Onwards

New music, huh. Where do we begin?

Well, I’m releasing music again. It’s been a long time. I haven’t put anything out since 2023, which feels bizarre. Required a bit of a redefinition of my “job” ~

***The lingering question***
Am I a musician if I’m not putting out music?

Obviously, yes. In the time since I last released, I’ve made more music than I have in years. In fact, I had an entire other EP that I was supposed to release last summer (more on that later). Dozens and dozens of sessions. Late night experiments making strange avant-jazz emo solo shit. An entire project of music made on stream with Nico. A year of feelings and thoughts and moments captured permanently in the only way I truly know how.

***A less lingering but still fair question***
Where is the music then?

To answer that question, we have to travel all the way back to “Junk Male.” The EP, not the short film. Now that I can officially say the rollout has been put to rest (long overdue), I suppose I can outright explain my intentions and vision and other things I can only truly reflect on now that the era is over. “Junk Male” was my reaction to the moment “Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted” had on TikTok. Tl;dr a video I posted in my garage turned my life around overnight, and it freaked. Me. Out. I was so new to making solo music. My band had just broken up and I was learning how to produce and write and express my singular vision for the first time. It was terrifying. I had always relied on my friends to help me decide what was good, what felt right, what was worth playing and releasing. And suddenly, a song – well, not even a song, the unfinished chorus of a song – had millions and millions of views on an app I had been posting on for 6 days. I was acutely aware, then, of my shortcomings. I didn’t know how to finish the song. I didn’t have a brand for people to attach themselves to. Shit, I didn’t even know if I liked the song.

HHWA came out at a time when MGK’s “Tickets to My Downfall” was in the zeitgeist and fans of the post-MGK style of pop punk revival attached themselves to the distorted guitar stabs and the self-deprecatory-pseudo-flex about my grandma’s necklace. This was awesome and I am so grateful that the song was able to be attached to this wave, but the problem I had at the time was that I didn’t want to be a pop-punk artist. This may sound a bit gatekeepery, but as a kid who grew up listening to the genre’s more left-of-Green Day emo offshoots I reviled even the TERM “pop punk.” I remember a time where referring to that type of music by that title would get you laughed out of a RYM forum. Call me old-fashioned but I didn’t think anyone making genuine “punk” would ever call it that themselves, let alone POP PUNK. I grew up with the idea that if you had to call yourself punk… you weren’t really punk.

Of course, nowadays I have an entirely different view (or perhaps just a more nuanced one). But at the time, I was still mourning the loss of my band (which, let’s face it, was very pop punk). Perhaps I thought that pop punk had ruined my life. Perhaps I thought it was impossible to make genuine homages to this sound without a full band behind you. This may seem strange given my output since, but I was determined to take my solo stuff in a completely different direction. I had attached myself to Dominic Fike, late-game Brockhampton, Aries, Jean Dawson, stuff in that camp. Everything I was making was supposed to be in THAT world. THAT was the kind of solo artist I wanted to be. This was what everything I made during this time sounded like. Everything except HHWA.

To be honest, and maybe this will lift the curtain a little bit, I was inspired to make HHWA after my friend Slush Puppy released a song called “Juliette.” I loved the kick-kick-snare. In my quest for Lorem-placement subtlety, I forgot that songs were allowed to be unabashedly loud-soft and have an indulgent angsty chorus. As an experiment, I made a quick demo using two different sets of lyrics from unused band songs. One set for the quiet verses, and one set for the chorus. I didn’t think much of it. It was just a fun thing to do. At the time, I was still in the thralls of Codename: Emily, so as I was wont to do in my quest for her validation I sent the demo over to her.

***Her response, and I quote***

“Max, this is it.”

This spark of reassurance set the tone for the next few years of my career. I posted a snippet of me playing the chorus from the speakers in my garage and the rest is history. The song, and by extension my fledgling artist project, was immediately placed in this post-MGK camp. And to be honest, I was PISSED. Didn’t they see this is supposed to be an IRONIC pop punk song? Don’t they see this song is making FUN of them? God, I was insufferable¹.

Maybe I was just self-sabotaging my own happiness. I should have been so excited that my dreams were coming true. But no, like an ingrate, I couldn’t be happy because it wasn’t coming true my way. Talk about control freak. In all of my writing sessions post-HHWA, everyone wanted me to recapture that pop punk magic. I refused to do it. I was going to control my own destiny. So for my follow-up, I decided to release “The Outsiders,” a song I did with Slush and Nico. It was about as different from HHWA as I could manage, but it was a lot closer to all the other unreleased stuff I was making. Remember, HHWA was an outlier. Suffice to say, The Outsiders did not blow up the same way HHWA did. I shouldn’t have been surprised – I didn’t ride the proverbial wave, and I suffered the consequences. To me, though, it was a conscious sacrifice. I’d rather maintain my artistic integrity than pander to whatever preconceived notion the internet had created for me².

After “The Outsiders”, I doubled down on this indie-chill vibe and released “Fresh Green at the Gallery.” Despite my attachment to this song, it did not live up to the HHWA numbers. In fact, despite being on New Music Friday, Fresh Green kinda flopped. At this point, I was freaking out. Did I make a mistake betting on myself? Was I supposed to just be the pop punk guy? Who was I to question my talents, and more so – who was I to reject the listeners who had changed my life? These fears and insecurities came to a head on my 25th birthday, when I wrote the first verse and chorus of my song “Birthday.” It was a return to pop punk, and what do you know – it blew up on IG Reels. And how did I react? Again, instead of being grateful for the internet, I interpreted this moment as my greatest fears coming true. Maybe I wasn’t this genre-defying musician after all. Maybe I was just the pop punk guy. Maybe I couldn’t escape my nature. Maybe the internet knew better than I did.

***To further complicate the lingering question***
How do you even DEFINE a musician?

I decided if I was going to be the pop punk guy, I was going to do it on my own terms. Again, control freak alert. I had a collection of songs from the last year that eventually became “Junk Male.” I set out to reinterpret them through a pop punk lens. Ultimately, as much as I tried to escape my roots, the pop punk was a part of my soul, and the songs very easily fit this sound. I got a band together – Jeremy, Reef and Daniel – and got to work recording these songs in a live setting. My vision here was that if I was going to make a pop punk record, I would do it in a way that felt like a true authentic homage to my favorite aspects of the genre. Rather than rehashing the Blink-182, Fall Out Boy, Green Day sounds of my other contemporaries³, I wanted to lean into the more abrasive side – the eyebrow-raising rawness of “Pinkerton.” The cathartic navel-gazing of Max Bemis, the dark sensitivity of Brand New⁴.

What came of out of it was a messy, rough-around-the-edges, expressionist body of music that was released to the world as “Junk Male.” All of my self-loathing, my hatred of the internet and LA that led me to this point, the exhausting experience of my communion with my Codename: Emily muse, all of it wrapped in a garage room-sound, RAT pedal Strat, trash can snare drum, first-take vocal authenticity. I almost killed myself engineering the live band with zero experience, and nearly succeed when I decided I’d be mixing the entire thing as well⁵. I had something to prove to the world, which is a monumental task, but not nearly as Sisyphean as trying to prove to myself. In the end, after months and months of painstaking work, I did it. I made something real.

***And what did I learn?***

I really didn’t needa do all that.

I succeeded in making exactly what I set out to, but at what cost? The shortcomings of “Junk Male” come from the vertical nature of its creation – all the parts, all the lyrics, the sound design, all came from one person who had hubris but was ultimately unqualified for the job. It was not a fun project to make. The concepts and ideas present in the record felt like toxic sludge passing through me. I felt like I was presenting myself in the absolute worst light. I distanced myself from this feeling by calling the narrator of the EP a “character.” Once it was finished, I was so removed from the thoughts and feelings that informed the record that I had no other choice but to rationalize it as performance art. To top it off, the self-isolating way I created the record led to a deep feeling of loneliness and disillusionment with my job and craft. Getting “Junk Male” out of my system felt more painful than triumphant.

Once I put it out into the world, I felt deeply embarrassed. Not just because of the revealing nature of the songs, but because of my thoughts and behavior. With this finished body of work in front of me, it was easier to reflect on what had led me to create it. It felt foul, sick, misinformed. It wasn’t some sweeping statement on the genre, the state of the industry, a monument to self-refliance, no – it was just music. Just like everyone’s music is ultimately just music. I felt so ashamed for spending so much time making something as a REACTION to something else. Why was I on SUCH a high horse about this whole anti-pop punk thing? Who was I to pass judgment on anyone else in the scene? Why was I so ungrateful? Jesus, did I say any of this bullshit to people around me? No wonder I was so lonely. No wonder I hated LA. Maybe I was a real junk male, after all. And here I was thinking it was performance art.

I feel much better now, luckily. I suppose that’s the whole purpose of making stuff. It’s a way to take the thoughts and feelings you’re unable to cope with and put them into this sorta sensory time capsule so that once they part from you they’re not a part of you. This gross, ugly version of myself is now not myself – it is forever externalized in the EP “Junk Male.” I can finally move on.

With “Junk Male” behind me, my love letter to the genre written and delivered, I can say without a doubt that I’ve gotten my pop punk rocks out. I don’t think the genre has anything left for me. And for all the disdain and contempt I’ve treated it with, it has given me so much love and connection and catharsis and understanding in return. Pop punk, I love you. I’m sorry for all the shit I talked. MGK, I’m sorry for deeming the scene post-MGK as if that was something derogatory. I’m sorry that I made an EP to prove that I was better than anyone else. I’m not. Pop punk made me. It was my first favorite genre. Listening to “1,039 Smoothed Out Sloppy Hours” as an 11-year-old gave me the faintest glimmer of an idea that perhaps I could write songs, too. Pop punk incubated me, pop punk taught me I-V-vi-IV, pop punk put my song on a wave that’s led me to live the life of my dreams for the last few years. Thank you, pop punk.

***I’m sorry***
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say that without wincing a little bit.

Aaaaand this brings us back to today. Where’s the music? Well, like I said before, I made a whole other EP. It was the conceptual follow-up to “Junk Male.” I called it “Icky Guy.” It was completely finished, in the label’s system, and ready for release. So what happened? Well, to be honest, it followed in “Junk Male’s” footsteps a bit too much. It delved into hip-hop, sure, had a grandiose maximalist slant to contrast “Junk Male’s” minimalism, but ultimately it didn’t feel like a true progression. A baby step, but enough to warrant an entire other EP? I wasn’t confident.

Deliverance came this summer when I went through my breakup. The world was uncertain again, and I was able to reconsider all aspects of my life with this in mind. Will my choices take me where I need to go? A lot of things didn’t make it through the grinder, but first on the chopping block was the EP. “Icky Guy” was going to push me further down the path “Junk Male” created. This was by nature – it was the successor, after all. Furthermore, the songs were OLD. Some of the verses I had written almost seven years ago! The worst part? I feel like this EP still had something to prove. If I’m being honest with myself, I made it with the intention of impressing others with its weirdness and abstractness and boundary pushing. This music wasn’t for me. And suddenly, as if from a distant dream, I remembered what I set out to do, all those years ago, before HHWA.

With this clarity, I didn’t feel capable of spending one more second in my self-defined pop punk world. It wasn’t authentic anymore. By this point in my life, I had touched a little money, been through a serious relationship, traveled the world. I was about to be 28. I didn’t live in the garage anymore. Making “Junk Male” didn’t prove I wasn’t “the pop punk guy” – growing up did. All this time I was pushing so hard to escape from a trap I didn’t realize I myself was perpetuating. It was time to let it go. It was time to move on. “Icky Guy” was a relic, an appendix, an epilogue to a story I didn’t want to tell anymore. I thought it was about time I returned to the original vision. In a whirlwind, I created an entire new EP with Tyler. God bless his heart, we did this shit FAST. And so, the new record feels more pertinent and true to what I’ve experienced in the last six months. It feels fresh. It feels necessary in a way the other EP didn’t. So, rest in peace “Icky Guy,” we may never see your like again. Maybe as a YouTube exclusive.

Choosing to part ways with a completed body of work was the single most empowering thing I’ve ever done as an artist. No longer am I making music as a reaction to external factors. No longer am I trying to control the narrative around me. For the first time since the overnight success of HHWA, I feel like the reins of my career have been passed back into my hands. I accept and stand behind what I am about to put out into the world, and relinquish any semblance of control over what happens from here on out. I made this music for me.

What do I glean from this? Did I actually learn more from NOT releasing than I did by releasing? What exactly am I doing here? After all, the question remains – what is a musician? What is an artist? Is anyone who picks up an instrument a musician? Is anyone who shares a piece of art an artist? If I’ve learned anything from my relationship with pop punk, it’s that using concrete terms and definitions to understand something as nebulous and unfathomable as art is an exercise in futility. No, I’ve learned my lesson. In my year off of releasing music, am I still a musician? There’s no objective answer. I suppose the only solace, the only guiding light, the irrefutable cartesian conclusion, comes from deciding how I, in the deepest most subjective reaches of my overly analytical soul, feel about it…

So, how do I feel about it?

***To answer the lingering question***
I am more of a musician than I’ve ever been.

With all that said, I present to you the new era. “Loser,” the first single, comes out February 4th, 2025.

Thanks for reading -mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. I mean, I’m writing a blog about it 4 years later, so I haven’t really gotten much better. Your fault for reading
2. In retrospect, there’s a much more nuanced way I could have played this, but I am grateful for this choice
3. No shade – love these guys – just wanted to prove something to myself I guess lol
4. I know, I know, sorry
5. Except 2AM which Nico mixed thanks Nico:)