FEATURE:
Second Spin
Maya Hawke - MOSS
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NORMALLY with Second Spin…
PHOTO CREDIT: Celine Sutter
I revisit a great album that did not get the acclaim and attention it deserved years ago. Most of the albums arrived quite a while ago, but there is one from this September that I feel was overlooked by some and is underrated. Maya Hawke announced some big tour dates, and they sold out remarkably quickly. Someone perhaps best-known for her acting, like Suki Waterhouse for instance (another renowned actor whose first love is music), you feel that Hawke connects more strongly with music than acting, in the sense it has been a deep passion since childhood. I wanted to urge people to give MOSS a second spin, as it is a remarkable album from her. Her second album – after 2020’s Blush -, there was positivity for MOSS - but not as much as there should be. Not that Metacritic’s an overly-reliable meter when it comes to reviews and the worth of an album, MOSS has 70/100 at the moment. It signals favourable reviews, but it is such a strong album, it should be in the 80s and even 90s! One of the best albums of this year, I am sure it will be included in my top twenty when I do a list in December. For now, and breaking with convention, I want to highlight a recent album that people need to re-evaluate and spend more time with.
One of the very best albums from this year, I wanted to finish by bringing in a couple of reviews for the stunning and hugely impressive MOSS. Before getting to a couple of reviews, NME sat down with Maya Hawke and talked about her work on Netflix’s Stranger Things. I am more interested when things started to turn to the subject of music:
“Now established as a bankable Hollywood name in her own right – though she’s reluctant to admit it – Hawke says she’s grown up a lot since NME last sat down with her in 2020. “I feel like I’ve heard a lot of people say this before, but getting older is really getting younger,” she says, swinging side-to-side in her chair. Hawke shares Robin’s frenetic energy – and often barrels from observation to observation without pausing. “When you’re young, you want to be old, so badly, and you’re so afraid and freaked out. I’m really enjoying becoming more playful, more excited, more myself, less afraid, more confident.”
She launches into a metaphor about high school crushes and how you initially think you fancy the person all your friends fancy but, as the validation of others starts to matter less, you let your own taste dictate your crush. “I feel the same way about art,” she says. “When I was younger, I wanted the jobs everyone else wanted. I wanted to make songs everyone liked. Now, I feel like when you do things because other people want them or like them, all other people smell is a liar. The best way to communicate with the world is to be the most yourself – and then if people like it or hate it, at least you were you.”
As well as being one of the most exciting young actors around, Hawke, 23, is an equally talented musician. In 2020, she released her debut album ‘Blush’ – a minimalist collection of poetic folk – and, in September, she’ll return with her second record, ‘Moss’. The new project is bolder, lusher and richer, deviating from the bare-bones approach of its predecessor and signalling an artist beginning to blossom with confidence.
“When I was making ‘Blush’, I wanted to do as little as possible to avoid making mistakes,” she explains. “I wanted it to be as stripped-back as possible, I didn’t want to put reverb on my voice, I didn’t want any electronic instruments. I think I’ve learned now to be like, ‘Let’s make mistakes, let’s aspire to sound how we actually want to sound – even if it means embarrassing ourselves for being try-hards’.”
During the height of the pandemic, when sets were shut down and touring was called off, Hawke wrote songs instead. She was quarantining with her younger brother Levon, who she calls an “amazing guitar player”, and the pair would spend hours each day singing and playing together. Working with someone she knows so intimately helped her shrug off the intimidation she usually feels in the studio.
“Even though I think he’s a better musician than me, I trust Levon enough to share my bad ideas with him,” she says. “[Working on] them together and some of them not being bad gave me a lot more confidence when I went in to make ‘Moss’.” When Hawke speaks – whether it’s about acting or music – she does so from a position of humility, aware that just because she’s had some critical acclaim doesn’t mean she’s suddenly a maestro in either field. Knowledge, she suggests, is key to being able to create. Hawke, above all, wants to grow and improve.
PHOTO CREDIT: Celine Sutter
She describes ‘Thérèse’, the first single from ‘Moss’, as about being “stuck as a version of yourself that someone else created”, but rather than relating that to fame, she tells NME it’s about “gender and misogyny and the way women are generally looked at from a young age as sexual creatures.”
The title and the central idea for the song came from a painting Hawke saw in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art by the late Polish-French painter Balthus, called Thérèse Dreaming. In it, an 11-year-old girls sits with her hands on her head, eyes closed, and her leg perched on a stool so her underwear is visible. It’s a piece that has caused much controversy because of the model’s demeanour and age. In her new track, Hawke uses the character to sing about “the secret spaces” she’s built for herself. Spaces which help her to break out from society’s suffocating ideas around femininity.
“It’s written from the point of view of my high school self,” she says, noting that much of ‘Moss’ looks back at that period, sharing the “songs I wish I’d written when I was 15”. While in ‘teen mode’, she took inspiration from past acting roles, many of which saw her play younger than she actually is. “In the acting world, you often get cast to play 14 at 16, 16 at 20 – what’s cool about that is you know a lot more about what it means to be 14 when you’re 16. So I’ve been taking that ethos and using it in my music.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Celine Sutter
Going back to that time of her life is interesting to Hawke because that was when “a lot of things felt possible”. As she got older, stuff like school, society, self-consciousness shut those feelings down, and made her think she needed to be only one thing. “But when you look back, you go, ‘Remember when I was everything? Maybe I’m still everything’.”
‘Moss’ doesn’t so much unlock parts of Hawke that were previously suppressed as it does showcase that eureka moment. “Making this record felt like a break, like a beginning,” she says. “Since then – and it’s probably what my next record will be about – I’ve started feeling freer and exploring more. But since I made the break, everything’s going really great.”
As an outsider looking in, it’s hard to disagree. It seems like Hawke is just getting started. “I’m really hungry to keep learning and get better at all the things I’m doing,” she nods. “There are so many things I want to be doing… But I’m 23, I’m not in any hurry”.
I am going to wrap up with reviews for the gorgeous, wise, intimate, and moving MOSS. It is an album that I feel should have been reviewed by more people and embraced with greater warmth. Not that it lacked acclaim – just that it should have got some five-star reviews. I think it will still make top twenty lists on many critics’ polls later this year. The Forty-Five had this to say about MOSS:
“I‘ve got sticky little words / They heal and they hurt”, sings Maya Hawke on ‘Sticky Little Words’. The track is from Hawke’s second album, ‘Moss’, itself a spellbinding combination of sticky little words. The 13 album tracks are more poems than songs, vignettes interrogating the experience of being a woman and artist through Hawke’s eyes. A more confident and experimental departure from the folky whimsy of 2020’s ‘Blush’, ‘Moss’ is audacious, introspective and lyrically labyrinthine, radiating curiosity and wonder tempered with a knowing melancholy.
Hawke’s feathery voice dances beautifully over the contours of ‘Moss’, her delivery hushed and intimate – almost like she’s whispering in your ear. Sonically ‘Moss’ is ambient and lush, a rich woven tapestry of indie and folk textures (Hawke’s primary collaborators on the album are indie musicians Christian Lee Hutson and Benjamin Lazar Davis). Mixed at Long Pond Studios, the album seems to carry with it the misty quiet of the famed studio hidden in the haze of upstate New York.
Intertwined in the guitar strings and organ keys is a surprising darkness, a depth of searching vulnerability and unforgiving admission. “I don’t need anyone to hurt me, I can do that myself”, Hawke sings on ‘Luna Moth’ – she accidentally steps on a moth at a lover’s party and spirals into self-hatred and blame. She sings of love with jaded irony on ‘Hiatus’, beginning the song with dizzying tongue-in-cheek infatuation (“I want a gym routine, self-obsessed, hardly dressed teenage dream who cares about sunscreen / And loves to make me Wilhelmina scream ‘cause it sounds like applause”) only to later sing wearily of infidelity and acquiescence (“Maybe he’ll cheat on me, but I’ll forgive him when he does… She was a late shift waitress with a pour heavy / Now your home on hiatus”).
Perhaps no other song captures the prickly essence of ‘Moss’ better than ‘Bloomed into Blue’, a gentle and meandering story of brutality and bloodshed. “As a babbling baby they blessed her”, Hawke sings over a gently falling indie tinker, “her balling mother bled onto the bed boards.” Over darling folk tones and in her signature rasp, Hawke recalls the life of a girl born semi-charmed but all too soon ruined by this world she was born into: “the birds bid for her body”, she is taunted by “whispers of weakling and witch”, and“the blokes” of this world ruthlessly cut her down to nothing. The haunting story (“Bend over, you bedraggled basket babe”, the blokes snarl) is told over innocent nylon strings, chased with the discordant harshness of a fuzz guitar.
‘Moss’ picks up from the thoughtfulness and intrigue of Hawke’s impressive debut and stretches her lyrical and worldbuilding abilities to even darker corners. Far from lighthearted, it speaks to the knottiness and complexity of Hawke’s experiences and relationships, whilst draped in the ethereal soundscape of a fairytale”.
The final review is from The Line of Best Fit. Released on the Mom + Pop, MOSS sees the New York-born actor and musician hitting a peak here. It is exciting to consider what might come from a third album. I like the one-word titles and the fact that, to me, MOSS refers to Kate Moss. Following Blush, there are connections to modelling and beauty – but it is more likely Hawke is referring to nature and something else. If you have not heard this tremendous album, then go and check it out. Go and get it on vinyl if you can:
“First was Joe Keery, with his DECIDE album under the name of Djo, and now Maya Hawke is sharing her second album; MOSS. Some people just have it all. The new album sees Hawke prove her lyrical prowess with whimsical poetry and an acoustic, summery indie-pop.
Hawke’s talent lies especially in her unique songwriting style. The character-driven poetry of "Thérèse" and the alliteration exercise that is "Bloomed In Blue" stand out as some of the best songs on the album, and she also excels in the more jarringly personal lines like in "Luna Moth" (“I don’t need anyone to hurt me / I can do that to myself”). Elsewhere, she really leans into the more witchy, whimsical style: "Over" gives the album a little edge when Hawke lowers her voice for a folksy incantation, and "Mermaid Bar" is a delightfully charming way to close.
MOSS has a delicate, light sound which will appeal to those with an inclination for cottagecore; think along the lines of gentle acoustic guitars and whispery vocal harmonies. "Backup Plan" is particularly summery, introducing us to the sugary sweetness of MOSS and great lyrical promise. As we move through the album, each track is satisfying to listen to on its own, but by the time we get to "Crazy Kid," you start to feel a frustrating lack of sonic variation. There are stand-out moments of course, but at times MOSS finds itself becoming somewhat repetitive.
That’s not to say there are no songs that break free from this formula. Her previously released single "Sweet Tooth" is energetic and more impactful than the tracks that came before it, just as the cinematic "South Elroy" could really pack a punch on a coming-of-age indie film. Later, experiments with vocal harmonies on "Sticky Little Words" allow Hawke to really show off her skill and gives us one of the most memorable choruses on the record.
When you listen to any of the songs on MOSS on their own, it’s impossible not to be charmed by their lyrics and delicate style. Yes, the album could do with some variation in its sound and a few more wildcard tracks to switch things up a bit, but overall, MOSS is a gorgeous outing for Maya Hawke”.
I might be a few more very new albums in Second Spin, as underrated is underrated, regardless of what year they were released. MOSS has gained critical acclaim, but an album can still be underrated if people really like it. I do feel there should have been more coverage and a higher chart position. MOSS is a fabulous album where Maya Hawke proves herself to be one of best young producers and songwriters in the world. A naturally gifted artist, the twenty-four-year-old has a long and successful future in music. MOSS is proof of that! Go and investigate Maya Hawke’s…
AMAZING second studio album.