Meredith Johnston, the singer-songwriter-producer at the heart of indie project Warm Human, has announced a new album, Hamartia, set for release on October 11th via Chicago mainstay Sooper Records. This marks her first album for Sooper and with a label. Produced and written by Johnston, along with Conor Mackey (Lynyn, NNAMDI, Mobobody), the album follows last year’s alternative rock-leaning Hometown Hero and swings back towards Warm Human’s more electronic roots, while retaining some guitar-infused elements from the former.
An often sarcastic and nearly absurd level of self-awareness is evident throughout Hamartia, a literary term from the ancient Greek tradition meaning the fatal flaw that inevitably leads to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine. These tragic characters often find redemption from their hamartia in a deus ex machina… a device that Warm Human also weaves throughout the album. Hamartia is laden with references to the flawed figures, storylines, and plot devices of literary tragedies throughout the ages; reference points for the self-mythologizing of Johnston’s own flaws and tragedies, which she lays bare in an almost too-much-information display that is as deviously fun as it is psychologically disquieting. However, self-awareness and literary ornamentation don’t always have to be somber, and some of the best songs on Hamartia show a more playful side of Johnston. The first single, “Love 2 Hate,” which was mixed by Grammy Award Winning Engineer & Producer Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, The Linda Lindas, M83), is an up-tempo, irresistible Do Revenge cut about the importance of embracing your own negativity from time to time. Johnston notes:
"This record is about my fatal flaw of always hating myself no matter how much better I get. ‘Love 2 Hate’ is the cornerstone song of the record, reflecting how deliciously good it feels to turn your self-hatred onto someone or something else, even if the relief only lasts for a couple of minutes.”
The song arrives with a video directed by Johnston & Dana Shihadah where Warm Human personifies a mix of characters inspired by Marie Antoinette, Mozart and Salieri (“The O.G. hater”, as Johnston calls him). Sitting in her high castle of hater-dom, Johnston looks down on all the things she hates in the world, barely remembering that the thing she hates most of all is herself. All while eating cake and dancing.
Johnston explains that much of Hamartia was written after a period of intense introspection and personal assessment, which she calls “Meredith Rehab.” Johnston has been sober for more than eight years and spent this time living with her parents, attending daily 12-step meetings, taking hour-long walks, and figuring out how to tend to her mental health. The album is full of references to Greek tragedies, but they are far from the only influence on the album’s writing and production. Johnston names Portishead, Sheryl Crow, Frou Frou, Madonna's album Music, and Disclosure as key inspirations. She also says that the arena-suitable rhythm of “Dramamine” was a deliberate attempt at the whole Lumineers stomp-clap thing. These influences may sound challenging to weave together cohesively, but Johnston does so, combining the everywoman lyricism of Crow, the cool but not distant electronic soundscapes of Portishead, and the major pop nods of Madonna into an album that centers the negative feelings we have about ourselves, without feeling like therapy session homework. “I'm not a poptimist. I'm a pop pessimist, and I like that. I like being able to bring actual sadness, not like therapy speak sadness, but actual despair and anguish and self-hatred and all the things that I struggle with all the time into a pop record,” she says. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment