Angie McMahon impressed in the summer of 2019 with the raw and gritty “Salt” and does so again with the much fuller and more versatile “Light, Dark, Light Again”, on which she once again impresses as a singer and as a songwriter
I was certainly charmed by Angie McMahon’s debut album in 2019, but I can’t remember the album causing as many goosebumps then as the reacquaintance earlier this week. Angie McMahon has not made Salt 2.0 with “Light, Dark, Light Again”, but opts for a more versatile, fuller and more polished sound. It all sounds great and once again the Australian musician impresses with her passionate vocals. It may take some getting used to, but the songs on “Light, Dark, Light Again” are so good. Angie McMahon was still a bit of a rough diamond in 2019, but shines brightly on her new album.
It’s been more than four years since Australian musician Angie McMahon made her debut with the excellent Salt. It was an album full of rough guitar lines and remarkably passionate vocals and it was also an album with intense songs, which sometimes rattled pleasantly, but usually grabbed you roughly by the throat. It is an album that could count on very positive reviews in the summer of 2019, but that was hardly to be found in the annual lists at the end of that year.
When I picked up the album again last week, I was surprised that “Salt” didn’t make it to my annual list in 2019, because what a great album it is and how Angie McMahon interprets her songs with a lot of feeling and passion on her ultimately somewhat underrated debut album. In 2020, another EP was released with a number of tracks by “Salt”, but with only a piano and the voice of the Australian musician and that also tasted like much more.
We had to wait quite a long time for that lake, but this week Angie McMahon’s second album was finally released. After I had fallen under the spell of the incomparable “Salt” last week, I started Angie McMahon’s second album with high expectations and “Light, Dark, Light Again” certainly did not disappoint me. And that’s despite the fact that the musician’s second album has become a completely different album than “Salt” or the “Piano Salt” EP.
“Light, Dark, Light Again” opens with an almost overwhelming sound, which, apart from Angie McMahon’s powerful voice, hardly reminds us of her debut album. It is a fully coloured sound, which is supplemented with nature sounds. They also appear in the second track, but this time they have opted for a slightly more subdued sound with both piano, guitars and synths. When the guitars start to sound grittier, you can hear some tentative echoes of Salt, but compared to the debut album of the Melbourne musician, Light, Dark, Light Again sounds fuller and richer and also a lot more varied.
It took me a while to get used to it after the recent listens to Salt, but I was quickly impressed by Angie McMahon’s new sound. The Australian musician has coloured her songs fuller, but also very tastefully and still has a quirky indie sound, which fits well with the indie pop and indie rock of the moment. The musician from Melbourne has once again written a series of personal songs, which she interprets with heart and soul. The vocals sound a bit less rough than on “Salt”, but also the vocals on “Light, Dark, Light Again” come in pretty hard.
Angie McMahon recorded the basis of her new album in her home base of Melbourne, but then moved to Durham, North Carolina, where she worked with renowned producer Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Snail Mail, Jess Williamson, Indigo De Souza), who brought a number of top musicians to his studio. “Light, Dark, Light Again” sounds a lot more produced than “Salt”, but it is a beautiful production, which provides Angie McMahon’s songs with a more varied sound, which can gently caress the ear, but fortunately the music of the Australian singer-songwriter can also occasionally go off the rails.
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