Are we all just victims of nostalgia? Listen to Mxmtoon latest new song here
Photo Credit: Lissyelle Laricchia
mxmtoon is releasing her new album rising on May 20th, it’s a triumphant return and shows a new, more dynamic, and highly danceable side of the 21-year-old artist. It’s hard to believe only four years have passed since Maia’s self-made songs and videos began shaping a new sort of star through mxmtoon. But at least two of those years have, of course, passed like decades, each packed with enough worry and woe and loss and hope to catalyze aging at large. And so it goes with rising, mxmtoon’s bold and compelling, and wise second album, a 12-song set that looks at the hardest lessons of these recent dark days and opts to surge forward through triumphs of pop-and-disco confessionalism.
Tour Dates:
5/2 - Montreal, QC @ Fairmount
5/4 - Toronto, ON @ Danforth Music Hall
5/5 - Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
5/7 - Chicago, IL @ House of Blues *SOLD OUT*
5/8 - Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
5/10 - Englewood, CO @ The Gothic
5/11 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Complex
5/13 - Vancouver, BC @ Vogue Theatre
5/14 - Portland, OR @ Wonder Ballroom
5/15 - Seattle, WA @ Showbox Market *SOLD OUT*
5/17 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency *SOLD OUT*
5/18 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency
5/20 - Santa Ana, CA @ The Observatory *SOLD OUT*
5/21 - Los Angeles, CA @ Fonda *SOLD OUT*
5/22 - Los Angeles, CA @ Fonda
5/24 - San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
5/25 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
5/27 - Dallas, TX @ The Studio at The Factory
5/28 - Austin, TX @ Scoot Inn (Outdoors)
5/29 - Houston, TX @ White Oak Downstairs
5/31 - Orlando, FL @ Beacham
6/1 - Atlanta, GA @ The Loft
6/3 - Washington, D.C. @ 9:30 Club *SOLD OUT*
6/4 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Rozian Theatre
6/5 - Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre of Living Arts *SOLD OUT*
6/7 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall *SOLD OUT*
6/8 - New York, NY @ Webster Hall
6/10 - Boston, MA @ Royale *SOLD OUT*
6/11 - Boston, MA @ Royale
Today she is back with another song titled “victim of nostalgia” a song that examines time and how quickly it moves without us even realizing it until it’s too late. mxmtoon tells us “A lot of us have fallen victim to that feeling that time moves too quickly. I feel like I blinked one afternoon and suddenly found myself fully cemented in adulthood, wildly unprepared to take on the future and desperately wishing I could go back in time. “victim of nostalgia” is about missing the blind optimism and warmth that’s so much easier to experience when you’re younger. Wanting to escape back into a time when your worries weren’t so pervasive. Looking into the future can be daunting, and I know I’ve personally really struggled with how fast years can feel in the grand scheme of things. I hope one day it’ll feel easier to accept the passage of time, but for now, I definitely find myself as a victim of nostalgia.”
Already released songs “sad disco” and “Mona Lisa” give fans an exciting preview of the musical journey mxmtoon is embarking on. This is the music she needed to make and hear after those years that felt like decades, after growing enough to know this is what other people might need, too. These songs collectively argue that growth is never done, that rising is just one of many restarts and beginnings to come.
mxmtoon’s last North American tour sold out quickly and she has just announced huge world tour tickets in all continents again selling quickly. The latest rundown can be found on your right.
More on rising….
Though wrought as always from personal experience, mxmtoon extends these glittering and moody tunes — the impatiently waiting jangle of “Mona Lisa,” the frustrated but persevering electrofunk of “scales,” the incandescent and unforgettable bounce of “dance (end of the world)” — as acts of communal solidarity. Maia knows this has all been hard, so she wants to sing it out, together.
In late 2019, Maia had just finished her first full tour as mxmtoon, and she felt inspired by the prospects of her career and life to come — two new EPs in the making, more shows, a planned move to join her brother in New York. But as the pandemic took hold, she returned to her parents’ home, working to return to her old writing habits in that guest bedroom-turned-makeshift studio. She felt stuck, however, so suspended in time and place she barely wrote anything at all during 2020. What’s more, she lost a cherished grandfather to leukemia, rushing to see him one last time in Florida, and then a beloved grandmother. That’s to say nothing of elections and protests, nationalist revanchism and bigoted violence, enough to beleaguer or age anyone.
Much of rising unfurls from that same premise — mxmtoon’s hallmarked vulnerability buttressed by a newfound musical effervescence and might. These are the songs, as Maia puts it, that she wished existed when she struggled as a teen. They are instruction manuals for surviving, written for young people looking for themselves, but coded as magnetic pop. “growing pains” asks thorny questions about whether we actually improve as we age (or if that’s just what we tell ourselves to feel better) above guitars that shimmer like a sunrise and drums that lift off like rockets. “dance (end of the world)” acknowledges the apocalyptic tenor of our times but finds at least 150 seconds of Gloria Gaynor-style salvation in holding someone (yourself included) close and just moving. “learning to love you” reckons with the exhausting demands of our breathless interconnectedness and funnels the dizziness into a pop sunshower, its namesake chorus rendered as a gleeful collective credo. “frown” gets absolutely funky with absolute existential despair, a pressure-relief valve for the beset mind.
Everything here doesn’t revel in musical refulgence, though. As Maia relates the story of visiting her dying grandfather during “florida,” she remains under cover of chiming acoustic guitars and cascading cymbal washes, a choice that highlights the writing’s poignant intimacy. Laced with arcing strings and textural harmonies, the exquisite “dizzy” captures the vertigo of someone who has spent four years in the public eye but, more broadly, anyone who thinks too much about the perception of online strangers. These more mellow moments betray the depth of their peppy counterparts and the breadth of experience that Maia, now 21, frontloads into mxmtoon.
For Maia, rising represents the culmination of an unintended trilogy that also includes dawn and dusk, the dual EPs she released in 2020. It’s true that rising continues its era of rapid musical growth for mxmtoon. But these dozen songs are the definitive steps forward for mxmtoon, because they are just as ingenious and honest and unguarded musically as Maia has always been lyrically.
