Angie McMahon would like to clear something up: the 29-year-old Naarm-based singer-songwriter is not, we repeat, not an anti-vaxxer.
“Please put that in writing and save me,” she pleads.
The potential confusion comes from the world-weary waltz of ‘Black Eye’ from her second album ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’. The song, which McMahon says is about “over-loving somebody”, has some lyrics that really jump out: “I’m trying to insert myself like a vaccine into your arm / I didn’t know I was doing harm.”
McMahon has been doing damage control. “I’ve actually been unpacking this on stage before we play it. It needs a disclaimer: ‘We are pro-vaccine, we are all vaccinated.’ Unfortunately, I wrote ‘Black Eye’ pre-2021; the vaccine topic wasn’t hot.
“I don’t know why it took me four years to realise I could have just changed the lyric to ‘needle’… but the record is done.”
McMahon’s relief is palpable, both at getting a chance to explain herself before keyboard warriors start brandishing their pitchforks, and having a suite of 13 remarkable songs to follow her 2019 debut album ‘Salt’.
That record’s sonic palette echoed the stuff her parents would play on long car rides: Bruce Springsteen, k.d. lang and Van Morrison. McMahon took lessons from those masters and advanced her craft by poring over Missy Higgin’s ‘The Sound of White’. When Higgins posted a picture for its 15th anniversary, McMahon retweeted it with three words: “changed my life.”
‘Salt’ hit number 5 on the ARIA charts and won Best Independent Rock Album at the AIR Awards. It produced ‘Slow Mover’, which has a combined 45million streams and a chorus (“Try set me on fire / Try set me on fire”) that has probably been lodged in your brain at some point. It’s a tough act to follow.
But fans of Angie McMahon will doubtless get all they need from ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’. Her booming lower register still punches you across the face one moment and bobs and weaves beside your dizzy frame the next. She’s grown as a songwriter, combining Courtney Barnett-style vignettes with Joni Mitchell’s disarming lilt, creating something all her own.
To record, McMahon headed to producer Brad Cook’s Puff City studio in North Carolina with a crack band: drummer Matt McCaughan (Bon Iver), Canadian singer-songwriter Leif Vollebekk and Megafaun musician Phil Cook. Back home she added vocals from her local peers: Ruby Gill, Hannah McKittrick and Maple Glider, assisted by Alex O’Gorman and the in-demand Bonnie Knight.
She needed her community: The last few years have seen McMahon go through an astrological rite-of-passage, a relationship break, a change of meds and a diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). There were also Victoria’s brutal lockdowns, which she rode out in her Preston home, wondering if and when she’d get the reciprocal catharsis of singing for audiences again.
“I was in my front yard thinking of how much I wanted to be on stage. It was a chapter in time where things were not working anymore and my body felt panicky.”
“The process of writing this record was: ‘I’ve been so hard on myself and I need to heal’”
It was all a bit much. On ‘Fireball Whiskey’, a bona fide Angie 2.0 love song, she sings “…but then it makes you vomit, I really hate to vomit.” On ‘Serotonin’ she pensively tells us she’s “starting to wean off medication”. On ‘Letting Go’ she sings, over a triumphant War on Drugs-esque riff, “I might have spent six months lying on my living room floor”.
There is a gruff self-acceptance to that song, which ends in the stadium-ready bellow “it’s OK, make mistakes,” one she repeats until she is hoarse and happy. On an equally loud moment, she channels the divine feminine on ‘Mother Nature’. “I used to be like, ‘I’m so angry at everyone… and I’m gonna write about it in a song’,” she says with a snigger. “The process of writing this record was more ‘I’ve been so hard on myself and I need to heal.’”
The opening track, ‘Saturn Returning’, guided the healing theme. McMahon thinks she hit her Saturn Return, an astrological phenomenon that is said to bring about existential crisis, when she was 27. Reading The Pocket, a compact collection of teachings by Buddhist nun and author Pema Chödrön, helped her understand “the necessity of going downhill”.
“We are kind of always told that life is an uphill climb. But if you want to actually get into the nitty gritty you have to be willing to go down to where the juice is,” McMahon says. She shares a photo of a two-page passage which concludes: “Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.”
What also helped McMahon was being diagnosed with ADHD. “When I received my ADHD diagnosis I was able to understand my brain,” she says. “What are you avoiding all the time? My therapist helped me to come into conversation with the greater powers outside of myself.
“I am so grateful for Saturn Returns. It gives the album context,” she adds. “I’m glad that there’s an astrological explanation.”
McMahon’s gone through it – and come out the other side, ready for the slog of the release cycle and whatever else life throws at her.
“I’m more intentional now. I’ve become more of a hippie meditator,” she says, which leads to a break in the interview where we do a breathing exercise together.
“Fred Again.. has done me a solid by giving ‘Pasta’ a new life. It feels like a beautiful sequel”
“That’s part of my evolution as a person and it comes out on stage now,” she says. McMahon isn’t drinking alcohol before gigs and is embracing the raw, happy-tears moments.
“I am just really trying to lean into how we don’t do that stuff [cry together] when gathering in spaces. Maybe it’s a bit uncomfortable, but also maybe we tear ourselves down too much. And, like, maybe it’s OK to be vulnerable.”
While COVID shut down touring for musicians and put their financial safety in jeopardy, McMahon received a serendipitous email from a cheery English producer: Fred Again.., who wanted to sample her track ‘Pasta’. It ended up being the song ‘Angie (I’ve Been Lost)’, which now has 20 million streams.
“I must admit, when it was first sent to me I had no idea who he was. I listened to it once and was like ‘Yeah, whatever’,” she says dismissively.
McMahon knows better now. “I’ve got way more into dance music in the last few years. It wasn’t until people kept saying to me, ‘It’s Fred Again?!’”
She adds, “There’s been some business lessons I’ve learnt from it… everything is an opportunity for learning.
“He’s done me a solid by giving the song a new life. It feels like a beautiful sequel to something I don’t have to worry about. The thing that’s special about it is people from all over are connecting with it. I’m not making music for Berlin dance festivals… and then 7,000 people hear it and I get a video of them singing along. It’s a special thing to know it’s spreading joy.”
Now it’s McMahon’s turn to go out, spread that vibe and remind her fans that after all we’ve been through during the pandemic that the love didn’t die.
“I just want to try and create a space where everyone can cry and everyone can take a deep breath.”
Angie McMahon’s ‘Light, Dark, Light Again’ is out now via AWAL.