Here to flip the script on love songs, Madi Diaz’s new album, Weird Faith, details every aspect of falling in love, from the not so pretty to the downright uncomfortable truths: that falling in love is one of the scariest things a person can do.
Recently embarking on one of the hottest tours of the last few years, Diaz supported pop superstar Harry Styles on multiple dates on his highly acclaimed, and seemingly never-ending, Love On Tour. Styles liked her so much that she even landed a gig as part of his touring band, playing the guitar and providing back-up vocals. And now she has released a new album, glistening with the promise of becoming a new hit in indie scenes. But Diaz has been here for a while, releasing music since the late 2000s. Her previous release, History Of A Feeling, was the catalyst for her music starting to turn heads outside of niche indie folk circles. Where she previously poured over a painful breakup, Weird Faith details a painful falling in love. She explains that “after being really burned by love–maybe relentlessly burned by it–the album is about being brave and trying again” and it is this trying again that can be so daunting. But, nonetheless, she leaves no stone unturned in these songs, “saying every feeling out loud, when I feel it, for better or worse because I can’t help it.”
The album wastes no time on this theme, opening with the line “What the fuck do you want”, talk about not holding back. Same Risk asks the question that you only ever want one answer to, is the other person in this relationship committed as much as I am? It features one of the album’s most memorable lines, “Do you think this could ruin your life? / Cause I could see it ruining mine”. Diaz admits her willingness to put her life and heart on the line to be with this person. In the bridge, the song reaches its loudest point as she sings “I’m standing here naked / Saying you could have it all/ And it’s all out on the table”. All the tracks elements come together as one large outburst of sound before it drops back out. What is left of the song is the subdued outro, with gentle guitar strumming as she sings the heartbreaking chorus line for the final time. There’s no doubt that this killer opener is meant to capture our attention.
Picking up the pace, ‘Everything Almost’ wonders how much to share in a relationship, what parts of you are allowed to stay just yours? It feels hopeful about the new relationship with the warm guitars carrying this feeling throughout the track. The drums begin to build in the pre-chorus, and when the chorus eventually hits, it encapsulates the fairytale feeling of falling in love, sudden and all-encompassing. In the end, Diaz comes to the realisation that they could make it work (“We’ve got it, everything”). But she doesn’t leave without the quiet reminder that she’s keeping a little bit of herself for herself as she faintly sings “almost” as the song fades.
The piano ballad, ‘Hurting You’, is the fourth track of the album but feels intrinsically tied to ‘For Months Now’, not making its appearance until number nine. Both songs feature a stripped back production, letting the lyrical story building do the heavy lifting. ‘For Months Now’ feels like a grand revelation, confessing that you had already checked out of the relationship emotionally, but ‘Hurting You’ is the quiet doubt and worry leading up to that crucial and painstaking moment of finally saying it aloud. Where the bridge of ‘Hurting You’ has layered vocal harmonies accompanied by a soft, faint acoustic guitar, in ‘For Months Now’ the bridge is the intense fever pitch culmination of the track, declaring “When I love you, I hate you the most”.
‘God Person’ and ‘Kiss The Wall’ are the album’s midway mark, but they certainly aren’t to be mistaken for fillers. In ‘God Person’, Diaz begins by letting her voice lead the way with a subtle but other-worldly, drone sound building in the background. Guitars replace this sound by the second verse but reappearing with the chorus. The rest of the song is then filled with ethereal, echoey background vocals that almost replicate the sound that can only be produced from singing in a vast building- a church, perhaps? ‘Kiss The Wall’ contrasts this, starting off slow, luring you into a false sense of familiarity. The chorus then comes in with an unsettling explosiveness. While little to no percussion can be heard on the verses, drums are suddenly introduced with a strong, steady pulsating rhythm before it all comes crashing together in a short post-chorus instrumental that you’d certainly be surprised to hear in a church.
Other tracks such as ‘Girlfriend’, ‘Get To Know Me’ and ‘Weird Faith’ detail more of the complications of a new relationship, dealing with exes, revealing your flaws and the lessons you learn from it all. The album really highlights the highs and exposes the lows of love, and that it isn’t always what it is made out to be. Despite it, you still choose to stay, like on ‘KFM’, the title a light-hearted play on words, Diaz wants to always be with them, even when she could metaphorically kill them.
One song does this theme particularly well. On what is sure to be the standout track, Diaz becomes more countrified, enlisting the genre’s sweetheart, Kacey Musgraves with ‘Don’t Do Me Good’. The track has already gained over a million streams on Spotify, promising more big numbers coming Diaz’s way for this album. Of course, it is not all due to Musgraves’ notoriety that this is doing well, the song is a triumph. It explores the inner conflict of needing to leave a relationship but getting pulled back in every time. It’s also exactly what this song does, releasing us and then pulling us back in with another heartbreaking lyric. Diaz said she “wanted this song to feel like calling your friend in that moment of needing to commiserate with someone” and “to have that person say “yeah man, I’ve so been there””. On the outro, Diaz takes up a high harmony that feels like a release of the pain she’s been keeping to herself within the relationship. Meanwhile, Musgraves sings the song’s melody, her calmer, soothing vocals representing the friend on the phone, reflecting on a, now past, but similar experience.
Closing the album, ‘Obsessive Thoughts’, leaves us with her final outburst. She has said all that she thinks, and this song is the last indicator. Her fiery, powerful background vocals are like letting out pent-up thoughts in scream form. The outro, and the last takeaway from the album, has her echoing some words, (“It’s a lot (lot)”), mimicking her repetitive thoughts that will continue to go on despite the record’s conclusion.
Words by Lauren P