(2022) Maz O'Connor - What I Wanted    


Review:
Co-written with producer and keyboardist Will Gardner, tinted with electronics amid the acoustic instruments, What I Wanted is the long-awaited follow-up to Maz O’Connor’s Chosen Daughter (2019). It is a concept album of sorts, inspired by the spiritual journey undertaken in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Opening to the sound of piano, swirling keyboards and footsteps, it’s an exploration of an allegorical London, her current residence, told through the eyes of the central narrator, Vulpes (from the Latin and incarnating the city’s foxes), as she wanders the streets, encountering various characters on her travels, searching for connection and redemption. An electronic pulse is the heartbeat of the gatheringly infectious Soho with its piano notes, tumbling percussion and what sounds like a fluttering harp. Her voice soars to the skies as she laments the translation of the area from a home to individualism and engaging eccentricity to another identikit corporate void as she nods to Joni Mitchell’s similarly-themed Big Yellow Taxi in the lines “They bought up all the old streets/And they priced out all the old queens/Tore the party down/And put up a burger joint”, pondering “what can I do to make this feel like home?” when “there’s nothing to come home to”. Drawing on Sigur Ros inspirations, another recurring character is introduced with the skittering piano runs and subsequent handclapping percussive beats, mandolin and tambourine bells of Jessica, an airy memory of youth, staying up late at weekends watching Stand By Me, drinking red wine stolen from her friend’s father and the stirring of feelings condemned by a homophobic Catholic church (“Do you think we would have been in love/If we had been allowed? Jesus hates that kind of thing and no one’s like that in this town”). O’Connor’s lapsed faith and the search for a spiritual replacement colour several tracks, the walking beat, violin, and thumping drums of the Vega meets Bush When It Comes For You driving her questioning of what, in the growing tide of atheism, alienation (“How can I be with you? You can’t be with yourself”) and consumerism (“Do you ever get the feeling/They put a price on breathing?”), fills the void of a rejected faith (“You told me tales of a woman in Berlin/She laid her hands on you, healed you outside and in/She only charges £200 an hour”) when it takes you up in its waves (“What you gonna do about it/When it comes for you?”). The musical emphasis on strummed guitar, echoing a similar sentiment, the title of Can’t Get Enough Of What I Don’t Need evokes the gentle lope of Chris Cleverley‘s Low Light Low, the lyrics involving a glimpse of a fox and her cubs searching for scraps prompting memories of a former lover as she ponders “How long do you think it will be my old friend; How long til I crumble and call you again?“, again touching on the need to fill an emptiness (“I paid a woman to tell me to grow/Tell me I’m not a child, as if I didn’t know/I know where I’ve been just don’t know how to be”). The piano-led title track arrives midway, in which the quiet of the city at night finds the narrator’s tormented mind wandering back (“All I do is fight with oceans in my mind/Think of you by the waves in your best shoes”), a crystallising of the themes of home, paths taken or not taken, (“You were so certain and I could never choose”), of turning back time (“Be who we used to know”), redemption (“Run ’til we are forgiven/For things lost a long time ago”) and regret (“we left a long time ago/This is what I want, what I want, what I wanted”). A brief thrumming Interlude heralds the second act, opening with the bright, joyous piano notes and circling guitar pattern of (“I’ll try”) Anything, Once, with its post-break-up exploration of the need to connect to something (“everbody needs someone to blame”) and cascading hallelujah chorus as her voice swoops and soars across her wide range, the song ultimately capturing the sense of a generation adrift and searching for a rock to cling to (“…a woman gave me a leaflet/Saying won’t you come home to Jesus/No I’m not that lonely yet/But I’ll try anything anything once”). Arranged for piano and toned by clarinet, the softly sung Lily & Lemonade Wine sketches a quiet catharsis as two people connect, the girl in the bar looking to find her wings and fly (“She has a map of the world/She’s coloured in red”) and the more introverted narrator (“She read my palm…She told me my love line is/A little too fine/I said that sounds about right”), a brief encounter love song (“She left in July/Said England’s a bore”) about filling the void (“I hear you laugh…Wait for the voice notes and photographs/I pin you up on the back of the door/Now I buy my own drinks/To spill on the floor/I don’t mind…It’s one way to spend all this time”). On the jazzy folk, finger-snapping Cable Street she contemplates another area of London threatened with losing its unique identity to corporate soullessness, the song was specifically written in response to plans to close the Jamboree in Limehouse (“…take me to Jamboree/Oh, I’ll dance with a painter man/Oh, with gold shoes on his feet/Oh, and feathers in his hand”) but also about all such venues where the music sets you free from the drudge (“We will sing for Cable Street/I will miss the last train home/Nights like these way out east/I don’t feel alone”) and of their being shut down (“I fell in love on Cable Street/Now she’s falling at my feet”). It ends with the looped piano chords of the shimmering, ethereal Grace returning to the overarching theme of finding connection (“Your shadow on my throat/Your rain against my skin… Whenever you leave/I want you to stay”), something to believe in and the peace it can bring as she sings how “Each night is a blessing/It reminds me to pray/For time everlasting/Whatever form that might take” and “Don’t give up now, don’t lose your faith/Cos we’ve almost reached some kind of…Grace”. A strikingly confident leap into new musical and stylistic territory but never losing sight of her established core strengths – her voice and lyrics. It’s tempting to say this find O’Connor at the peak of her powers but I suspect it’s just the start of many wonders to come.


   


Track List:
01 - Intro
02 - Soho
03 - Jessica
04 - When It Comes for You
05 - Can't Get Enough of What I Don't Need
06 - What I Wanted
07 - Interlude
08 - Anything, Once
09 - Lily and Lemonade Wine
10 - Cable Street
11 - Grace


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk
Country: London, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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