records that year - the haphazardly knuckled guitar, the immediacy of McMahon's vocal against a minimalist background. Light, Dark amplifies those early tentative steps with the encouragement of North Carolina producer Brad Cook, not reinventing the artist's sound as much as extending and expanding it, further revealing the music's raw beauty. I feel like an evolution of the same person, McMahon has noted. She is joined on the journey by a small cohort featuring Phil Cook, Leif Vollebekk, and Matt McCaughan.

The sound of running water introduces "Saturn Returning", before easing into piano, McMahon's vocal, and a shower of electronics, all grounded with sturdy percussion. The sounds are simultaneously earthy and celestial, rooted in our physical reality, but frequently following these personal, everyday roots to more universal sonics and themes. She sings: 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. Where Salt could be edgy, "Saturn" is lush and expansive, free-flowing: Nothing less that letting this jaw go loose / For the flow of the river.  An electric pulse of energy propels "Exploding", with McMahon's vocal a confident force like Florence + the Machine at their most primal. Perhaps keeping with the light/dark/light theme, many of these new songs follow a quiet/loud/quiet design, dramatic crescendos alternating with passages of hushed restraint: I hope I am always exploding / I see the stars, they're supernoving (when you're an artist, you can claim artistic license to create your own words). 

Rather than dispensing dimestore wisdom from on high, there is a sense that the affirmations on Light, Dark are hard-earned, that maybe the story of Angie McMahon's new album is actually that of an artist discovering these truths on the way through the gestation and birth of her collection. "Divine Fault Line" places us on this precipice: 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. The songwriter has spoken of her uncertainty in bringing new music to the studios, the emotional and artistic struggle over the past four years, not just through Covid but in and out of broken relationships and depression. On "Seratonin", McMahon has traded smoking for a yoga routine. "Letting Go" is the album's most cathartic moment, with racing, insistent guitars and pop energy, from lying on the living room floor to the realization that the trick was simply to surrender. Mantra-like repetition is deployed throughout the record, a tool for manifesting one's reality. McMahon gives full rein to her courage, unshackling her voice and shouting, It's okay, it's okay / Make mistakes, make mistakes! 

McMahon embraces these affirmations fully, not just emotionally but also embodying them physically. On the fierce "I Am Already Enough", cowritten with Meg Duffy, she sings: I think I know how to love my life ... / And if I dance like I'm goddamn sure / Then it doesn't hurt like it did before. Low fuzz guitar rips through the upbeat cut, accompanied by heavy bass and steady snare. It's an anthem of radical self-compassion, with the singer intoning I am already enough, I am already enough until it is less an encouraging affirmation and more a rallying cry. That heartbeat percussion pumps throughout Light, Dark, an element almost unheard on Salt, a dependable presence even as it shuffles through "Making It Through". McMahon shares a lesson she learned from Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron: I didn't know then / That out of ash and destruction / The ground will grow things. We need the dark in order to find the light. Light / Dark / Light again ... 

"Fireball Whiskey" starts with the sound of birds, wind through trees, nature as comforting presence. It's one of the few stories Angie McMahon tells here, using alcohol to quiet anxiety and stir courage. In the absence of chemical support, there is the acceptance that we simply have to develop a healthy relationship with fear and failure. That's the victory: This morning / I didn't want to get out of the shower / But hot water runs out / And you have to carry on don't you. We're still that anxious little mess that the songwriter identifies on "Black Eye", the collection's most straightforward country-folk arrangement. The song showcases McMahon's lovely, atypical voice, as powerful in its restraint as it is vulnerable in its stormier moments. 

In her native Australia, Light, Dark, Light Again shares chart space with Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and the Rolling Stones. It's been nominated for Album of the Year by the country's J Awards, where she commands the stage in front of a sea of admirers. Angie McMahon isn't exceptional for expressing her insecurities or for transitioning herself stylistically in a larger, more extroverted fashion. Where the songs of others might point back in on themselves (thinking Courtney Barnett, Lydia Loveless) McMahon's work manages to lead forward and upwards on her second album. The guitars and vocals that brought us to embrace Salt are still present, but here they are deployed with increased confidence and purpose. She has mentioned, I wanted to be the War on Drugs. It seems Angie McMahon has a chance to be that, and more. Just making it through is the lesson. 

^ Angie McMahon, "Black Eye" Light Dark Light Again  (Gracie, 23)

- Beirut, "Hadsel" Hadsel  (Pompeii, 23)

- Cat Power, "Tell Me Momma (live)" Sings Dylan: 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert  (Domino, 23)

- Jeffrey Martin, "Sculptor" Thank God We Left the Garden  (Fluff & Gravy, 23)

- Heavy Diamond Ring, "When You're Away (ft Nathaniel Rateliff)" All Out of Angels  (Cowboy Cowabunga, Nov 17)  D

- John Moreland, "Hang Me In the Tulsa County Stars (live)" Live at Third Man Records  (Third Man, 23)

- John Leventhal, "That's All I Know About Arkansas (ft Rosanne Cash)" Rumble Strip  (Rumple Strip, Jan 26)  D

- Mindy Smith, "Little Wings" single  (Giant Leap, 23)  D

- String Machine, "Misfire" Turn Off Anything On Again EP  (String Machine, 23)  D

- Roadside Graves, "Long Death" I Won't Cry Alone  (Don Giovanni, 23)

- Frog, "New Ro" Grog  (tapewormies, Nov 17)

- Ryan Davis & Roadhouse Band, "Learn 2 Re-Luv" Dancing On the Edge  (Sophomore Lounge, 23)

- Violent Femmes, "Country Death Song (Live at Beneath-It-All Café 1981)" Violent Femmes (Deluxe Edition)  (Craft, Dec 1)

- Will Sheff, "Tommy McHugh" single  (ATO, 23)  D

- David Newbould, "Jean" single  (Blackbird, 23)  D

- Great Peacock, "The Innocent" Said the Firefly To the Hurricane: Celebration of Kevn Kinney  (Tasty Goody, Nov 24)

- Jon Dee Graham, "Death Ain't Got No Mercy" Only Dead For a Little While  (Strolling Bones, 23)

- Lori McKenna, "Wonder Drug" 1988 (Deluxe Edition)  (CN, 23)

- Boy Golden, "Aeroplane Song" single  (Six Shooter, 23)  D

- Chris Stapleton, "What Am I Gonna Do" Higher  (Mercury, 23)

- Vincent Neil Emerson, "Man From Uvalde" Golden Crystal Kingdom  (La Honda, 23)

- Zach Russell, "Take Me Back To Tennessee" Where the Flowers Meet the Dew  (Carlboro, Dec 1)

- Wilder Blue, "True Companion" Super Natural  (Hill Country, Nov 21) 

- Sarah Jarosz, "When the Lights Go Out" Polaroid Lovers  (Rounder, Jan 26)

- Daniel Donato, "Rose In a Garden" Reflector  (Retrace, 23)

- Sophie Gault, "Christmas In the Psych Ward" Baltic Street Hotel  (Petaluma, Apr 12)  D

- Jaime Wyatt, "Moonlighter" Feel Good  (New West, 23)

- Hurray For the Riff Raff, "Alibi" The Past Is Still Alive  (Nonesuch, Feb 23)  D

- Vashti Bunyan, "How Could You Let Me Go (ft Devendra Banhart)" Light In the Attic & Friends  (Light In the Attic, Nov 24)  D

- Alela Diane & the Hackles, "River" It's Always Christmas Somewhere  (Jealous Butcher, Dec 1)  D

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