By Clara Gauthier
Indie rock and Tame Impala fans will enjoy the new single from nonbinary musician, Mahawam, titled “Hitherto” from their most recent EP “Hot Pressed.”
“Hitherto” is a “breakup song about leaving yourself” and growing past the parts of yourself that are no longer beneficial to you. For Mahawam, they are leaving behind the part of themself that was constantly angry at the world when they were younger. “I’m breaking up with myself and breaking up with the part of myself that’s not at peace, which was quite a lot of me. I feel like I’m having to start over and rebuild my personality from scratch in a lot of ways, and it’s been an uphill battle. I feel like I’m learning a lot about myself again. Mostly learning what I can be, not what I have been, and as emotionally tumultuous as that process is, I’m really enjoying who I’m becoming. I see a version of myself in the future that I can be proud of,” Mahawam says, explaining the process of self-growth that is behind this song and Hot Pressed.
The title of the EP, Hot Pressed, is also inspired by the effects of anger on a person. Mahawam defines the title as “literal and also metaphorical. I’m thinking of how anger can change the way you feel inside your own body. When you think of a hot press, like a flat iron or curling iron, it takes the texture, takes the curl out of your hair and it leaves you with nothing. And it’s thinking about how certain emotions flatten you in waves. The feeling of righteous anger, the feeling of self-discovery overtakes the texture that was there and leaves you with a blank canvas.”
The EP as a whole is not a concept album, but a collection of songs that represent the journey of self-discovery and the second adolescence that queer people often experience, as well as Mahawam’s songwriting experience from a nonbinary perspective and growth as an artist. They have only recently felt comfortable describing themself as an artist, despite making music for most of their life. This journey to self-identification and confidence with the label of “artist” represents the journey of self-discovery that they have and are continuing to experience.
Mahawam’s nonbinary identity also has had a large impact on this EP, in terms of the themes the EP explores. The last record Mahawam created centered around their reaction to being diagnosed with HIV, and they felt like that was a very specific and unique perspective to convey for an album, rather than something that the general public could relate to. However, for Hot Pressed, they focused on a more universal perspective and was able to do that by leaning into their nonbinary identity. Mahawam describes this nonbinary-based approach: “I’m not just looking at lyric writing from the perspective of a man, but I’m thinking in more of a universal experience of thinking about what life feels like as a human. And I feel like gendered songwriting tends to lean on tropes of if I’m a man, I’ve got to be tough and resilient in this one particular way. And if I’m a woman, I need to be sensitive and resilient in this very other particular way. And I’m trying to look at a holistic approach, to experience pain, joy, sadness, and that’s the perspective that I write from for this EP.”
As well as fully diving into their nonbinary identity for this EP, Mahawam’s writing process for this record differs from their other work in terms of how social it was. For their previous records, Mahawam mostly wrote by themselves in their room. However, for this EP, they both collaborated with others and wrote the songs in public spaces to infuse them with life and energy from the spaces where the songs came to fruition. In terms of collaboration, Mahawam worked with their friend, Derek Barber, to add guitar to the electronic tracks they had originally created on their own. “Working with Derrick especially really opened me up, and revealed an element of my sound that I had been trying to achieve on my own that wouldn’t have been possible without bringing in friends to build on,” Mahawam explains.
They also felt that working in public spaces, rather than their house, made a clear difference in the sound of the EP compared to their other work. To Mahawam, it is clear that the different environments heavily affected the sound and feel of each song, saying “You’re out in public, you’re gonna absorb the energy of this room, you might have a conversation with someone, you might have a beer or a cup of tea or something. And whatever comes out of you in this moment is what this feeling is going to be. And that was something new that I hadn’t done in the past and I really, really liked the way the songs turned out.”
The full Hot Pressed EP came out on April 19th and included the single “Hitherto” and four new songs from Mahawam, who encourages those who are still experiencing the identity journey that is represented in Hot Pressed to not “let the anxiety of not knowing for sure what’s going to happen next or who you are distract you from how much fun it can be to figure it out.”
Originally published in Out Front Magazine.
Posted on Aug 24 – 4:15pm