Album Review: Angie McMahon - Light Sides

And maybe, if you are like me, you do, eventually, at some point in the day, hit a wall.

It does happen to me when I find I have been pushing myself through the day—the morning, and then into the afternoon. And I will take a moment. Often, in the kitchen, in front of the sink. The late afternoon sun pouring in through the windows. My hands on the black countertop. And I will reflect on what I have accomplished in a day. I have pulled myself out of bed. I have walked the dog. I have readied myself. Depending on the day, I have worked. Depending on the day, I have worked at both of the jobs I currently hold. I have done laundry. 

The wall usually comes, at least for me, and maybe for you as well, when I am in the process of preparing dinner. And I will realize that I, perhaps, have not sat down for a number of hours. That I have continued to push myself forward. And I think, well, maybe now is a moment when I could step away from what, as of late, has been referred to as the “unpaid domestic labor” in my home, and do something else—something for myself. 

And in the moment when I do give consideration to stepping away, I also realize how much work there is left to do. The dinner to be completed. The dishes to be washed. The garbage to be taken out. More laundry to be washed or put away. The laundry never seems to end you see, even in a household with two people and a dog. 

And maybe, if you are like me, you do, eventually, at some point in the day, hit a wall. 

You hit the wall and realize how much you have done but how much is still left to do before you can perhaps have that m moment for yourself. And you some how, at least I do, and maybe it is the same for you and maybe it isn’t, but you push yourself even harder and keep going.

Because the work never ends. 

The work.

I think about that a lot. Or, at least, I have thought about that a lot, for a few years now. Just the expression, “the work.” The work that we are doing. The work that we are putting in. The work that never ceases, regardless of how much we have accomplished in a day because there will always be more of the day to go, and more that still feels like it needs to be accomplished before we allow ourselves to rest.

The work.

I think about that expression a lot. “The work.” And all that it holds or all that we allow it to hold. The laborious implications it has. The jobs that we go to—we refer to those at “work.” The work that we do around our respective homes in order to keep them tidy, or functioning. To make sure the dog is walked and has been fed. To make sure the clothes are washed. That dinner is provided. 

The work.

I think about that expression a lot and “the work” that we continue to do because society places these expectations and demands on us. And how we do hit walls, in the midday. It is exhausting. It is, at times, impossible to find those moments for ourselves. 

And we are of course, or at least we are encouraged to, put in “the work” on ourselves, and our relationships with others. We are, of course, or at least encouraged, to try to better ourselves as we are able. If we are able. To “work” on ourselves. To grow. To make changes. To improve. To discover. 

And, what I have realized, and perhaps you have too, is that there is comfort in the discomfort and if not comfort at least a kind of familiarity that will do. It will do as long as it has to. Because it is the discomfort you know. And there is an ease within that familiarity. 

Because there is more work to be done, of course, if you do wish to make changes. To improve yourself. To discover. To grow. 

And maybe, if you are like me, you do, eventually, hit a wall.

*

Something that I think about, not often, but often enough, is part of a quote from Hanif Abdurraqib, within an essay about Carly Rae Jepsen and her 2015 album Emotion, and in questioning why she, at the time he was writing, was not a much larger name within the world of contemporary popular music, and why the album itself had not commercially performed the way its predecessor had, the conclusion he arrived at was that he was no longer concerned with the “life of an album,” but rather, how an album lived.

How an album lives is something much larger, and perhaps, more difficult and if not more difficult at least more personal to try and explain. The “life of an album” is, I think similar to what is often called the “album cycle”—a kind of unbroken circle that artists find themselves in, regardless of if they wished to be there or not, and in finding themselves there, it is difficult (though not impossible) to find their way out. 

Songs are written. An album is recorded. Singles, often, are released in advance. The album arrives. It must be promoted. The artist (usually) goes out on tour to support it. The tour ends. And, because things move so quickly, and have for some time, there is a little less interest in the album, from both the artist, and us as the audience. We move on to another artist and another album and another cycle. The artist who wrote and recorded and released and toured is expected to begin the cycle again as soon as possible. 

And there of course attempts to extend the life of the album. For things to remain relevant or of interest for just a little while longer, before beginning the cycle again. 

I did, at first, think that the idea of the “life of an album” and how the album lived were on opposite ends, with little if any space where there could be an overlap. But I don’t think that is the case here.

Arriving nearly a year after the release of Angie McMahon’s second full-length album, Light, Dark, Light Again, the “sister album,” or companion EP, as I might call it, Light Sides, is a continuation of the themes she explored on the album—featuring one song that was recorded for the Light, Dark sessions but did not make the final cut, and another that was written for the album but scrapped during the recording process, it does extend the life of the album in the sense that it serves as a simple reminder. A reminder that if you are like me, a copy of Light, Dark, Light Again is filed away in the M’s of your record shelf, and that, if you are like me, at the end of last year, it was a record that you spent a lot of time with, in terms of analyzing both the growth McMahon experienced as a songwriter but also, and perhaps more interestingly or more importantly, the enormous and starkly personal themes she had woven into her writing. 

It is, as an extension of an album’s life, something that signifies the final lap of the album cycle for Light, Dark, Light Again—arriving as McMahon has spent the majority of 2024 touring the world in support of the record, with a few final dates scheduled before year’s end, and before she decides what might come next.

Light Sides, maybe more than anything, though, is an extension of how Light, Dark, Light Again lives. 

Yes, it does include one song that was recorded in preparation for the album, as well as an additional song that was written with the intention to be recorded and included but ultimately was not, but what it does, and does well, is it keeps the spirit, or the feeling, of the album, and the album’s larger ideas, alive, and pushes them out further. Light, Dark is an album inherently about personal growth. It is about “the work.” It’s about finding yourself in the lowest point possible and figuring out how to claw your way back, even if it seems impossible. It is about the, at times, herculean effort, or “work,” work that we are encouraged to put into ourselves to grow or to be better, or more thoughtful, and what we discover about ourselves and others along the way. 

Light Sides continues to explore all of that because even when you think you are done growing, or that you can take a break from putting in “the work,” the truth is that the work is never really done, and McMahon knows that, and has taken that spirit, and channeled it into this brief, but wondrous and impactful collection. 

*

McMahon released her debut full-length, Salt, in the summer of 2019, and maybe it is the group of producers and collaborators she worked with on Light, Dark, Light Again, or maybe it was four years in between records, but it was very apparent from the gargantuan opening track on Light, Dark, “Saturn Returning,” that she had undergone a lot of growth—personal growth, yes, certainly, but also growth, and with that, confidence, in songwriting and arranging. 

I stop short of saying that the five songs on Light Sides are “cut from the same cloth” in terms of their aesthetic, but you can hear echoes of the sound she found herself working from within last year on this collection—specifically on “Just Like North,” released ahead of the EP, which was the one song leftover from the Light, Dark sessions; and outside of those echoes, you can hear her, even in the year that has passed, pushing her sound into new, and other places. There is a surprising soulful kind of feeling to a few of the songs here—they smolder, as McMahon’s work often does. But here, they smolder with a different kind of passion and intensity. 

Also released in advance of the EP’s full arrival was “Untangling,” a song that was written early on in the process of working on Light, Dark, but it, allegedly, presented a challenge to complete in the studio—this version, here, was recorded with McMahon’s backing band, in between tour dates out in support of the record.

“Untangling,” here, has a jauntiness, or playfulness to it, at least musically. It literally bounces along thanks to the ripple of a synth bass line, and a soaring, triumphant melody that shimmers through what appears to be both an electric guitar and a keyboard, plunking the notes out. There is a feeling of restraint to it, at first, but McMahon does allow it to grow and flourish the further along it gets, adding a distorted edge to her vocals, layering her voice with overlapping fragments, all while the instrumentation is given the chance to propel itself towards a kind of bombast.

Musically, certainly on Salt, and at times on Light, Dark, McMahon does lean into this kind of much more rollicking, or even a raucous sound—it isn’t bad, per se, but I think her songs are simply more resonant when they burn slowly, and somberly in tone, which compliments the often stark or difficult lyricism. The kind of brighter sound here, or at least hopeful, serves as a little bit of a contrast to lyrics that are, at times, self-effacing, and if not that, they do certainly find themselves connected to the larger ideas of growth and discovery that McMahon presented on Light, Dark, Light Again. 

And in that growth and discovery of the self, on “Untangling,” McMahon admits to how difficult it can ultimately be or that there is pain that comes with it all. “I needed rewiring, and breaking this open meant starting a riot,” she confesses in the first chorus. “My least favorite feeling is hurting someone ‘cause I was slow at healing.”

With the feeling of hope, or optimism, that resonates throughout the music, it is then present in the lyrics as well—certainly, as it continues into the second chorus, but most apparent in the bridge, where McMahon uses a technique she introduced on “Divine Fault Line” on Light, Dark, where she creates this hypnotic rhythm using repetition of phrases and overlapping them within layers of her voice. “Go angel, it’s okay,” she assures at first. “Sometimes things are gonna feel this way,” she continues, before the addition of the song’s titular expression—“I am untangling you from my center.”

And there has been, if you are familiar with McMahon’s work in the past, a lot of heartache that is depicted in her writing—going all the way back to the songs Salt, which often detailed, with a kind of bleak humor, the tumultuous nature of the relationships she had been a part of. And even within all of the self-discovery and want to improve or better the self on Light, Dark, Light Again there are still a number of songs about the dissolution of a relationship, and then the depths that brought her to as a result. 

I do often write about the difference between “love songs,” and songs about love, because there are, of course the places where those things overlap, but they are two different things, really. A song about love can be about the good things, yes, but it can also be about the frustration, or the disappointment, or how you feel when something has come to an end. 

Along with the optimism, or hope, found in a song like “Untangling,” there is more optimism to be found in the subtle and soulful “Interstate,” which McMahon explained is about traveling down the Hume highway in her native Australia, and had just met and was starting to fall in love with her partner, and all of the feelings, both a good and bad kind of nervousness or excitement, that comes with something like that.

Musically, there is a give and take with restraint and then a little bit of a snarl on “Interstate,” all of it building itself up to a soulful kind of exhalation in the way McMahon uses her lower register to belt out the chorus. There is a tension throughout that is cut with these explosive bursts, but the focus of the song is really the imagery, or at least the feeling, that McMahon wishes to conjure in the lyrics, which is quite earnest and rather sweet. 

“Sometimes I can’t stand standing still,” she explains. “And just to be close to you, sometimes I will.” Then, later, in the chorus, “I’m bruised enough to hideaway but light enough to smile—you are a beautiful time.”

*

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?

And not that I was, really, at risk of struggling to find an access point for when I really sat down with Light, Dark, Light Again in October, and well into November of last year—there were, in fact, a number of access points for me to find myself, and then, of course, find my way into thoughtfully writing about the album. 

One of the things that resonated early on, and still does, nearly a calendar year later, and probably will again, at this point, next year, is a line from the album’s smoldering second track, “Fireball Whiskey,” which is among the handful of songs within the album about McMahon hitting a bottom. It’s moody and stark, swooning and rushing slightly in just a few places to punctuate the emotion of the song, but it does remain in this harrowing kind of holding pattern as she, among other things, depicts the kind of low one finds themselves in when they are so unwell, they do not wish to step out of the shower, and are more or less dissociation as the hot water rains down on them.

But. The hot water does eventually run out. And we are expected, whether we wish to or not, to carry on.

And, I mean, there are myriad things that did truly resonate the further I got into Light, Dark, and the longer I sat with it and analyzed it and saw somewhat unflattering reflections of myself within it, but the reason that line in “Fireball Whiskey” hit me so hard is because I often feel my worst in the morning. Like, when I get out of bed, and begin hobbling into the living room to let the dog out, and then feed him, and then taking those first sips of scaling hot coffee—as all of this is unfolding, I am, within moments of my body becoming upright, am often stricken with a terrible sense of dread for the day that has just begun.

I am often stricken with dark, intrusive thoughts, before the first mug of coffee has been finished.

The reason that line in “Fireball Whiskey” hit me so hard was because for as quickly as I try to shower as not to waste resources or tie up the bathroom, I understand why the small comforts and allure offered by remaining in there until the hot water has run out. 

And perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised me, the way it did, given what I know about McMahon’s songwriting—specifically the kind of emotionally difficult lyrics she was penning for a majority of Light, Dark, Light Again, how initially upsetting the opening track on Light Sides was, in its themes. 

“Beginner,” aptly titled, smolders from the moment it opens, and it does hint at, at least once it rises to the chorus, that kind of soulful feeling, or nature, that does ripple throughout the EP in places. Here, it is the way McMahon’s voice soars in the chorus, certainly, but it is also the warmth of an organ that is tucked in underneath all of the other layers of instrumentation, including a wet echo of reverb on the guitar, and the very measured percussion which is crisp, and gentle. The song itself is paced very, very slowly—a trudge, almost, which I think is what also makes the way it does kind of all swirl together and ascend slightly during the chorus all the more impactful. 

McMahon herself does not do it that often, but regardless, it is a songwriting technique I find to be impressive every time—not exactly disguising dark, or sad, or serious lyrics, but rather, dressing them up and folding them into an arrangement that serves as a contrast in how infectious, or fun, or jaunty it might be. Because it does, then, take a few listens for the gravity of the song’s conceit to really hit you. Written after Light, Dark’s completion, McMahon refers to “Beginner” as a “sibling song” to one of the more personally affecting songs from Light, Dark, Light Again, and a song where she does pull off, with grace and ease, that songwriting technique, “Divine Fault Line”—where against a rather rollicking, swooning rhythm, she belts out, “You’re on your own dark side of the border tonight. And you’re all fucked up, and you’re wanting to die.”

However. There is hope, or at least a kind of optimism and a want for something better in “Divine Fault Line.” It is one of the song that is about putting in “the work” on yourself, and among other things, show yourself some compassion. 

There is a lot less optimism, or hope, in “Beginner,” though it is not hopeless. And maybe it is because it is set to a slower tempo, that does rise into moments of dissonant and distortion, but is also cloaked in a kind of folk-rock, hazy warmth, but there is a kind of urgency and desperation within it. There is still that wish to put in “the work,” and to better or improve yourself, or at least be kinder to yourself. Though the message here is much more subtle, and it can serve as a kind of reflection on the effort that does go into clawing your way back from the darkness you found yourself in to begin with.

“I had to reach the bottom, begging at the door,” McMahon begins in the first verse. “Praying it would be open to who I was before.”

“I reached the peak of the mountain when I was crying on the floor,” she continues, her voice fragile. “Felt like I was dying—but I was just being born.”

The little sliver, or glimpse, of optimism, comes in the swaying chorus, where McMahon reconciles with the notion of, when you are finding your way back from a kind of darkness, you have to start over, or humble yourself to something larger. “Some are wild, some are blessed,” she sings. “Some are kind, some are restless. Some will take to be the winner—I am always a beginner.”

*

And I am, of course, still thinking about the idea, or the contrast and the overlap, between the life of the album, and how that album lives, and how the five songs on Light Sides do ultimately extend the life of Light, Dark, Light Again, but also expand on how it lives by continuing the story, or if not continuing, serving as additional context. 

And maybe it was intentional, on McMahon’s part, with the songs that were not either written or completed during the sessions for the album proper, but there are many similarities (and she, too, admits this) between specific album tracks, and the songs included on this EP—she affectionally refers to them as sibling songs, which is I think the best description. Because others that I have been attempting to use might not be accurate—like an inverse, or a kind of fun house mirror reflection. That makes sense, or could be used as a way to note the shared elements, or themes, between “Divine Fault Line” and “Beginner.” 

Light Sides concludes with the brooding, cavernous “Take Up Space,” which is not an inverse exactly, but is an expansion, or exploration, of the kind of heights that McMahon achieved on Light, Dark’s opening track, “Saturn Returning.”

I wanna be wide awake when I’m 40.

Last year, a few months before Light, Dark, Light Again was released, I turned 40. It is an age, or a kind of “milestone” one reaches where there is an expectation, or a pressure, associated with it. I have had, for a number of years, a very flimsy relationship with my own mortality, and in hearing McMahon declare that—wishing to be “wide awake” when she turns 40, among other compassions, she shows herself in the lyrics to “Saturn Returning,” I admired that kind of hopefulness and optimism about the self, and about what is to come. 

I admired it because I realized that, at 40, I was certainly not wide awake. There, again, is “the work.” The effort we put into bettering or improving ourselves somehow. The surrender to an unknown, or something that is much larger out there that will enviably embrace you and guide you. McMahon is a number of years younger than I am, and it, like her declaration to be wide awake when she arrives at 40, it is admirable that she has the confidence that she will make it to that age. Because there were times when I certainly did not.

“Saturn Returning” is a mission statement, or a thesis, that, as it swirls and swoons and glistens, introduces the larger ideas about self-discovery that are then explored in the songs that follow. It is a gorgeous song that does build, shimmer, and then recede, so in a sense, “Take Up Space” is an inverse, at least in sound, because, regardless of what the central plea within the lyricism is, the song's tone, and how it is arranged, is much, much darker in aesthetic. 

There is a spectral nature, at least at first, to the arranging of “Take Up Space,” as it begins with McMahon’s voice in a higher, fragile register, and the creaking, echoing piano chords plunked out on an upright, with the momentum of the song gathering through the meditative first verse and into the beautiful, sorrowful chorus. 

The difference, or rather, the like noticeable difference, in terms of song structure, between “Take Up Space” and “Saturn Returning” is that the latter was, intentionally, very free floating—it wasn’t like without any kind of structure at all, but there was a rather loose rhythm that did kind of shift just a little as the intensity and emotion undulated around, but there was no real like verse/chorus/verse structure, and the observations within it just unraveled at their own pace. “Take Up Space,” for as hushed and slow as it is in the beginning, does find its way into a more clearly defined melody for its chorus, before an edge of distortion followed by total cacophony—a balance of tension and release that she continues to walk until the song’s hushed conclusion.

In her lyricism on “Take Up Space,” McMahon does return to and continue developing the kind of affirmations found throughout Light, Dark, Light Again, but certainly within “Saturn Returning,” though here, as she balances that tension and release within the arranging, there is a balance between the affirmations or assurances for improvement, or discovery, or to do “the work” that we are asked to put into ourselves, and the kind of painful reflections on what brought us to the point where we did need to bring ourselves back from an edge. 

“Life’s all about the hills,” McMahon observes in the first verse. “This blister kills—I’ve worn out my shoes trying to keep up with the walk that I walk with you,” she continues, before confessing, “I don’t know where I learned to keep quiet. When my body is speaking, it shakes—all I know is I hurt, and then I hide it in a not-so-invisible place.”

The conceit of the song, then, arrives in the single phrase uttered in the chorus—a demand, and a plea. “I want to take up space.”

And there are similarities, of course, in the kind of grand declarations—“I wanna be wide awake when I’m 40,” and “I want to take up space.” Because they are both results of “the work,” and are both a kind of want for something better, and something larger. To really experience something. For people to really experience or acknowledge you.

Because we all, for whatever reason, do shrink ourselves down. And once we begin to, even in the most subtle of ways, we create less and less space for ourselves. Or to be ourselves. A space that someone else will claim as their own. It is a bold declaration. It seems so easy to say, but, like all of “the work,” impossible and, if not impossible, then extremely difficult to claim that back for yourself and to take the space you wish to—and that those around you will acknowledge and respect it in the process.

*

Pain will be in every year, just like August

And there were, of course, the years that were better. Or, at least, the years that were not as difficult. 

It’s something that, at least in sitting down, and giving consideration to Light Sides, and in reconsidering both my experience with Light, Dark, Light Again a year ago, and what it was like to witness Angie McMahon perform live in the spring of this year—it is something that, in sitting down, that I wish to acknowledge because it is for me and perhaps it is for you, too, if you are like me, challenging to keep that in mind.

That it wasn’t all bad. And that is not meant to be dismissive of what was, in fact, very bad. Or difficult. Or what hurt the most. 

But there are moments. Moments where it, perhaps, felt like things were okay. Or things felt a little bit lighter. Or things felt like they were manageable. In comparison. You don’t wish to take those moments for granted but if you are like me, then yes you probably do.

I specifically retrace the last decade. There were the rebuilding years. There were the years that do end up breaking you all over again.

Pain will be in every year. Pain will be on every map.

Released as the first single from Light Sides, and originally recorded during the sessions for Light, Dark, Light Again but ultimately left off of the record, the rippling and meditative “Just Like North” is the song that, both sonically and thematically, has the strongest connection to the larger whole that McMahon has created across both the full-length and then this companion or sibling collection of songs. 

It is not my favorite song off of Light, Dark, but one of the songs that do ultimately stand out from the record, or are amongst those with the loudest messaging, is the rollicking and raucous “Letting Go” which ends with McMahon shouting the phrase, “It’s okay—make mistakes!,” over and over again. And the idea of failure, and the growth or discovery that comes from that, is, of course present throughout the 13 songs on the album, and it is of course present here on “Just Like North”—the idea that you cannot really grow if you have not failed, or experienced some kind of pain, or discomfort. 

The idea that there is always time to feel reborn and move forward.

Musically, “Just Like North,” at least in tone, or production, of course feels like it would have been right at home in the sequencing for Like, Dark—there is a warmth to it, as it shuffles along slowly, operating primarily from a space of reserve, or tension, with only a few opportunities where McMahon is willing give into a slight release.

“Just Like North,” because it was recorded before the other songs on this EP were, both is and is not as “soulful”—and I guess what I am getting at is that yes, it does, like all of McMahon’s most well-executed, smoldering tunes, sway, and eventually lead up to a kind of swooning, or build. But she does not let it get away from her, and yes, there is, of course, a lot of soul within the earnest self-reflecting done in the lyrics, but musically, while there is warmth, especially in the hush that falls over during the chorus, it does not have the kind of “soulful” musical nature that is present elsewhere. It skitters along with brushed percussion and, eventually, a glitchy, synthetic noise that courses through underneath the meticulous and cavernous-sounding plucks of McMahon’s electric guitar strings.

One thing about me is that I am chronically online. I mean, we all are, in our own way.

And in being online, chronically or otherwise, we do occupy different pockets of the internet and are familiar or more well versed in specific things. 

There are these quotes from athletes that I often reference—usually when I have submitted an essay to a literary competition, and usually when I have ultimately received a polite, but disheartening, rejection letter months later in response.

For the former, the quote allegedly from Wayne Gretzky—“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”; the latter, something attributed to Michael Jordan.

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Failure will be in every year. It will be on every map.

And what I find is that I do not think of the specific instances where I have, perhaps, failed, and I, certainly, have not continued to think of myself as successful in the wake of those. But, rather, I fall prey to what you, perhaps, also fall prey to, which is thinking of yourself, as a whole, as a failure. 

Because it, like so many other things, that ask more of us—more effort, or asks us to put in more of “the work,” there is a familiarity and a comfort in the discomfort. Or of thinking so poorly of yourself, or how you think you are defined. 

“Just Like North,” like the material that did make the cut for Light, Dark, Light Again, finds McMahon putting in that “work,” and engaging in a conversation with herself about where she has been, how she got there, and where she wishes to go.

“This season is for going back to the sea,” she begins. “Where nothing is certain—to rinse off all parts of me. Toweling my clean skin, powerful washing away.”

“I always want outlines,” she continues. “I head for the shore—beg for the road signs that I had before. But that wasn’t joy—amnesia, babe—that was pain.”

And there is something so fascinating, and gentle, about the way McMahon breaks just slightly, to address herself as “babe,” and tries to, as delicately as she’s able, understand the pattern she had fallen into of remaining in the discomfort, or the pain, because it was easier than the unknown, or the growth and the effort it would take to get there.

The conceit of “Just Like North” is that the pain and the failure are simply unavoidable. 

“Pain will be on every map, just like north is,” McMahon explains in the chorus. “Pain will be in every year just like August. And if you get everything right, then there’s nothing left.”

You miss the shots you don’t take. You succeed because you fail.

And it is, admittedly, a little cloying, or heavy-handed, the further McMahon takes us into this idea, and trying to find the duality of strength and slowness, or being intentional in how you live, or conduct yourself—“Balancing tiger with rhythm of tortoise” is a little much, but the reminders, about the effort, and that “the work,” in the end, being worth it, is comforting, and encouraging.

*

And there is, of course, a difference between what is referred to as the life of an album, or what is perhaps colloquially known as an album cycle, and then how an album lives, or rather, extends itself beyond the average shelf life—how it goes on to find its way in our lives, and how we carry it with us. How it made us think. How it made us feel. 

How it made us grow. Or see that we need to put in “the work.”

There is of course a difference between simply being alive, and the idea of living.

Because one is ultimately going through the motions—you rise, you go to work, you come home, you collapse, you do it all over again. You fall into patterns that regardless of how uncomfortable or unhelpful they might be, they are what is familiar, and there is comfort in what is familiar, even if it is not serving you. 

One is taking more control of yourself. But it requires effort. A surrender to an unknown. It requires work. “Work.”

Angie McMahon as someone writing songs, and singing, and performing—the music she makes does not ask much of us as listeners. The songs can be jubilant and rollicking. They can be snarky. They can be somber. They can be cathartic. She creates bold music. But the music itself, within, does ask a lot of us. Because it asks us, at least in the songs found here on Light Sides, and the material it is inherently connected to on Light, Dark Light Again, to put in the effort. “The  work.” To grow, or seek improvement, or discovery, alongside her. She makes it sound easy. But it takes a herculean effort. I am certain.

I was not wide awake at 40. I was not wide awake this year as I turned 41. I am often, maybe too often, on my own dark side of the border, feeling all fucked up and wanting to die. I understand the impulse, or the allure, to remain in the shower—perhaps you, like me, shower in the morning in total darkness, allowing muscle memory to guide you through finding the shampoo and the soap—until the hot water runs out and until you do remember that society demands that we have to carry on, regardless of it we really want to or not.

Light Sides is a collection that both extends the life of the album that it is anecdotally attached to, but it also expands, or gives greater meaning and depth, to how that album lives. It asks things of us, in the end—to grow, to change, to put in the effort and do “the work,” and it does ask it in a way that is encouraging, and not intimidating. It, like the conclusion of Light, Dark, Light Again, offers up small glimpses of hope that we must grab ahold of, and figure out how to make them our own. 

Light Sides is available now digitally via Gracie Music.