Maya Hawke has released “Hang In There,” an elegantly delicate track from her upcoming album, Chaos Angel, to be released May 31st via Mom+Pop. Chaos Angel is the talented multi-hyphenate’s third album and follows the success of lauded sophomore full-length, Moss. Created with Maya’s longstanding collaborators Christian Lee Huston, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, Chaos Angel is a deeply beautiful, meditative album about falling in love, fucking it up, and getting back up again.
“Hang In There” sonically channels an earnest, early singer-songwriter sound pioneered by greats like Joni Mitchell. On the track, Maya offers support to a friend going through a difficult time in the midst of a toxic relationship. Its sound is perfectly enhanced by an accompanying minimal technicolor lyric video also out today. Check it out below!
Maya says “The idea of ‘Hang in There’ is when you have someone close to you, who’s going through something awful that you’ve been through earlier in your life, and you know that you can’t interfere because they’ll probably isolate themselves from you. So you have to just watch as they get really hurt. Until they have that moment where they realize they’ve been in a toxic situation all along. Then they come to you, and together, you help them emerge from it. It’s a moment of real happiness when you can witness the pieces all click into place.”
Chaos Angel takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting Maya has made her name on and goes deeper, bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Maya catalogs upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while growing older, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.
Chaos Angel is also a document of Maya coming more fully into her own as a musician. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Maya’s graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before.
At first glance, there are scenes just as sad as those on Blush and Moss, but Chaos Angel is an altogether happier album. Through these songs, Maya accepts the cycles we travel, the things we can leave behind and the things that will always be with us, before concluding: “The only thing to regret is the time I’ve spent regretting.” That’s what Chaos Angel became in the end: a portrait of a person, complicated and still searching, but evolving.
In celebration of her upcoming album, she is performing a handful of special record release shows. On Saturday, June 1st she performs both early and late sold out sets at Third Man Records in Nashville, TN followed by a show at Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta, GA on Sunday, June 2.
SEE MAYA HAWKE LIVE:
Saturday June 1 (early show) – Third Man Records – Nashville, TN – SOLD OUT
Saturday June 1 (late show) – Third Man Records – Nashville, TN – SOLD OUT
Sunday, June 2 – Buckhead Theatre – Atlanta, GA
