Hamish Monk
A freelancer with a masters in journalism and over 10 years’ experience writing for content agencies, communications firms, as well as journalistic publications.
American actress and singer-songwriter Maya Hawke’s third album raises interesting questions about the place of actors in the music industry
With all of its disastrous consequences, Britain has watched from across the pond the incursion of celebrity into politics – less so you, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now comes the age of the actors’ (far more benign, but equally unsolicited) foray into music.
This exodus from within the increasingly homogenised, upper echelons of Hollywood talent, reveals a subverted meritocratic inflexion of the American Dream – where all those with a name may aspire to release an album. It’s a tenet that conjures mixed feelings: of surprise and curiosity, then a pervading sense of awkwardness-cum indifference when it falls flaccid.
The third studio album, ‘Chaos Angel‘, from Maya Hawke, finds place in this rich lineage of music from American actors. Closest to home of course is Hawke’s Stranger Things co-star, Joe Kerry, who – under the moniker, Djo – independently released his second studio album, ‘DECIDE‘, back in September 2022. It gathered dust on the shelves of Spotify until earlier this year, when one of the lead singles, ‘End Of Beginning’, went (quite deservedly) viral.
Unfortunately, ‘Chaos Angel‘ does not pack the same punch. It is a down-tempo, bare, and simplistic guitar album about love and loss. It breaks no new ground, though it does have something to offer for fans of sweet, sentimental pop music, like Taylor Swift’s ‘Folklore‘ or Corinne Bailey Raye’s innocent debut.
Given the vanilla hue of the songwriting on ‘Chaos Angel‘, accusations of “nepo baby” abound. It is a label that when applied to Hawke, one struggles to refute. Indeed, it is questionable whether a musician without celebrity parents – or a tantalising acting career from a Netflix sci-fi drama – would receive such a tepid review.
This is a curious phenomenon. We are looking up to a handful of messianic personalities and asking them to be limitlessly talented – all the while neglecting the most exciting grassroots music. It is almost as if we struggle to departmentalise the rank of the celebrity; preferring a familiar face than the occupational candidate.
But to her credit, Hawke is not deaf to the platform from which she benefits. The lyrics on ‘Missing Out’, are candid and self-reflective: “I was born with my foot in the door and my mind in the gutter…” There is a bravery to be commended here. The instrumentation is reminiscent of José González’s side-project, Junip, with its colourful synth palette and damp, understated kit. It is one of the most enjoyable cuts on the LP.
Hawke’s least-streamed single on Spotify is ‘Hang In There’, which seeks to support a friend through a toxic relationship. Once again, pleasing indie influences trickle through, with the roomy arrangement reminiscent of Vampire Weekend’s ‘Modern Vampires of the City‘. This is also subtle, sparse and sodden with reverb, but we’re missing that boldly experimental edge.
The other single, ‘Dark’, is a dilute, minimalist, and slow acoustic guitar ballad about heartbreak and anxiety, which builds into a full-band arrangement, with fuzzy electric guitar just before the 2-minute mark. Usually, such an evolution would make for an exciting audio-cocktail, but the track starts and finishes without ever veering too far from the middle of the road.
Some tracks offer stirrings of inspiration. There’s ‘Okay’, the lyrics for which stray from the well-trodden path of romance, and dissect Cassavetes’ A Woman-Under-the-Influence representation of dependency. And there’s ‘Black Ice’, which shows off Hawke’s homework around America’s cult-folk world of the ‘70s. All the while, Hawke is trying on different personas with her voice; a muscle no doubt kept warm by her day job.
This is the redeeming feature of the album: the performance. No, it isn’t perfect – and Hawke’s voice does sound rather untrained – but it comes across as warm and endearing. It is refreshing to hear vocals on such a big album left intact, exposed, and underproduced. For such restraint, Hawke perhaps has the album’s producer Christian Lee Hutson to thank.
The goal of ‘Chaos Angel‘, then, was never to chart. It was simply to provide another creative outlet for this talented American actress. It’s a right that should be afforded to everyone – whether Uma Thurman is your mum or not.
Listen to ‘Chaos Angel’ here: