Every now and then, a singer/songwriter emerges who possesses that elusive ability to translate the guarded intimacy of one’s personal strifes into music that is universally urgent. Enter Angie McMahon — guitar-shouldered and bearing the brunt of life’s emotional heft — her poetic lyricism earnestly thumbing the depths of lucid self-revelation. With the release of her second album Light, Dark, Light Again she is heading out on a headlining tour across North America that will include a stop at The Troubadour in Los Angeles on March 15th.
McMahon is the latest in a long, ever-growing line of phenomenal Australian singer/songwriters. The arrival of her 2019 debut album Salt revealed her capacity for penning poignant lyrics and tuning them to dually resonant-rollicking sonics. Throughout, she evokes two of her guiding stars — Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen — yet the searing catharsis found within is all her own.
Songs like “Soon” and “Missing Me” bristle with rapt fury as McMahon reckons with love’s sundering, her hushed, gut-wrenching whispers growing into clamorous expressions of the internalized rapture of heartbreak. Elsewhere, she articulates the necessity of confronting life’s rollercoaster of emotions on her own time, entrenching herself in the rousing riffs that pulverize her fears on “Keeping Time” and “Slow Mover.”
A year later, she followed up the album with a piano-centered version of its songs that only further exposed the devastating beauty of her songwriting. Then came a string of covers that reimagined ABBA’s “Knowing Me, Knowing You” as a guitar-roiling crescendo complete with a goosebump-inducing finale delivered via McMahon’s ecstatic cries. Or her sublime reinterpretation of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” as a slow burn of resounding riffs and heavy drums.
On her second album, she returns fully enmeshed and rejuvenated by the reflections of her first record. If Salt was an attempt to acknowledge the discord inherent to the world and her own being, then Light, Dark, Light Again endeavors to bravely accept it. The Springsteen-esque mantra of surrender “Letting Go” and the electrifying “I Am Already Enough” reaffirm McMahon’s fearsome talent for driving anthems that fissure the soul.
Her boldly lofty goals spark a shift in her soundscapes as well: opener “Saturn Returning” pairs her luminously inspiring vocals with a glacial melody replete with sonorous instrumentals, as does the breathtakingly beautiful “Divine Fault Line.” By the time you reach the album’s end, you’ll find yourself revitalized in the lingering phosphorescence of its tender final song, “Making It Through.” And you’ll return swiftly to the collection — as its title suggests — through all the alternating cycles of life’s incessant highs and lows.
Words: Steven Ward
See Angie McMahon on her U.S. tour kicking off March 11 with a Los Angeles date at The Troubadour in Los Angeles on March 15th.
Visit Angie McMahon on her website, TikTok, and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Angie McMahon tour
March 11 – Seattle, WA – Madame Lou’s
March 12 – Portland, OR – Star Theater
March 14 – San Francisco, CA – The Chapel
March 15 – Los Angeles, CA – The Troubadour
March 18 – Washington D.C. – Atlantis
March 20 – New York, NY – Bowery Ballroom
March 21 – Brooklyn, NY – Music Hall of Williamsburg
March 23 – Philadelphia, PA – World Cafe Live
March 25 – Montreal, QC – Bar Le Ritz
March 26 – Boston, MA – The Sinclair
Listen to Light, Dark, Light Again the new album from Angie McMahon below!
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