mxmtoon

Since she was 17-years-old, mxmtoon has made exquisitely catchy pop songs that capture the kind of complex and tender feelings we often keep hidden from the world. Over the years, the Oakland native and now Nashville-based artist’s unguarded self-expression has earned her a devoted global following, led to collaborations with the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen and Noah Kahan, and propelled her through an expansive career that’s also included hosting a podcast and authoring a pair of graphic novels. Now 24, mxmtoon found her relationship to songwriting profoundly transformed in the making of her third album liminal space, a body of work informed by a period of major upheaval and uncertainty in her family life. When met with a bigger and bolder sound threaded with elements of folk and indie-rock—achieved thanks to her all-female creative team —the result is an up-close exploration of what she sums up as “the messy, dark, complicated, and also very beautiful chaos inherent in mother-daughter relationships.”

“From the beginning I wanted this album to be about familial bonds,” says singer/songwriter otherwise known as Maia. “Then last year my mom was diagnosed with cancer, which solidified that idea and led me to dive deeper into our relationship. I watched her face and live through something so unexpected, and I ended up building the album around questions like, ‘How do we as people cope with tremendous amounts of change?’” To that end, the title to liminal space refers to the unnervingly surreal quality that defines moments of transition. “After my mom’s diagnosis, I felt like I was navigating an endless hallway with no clue how to get out,” she says. “The idea of liminality became a theme for the album: so many of the songs have to do with decision-making, and either turning away from hard decisions or leaning into them more fully.”

The follow-up to rising—a 2022 LP praised by The Guardian as “the smart teen-movie soundtrack gen Z never had”—liminal space finds mxmtoon working with co-producers Carrie K (Noah Kahan, Suki Waterhouse) and Chloe Kraemer (The Japanese House, Wet Leg) and bringing a newfound sense of agency to the album’s creative direction. “In the past I’ve had this perception of myself as not being capable of leading the charge in the studio, but this time I finally felt ready to step into that role,” says Maia. “Because of that, this record feels the most true to me out of anything I’ve ever done.” Mixed by Laura Sisk (Lana Del Rey, Troye Sivan) and mastered by Heba Kadry (Björk, Beach House), liminal space emerged from a creative environment in which she felt entirely free to follow her instincts while pushing through certain deep-rooted fears. “For the first time I challenged myself to play a lot of the instruments—which was pretty daunting, but I felt so much more comfortable than I ever had in the studio,” says Maia, who plays piano, guitar, and banjo on the album. “It’s so rare to be surrounded by other women while you’re working, and every day felt like summer camp in the most healing and positive way. I knew from the start that if I was going to tell stories about girlhood and womanhood, I wanted to involve people who’d innately understand that experience, but it turned out to be even more gratifying than I ever expected.”

One of the first songs written for liminal space, a breezy but wistful track called “rain” set the tone for the album’s narrative-driven lyricism. “That song came from a time when I was struggling with whether to leave New York and move back home to California after my mother’s diagnosis,” says Maia, who co-wrote “rain” with Kraemer and singer/songwriter ROSIE. “It almost felt like a betrayal of self to make a decision that went against what my family wanted, but getting to that level of vulnerability in the writing process helped me work through everything I was feeling.” With its lilting piano melodies and gilded guitar tones, “rain” also served as a breakthrough in embracing a more organic aesthetic in the album’s production. “My last record was very dancey and rhythmic and pop-leaning, but ‘rain’ felt closer to the more stripped-down indie music I’ve listened to for a long time now,” says Maia. “It felt like a good first step toward making what I wanted to hear, instead of focusing on what other people might expect of me.”

Although much of liminal space dives into nuanced questions of self-realization and faith and the work of setting emotional limits, mxmtoon imbues her storytelling with plenty of playful humor and idiosyncratic detail, revealing the dazzling expanse of her inner world. On “i hate texas”—a fiddlelaced track co-written with April Harper Grey, aka Underscores—she shares a post-breakup escape fantasy whose lyrics slip from sweetly poetic (“I haven’t left my apartment in a real long time/I’m making friends with the stars at night”) to unapologetically blunt (“i  hate texas/But the exits have more room to run away from you”). “Working on ‘i hate texas’ felt like when I first started making music, like I was completely in my element,” Maia recalls. “I felt inspired to get a little sarcastic and write a song with some kick to it, just as pure fun.” Meanwhile, on “the situation,” Sarah Midori of Kero Kero Bonito lends her angelic vocals to a tongue-in-cheek but strangely exhilarating meditation on mortality and gender. “When we came up with that song I was thinking about death and the life cycle, and how women are constantly told that at some point we’ll peak and after that it’s all downhill,” says Maia, whose co-writers included Morgan Nagler (Phoebe Bridgers, Madi Diaz). “It’s a horrific idea but it’s the reality of the situation, so we decided to make that the hook.”  

Mainly recorded at Carrie’s home studio in Nashville, liminal space ultimately finds mxmtoon returning to the insular approach of her early work (including the many songs she self-recorded in her family’s guest room and posted to SoundCloud) while shaping each track with a newly heightened confidence and clarity of vision. “I remember being in a session for this record and wondering if I should ask my co-writer if the melody I’d just written was good enough—and then telling myself, ‘If it feels good, let’s just trust it and move on,’” she says. “Throughout the whole process, I was very conscious of allowing myself to sit with the songs and make sure that I loved them as they were, rather than showing them to other people right away and letting their opinions weigh too heavily against my own.” In a particularly meaningful shift from her previous projects, she also deliberately held off on sharing the album with her family. “In the past I’ve always let my parents into the process every step of the way,” says Maia. “With this record there were certain songs I was nervous to share with my mom, and I wanted to make sure to show her in person instead of just sending off a text. But at the end of the day, she loves this record more than anything I’ve ever made, which is so encouraging to me. It’s shown me that something can be so scary and overwhelming in the moment, but then turn into something beautiful in the end.”

By the time she’d completed her most emotionally intense and ambitious work to date, mxmtoon arrived at a more elevated perspective on the infinitely strange experience of making her way through the world. “For a while I wanted these songs to sound like I was resolved and had worked out the answers to everything, but eventually I realized I can’t expect that of myself,” says Maia. “I hope when people hear the album it helps them to see that understanding yourself is a never ending process, and that you deserve the time and space to be lost in it. It’s a little terrifying but it’s also really freeing, and I think those two things can absolutely exist together as one.”