"One should either be sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers."
This line comes from legendary playwright Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions, but it could just as easily be pulled from a hyperliterate review of MAITA's new album, I Just Want To Be Wild For You.
The record finds the Portland indie rock band's namesake Maria Maita-Keppeler yearning. What exactly she's yearning for varies over the course of the LP's 11 tracks, which only makes her singer/songwriter dexterity shine brighter.
"That is definitely my bread and butter — figuring out a moment of yearning and then trying to write about it," says Maita-Keppeler. "It's the same as with any other plot. If you think about a book or a play or scene, nothing's really happening unless a character wants something. There's a desire that's trying to be fulfilled. And I feel the same way about songwriting and about emotion."
"The moments that I'm most inspired by are when there's desire," she continues. "And I think that desire only exists in the presence of absence or distance. So those are the moments that I feel the most like writing about. When I feel very content, I don't feel particularly like I need to write about it."
While the seeds were there on the band's contemplative 2020 Kill Rock Stars debut album Best Wishes, MAITA flowers into full bloom on I Just Want To Be Wild For You. Maita-Keppeler's razor-sharp songwriting can't be easily pinned down. The retro smokey, loungey creep of "Loneliness" captures the feeling of not fully wanting to take a person back, but longing for that lost sense of comfort. There are moments of desire for sheer release, like the outro coda on "Ex-Wife": "Someday I'll drive to the ocean and scream." She can craft a cleverly biting, tongue-in-cheek "love" song about her smartphone ("Light of My Life (Cell Phone Song)") or peel back layers of faded distance to turn a fingerpicking meditation into an anthem pining for a return to wild passion ("Wild For You").
From her viewpoint, Maita-Keppeler is particularly pleased with how the two-part song "You Can Sure Kill a Sunday, Part I & II" came out. The back-to-back tunes tell both sides of the same clashing relationship — one a hyper indie rocker about overthinking, the other a slow twangy ode to trying.
"I've really, really loved playing the songs live because I feel like they truly represent the full range of what we do as a band. It's like the loudest, most crazy rock and roll moments with this very sensitive side," she says.
"From the beginning, I knew this was going to be a two-part song, that was just the impetus behind wanting to write either of these in the first place — just to represent two views of something that seems very innocuous. The fight was not an important fight by any means. It wasn't created over any large, important reason. It was just a miscommunication or some friction that became bigger and grew and got legs. I just thought it was really interesting to explore the same day from two perspectives, and I knew that that's how it was going to be, and it allowed me to really try to think of the two opposing perspectives, both in like viewpoint but also in energy."
While Maita-Keppeler excels at songwriting when she's singing from the perspective of a character seemingly distant from herself, she still must find an empathetic and emotional connection to what she's writing about. It's tough for her to write unless the songs come somewhat naturally, and she's not oblivious to being the narrator hiding behind the various lyrical masks.
"At the end of the day, you are really only able to write from your own perspective," Maita-Keppeler says. "So even if you think you're embodying somebody else, it is still your eyes and your ears that are processing everything. So what I think ended up happening was that both ["You Sure Can Kill a Sunday"] songs do capture things that I experienced inside of my brain, but they're just different sides of [me]."
Listening to I Just Want To Be Wild For You's "Road Song," which dwells on the strain of the touring routine (with a refrain of "we just wake up, drive, get to the bar, drink / talk to strangers, soundcheck, try to sing, try to sleep"), one might come away with the impression that Maita-Keppeler loathes the musical road life. But when chatting about the topic without instrumental backing, she's thrilled I Just Want to Be Wild for You songs are translating live (she was apprehensive they wouldn't) and much more enthused about making the towns.
Perhaps that's in part because the arrival of Best Wishes in May 2020 naturally meant touring was a pandemic no-go, an undoubtedly frustrating experience when one's debut LP is garnering praise. MAITA wasn't even able to play shows east of the Rockies until this summer, so the rush of meeting fresh fans helped sweeten the touring experience, even as the live music landscape has become increasingly difficult for independent artists over the past couple years.
"I do think there is still a lot of apprehension," Maita-Keppeler says. "I think it's a really hard time to be a musician right now — there's a lot of people touring, and not as many people going to shows. But I feel really, really fortunate that the fans that do show up to the show, are really sweet and great people, and the connection they have with the music is very genuine, sometimes in a way that surprises me. And I find that no matter how big or small the crowd, knowing that there's even one person in the crowd that feels that way makes me want to make the show matter to me and makes me want to do the very best we can to play really well."
It's not easy out there. The yearning will never fully dissipate. But as author Merle Shain once wrote, "One often learns more from 10 days of agony than 10 years of contentment."
So maybe it's not just yearning. On I Just Want to Be Wild for You, MAITA is learning. ♦
MAITA, Atari Ferrari • Fri, Nov. 4 at 8 pm • $10-$12 • 21+ • Lucky You Lounge • 1801 W. Sunset Blvd. • luckyyoulounge.com • 509-474-0511
MAITA, Desolation Horse • Sat, Nov. 5 at 8 pm • $12-$15 • All ages • Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse • 420 E Second St., Moscow • eventbrite.com
