Sure, there’s heaviness but the album also has levity and tonnes of personality.īest of all is ' Most Hated Girl'.
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‘My world’s a dumpster fire!’ she admits on ‘Help Me Hell’, once again purging shitty feelings with the help of loud, thrashing guitars as she bellows ‘ My life still sucks/I can’t be somebody to love’.Īs much as At Least I’m Free is a break-up album at its core, Maz admits her own faults as much as her grievances, bringing refreshing complexity to a well-worn topic.Ĭandid closer ‘Whoever’ embraces the messiness and chaos of a busted relationship but also hopes to grow and let go of the grudges. Maz isn’t afraid of throwing that same level of shade at herself. ‘ And how’s the spare room at your mum’s?’ she asks scathingly between the bright choruses of ‘Man Like Me’. ‘ You’re just another guy in a band / There’s plenty of you out there’ she sings dismissively. ‘Read Receipts’ captures post-break-up helplessness and abandonment in its lyrics, but Maz’s full-throated performance gives it a ‘f**k you!’ sense of empowerment.
That same compelling tension plays out through a lot of these songs. Those stark contrasts play into the conclusion, as Maz admits ‘ I’ve never been so sad/But I’ve never danced so much.’ It’s both melancholy and monstrous, Maz wandering the titular Gold Coast suburb, past casinos, tourists, and her ex-boyfriend’s house as atmospheric guitars and piano ring out before igniting into mosh-friendly mode. WAAX have described At Least I’m Free as “an album of extremes”, and opener ‘Mermaid Beach’ perfectly sets that tone. “I became obsessed with the villain on the show, Gina Liano,” says Maz. Most entertaining of all, the aforementioned ‘Same Bitch’ channels its lovable baddie attitude from Real Housewives of Melbourne. “We were listening to a lot of Foals at the time, especially the track ‘ Inhaler’.” But Foals could never get away with the track’s fempowerment chorus of: ‘ I am a girl, I am a queen/I get f**ked up, at least I’m free’. Meanwhile, Maz says she was “listening to a lot of Crushing by Julia Jacklin’ as a way of exorcising her own heartbreakĪlbum highlight ‘Jeff On The Streets’ imagines Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos “being out of house and home, living on the streets,” explains guitarist James Gatling. Queen’s ‘ Seven Seas of Rhye’ informed the solo-ing on ‘Beam Me Up’ and the band cite Oliver Tree as inspo on ‘Help Me Hell’. There’s some other unlikely inspirations on the album, too. I started thinking about that when we were writing… It has that weird random influence there.”
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“There’s one scene in the movie where a character keeps having this recurring dream – she’s in a car and there’s no driver in the front. “The day before I’d flown into, I’d watched the movie Hustlers,” Maz explains.
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“She taught me how to write a bit more rhythmically because she’s got that more hip-hop background as well.”īoth the track and music video – where Maz’s bandmates shuttle her around in a shopping trolley – were inspired by the feeling of being trapped in a speeding car with ‘ no-ooh-o-oooh-o control’ (as the hooky chorus goes). “She has this incredible urgency and works incredibly quickly,” says Maz. co-write is ‘No Doz’, a bouncy spin on WAAX’s sound and their first song to use programmed drums and sampling, which was penned with American genre-bender K. Reuniting with co-producers Bernard Fanning (of Powderfinger) and Nick DiDia (whose CV includes Rage Against The Machine, Pearl Jam, and Bruce Springsteen), WAAX revisit the winning formula of their 2019 debut album Big Grief:the band’s thumping attack being the guts and Maz’s revealing lyrics and howling performances the heart.īut as well as doing more of what made their first album special, At Least I’m Free introduces new techniques that might seem like second album clichés on paper - ballads, electronics, pop-leaning co-writes – but in practise, sharpens WAAX’s sound while also pushing it forward. A forceful vocalist who brings personality and power to the band’s spiky urgency and punk-rock vigour.īut to say Maz is still ‘ that same bitch’ undersells the progress she and WAAX make on At Least I’m Free, reaching outside their comfort zone to achieve greater variety and complexity in their songwriting. She’s still the ferociously commanding presence at the centre of the Brisbane shredders’ songs and live show. That’s the roaring, tongue-in-cheek declaration from WAAX frontwoman Maz DeVita towards the end of the band’s second album At Least I’m Free. ‘ Darling, you know me / I’m still that same bitch’ The Brisbane band expand their punk-rock on a dynamic break-up album that weaves in unlikely influences like Linda Perry, Queen, Julia Jacklin, and Real Housewives of Melbourne.
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