Artist Profile: MX Lonely
Photo Credit: Owen Lehman
For MX Lonely, the Brooklyn-based rock band, their newest album– All Monsters– represents a stark realization of the sound they’ve pursued since their organic beginnings, straddling a barrier between enormously loud and dauntingly personal and intimate. It’s a process they began through their first two projects, and now, on their true debut, they have delivered a resoundingly clear message of their sonic intentions.
To understand these, though, it’s necessary to travel back to their earliest days as a project.
The original skeleton of MX Lonely initially came together for the purpose of rehearsing multi-instrumentalist Jake Harms’ solo project. Harms had constructed that project entirely in the context of his DAW, and he wanted to see how it would sound fleshed out with a full band. He and Rae Haas, who would become the lead vocalist for MX Lonely, had long played together in a different project (Void Boys). They recruited bassist Gabe Garman to join them for their sessions along with their original drummer, and they immediately set to work.
Yet as they rehearsed Harms’ solo content, they would naturally improvise and riff off of each other. Eventually, a song written collaboratively by the three members popped out– and then another, and another. They quickly realized there was a creative chemistry present among that group. All three had similar tastes and interests, and all three were intrigued by the direction their fledgling sound was taking.
“I think [it helps when] you just spend enough time with somebody and you don't want to kill each other,” said Haas with a slight chuckle, “We were able to do all the life things [together]. Gabe and Jake are both carpenters, and I do a lot of scenic painting… we had these two different worlds that were both really complementary to each other.”
Since these first sessions took place during the Pandemic, their initial sound was devised in isolation. There was, at first, a struggle to decide between a more electronic, synth-driven sound or a more classic, shoegaze-inspired frontage. They ultimately settled into the latter sound rather naturally, while maintaining the synth in their lineup instead of a second guitar.
They recorded virtually all of these initial sessions as they were writing and demoing their first songs, and that is part of what Harms credits for bringing them together as collaborators: the grueling and arduous process of creation.
Cadonia”, their first EP, was born from these initial experimentations with MX Lonely’s sound. Across its seven tracks, it shows undeniable signs of what MX Lonely would become– it’s both tumultuous and stunningly clear, sonically complex while betraying a disarming simplicity and clarity and its vocal portfolio.
When they wrote and tracked Cadonia, MX Lonely had yet to play a live show. When they ultimately did, their sound crystallized even more. They longed for loudness, for pulsing rhythms, for bursting sounds that transcended their bleary shoegaze foundations.
“Spit”, their second EP, was written and recorded after almost a full year of extensive touring for the band. In between the two projects, they had gotten the opportunity to truly express and feel out their sound on larger stages (and larger soundsystems).
All Monsters, therefore, represents a marriage between the two projects. It takes a more intentional and toned-down approach than “Spit” did while also fully occupying the sonic spaces that “Cadonia” failed to reach. It is, by all accounts, a realization of MX Lonely as a project and as a group of collaborators:
“I think All Monsters is very much what we wanted ‘Cadonia’ to really be. [‘Spit’] was a step closer, and I think All Monsters is pretty realized…” said Garman, “I think we needed all those steps to happen. I appreciate every one of those records and all their flaws for that reason.”
From the first, earth-shaking strums of “Kill The Candle”, to the careful, slow burn of songs like “Blue Ridge Mtns”, to the epic, seven minute closing track “Whisper In The Fog”, All Monsters is truly striking. The project thrives on the vocal talent of Harms and Haas while allowing the instrumental components to occupy their rightful spaces, and it is a triumph not just of mixing and mastering engineer Corey Coffman but of the band’s intentional approach to songwriting and composition.
They also note the addition of drummer Andrew Rapp, who joined the band when they began working on All Monsters, as being a major boon to these efforts. Rapp is a highly intentional drummer in the sense that he meticulously plans all of his drum parts in the process of composing the song, granting each individual song a uniquely and conscientiously crafted series of rhythms.
Yet, for MX Lonely, All Monsters remains more than a debut– an adequate representation of their sound as they’ve pursued it thus far. It is, undoubtedly, a stunning manifestation of the vortex their sound represents. It simultaneously draws you in with its intimacy and thrashes you outward with its rupturing heaviness; it is organic and carries a nearly incomprehensible gravity in its breast.
“At this point, we are fairly uninterested in the idea of being a shoegaze band, even though that's like what we get lumped in with,” said Harms, “I think what's cool about All Monsters is that there's that expansiveness– we understand how to create a lot of atmosphere. We understand how to create a big sound. The album has this sort of big, cavernous sound, but it has, at the center of it, this focus and intensity.”
