A N G I E M C M a H

Home , Angie McMahon, Jen Cloher, Julia Jacklin, Music Victoria Awards, Triple J Hottest 100

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A N G I E M c M A H O N

BIOGRAPHY 2019

Angie McMahon is the kind of indie ﬁlm heroine that every twenty-something can relate to and root for, but instead of on-screen, her narrative plays out in charming songs about life, love, and comfort food.

Her debut album Salt (out 26 July) exhibits all the talents that have seen the Melbourne songwriter quickly gather an impressive list of ﬁgures, accolades, and a reputation for ﬁlling some of Australia’s most revered venues, moving audiences who want to befriend her.

Angie’s raw, human songwriting hums with realness, coupling intimately relatable lyrics with guitar-driven, anthemic guts and delivers it in a disarmingly soulful voice that can stop you in your tracks

It’s all there in her debut single ‘Slow Mover’, a charismatic, cathartic song about an im- potent romantic encounter in an all-too-familiar late-night setting, which sparks an inter- nal monologue that becomes a ﬁrework chorus. It shot Angie from relative anonymity to one of 2017’s biggest success stories, landing her at #33 in triple j’s Hottest 100 off the back of listener votes and love from fellow artists Julia Stone, Julia Jacklin, and Gordi.

In February, Angie followed up with the bruised, bluesy, but ultimately emboldening ‘Missing Me’. A brew of punchy chords and confessional vocals mixing sorrow and sass, it landed her at #49 in this year’s Hottest 100. With the release of her third single ‘Keep- ing Time’, she became the #1 most played artist on triple j and received high rotation across Australian radio, as well as cracked the AIR and Spotify Viral Charts.

With 15 million plays on Spotify and Apple Music, Angie garnered local and international support. In the ﬁrst 12 months of her career, she rose from playing small rooms to selling out 1500-2000 capacity venues on her ﬁrst headline Australian tour. She entered the na- tion’s festival circuit playing Splendour In The Grass, Laneway, Groovin The Moo, and has shared stages with Father John Misty, The Shins, Alanis Morissette, Angus & Julia Stone, Leon Bridges, Mumford & Sons, and Pixies.

In 2018, Angie won Best Live Voice of the Year (National Live Music Awards), and was nominated for Breakthrough Artist of the Year (AIR), Unearthed Artist of the Year (J Awards), Best Solo Artist and Best Victorian Breakthrough Act (Music Victoria Awards), and Live Act of the Year (National Live Music Awards).

Not bad for a naturally introverted teenager who grew up in Melbourne “writing and yelling at the piano,” obsessed by the likes of Missy Higgins, Mia Dyson, k.d. lang, and especially Adele’s power ballads. “I was never very good at communicating with people in my life,” Angie says now, at 25. “I struggle to be expressive without songs. I have to write down how I feel and sing it out to even understand it.”

At 19, Angie entered a local songwriting competition, “just to see if I was good enough.” She was, however, when the prize positioned her as the unlikely opener for Bon Jovi’s Australian stadium tour, she spiralled into a bout of existential confusion. When she ﬁrst shook Jon Bon Jovi’s hand at a pre-tour press conference, “he offered some industry advice, ‘If you don’t use this opportunity, that’s your own fault. Do something with it’. And I thought, ‘I’m so not ready to use this opportunity. I don’t even know what this opportunity is. It’s so far from my world.”

With little direction or community to help her, Angie dug deeper into herself and focussed on modest goals: writing better songs, building her conﬁdence, taking things slowly. While pursuing a literature degree and working at a local bar, she began playing solo gigs and booking shows for other aspiring songwriters. Searching for guidance, she read the memoirs of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith. She dove into treasured lyric collec- tions by Bob Dylan, Nick Cave, and Leonard Cohen. She studied Song Exploder pod- casts and attended a workshop with Melbourne music scene vet Jen Cloher.

All the while, Angie honed her knockout voice by out-brassing the horn section of the nine-piece soul band she’d joined as a teenager. It was an instructive experience, teach- ing her to carve a hook and develop her style of “yelling singing”. But working with eight boys and rehearsal-room microaggressions grew grating: “I didn't feel very feminine or empowered in that space.”

This winding period of self-discovery manifested in her bracing debut album Salt, which puts Angie’s twenty-something uncertainty front-and-centre, her self-awareness became a strength. “I was fostering some kind of power inside myself,” she says. “It gave me a stronger sense of self.”

Armed with a selection of bedroom demos built up over several years, Angie and her friend Alex O’Gorman (co-producer, bass player) retreated to a Victorian country scout hall to record 11 subtle anthems that possess a musical ﬂuidity, ranging from punchy rock and propelling drums, to whispering ballads and moments of delicate isolation.

Her soaring voice cracks around the subtly devastating hook coursing through the smouldering opener ‘Play The Game’. In the evocative ‘Soon’, she’s all composed fragili- ty, hiding tears from her mother before exploding into relief. Unwilling to be fake, she sings about being embarrassed by heartache and learning how “all the ways we can bruise are of use to us.”

Her powerful performances swell with vulnerability and a refreshing self-deprecating sense of humour. She’ll reel you in with a witty line about fried chicken or her dog’s med- ical troubles, then break you apart with a lyric reﬂecting how – like the rest of us – she can feel lost, lonely, and undervalued, inspecting the sometimes quiet, brutal lessons that have come with growing into a young woman. A personal triumph is ‘And I’m a Woman’, a feminist response to the infuriating experience of having to perform emotional labor during a dinner date: “This guy didn’t understand the conversation we were having,” she explains, “which was about women feeling safe at gigs, in public spaces, and having a right to our own bodies.” Unable to clearly express herself in the moment, Angie wrote the song next day.

‘Pasta’ is another thoughtful highlight, written during a self-imposed retreat where Ang- ie’s creative productivity went astray. Feeling perilously stuck and distracted, she spent most of her time cooking gluten-free lasagna and binging Downton Abbey. “I had this dream of being a songwriter for so many years, but I was stumbling through it,” she says. “I didn’t really know what I was doing, and I felt tired all the time.” So she wrote the most honest thing she could: “I’ve been lost for a while,” she sings in a refrain that echoes long after the song is done.

On Salt, Angie McMahon leaps out of the stereo as a recognisably three-dimensional human being, offering up normality but rendering it in remarkable songs that - like all stories worth telling - can make you laugh, make you cry, make you think and feel.

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For Further Information contact: Ellie Jones at Stay Loose | [email protected] | +44 7849 844 143