Angie McMahon has announced a new EP, Light Sides, a companion piece to her acclaimed 2023 album, Light, Dark, Light Again.
The five tracks were written at the same time as the Melbourne singer-songwriter’s most recent album. They were put to tape at studios in North America and Australia during McMahon’s album sessions and during stops on her recent year-long world tour.
Light Sides features three as-yet-unreleased tracks, “Beginner,” “Interstate,” and “Take Up Space,” alongside “Just Like North” and the newly released “Untangling.”
McMahon found it particularly difficult to finish the latter track, with “Untangling” living in demo form on her phone since she first started working on Light, Dark, Light Again.
“It was written about someone who is deeply entwined in my life,” she explains, “so I never felt like either the song or the untangling itself was entirely finished.”
“Untangled” is the only track on McMahon’s forthcoming EP that was finished with the aid of her live band, Lachlan O’Kane (drums/percussion), Jess Ellwood (guitar), Stella Farnan (keys/synth) and Alex O’Gorman (bass). “I was surrounded by trees and my friends and I’m so grateful to them for their musical powers,” she adds.
Listen to “Untangling,” and watch the accompanying lyric video, below.
“Just Like North,” meanwhile, is an ode to embracing hurt and uncertainty as being part of life, and trusting the purpose the latter serves.
“‘Just Like North’ is one of my favourites from the writing period of Light, Dark, Light Again, and it was recorded in Durham, NC with a bunch of the other songs on the record,” says McMahon.
“In the end it didn’t fit into the sequencing, and I always wanted to put it out somehow. It was written in a School of Song session led by Courtney Marie Andrews, who prompted us to respond in some way to a beautiful poem called ‘You Can’t Have It All’ by Barbara Ras. This one was also mixed by Alex O’Gorman. We’ve been playing it on tour lately because it holds the album theme of trusting in the course of failure and rebirth.”
McMahon featured in our ‘Future of Music’ series this year, our list of 25 of the most exciting and innovative artists from Australia and Aotearoa we believe are destined for the very top.
“In a country spoiled for choice when it comes to singer-songwriters, Angie McMahon still manages to stand out from her Australian (and global) peers. Her latest album, Light, Dark, Light Again, contained some of the most profoundly moving lyricism of the decade so far,” we wrote.
“It takes a special artist to make you feel less alone in the vastness of the world, but that’s what McMahon achieves in her songs, instilling them with mantras that urge both her and her listeners to relinquish, breathe, and find light through the darkness. We’re lucky to have brave songwriters like McMahon embracing the feelings we’re afraid to face.”
Angie McMahon’s “Untangling” is out now. Light Sides EP is out September 13th via AWAL (pre-save here).
