With “Light, Dark, Light Again”, Angie McMahon has put out a highly emotional album. Today, we’re here having a highly emotional conversation about it: me at home in Berlin, fighting sickness on my couch, Angie McMahon in her home in Melbourne, Australia. There’s a ten-hour time difference and a completely adverse cycle of seasons between us. Yet we’re very connected. That’s what it’s about, we agree.
How is life on the other side of the world?
It’s actually really nice in Melbourne right now. We’re going into spring. We just had a pretty cold winter. I mean, not by your standards! There was no snow. My house is very dark and cold. But we have a big backyard and now it’s all green and it’s sunny. I’m really grateful. You know that turn of the season, when you start to feel the depression falling away? That’s how it is right now. It’s nice.
It’s funny, how it is completely the other way round with you. Here it’s fall, we are about to go into winter and it’s getting so dark. The world is crazy, isn’t it?
It is. It’s weird. I find it confusing. I mean, I haven’t done that much touring, but it’s so confusing with touring. Even just going to LA, where the seasons don’t exist, or being in Europe for like two weeks and then coming back here and everyone’s just like “Oh, it’s been so hot”, or “It’s been so cold… and you’re like “What? I can’t relate to you.” So weird. We’re also all experiencing extremes, I think. We have that in common.
I always say, I couldn’t live in a place that doesn’t have seasons.
Yeah, same. And Berlin has beautiful seasons.
The winter can be pretty hard though.
Yeah. It always goes on a bit too long.
I do believe, wherever you live, whether you have seasons or not, that all this influences your creativity and your art. I feel like nature is very rich and present in your album.
Oh, I’m glad that comes across. It felt like a really big intention. I think I’ve had some big epiphanies about how important that is. Like you say, living in the seasons and observing them. I just started to see nature as my teacher. I didn’t have that mindset at all before, and now Mother Nature is like God to me. I’m finding a lot of my answers and directions there. It’s just such a relief. You don’t have to try and control or make sense of something too deeply, because you can trust that it’s the season, that it will pass and it will change, and that’s reflected in the world around you. I’ve just found that to be a really calming mindset. And I think about seeds a lot, planting seeds and trusting that there is a certain time when you’re meant to plant something, and then you have to leave it alone. You can nourish the soil, but what comes later on, you can only trust in it. I’ve just been unlearning this whole grip and control and needing to know. Nature is the eternal evidence of “it will be fine. It will change, it will pass, it’s temporary. It will grow”. There is always more space, there is always more sky. I think my whole mindset relies on the beauty and the resilience and the cycles of nature.
I love how you say nature is your God. I feel like the world would be a much more peaceful place if we all believed in that. Instead we are exploiting the earth and killing each other over religion.
That is the spirituality that I feel is quite open and generous. I was raised Catholic and with all these limitations around who you can be. For a long time, I was really afraid of the word God, because I decided I’m not a Catholic any more; I don’t belong to this religion. But I still want something to pray to, just to be in the act of prayer, speaking things out loud. I was talking to a friend about it a couple of years ago. In her morning meditation/prayer of gratitude she would say: “Hello Mother, thank you for this day,” speaking to Mother Nature. That really stuck with me as something more feminine, but also a more grounded idea of God. I think I just started to see all of it differently from the way I was brought up. And that was such a relief. I can actually have a spiritual practice without hating myself and my body (laughs). Not feeling like I’m causing harm. But yeah, I know what you mean. We get it wrong so much. We are only alive because of the air we are breathing and the water that we are drinking. It’s everywhere around us, the evidence that we are nothing without nature.
It makes so much sense how you say it, that you are in a phase of your life where you are getting away from restrictions and being at peace with yourself and nature and your body. Because that’s exactly what your album sounds like. I’m so happy for you, that you found a way of expressing yourself like that. With so much honesty.
Thank you for saying that, that is so lovely. It means a lot to hear it reflected back. Because the practice of trying to express myself feels like a selfish one sometimes. I’m just trying to understand what is going on in my life, what my instincts are, what I need to understand, what I want to know. So it means a lot to have you say it back. It’s a real privilege to put it on a record and talk to people in interviews about it, to have a conversation about it and a connection over it. It’s such a bonus (laughs). When it’s coming out of me, I’m just hurt and confused, and I don’t know what to do with it. I think I need to find a door through, and music has always been that for me. Getting to connect with people that way is very special.
It’s also so unifying. Because in the end we’ve all got the same fucking problems.
Yeah! I think that’s such a refreshing thing to remember. It’s such a restorative idea. I think of how many moments I’ve had when I’m halfway through writing a song and I’m really in my head about it and questioning whether it’s worth it. I’ll be really deep in it and accessing the feeling and the vulnerability, trying to figure out the way to say it. I’ll snap out of it and I’ll come back to my body and kinda be like: “This is so self-absorbed!” I bury myself in this idea of this feeling, trying to express it. I have these moments of doubt, which I think are healthy, but they can become unhealthy. Questioning the selfishness of it. I’ll be writing a song that uses the word “I” seventeen times and I’m just like: “God, just shut up!” (laughs). I think I felt that having made a record before, which was quite personal, where the feedback was: “I love this song, because I connected with it.” When that first happened, I was like: “Wow, that is amazing.” Because this is just something that came out of my life. There is this sweet spot, when finding the truest way to say something in the most authentic way somehow ends in exactly the place where somebody else needs it to be. To me that is so magical. That is oneness. That is a collective, harmonious thing. Sometimes I can forget it. But I think if you trust your instincts with a song and on the writing and just believe you’re good at this and there is a reason you want to be doing this and you’re brave enough to do it well, then it does mean something. And it’s not just selfish. Hopefully (laughs).
As you just mentioned, your first album – when you got into making this one, did you know right away, that the sound would be so rich this time, or did that surprise you?
I guess I always wanted it to be more layered and rich than the first one. I was really hoping for that. And I still feel that the next record, or whatever next, I’ll feel that again. It feels like a really important development, to be able to experiment more and to expand the sound into different places. With the first record I was very unsure about who I was and what my sound was, so I kept some doors locked or kinda half closed. I’m glad I did that because I was protecting myself, while I was figuring myself out. And then with this one I was pretty keen at the start of it to make something that sounded exactly like a War on Drugs record (laughs). It’s good that it doesn’t sound exactly like a War on Drugs record, but that’s how I began, because I was listening to them so much and it’s so textured and there is so much going on in their records. So I knew that I was gonna have to expand. And I had a focus point: I could see that that’s what I wanted. I was ready to make more noise and started to unlock some more doors. That was scary. I had to, over and over again, accept that I am a perfectionist, and I had to stop being a perfectionist. I was stepping into all these places I did not necessarily have the skills for, or I didn’t know what was behind the doors. I also just really wanted to do it. I want to keep making records, and I want them to evolve and be interesting. This one was quite scary because it was the first time I had done that, or maybe it will be just as scary the next time. It just felt really important to expand and to use more colours. I still get the automatic feedback in myself that is just like: “Ah no, this is too much, that’s not good enough, quick, go back to what you know.” When I finished making the record, I actually didn’t feel really good about it. The same thing happened on the first record, because you get decision fatigue. I have to define myself in the songs and finish them. But they are not perfect (laughs). They don’t need to be perfect, but I do want them to be rich. I want them to be new and expansive.
Our time is almost up, unfortunately. But just one more thing, before we finish. I recently saw Fred again… live. And I wanted to tell you that when the song you made with him is played, you feel so present in the room, even though it’s just your voice and your face on the screen. The emotion of the music and your voice is felt so deeply by the audience. Have you ever seen it yourself?
No… I get sent videos of it though and it’s pretty amazing. It’s funny, I was getting sent videos of it while I was couped up working on all of this stuff, not promoting myself. But he’s out there, putting the song up, putting my face up, people singing along to it, and I’m kinda like really grateful I didn’t have to do it (laughs). I didn’t have the capacity, I haven’t been on the road, but he’s been creating new life for that song and new connections for me with people. It’s super weird. It’s wild. It’s wonderful! And also, I could never have made that into a dance track, I would never have done it. And then the videos show me that so many people connect to that, and that is so beautiful. And it opens my mind. It’s so unexpected.
Isn’t it crazy? I saw you in this huge arena, with 17.000 people singing along with you and at least half of them crying, and you weren’t even present. And still there was this strong, emotional connection. It felt so personal.
I’m so glad that you told me. Because I guess even if I was there, I wouldn’t be able to feel that for myself, because I’d just be: “Shit, that’s me.” (laughs) That’s really special. I’m so glad! What he’s doing seems so special. There’s this room full of people, like a big room, feeling connection and joy. I guess that’s success to me, that’s what the point is. With that song, I felt like I was being rewarded for saying yes to something unknown. I had no idea who he was, it was such an unknown to me. Surrendering to that was a positive thing. I see that with all the negatives going on right now as well. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But hopefully it’s going to be okay.
Photo © Bridgette Winten