I'll confess my bias right off the bat: Angie McMahon’s 2019 debut album Salt was undoubtedly one of my top 5 of the year (and 2019 gave us some truly top-tier albums). I have nothing but admiration for both its contents and its creator. The Melbourne-based singer has described the writing process of the collection as cathartic, and the experience of listening to it is nothing less. Salt's 11 tracks are intimate, funny, well-polished, and altogether just a beautifully truthful reflection of human experience and emotion.
As an artist, she’s endearingly humble: the “about” section of her Facebook page simply reads “yells words at microphone” and she sings “I just sit in my house making noise for fun."
Grounded by electric guitar and the occasional hard-hitting beat, McMahon’s vocal performance on this record is what really captivates. Its range is evocative of Florence Welch, always oscillating between calm and clamourous. She merges gentle folk with edgy rock music, cementing her style with a knack for remarkably relatable lyrics.
Salt is shaped by its dynamics. The tracks are ordered such that the energy never stays the same for long, with upbeat and melancholic songs scattered throughout. We’re taken from vulnerability to self-assurance and back around again, both between and within songs. In this way, she captures the realistic fickleness of emotions and mental states. (Otherwise put: your wildly unpredictable moods? She gets it.) She’s able to wield these dynamics with impressive ease: loud without being abrasive; quiet without being faint.
The album’s title is an interesting choice on its own: pouring salt on wounds can be painful but also cleansing, and the singer has said that it can also refer to salty tears --- “It’s a metaphor, I suppose, for the songs being what is left over after the experiences that I’ve had; salt is what remains after water evaporates.”
Each of the songs deals with the confusion and growth of young adulthood in one way or another. For example Slow Mover, her debut single, is a funny, upbeat track about indecision and taking your time, and in similar style, Keeping Time conveys a conversation with self during a period of change.
An absolute favourite of mine is Pasta, her quirky ode to lethargy. It’s strikingly easy to find yourself in its lyrics (“I wonder why I’m feeling lonely when there’s plenty of ways to feel alone / I guess I spent all of yesterday on my phone") as she expresses the existential crises of your mid-twenties with a sharp sense of humour.
One of the most important songs of the collection is And I Am A Woman. It’s about men “referring to girls as if they are a game”; the inability to speak while ‘bleeding’; and the frustration of having to teach while you’re still learning. McMahon has described it as her end of the infamously overused statement: “boys will be boys…and I am a woman.” Beginning somberly, the tension of the song rises until it’s finally flooded out in the final minute through howling vocals singing over and over, “You are in my home now, and I am a woman.”
The remaining six tracks center on heartache --- and it’s pretty wild that given the bottomless pool of songs on the subject, new ones still manage to sound so refreshingly unique. (It’s the medium, not the message.)
The brilliantly volatile Missing Me will make you feel angry about a past heartbreak (regardless of whether or not you've actually been through it), in contrast to gentler lullabies like Play The Game.
Soon plays out the emotional brawl of moving from one relationship to the next. The verses are sung steadily before barreling into a disarmingly sincere chorus (“See I’d like to have real love someday / and I’d like to get past this heartbreak soon"). McMahon captures this crazy (real) part of our nature – of falling in love, feeling the heart wrench of its aftermath, and still wanting to do it all again.
She trades her electric guitar in for an acoustic one in If You Call, the 8-minute closing ballad. There is so much to say for every song on this record, but this one always hits especially hard. Something about its stripped back sound and haunting whistling melody make it feel more intimate than any of the 10 tracks leading up to it (and that bar has been set high).
It's the general tone of the song that really strikes a chord – self-aware but also kind of defeated. And I think her choice to close the album this way speaks to her ability to really capture truth. At the end of this whole emotional ride, you might want her to conclude with some sense of overcoming, of being dragged through the mud and making it out victorious. But no – none of that here. Even after it all, she gently confesses in the chorus: “If you call / I’ll put on the light for you.”
But unlike the other songs of heartache on the album --- in which she wants to dissect and understand and mourn the relationship lost --- in this one we finally get a sense of acceptance. If Salt had a thesis, it would likely come from the first verse of this closing track: “I just want to feel it, feel that I like who I’m becoming and feel alright in the quiet.”
Through these songs, McMahon takes the time to delve into some of the more unruly aspects of love and pain. Give it the time and quiet attention that it merits and you won’t be disappointed.
Happy listening!
Comentarios