Album Review: Angie McMahon - Light, Dark, Light Again

This morning, I didn’t want to get out of the shower, but hot water runs out, and you have to carry on, don’t you?

In the mornings, I shower in total darkness.

I think that when things were at their worst—like, anecdotally, around eight years ago, was when I began doing this. And the darkness does help, of course, in an effort to slowly introduce myself to the harshness that the morning will most certainly bring—both literally, with the light of day, and even taking it a step back—the oppressive light from when the switch is flicked in the bathroom.

But metaphorically, of course, as well.

When things were at their worst, I would stumble into the bathroom in total darkness, turning the water on as hot as it could get, then carefully stepping into the shower, and even in the total darkness of the bathroom, which was quickly filling up with steam because I also, in an effort to slowly introduce myself to the harshness that the morning would most certainly bring, often would leave the fan off—and even in the total darkness of the bathroom as the water hit my body, I would still keep my eyes closed as tightly as I could squeeze them, navigating where the shampoo and conditioner and the bar of soap were in the shelf underneath the shower head through muscle memory.

In the mornings, I shower in total darkness—it was something that I did even when things were, like, anecdotally, a little better than when they were at their worst. 

But I find that things have returned to their worst. And I spend a lot of time in darkness.

The literal kind, yes. And the metaphorical kind as well.

For myriad reasons, I try not to take all that long in the shower. I suppose one of the most apparent reasons is because I begin to think about the use of resources; but another reason is just out of the efficiency with which I go through life. I am too practical of a person, and showering is something that seems, to me, like it should not take that long—just a few minutes, and then I’m done. 

In the mornings, I shower in total darkness, and I find that, more and more, I am beginning to understand why people remain in the shower, under the torrent of hot water, for longer periods of time. There is a small comfort to it—a reassurance that lasts just a moment, but you wish you could remain in it, or hold onto it.

I’ve found that, more and more, in the mornings, and in the darkness, I begin disassociating as I stand perfectly still, in the bathroom, filling up with steam, as the water rains down on my body.

I’ve started crying in the shower. Sobbing, really. Quietly. Trying to muffle the sound of gasping so that it does not escape the confines of the bathroom within my home. The tears, then, when they do come, are indiscernible from the water spilling out, and down, above me.

Hot water runs out. You have to carry on. 

Or, rather, you are expected to. Regardless of if you want to or not.

*

Four years seems like both a long time, and not.

And it is hard, though, now, to really be able to measure time, or even think about it as a framing device, either subjectively or objectively—because there was maybe a point when you could have argued that four years really isn’t all that long at all—or it doesn’t feel as long as it might sound, or look on paper.

Though, anything that happened, or that we experienced, before 2020 does feel like it was from a literal lifetime ago.

And there was a time, even just four years ago, which does, at least for me, and perhaps for you as well, feel like a lifetime ago, when I approached writing about music differently than I do now.

There was a time, even just four years ago, when things, as much as they could be at that point—six years into doing this, were more casual, or conversational, comparatively. The writing, from what I can tell when I do go back and glance over things from the past, was thoughtful certainly, at the time, or at least there was thought put into it—but it is nowhere near as deliberately eloquent or intentionally sprawling as I do insist on making everything now. 

There was a time when this was all just a little less complicated than I have made it to be in the last three years.

There was a time, I guess, when a lot of things were just a little less complicated than they turned out to be in the last three years.

Four years seems like both a long time, and not. And what I have found, and perhaps you have found this as well, that music—contemporary popular music, as a thing, moves very quickly. Often much quicker than we maybe would prefer it to. And what that means is that, sometimes, there is an album that you make an immediate connection with when it is released—it might, even, be one of your favorite albums of that specific year. 

But, as the years pass, how often do you find yourself returning to it? Is it an album that sits on your shelf, amongst your collection, gathering dust? Is it a folder of MP3s taking up space on your computer’s hard drive, going unplayed? 

You know, or at least I know, that I have found an artist who is impressive and full of promise, and an album that is worthy of the descriptor “something to behold,” when I find myself returning to it, with some regularity, or frequency, years later. 

Angie McMahon’s blistering, often snarling debut full-length, Salt, released in the mid-summer of 2019, is one of those albums, and McMahon herself, is one of those artists. 

Salt was, and still is, a startling breath of fresh air—funny at times, but mostly existing in a ramshackle, unpredictable, and sometimes unhinged place of pensive reflection and self-deprecation. And one of the most impressive things about it, outside of McMahon’s regularly poignant phrase turns, is her voice—and the surprising and regularly amounting control and range displayed throughout the record—beginning as a bluesy, soulful, mumbled whisper, then letting it grow to become something visceral, howling, and otherworldly.

Musically, it is easy, though not intended to be dismissive, to call Salt a “rock” record—even when it becomes a little more hushed and a little more insular towards its conclusion, it is a collection of songs that are structured around big, often powerful strums of the electric guitar; and arguably, the inverse of this album was the pandemic-produced EP that McMahon recorded and released in 2020—Piano Salt, which, save for the jaw-dropping updated arrangement of the tune “If You Call,” features McMahon stepping away from the guitar, and sitting down at the piano, where she reimagined five of the album’s songs, along with two surprising covers.

Four years seems like both a long time, and not. And regardless of how you feel about it, or how you choose to measure what a “long time” might mean, it was during these four years, give or take, that McMahon grew—both, as a person, and as a singer and songwriter—making huge strides forward in her lyricism, and her ambition in trying to achieve a densely layered sound that is worthy of underscoring her writing. 

It is an understatement, then, to say that McMahon’s second full-length, Light, Dark, Light Again, is an enormous leap forward, and an impressive, beautiful, and bold statement—anchored by meticulous production details and huge, often lush-sounding arrangements, the album itself is structured as a bit of a song cycle, or at least held together by a through line, with McMahon’s writing reflecting on the ideas of letting go, of self-discovery and growth, and an acceptance illuminated by bright flashes of something hopeful to come even when there still will most certainly always be a feeling of uncertainty around you.

*

Just wanna be wide awake when I’m 40.

This year, over the summer, I turned 40. And I think that it surprised the people closest to me, and it was a surprise to myself, truthfully, that I was able to make it this far, because there were certainly times—some in very recent memory, when I was quite confident that I would not.

In turning 40, I thought a lot about the way this age was treated, or at least depicted, when both of my parents arrived at it roughly three decades prior. It was treated like a death sentence, or the punch line to an unfunny joke about mortality—crass greeting cards that included the phrase “Over The Hill,” or party decorations, like balloons and streamers, that were all black, to signify just how much closer to “the end” you were.

In turning 40, I thought about how my mother had celebrated her fortieth birthday—a party that went late into the evening at a bar where she, from what I can remember, or piece together,  drank entirely too much, and spent the next day—like, the entirety of the day, in the bathroom, vomiting from alcohol poisoning. 

I don’t think I have ever felt wide awake. And I don’t know, now, well into this fortieth year, if I am ever going to be.

Rarely, if ever, do I feel present in a moment. 

I have, and still often continue to feel, that things—life, really, is passing by in front of me, slightly out of my reach, as I slowly fade away.

I think about the tattoo I have on my left forearm—a quote from The Book of Disquiet that I got when things, personally, didn’t feel as bleak as they had, or would again, in just a few years. 

“How much I’ve lived without having lived.”

In turning 40, my father, with whom I am more or less estranged from and have been for the whole of my adult life, sent me an email wishing me a happy birthday. In his message, he told me, “Most people view 40 as a major milestone. You know—the start of middle age. A time to look forward and back.”

This year, over the summer, I turned 40.  

And what I am failing to see, after four months, is what kind of major milestone this could be considered as, except for the fact that I made it this far, which was, and is, something that both surprised the people closest to me, as well as myself. Because there were certainly a number of times—many of which in very recent memory—more recent than you might wish to know, when I was quite confident that I would not. 

I do not know if keeping myself alive, often in spite of myself, is a milestone.

In turning 40, I have simply been unable to see it as the time to be reflective—looking forward and back, because in looking back, I only see the mistakes I have made, or things I wish I had done differently, and what I consider to be failures that, at times, seem like too many to count.

In looking forward, I am barely able to see that far ahead of me through the darkness.

I don’t think I have ever felt wide awake. And I don’t know, now, well into this fortieth year, if I am ever going to be. 

And there is something alluring, or enticing, about the very idea of feeling wide awake, and, in doing so, opening yourself up to some kind of surrender and acceptance of the things around you.

How much I have lived without having lived.

*

The thing that is very apparent about Light, Dark, Light Again, right from the beginning, is that it is an album so deliberately structured that it does not only ask, but demands, both your patience and attention—and in doing so, what it does reveal about itself early on is how slow of a burn it is regularly going to be, and that yes, sure, you can, and you might, pick out a song here and there as ones that you can return to somewhat regularly outside of the context of the album as a whole, but it is ultimately intended to be listened to, uninterrupted, from beginning to end.

And in that slow burn, Light, Dark really does take its time in order to build momentum the further along that McMahon takes you—with things picking up, in terms of pacing or a song that is a little more traditional in its arranging and instrumentation, with the album’s shimmering and dreamy third track, “Fish.” 

“Fish,” in a sense, is the first indication on the album that McMahon has not completely left her past aesthetic, or sound, behind—in contrast with Salt, Light, Dark is a much less guitar-heavy, or straightforward record, both musically and in her lyric writing. Everything is denser and much more intricate, and the lyrics plunge you even further into a place of self-reflection—but the rollicking, at times jaunty or freewheeling sound she favored, or at least found comfort in, is still present the further into the album’s first side you get, like on the dizzying, chaotic “Letting Go,” or in the brash, searing “Mother Nature.”

But “Fish,” though, arriving after the smoldering first two tracks of the album, serves as a jolt, and yes, there is a lot to unpack within the metaphors McMahon uses in the song, but the instrumentation, and the tone of that instrumentation, is what makes it such a compelling inclusion on the record.

Something that does make it so compelling, and in fact, a little bit of a surprise, is the seemingly 1980s pop-inspired elements that are woven into it, including the quick, playful drum fills that come in between the verses, as well as the overall shimmer, or glisten that it has, which is not a texture that McMahon has really explored before in her arranging—that shimmer, or glisten, is thanks in part to the tone of the electric guitar, which is very dreamy, and leans heavily into the slight quiver and lush layering of a chorus pedal, with a rippling of atmospheric synthesizers coasting underneath. 

The rhythm of “Fish” is interesting (genuinely interesting) in the sense that it kind of stutters or trudges along slightly, with the rest of the song’s instrumentation tumbling in and finding their place within the thuds of the bass drum and sharp cracks of the snare; and within all of these layers, there is a strange, melancholic beauty that is crafted, almost effortlessly—and even with the shimmer and the melancholic beauty and trudging rhythm, the music is at no point running the risk of distracting from McMahon’s reflective lyricism. 

When I wrote about Salt, the thing that I understood about it and tried my best to articulate was that it was not an album full of “love songs,” but rather an album that included “songs about love,” and those are two very different things, even though there is a place where those things overlap. Light, Dark, Light Again, is, in a sense, another album comprised of “songs about love,” because there are the moments (and there are many) where McMahon is writing about her attempts to love herself, rather than the follies that come from loving someone else. 

“Fish,” then, is not a “break up song” per se, but it is McMahon’s admission that a relationship might not exactly be working out how she would have hoped, and the stark realizations that come from that—“I sometimes felt stronger with someone at home,” she reflects. “But I started to feel like a fish in the ocean who knew it’s caught on a wire.”

*

And for as musically fascinating, complex, and robust as Light, Dark is from beginning to end—it is truly an album that ceases to settle into one specific sound, or corner, for very long before it grows too restless, or its emotions too large, and it moves onto something else—it is really McMahon’s phrase turns, often both unflinching and gorgeous, that make this album as resonant as it is.

It should not come as a surprise, though, that her writing, while unflinching and gorgeous, can also be extremely difficult to hear because, if you are like me, you’ll see a lot of yourself being reflected back.

I am remiss to call Light, Dark, Light Again a concept album, but it is an album that includes songs that are, more or less, unified by a concept—the idea of bettering one’s self, both mentally and physically. And within her journey toward self-discovery and improvement, McMahon details, somewhat graphically in a few instances, her attempt at tapering off of prescription antidepressants on “Serotonin,” which arrives midway through the album’s second half.

Both it, and “Divine Fault Line,” another very reflective (and harrowing) song, are also among the album’s most unique in terms of the arranging—with McMahon and her group of collaborators exploring tones, textures, and dynamic arrangements that are as surprising they impactful.

“Serotonin” begins with a quiet chugging rhythm coming from the muted strums of an electric guitar, thick and cavernous sounding, sending a warm echo through the fabric of the song, which is then joined by a layer of quick exhalations, delivered in time with the tempo—and this very humanistic quality gives it a little bit of an unsettling nature, but more than anything else, creates a sense of immediacy to the song, with a low, tumbling percussive pulse bubbling up in time with that heavy, quick breathing.

Structurally, what makes “Serotonin” so fascinating, and what also makes “Divine Fault Line” as fascinating as well, are the additional vocal flourishes that McMahon has woven in—here, she punctuates certain lines with an aside to the listener. The space left for these lines does, in a way, seem intentional, and like there might be something lacking from the song if she didn’t deliver them in a bit of a spectral tone, but even with the space that had presumably been cleared, it never risks becoming, like, entirely too much that she’s trying to work with, especially as the song is just beginning to take shape.

“I got real low on serotonin,” she boldly states in the song’s opening line, before coming in with that whispered aside—“Everything was thrown into shadow.”

Lyrically, the further into “Serotonin” McMahon takes you, the more vivid of a portrait she creates of the effort, and the difficulties, that come with self-improvement and self-discovery—“Traded smoking for a yoga routine—and things were changing like I hoped they would,” she admits in the first verse, before revealing the unexpected consequences. “Then my clothes got too small for my emotions—too small, I had to change.”

“Lost my sense of being an ocean,” she continues in the second verse. “Start to wean off medication. Keeping track, might try again—it feels like losing hero when you halt antidepressants.” 

“Serotonin,” though, is not only about the downside, or what is not often talked about in terms of the seemingly never-ending work that goes into helping one’s self—there, as there often is in a number of the songs on Light, Dark, is a sense of hope, or optimism, as McMahon arrives near the conclusion of the song. “I will dance at the same time as breakfast,” she exclaims. “I will schedule my friends in…I will work on moving through it, and how I communicate.”

And there are so many places on the album where McMahon and the musicians who are featured on this record, work toward a very deliberate build, or some kind of real moment of catharsis—“Serotonin” is not one of them, and that isn’t, like, a bad thing about it—the rhythm it begins with remains mostly steady and subtly relentless throughout, and the layers of instrumentation, including, later on, the soothing warmth of an electric piano, never get too ahead of themselves, or seem like they are working toward something larger, but rather, maintaining a kind of holding pattern that gently spirals around McMahon while she works herself back from the shadow she had been thrown into.

Placed within the album’s first side, “Divine Fault Line” is similar in its structure in terms of a real sense of tension and release, or musically leaning on one of those more than the other—though McMahon does play with a little more release from the tension, comparatively. And it is also within “Divine Fault Line” where McMahon plays with dueling melody lines—it’s surprising, but also a little disorienting at first to understand how everything kind of comes tumbling together; but when the collision begins to make sense a little more, even with as stark as the lyrics are, it is extremely fun, a little jubilant sounding.

And maybe I am way off base here—that has happened before, or, if I’m not off base, I attempt to draw a comparison between two things that is so complicated to explain, or perhaps only something I hear with my own ears¹, that I wonder if it is truly just a small, idiosyncratic point that is almost too small, or idiosyncratic to try and articulate to others. But what I hear, here, specifically, in “Divine Fault Line,” when the little flourishes of this additional melody line come in with McMahon’s voice kind of stuttering out certain lines like “I’ve been slow and so trepidatious not knowing I could make it—cut my body off from itself…got no water left in the well,” and she does it in such a deliberate way that the syllables fall into such precise and specific places that the rhythm they tumble into reminds me, of all things, of parts of the Donna Lewis song “I Love You Always Forever.”

There’s a gentle kind of swaying that occurs as the song builds towards the places where it does ultimately oscillate from—piano chords that ring out, and plaintively strummed acoustic guitar, with low rumbles of percussion keeping time, guiding it all to the moments when it really does swoon, or the momentum is pushed forward toward the chorus, which is one of the two key places where “Divine Fault Line” is perhaps most impressive.

The chorus is also where McMahon is perhaps the most brutal—or at least brutally honest, in her writing, and what she’s depicting in terms of these continued challenges, and the seemingly unending efforts that go into self-improvement and self-discovery.

She juxtaposes the chorus with bright flashes of hope, though, which is effective—“I'm learning to love my skin,” she quietly sings in the opening line. “I’m learning to dive right in.” And then, in the second verse, "I’m tired of where I’ve been—out in the dark, looking in. How do they move so easy?,” she asks. “I keep on freezing.”

“Divine Fault Line” is the first point, really, on Light, Dark, where I realized just how hopeful, or optimistic McMahon is at her core here with her writing, and the journey that she took over the last three or four years to arrive at her truth within the songs. But even in those moments of hope, or optimism, she is walking away from a place of darkness, which is what she reflects on within the chorus, and, of the songs that were not released as singles in advance of the record’s arrival in full, this song’s chorus, specifically, was something that just absolutely stopped me in my tracks because I saw so much of myself in it.

“You’re on your own dark side of the border tonight—and you’re all fucked up, and you’re wanting to die,” she howls while the music around her rises up. “And that’s the place where the breaking out begins. It’s the divine fault line opening.”

*

I’ve been a little darker than I’ve been wanting you to see, but you’ve been coming around here, needing to be looked after….

I used to walk to work.

For the first year or so, I was doing it, it was done mostly out of sudden necessity. For a few years, my wife and I had become a two-car family², but near the very end of 2018, we found ourselves back down to just one, and, for reasons I do not really even remember at this point, I became the one who would walk—to work, certainly, every morning, even when the temperatures dropped, and the snow began to pile up on the ground; back from work, though, not all the time, if I was able to grab our single car from my spouse, if she did not need it in the afternoon at her own job.

And I did come to rely on the kind of calm, and time for silent reflection, that came with the walks in the morning—early, always, either well before the sunrise, or just as it was beginning to ascend. 

There was a quiet, or a stillness, that I quickly came to appreciate, because it offered me a chance to ease into my morning as I mentally prepared myself for the day. 

And I would, many of those mornings, listen to music on my walk to work—usually, it was something that I wanted to spend time with for the purposes of writing a piece on it, but the further into 2019 I got, and into the early months of 2020, when I found myself within, and was attempting to work through, some considerably confusing and tumultuous emotions, I began listening to a specific collection of what I would consider to be very sad, or at least, very emotionally stirring, songs, which I both did realize at the time, certainly, and do realize now, to be an act of emotional terrorism, but I found, each morning, I was unable to help myself.

And it would have been in May of 2020—less than two months into things being extremely bad, but I had no idea how bad things could, and would, get, both personally, and for the world at large, when Angie McMahon released a new version of her song “If You Call,” featuring electric piano and harmony vocals from Leif Vollebekk. 

“If You Call” was the proper closing track on Salt—recorded seemingly outside, or at least near a rush of noises coming from elsewhere, while McMahon strums the song out on her acoustic guitar. It’s smoldering and sensitive, and the kind of unabashedly earnest and pensive song that was a fitting closing track for the album. But the song itself, or at least the lyricism and the sentiments within “If You Call,” did not connect with me until I heard this other version—and perhaps the connection, more than anything else, simply had to do with when I was hearing it.

When things were bad, and were only going to continue to be that way, and how all of that was going to impact me—within those moments, yes, but also in the long term. Like, years later, when I am still, at times, trying to make sense of everything I experienced living in and working through 2020 and 2021. 

I still think about those mornings—they were full of uncertainty, yes, but they were quiet, and provided me such a brief but needed moment of solace. 

That version of “If You Call” would, eventually, turn up on McMahon’s Piano Salt EP, which was released near the end of 2020—but in between the slow trickle of singles over the summer months, after revealing her updated recording of “If You Call,” and the EP’s autumn arrival, in August, she shared a video on YouTube of a new song performed on the piano, and accompanied only by a drummer, huddled behind the kit and playing a very dexterous, jazz-inspired rhythm. 

The song, McMahon explained to Apple Music, was written in 2019, but there was such an urgency, and a bleakness, and a single shred of hope that she was clinging to with both hands, that it seemed like a reflection of what it might feel like to try to make it through the last five months.

I was instantly drawn to “Staying Down Low”—primarily because of the writing, and what she was depicting, and how it was holding up a very difficult mirror and asking me to confront a lot of my own experiences during that same five months; but I was also impressed by the departure in McMahon’s sound. Only a year or so removed from the snarling, ramshackle guitar-focused sound of her debut LP, both her hushed and delicate reinterpretations of Salt’s material for the accompanying piano EP, as well as this new song, indicated she was looking to push herself in terms of how these songs were structured, and what instruments were at the center of how they were able to flourish.

There is a surprising jauntiness to “Staying Down Low,” which is perhaps unexpected, again, given that the lyrics are very honest and stark—the song, now three years after it originally appeared online in a video (which I most certainly ripped the audio from and would listen to on my walk to work) has found a home tucked into the final third of Light, Dark, Light Again, with its themes of improvement and hope allowed to really connect and echo throughout the rest of the material on the record.

“Staying Down Low” is sequenced late in the album, right before McMahon arrives at, like, the resolution of the conflict within herself that she’s been exploring from song to song—and it is the last little bit of fun, or exuberance, at least musically speaking, before the final two tracks take you further inward prior to the conclusion of Light, Dark, Light Again.

Musically, not much has changed for “Staying Down Low” since it originally appeared in 2020—the piano chords are still rollicking and bouncy, as she plays with the use of the sustain pedal, giving each chord just the right, and extremely precise, amount of time to either ring out slightly, or, is cut off quickly and bent upward or downward into the next chord of the progression as her fingers dance across the keys; and the gently, though crisply brushed jazz-inspired drumming keeps the song tumbling along at a well-paced shuffle—it is all almost whimsical, in a sense, in how freewheeling it can sound, and is certainly intentional as a means of distracting, slightly, from the severity of the lyrics.

In her comments to Apple Music, McMahon explains that the song is, as one might anticipate, about depression, but the bigger piece to what “Staying Down Low” is about is about her, as she put it, turning the mirror on herself—“I was writing about someone else’s experience with depression but I realized I had something things to learn about projection,” she said. “Everything I write is actually about myself. It’s the same as how I was learning that when you’re in conflict with someone, you’re projecting your shit onto them in some way—you’re experiencing life through your specific lens. Your traumas.”

And it is, ultimately about both recognizing the sadness, or the struggles in someone else, but being forced to recognize or acknowledge the sadness, or the struggles, within yourself, however unflattering or sobering that might be to take on. “I wanna help you get moving,” McMahon admits, to perhaps the off-stage character in the song, as well as to herself. “‘Cause I’m just like you—I’m pretty scared of cutting loose, but if I can do it, then you can too.”

And there is this desire, when you want to show up for, or support someone else who is not doing well, not to be toxically positive, but to be encouraging with your suggestions on what might help—though there is a fine line to walk between encouragement and being dismissive and giving that person the time they might need, or want, to process what they are experiencing, which is where McMahon finds herself within the song’s third, and perhaps most poignant verse. 

“You could take up running³, or something, to break out of your sweat,” she suggests. “I could keep you company and stop choking on the things I haven’t done yet. Or we could curtail our standards,” she continues. “I’m taking my time—I’m probably gonna be late. And we’ve both been crying…I’ll just try to resuscitate.”

And it is within the chorus where McMahon is then both honest with the person that the good intentions of “Staying Down Low” are directed at, as well as herself, when she admits, “I can see it on your face—this staying down low is no longer fitting you.” And it is within the chorus—or, at least the final chorus, when she begins to repeat the titular phrase with a greater urgency, and then begins interjecting what is perhaps, or at least what I have come to find recently, what someone who is in need, or is struggling, wants more than encouragement.

And that is just an understanding. And earnest support.

“I know that you’re tired,” McMahon confesses near the end, while the song is working its way to the gentle conclusion. “You can get back up again.”

It’s no longer fitting you. 

I know that you’re tired. 

*

This morning, I didn’t want to get out of the shower, but hot water runs out, and you have to carry on, don’t you?

Things are always worse in the morning. Always. And the thing that I have come to understand, over time, about living with depression, is how much it can slow you down—not all of the time. No. There are moments when you have, to an extent, fooled those around you into thinking that you are doing, or feeling, just fine. And maybe, there are moments when you have even half convinced yourself that you are, perhaps, feeling better—that you might be fine. Or okay.

For myriad reasons, I try not to take all that long in the shower. One of which is because of the efficiency with which I go through life. I am too practical of a person, and showering is something that seems, to me, like it should not take that long. Just a few minutes, and then I am done. But in the mornings, now, more and more, I am beginning to understand why people remain in the shower, under the torrent of hot water—hopefully as hot as you can make it—for longer periods of time.

Because there is a small comfort to it. A reassurance that lasts just a moment, and you wish you could remain in it, or hold onto it. Because’ve found that more and more, in the mornings, in the darkness of a bathroom where I refuse to turn the lights on, I have started dissociating as I stand perfectly still as the water rains down on my body.

But hot water runs out. You have to carry on. Or at least you are expected to whether you want to or not. 

If “Saturn Returning,” at all of two minutes and change, serves as an intro to Light, Dark, Light Again, it is the album’s second track, and one of the singles released prior to the album in full arriving in October, “Fireball Whiskey,” that could be considered its first proper track, or at least after the curtain has risen, the song that ushers you further into the depths the album intends on taking us.

“Fireball Whiskey” is, musically, the album’s most brooding in just how it smolders, and how McMahon plays with the act of sustaining a kind of tension and never really giving in to the idea of letting it go—allowing it to rise, or build, then naturally recede. It feels very loose in its rhythm, or its structure—not like it is barely being held together, but that there is a lot of freedom for movement within, which allows it to have the kind of large swaying momentum that it carries, where things reach like a peak, or a high, then is pulled back in, only to begin the act of building themselves up once again.

Strummy and atmospheric, the emphasis of “Fireball Whiskey” is not only in McMahon’s lyricism, but in the deeply personal narrative that she ends up depicting—pulling from fragments of the slow dissolution of a relationship, then shifting forward to what it feels like to be within the aftermath.

There is a somber and haunting nature to the way that she walks through this relationship, or the pieces of it that are used within the song—taunted by thinking she’s caught a glimpse of her former partner’s face in an armchair’s upholstery, before quickly turning the song’s gaze inward. “My backbone could’ve grown, but it’s turned to softness. I think it’s a problem,” McMahon observes, before the song takes a visceral turn, and she seamlessly blends the first verse into the stunning, emergent, and desperate chorus, when she compares the aforementioned problem to food that has spoiled, serving as the metaphor for the difficulty of knowing when to let go of something (or someone) and when to try holding on, or making it work.

“You might say it’s okay to eat it, but then it makes you vomit,” she sings with an urgency in her voice. “I really hate to vomit, except the one time I drank too much Fireball Whiskey because I wanted you to kiss me. So I threw it up, washed my mouth, and sat back on the couch with you.”

And there is a lot, as one might anticipate, happening within “Fireball Whiskey”—a lot of difficult emotions to both revisit, and experience, crammed into the swooning, swirling momentum that it maintains. In a post on Instagram when the song was released as a single around two months prior to the arrival of Light, Dark in full, McMahon wrote out a list of things she realized she was “afraid of” within the process of the song: “Telling someone for the first time that you love them; being the one to say, out loud, that something isn’t working; turning off the shower when the hot water is the only thing making you feel okay; telling someone for the last time that you love them; nothing changing; everything changing.” 

And all of those things are present—however subtle, or however direct, in the song, many of them becoming more and more apparent, and emergent, the further along we follow McMahon into the space of the song, specifically in the second verse, which is the most harrowing, and most honest, in what it depicts, and within those depictions, the difficult things McMahon, as the protagonist within the song, has to accept or at least try to reconcile with. “I planted my feet, and my hands were reaching back for you,” she begins. “Now everywhere I step into, I’m thinking about you fondly…this morning, I did not want to get out of the shower, but hot water runs out, and you have to carry on, don’t you?…just like letting go of you—I can’t believe I’m letting go of you.”

McMahon, despite whatever reservations she might have had about it, arrives at the “telling someone for the last time that you love them” portion of her list of things she was afraid of as “Fireball Whiskey” spirals around gently into its quiet conclusion where she oscillates, along with the music, between contrasting emotions or circumstances. “Got close enough to pull away,” she confesses, before adding, “You were so warm, you were the womb—I could’t stay, there was no room.”

Or, before she actually arrives at the greater understanding within the song that does connect it to the larger themes within the album (“Love for life”), she makes one of the hardest-to-hear juxtapositions within the song—“I could love you anytime. I cry about you all the time.”

The hot water does, eventually, run out. And we are expected, regardless of whether we want to or even feel like we can, carry on. 

*

Just wanna be wide awake when I’m 40.

The first thing Angie McMahon does on Light, Dark, Light Again—like, the first line she sings in the opening track, “Saturn Returning,” is an apology to herself. “Baby, I forgive ya,” she coos while the keys of the piano are plunked out in time underneath her, and fluttering atmospherics whirl in the background. 

The conceit that McMahon pulls from this opening piece, all the way through until the album’s final moments, is of the hope and optimism that comes from self-discovery and self-improvement, though she is honest about how difficult it can be, and often is, to keep pushing yourself to put in “the work” because it does, at times, seem like it is never going to end.

There is always growing to do—however painful or challenging it might be. There are always the efforts we can putting in to better ourselves somehow, as tiring as it might be, or as exhausted as it might make us feel when everything, already, feels so fucking fragile so much of the time. 

“Saturn Returning” is McMahon making a bold declaration to herself, or a reinvestment in herself as a person, and a giving in, or giving over, to things larger than herself. “I’m gonna be everything she couldn’t hold,” she sings before the song ascends into its chorus. “I’m gonna dance every day til I’m old.”

“I’m gonna love every inch of this body,” she continues. “The limbs that are writing each day of this story.”

And one of the boldest declarations made in “Saturn Returning” is this: “Just wanna be wide awake when I’m forty.”

This year, over the summer, I turned 40. 

And I think that it surprised the people closest to me, and it was a surprise to myself, truthfully, that I was able to make it this far, because there were certainly times—some in very recent memory, when I was quite confident that I would not.

And McMahon, who is now just shy of 30, wishes to be wide awake, for herself, and whatever larger things come along, a decade now from. And in this, my fortieth year, I do not think I have ever felt wide awake—I don’t know if I am ever going to be, because rarely, if ever, do I feel present in a moment. 

I have, and still often continue to feel that things—life, really, is passing by in front of me, slightly out of my reach, as I slowly fade further and further away. 

I have never looked at my reflection in the mirror, and said, “Baby, I forgive ya,” for both the past, as well as the mistakes, or missteps, that I will most certainly make in the future.

I do not know if I am capable, at this point, of loving every inch of this body—the body that has, for the last couple of years, continued to fail me. The limbs that write my story are weary. And the story itself is, ultimately, a sad one.

But there is something so alluring about this optimism, and this hope, and this reinvestment in one’s self—bettering yourself, regardless of how insurmountable it might seem because of just how far down you find yourself. The hope is promising—it’s big, and bold, and McMahon, throughout the album, is very convincing that it is, in the end, all worth the effort you end up putting in, even in the moments when you might not feel like you can give anything else back to yourself.

For the last year or so, I have, at times, been thinking about the act of surrendering to something. It doesn’t always have to be to something “much larger” than yourself, though it often is, or perhaps, you would often like something larger than yourself to appear and require you to surrender to it. It might be something unexpected that does require you to give in, or open yourself up to the unknown. And I think there is a hope, or an optimism, within these moments—however large or small, when you surrender and open yourself up to whatever comes next.

In this last year or so, I find that I return, somewhat regularly, to what is more or less, the thesis statement that Maggie Rogers wrote on the back of the album, aptly titled, Surrender—“When I’m angry, or in love, I feel it in my teeth,” she begins. “For a long time, I fought it. Resisted. Held up my fists. Tried to control the current,” she continues. “I found peace in the distortion. A chaos I could control.”

“Do you fear what’s underneath? Is your jaw wound tight? Do you ever want to bite? And what if you did? Sink your gums into a shoulder. Of a lover. Of a day. Of a year,” she asks. “Here’s all I have. It’s yours to take. Love. Hate. Anger. Feral joy. This is the story of what happened when I finally gave in.”

Light, Dark, Light Again ends with the gentle, and uncharacteristically skittering “Making It Through,” which lyrically, anyway, serves as McMahon’s opportunity to reflect, and become quite self-aware, of the journey she has taken through the album—what she has learned about herself so far, and all of the things she has yet to discover or understand.

The mid-tempo beat that kept “Making It Through” going is subtle—and seemingly processed in a way that makes it sound thick, and a little chopped up somehow, which is not exactly “out of place” on an album that, as a whole, is based around an incredibly dense and textured aesthetic, but is surprising nevertheless, and it, along with the cavernous, steady piano chords, and the way that McMahon herself delivers her vocals in a smoldering, almost sensual way, makes the song one that finds itself into what I can only describe as a groove—a kind of quiet, undeniable rhythmic pulse that makes you bop your head along in time.

“Making It Through” does, of course, soar to bombastic, explosive heights during its chorus, as one might anticipate from the closing track on an album like this, and it is within the chorus that McMahon reflects on the conceit of these 13 songs. “I froze on the side where you left me,” she howls as the music builds around her. “To hold everything still worth protecting. I know now at the end of the ending that just making it through is the lesson.”

The song ends with McMahon repeating the album’s title, over and over, with a hypnotic comfort in the way her words tumble out within the rhythm of “Making It Through,” and in a way that is perhaps a little obvious, or one where she does truly play her hand completely, she reveals what “Light, Dark, Light Again,” means in the larger sense of the album. 

It seems dismissive to say it, because when you are in the moment, or a moment, and it seems like everything is going to feel impossible, or terrible, forever, you more than likely do not want to hear that things will pass. But that is what it means—it is light; it is dark; it is light again. The moments, much to our surprise, do pass. Eventually. Sometimes slower, or more painfully than we want them to. But those moments are not always going to be the reality we find ourselves in, even when it seems hopeless to think otherwise.

It’s the knowing that there will be a give and take—that things will, at times, feel better, and that they will, unfortunately, feel worse again. And that this is just the human condition. 

And that the most important thing is that we make it through.

Light. Dark. Light again. 

And it should come as no surprise that I am often a very pessimistic, hopeless person, and that moving out of that dark, back into the light again, seems, at times, to be unfathomable. I have tried, over and over, for years, to improve myself in so many different ways—some of them more sustainable, or easier to commit to than others. 

Some of them eventually proving to be fruitless, or just entirely too overwhelming to keep up.

Light. Dark.

Dark.

But there is, of course, something so fucking alluring about this kind of optimism, or this hope, or this reinvestment in one’s self—the commitment to bettering yourself, regardless of how insurmountable it all might seem because of just how far down in the dark you find yourself. The hope that McMahon suggests—the return to the light in yourself is promising.

It’s big and bold and one of the boldest declarations made on the album is in “Saturn Returning,” and it’s this: “I’m gonna surrender my keys to the universe. Please always catch me the way that you caught me.”

Light, Dark, Light Again is an enormous statement from McMahon as a performer and a songwriter—collaborating with producer and multi-instrumentalist (and former one-time bandmate of Justin Vernon) Phil Cook along with his brother Brad—has grown both personally over the last four years, as well as within her craft. Dense, clever, beautiful, haunting, and all-encompassing, it is a fearless album about trying to let go of the fears we hold, that keep us from growing, or prevent us from a journey toward accepting ourselves.

There is something so alluring about McMahon’s optimism, and hope, and her desire to surrender her keys to the universe, and open herself up to whatever comes next—something much larger than herself. There is something alluring about the idea of surrender—not necessarily to something larger, but rather the unexpected, or what you really never could have truly anticipated. And it is in those moments within when you ask, "Please always catch me the way that you caught me.”

And there is, of course, an assurance, however subtle, however loud, said in return. 

There is something so alluring about the idea of surrender, and in the understanding of what it feels like when you finally give in. 

^{1- This is a small aside to the reader: the thing that I am specifically referencing here happened somewhat recently when I was listening to, and writing about, The Loveliest Time, by Carly Rae Jepsen, and in a conversation with my friend Alyssa, I mentioned that I felt like there were some sonic, or at least aesthetic, similarities between a few tunes on that collection, and Fever In/Fever Out-era Lucious Jackson—specifically the ubiquitous single “Naked Eye.”} 

^{She did not agree with me, which made me wonder if this is just like a “me” thing because I am too analytical.}

^{2- I wrote a long essay about this at the start of 2019 if you are interested in learning about the car I drove from 2005 until 2018.}

^{3- It seems worth mentioning that, okay, yes, there are people who believe that “just getting some exercise” can help with poor mental health, but I find it to be incredibly dismissive to say this to somebody who is unwell.} 

Light, Dark, Light Again is available now on CD (the vinyl is sold out) via Gracie/AWAL.