Album Review: Maya Hawke – MAITREYA CORSO
3 min read
Although still best known for her acting, Maya Hawke’s music career is becoming one for the books. She’s been consistently putting out material since mid-2019, with an album every two years starting with her excellent and arguably overlooked debut Blush. At the time, that is. Her music found a consistent audience in 2022 with the wildly successful Thérèse, pushed along by a stark music video and nostalgic sound. Now, she’s returned with album four, MAITREYA CORSO.
The record opens on Love of My Life, a corse and electrified tune led by a steady beat and a nicely paired panned guitar line. Maya’s voice is doubled lazily in the best way, bringing her laid back vocals some needed clarity over the building instrumentation. Her songs are all about the storytelling, this one being about an escape with her lover as they discuss the future. On Devil You Know Maya fires out words like rap, before the vocoder chorus eases the listener back in before returning to the fast-paced verses. Instrumentally it’s a strange mix of synths, guitar, and vocals that stays sparse throughout. Heavy Rain and Last Living Lost Cause both breeze over, the latter with a driving but paired-back build up, while the former’s harmonised vocals and folk delivery make for a wonderful four minutes.
Bring Home My Man is a definite mid-album highlight, a whimsical lullaby that could lyrically be just as much about a modern relationship than it could an old wartime poem. The guitar playing is stellar, Maya’s low-key vocals sitting perfectly with the tenderness of the track. It’s followed by the much more upbeat Great Minds, a song about sibling love. Green Dragon is a fuzzy, stoner-rock riff where Maya sings about a holiday abroad, while Slacker in the Rye introduces fiddles into the stomp-clap style acoustic tune. Maitreya and the Way Back starts with electric piano before transitioning into an atmospheric guitar and synth-choir ballad. It’s broken at the mid-point by a grand drum fill, going into a third phase with electric guitar that leads listeners to the end. It’s disjointed but entertaining. Dream House brings the album back to it’s acoustic roots with a soft, joyous ballad.
MAITREYA CORSO slots in with Maya’s previous work like a glove, but there are patches of experimentation which receive mixed results. The instrumentation throughout is expertly arranged, if at times repetitive, and occasionally the want to switch it up appears to outweigh its necessity. Maya’s songwriting, however, is outstanding. Lyrically, she has a gift for storytelling and brings the listener straight in every time, no matter the subject matter. Overall, it’s another entertaining collection, and far from a disappointment.
Writer and Musician, Ryan Bulbeck has been published with a number of online publications, and has worked with a myriad of great artists, both as a performer, and as a producer. His most recent band The 295 are still active, playing shows around the UK.
