Maya Hawke - Moss

Second album from musician-actor Maya Hawke

Translucent orange vinyl LP plus poster

It's fitting that Maya Hawke's second album Moss is being released as wide-eyed youngsters return to their classrooms, blank exercise books ready for another year of learning. "A lot of the songs (on this record) are me writing the songs I wish I'd written when I was 15," the musician and actor told NME earlier this year, days after describing her new work as a "back-to-school record" on Fallon.

Like days of dusting off textbooks after long, listless summers, Moss feels tinged with curious excitement and the vulnerability of starting a new chapter. It comes as perhaps little surprise given her work in hit TV show Stranger Things and recent teen flick Do Revenge that Hawke, daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, is looking back at her formative years. But Moss is familiar and fresh, not just a retread of the same qualities that made her 2020 debut Blush so beguiling, nor a pastiche with playground clichés.

"Whether original or discovered, songs have always come into my life out of need. I think every song in this record is about a beginning hidden in an ending, hidden reclamations of ways I've disappointed myself.

"The record opens with 'Backup Plan'... because I think being absolutely and freely myself was always stupidly my back up plan. If I couldn't succeed at being the person I was pretending to be, if I couldn't want the things I'd been pretending to want, only then would I give myself permission to just be me. Then came 'Thérèse' and 'Mermaid Bar' — 'Thérèse' is about a misunderstood girl trapped in a painting and 'Mermaid Bar' is about a girl who tries to end her life by jumping into the Hudson River and instead becomes a mermaid.

"'Bloomed Into Blue' was originally a poem I had written with a friend in high school called the B-Word Muse. It was a tribute to Ariel, to Eddie Sedgwick, Marie Thérèse, and so many more...Women who were always the subject of art and not the creator. Worthy of being spoken about but not worthy of being listened to. This record reckons with childhood in 'Sweet Tooth' and 'Driver,' with regret in 'Luna Moth,' 'Crazy Kid' and 'Sticky Little Words,' with anger in 'South Elroy,' 'Restless Moon' and 'Over.' Above all this record wants to be about rebirth and acceptance. I'm crawling back to myself. Thank you for watching." — Maya Hawke

 

 

1. Backup Plan

2. Bloomed Into Blue

3. Hiatus

4. Sweet Tooth

5. Crazy Kid - featuring Will Graefe

6. Luna Moth

7. South Elroy

8. Thérèse

9. Sticky Little Words

10. Over

11. Restless Moon

12. Driver

13. Mermaid Bar

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