Light Sides

Captured during the sessions for 2023’s *Light, Dark, Light Again*, these five songs provide an understated postscript to Angie McMahon’s soaring second album. They also showcase how her work shines in different ways during collaborations with assorted players and producers in America and Australia. The opening “Beginner” is a co-write and duet with Cairns songwriter Emma Louise that’s delivered with whispery closeness, while the quietly dramatic “Just Like North” grew from a group writing session led by US multi-hyphenate Courtney Marie Andrews. McMahon doesn’t try to replicate the climactic highs of her earlier release, and yet there’s some shared DNA on display. The centerpiece “Untangling” hints most closely at the album’s empowering combination of heartland synths and overlapping vocal mantras. “Interstate” celebrates the arrival of epiphanies during long highway drives early into a relationship, and “Take Up Space” adds fleeting cloudbursts of atmosphere to an otherwise sparse piano ballad as McMahon asserts her desire (and right) to do just what the title says. Similar to how 2020’s *Piano Salt* EP added fresh context to her 2019 debut *Salt*, this companion piece adds another profound passage to an ongoing conversation.