Although she often deals with common themes in popular music, Maddie Diaz seems to forge her own path simply by highlighting strange nuances that others might leave untouched. She uses her gift for melody while allowing her honest perspective to seep through all its messy contradictions, a simple approach that is forced – as we all go through life – to confront complexity. Although she has been releasing music since 2007, by the time she left Berklee, she had achieved major success with 2021 albums. History of feeling, which, as the album title suggests, competes with ancient, familial narratives about feelings without diminishing their sheer intensity; It was, after all, a record of the disintegration of a long-term relationship. Following its success, Diaz toured with the likes of Waxahatchee, Angel Olsen, and Harry Styles (whose touring band she briefly joined), and you'd think she'd reach for something more uniformly upbeat with her next release. However, in writing about falling in love, Diaz uses the same tangled emotional language that we collectively reserve for our negative experiences.
Diaz's first instinct is to put everything on the table — a necessary and extremely fragile act, but also a leap of faith that she knows must be mutual. “Do you think this could ruin your life?/'Cause I can see it's ruining my life,” she confesses on opener “Same Risk,” slowly enveloped in bass and drums that immediately give way to a soaring declaration: “I'm standing here naked/and saying That you can have it all.” Then she begins to wonder – what it means to have it all (“Almost Everything”, “KFM”), but also how much of herself she really wants to show. On “Get to Know Me”, she offers A personal introduction by listing buried insecurities that seem to have been carried over from previous relationships (“Have I reached my negativity yet? / When my cup is never half full / Have you? Caught me changing / My eyes when I rebel?”). For all her openness — and despite the initial accusation that she “can't believe a word that comes out of your pretty mouth” — she dedicates “Hurting You,” a spare piano ballad, to the ways real emotion can make her feel like an actor. , hides the deepest pain.
“I felt like the reason the hurt exists in the first place is because there's deep love and there's deep caring, and the reason I hate someone so much is because I care about them so much and I love them,” Diaz said in our 2021 interview, speaking about the breakup that inspired her latest album. Hurt is By its very nature, it's part of attachment, whether it looms early as a potential threat or arrives as an all-encompassing force toward the end.“When I love you, I hate you more,” she sings on “For Months Now,” one of two songs in the back half of the album that talk about prolonged departure. — that stage in a relationship where the simplest feelings, whether shared or kept at arm's length, can muddle and contradict themselves. But that doesn't detract from who they are, and Diaz finds different ways to honor them. “Don't Do Me Good,” a stunning duet with Kacey Musgraves , eschews dramatic confrontation in favor of the comfort of confiding in a friend who has certainly found herself in a similar situation, bringing a surprising warmth to a song about the struggle to imagine a version of yourself without the darkness, the sleepless nights, and waning faith—simply, surviving in spite of it.
But the surprise is what you create Amazing faith Unique Resonance – Not only does Diaz excel at writing songs that belie their live show, he seems compelled to find an interesting angle or aside as if that's the thing that makes a good song worth saving. On “The Person of God,” while tracing her relationship with spirituality, she suddenly turns to a conversation with her mother about her father, and then connects it again in depth. She goes further vocally as well, singing the song in a high-pitched voice that seems to take a cue from Ethel Cain. Like her rage, she keeps her guitar stern on “Girlfriend,” which turns the constant confrontation with your ex into a strange but powerful exercise in empathy. Although you can hear her basically explaining what that phrase is Amazing faith I mean on the title track, it's what it really is Voices Like the swollen, soothing breakdown of “Kiss the Wall.” “Is it hard to love me? / Because I'm around so much / And my messages don't get through?” Diaz wonders on the final track, “Obsessive Thoughts.” As far as her music goes, its intensity is what makes it go the distance – and Amazing faith It is an affirmation that love may not come easy, but it will take much more than doubt, friction, or history to keep you from believing in it.
