On North American Tour NOW
“mxmtoon has become one of the indie world’s major breakthroughs” – Variety
“It sounds like the perfect coming-of-age film theme, though songs of soundtracks past have never cut quite so deep.” – MTV
“a dance-filled, groovy disco-pop track that is filled to the brim with melancholy messaging. The glittering production juxtaposed with the doleful lyricism perfectly shows Mxmtoon’s multitudes in a single song” – Billboard
“the more she endeavors, the more she continues to level up, so to speak.” – American Songwriter
“‘sad disco’ finds mxmtoon mixing glitter with teardrops…vocals are slick, shimmering” – FLOOD
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Today, mxmtoon is releasing her new album rising into the world. This is the music Maia needed to make and hear after those years that felt like decades, after growing enough to know this is what other people might need, too. These songs collectively argue that growth is never done, that rising is just one of many restarts and beginnings to come. The eagerly anticipated LP is already receiving a huge response at live shows as mxmtoon makes her way across the US followed by dates around the world including stops in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Today she is also releasing a video for “frown” as part of a collaboration with WEBTOON. The video features creative direction by antlerella who is the artist behind the WEBTOON series Brass & Sass. Fans have already had the chance to sink their teeth into pre album released songs like “sad disco”, “mona lisa” and “victim of nostalgia,” these early tracks giving an exciting preview of the musical journey mxmtoon is embarking on. The 21 year old recently sat down with Variety as part of a very special Live From My Den series where she spoke about the upcoming album and her craft in general. mxmtoon also delivered an enchanting stripped back live performance, you can watch the performance and full episode in here. |
More on rising….
Though wrought as always from personal experience, mxmtoon extends these glittering and moody tunes — the impatiently waiting jangle of “mona lisa,” the frustrated but persevering electrofunk of “scales,” the incandescent and unforgettable bounce of “dance (end of the world)” — as acts of communal solidarity. Maia knows this has all been hard, so she wants to sing it out, together.
In late 2019, Maia had just finished her first full tour as mxmtoon, and she felt inspired by the prospects of her career and life to come — two new EPs in the making, more shows, a planned move to join her brother in New York. But as the pandemic took hold, she returned to her parents’ home, working to return to her old writing habits in that guest bedroom-turned-makeshift studio. She felt stuck, however, so suspended in time and place she barely wrote anything at all during 2020. What’s more, she lost a cherished grandfather to leukemia, rushing to see him one last time in Florida, and then a beloved grandmother. That’s to say nothing of elections and protests, nationalist revanchism and bigoted violence, enough to beleaguer or age anyone.
Much of rising unfurls from that same premise — mxmtoon’s hallmarked vulnerability buttressed by a newfound musical effervescence and might. These are the songs, as Maia puts it, that she wished existed when she struggled as a teen. They are instruction manuals for surviving, written for young people looking for themselves, but coded as magnetic pop. “growing pains” asks thorny questions about whether we actually improve as we age (or if that’s just what we tell ourselves to feel better) above guitars that shimmer like a sunrise and drums that lift off like rockets. “dance (end of the world)” acknowledges the apocalyptic tenor of our times but finds at least 150 seconds of Gloria Gaynor-style salvation in holding someone (yourself included) close and just moving. “learning to love you” reckons with the exhausting demands of our breathless interconnectedness and funnels the dizziness into a pop sunshower, its namesake chorus rendered as a gleeful collective credo. “frown” gets absolutely funky with absolute existential despair, a pressure-relief valve for the beset mind.
Everything here doesn’t revel in musical refulgence, though. As Maia relates the story of visiting her dying grandfather during “florida,” she remains under cover of chiming acoustic guitars and cascading cymbal washes, a choice that highlights the writing’s poignant intimacy. Laced with arcing strings and textural harmonies, the exquisite “dizzy” captures the vertigo of someone who has spent four years in the public eye but, more broadly, anyone who thinks too much about the perception of online strangers. These more mellow moments betray the depth of their peppy counterparts and the breadth of experience that Maia, now 21, frontloads into mxmtoon.
For Maia, rising represents the culmination of an unintended trilogy that also includes dawn and dusk, the dual EPs she released in 2020. It’s true that rising continues their era of rapid musical growth for mxmtoon. But these dozen songs are the definitive steps forward for mxmtoon, because they are just as ingenious and honest and unguarded musically as Maia has always been lyrically.
