Artist Of The Week #282 - Angie McMahon
This week’s Artist of the Week is Naarm/Melbourne-based singer and musician Angie McMahon – who has just released her EP ‘Light Sides’ - a five-song companion to her critically acclaimed album ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’.
Light Sides is the final piece of the Light, Dark, Light Again puzzle, and features five intimate, yet soaring and expansive songs, including the already released ‘Just Like North’ and latest single ‘Untangling’. The five songs on Light Sides were put to tape at studios in Nashville, Los Angeles, North Carolina and on Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Australia during the Light, Dark, Light Again album sessions and while Angie McMahon has been on the road for her year-long world tour.
She took a moment to talk to us about how the EP came together.
Hey there Angie, how are you? So your EP is out now – how does it feel to have it out there?.
Hi! I’m good and also tired! It’s feeling like the end of a very big and beautiful chapter, and I think the end of things always comes with a big release, like a big cry, or a big swim. Today it’s a pile of songs that I am really happy to put in the light of day, I didn’t know if they’d make their way into the world, and I’m grateful that they have.
It is called ‘Light Sides’ – what is the meaning behind that?
It’s a play on the idea of B-Sides, and it’s a little sister to the Light, Dark, Light Again album, so the title is partly my way of marrying those ideas, and also the songs feel like stepping stones toward an idea of being reborn and released out of a darker place.
Where was it recorded? Any behind the scenes stories you are willing to share with us?
All over the place! The songs were done in LA, North Carolina, Melbourne, Castlemaine and Nashville (In that order)! Beginner was written with Emma Louise, a beautiful artist who also co-wrote Divine Fault Line with me, and we recorded it in one day with Jonathan Rado. Emma and I wrote the song in one day a couple years ago, and this year when I was in LA, we had one day when all of us were available, so we smashed it out in the studio (with another friend, Tyler Ballgame). From start to finish this song just felt like it flowed out into the world without needing much coaxing or editing, I love when that happens. I didn’t have to worry about it at any stage, it always just felt right as it was. It feels like the sister song to Divine Fault Line, and I love Emma and Tyler’s backing vocals on it - it is always special to have a friend sing on the recordings. It’s also my friends doing backing vocals on Untangling in the bridge, and it makes me want to cry, I love hearing their voices!
What are the key influences behind the EP?
Honestly just the people I love! Take Up Space was written because of a song prompt from my really talented friend Mimi Gilbert. Untangling was recorded at the studio of one of my best friends (and my bass player) Alex O’Gorman, who also mixed two of the tracks. Interstate was written about falling in love with my partner, which was terrifying and so expansive. The whole journey of this EP has been about the beautiful people weaved into it. I think sonically, I was referencing War on Drugs in Untangling, and Perfume Genius in Take Up Space, and in Beginner it feels like there’s an old folk rock reference but I can’t really place my finger on who it is.
If the EP could be a soundtrack to any film – which one and why?
Not sure but it would be a roadtrip film, the EP feels like a long drive to me. Interstate was written literally on the highway, I had to pull over and make a voice memo on the side of the road. And there are all these lyrics about heading north, taking up sapce, being reborn - just feels like an open road visual.
Do you have a favourite lyric on the EP? If so, which one and why?
I just like the reminders of how to be at peace with myself. The chorus of Beginner, and Just Like North, feel like good reminders to me. And I love the opening line of Take Up Space, “the big fall is the roll call,” like a reminder that failure and falling is the moment when you have to step up and begin again.
Now the EP is out there – what next for you?
I think I’m going to delete social media from my phone and try to write like a hermit again for a little while. I’d like to be still!
