On Maya Hawke’s New Folk-Pop Album, ‘Chaos Angel,’ She Embraces Musical Drama She Once Rejected as ‘Actorly’: ‘It’s About Becoming Less Fearful’
06.06.2024 - 23:41
/ variety.com
A.D. Amorosi Singer, songwriter and actor Maya Hawke speaks quickly, but thoughtfully, when discussing her new musical work.
It’d be natural to think there’s a sense of haste at work, when she’s talking to Variety late on the day that her new album, “Chaos Angel,” just dropped, while filming Netflix’s “Stranger Things” in Atlanta, and preparing to hit Nashville the next day for a live show at Third Man Records. But Hawke’s fast patter is actually the sound of an ever-evolving, inventive mind.
“I have a hectic life, but I have a great life,” Hawke says, taking a break from filming the final episodes of “Stranger Things.” “That doesn’t mean that I don’t have days where I want to rip my hair out and not get out of bed, but I’m enjoying it all at this moment.” As well she should. After a couple of coyly evocative, sad, spare folk-pop albums (“Blush” and “Moss”), “Chaos Angel” reaches further into Hawke’s emotional truths and interpersonal relationships and, often, comes up happier.
Along with that lyrical psychic shift, “Chaos Angel” has a more expansive sonic palette of opulent harmony and rich orchestration than the records of her immediate past.
“I haven’t gotten very far from home, but I have been rearranging the furniture,” she says, in regard turning the folk traditionalism of her first and second albums on their ear for “Chaos Angel.” “I always wanted it to sound good more than I wanted it to sound new.”
One of her new album’s tracks – its title tune – was penned as she filmed 2023’s “Wildcats,” which had her father, Ethan Hawke, directing her as Flannery O’Connor. But the rest of “Chaos Angel,” and its real origin story, begins immediately following the release of “Moss,” her sophomore album.