For the past four years, the award-winning, Juno-nominated, SOCAN #1 bilingual Canadian songwriter, recording artist and producer Maïa Davies has been on a stubbornly unwavering mission of deep musical and self-discovery.
Born in Montreal, Davies has devoted the vast majority of her life to the craft of music. Getting her start in the Warner Music signed folk band Ladies of the Canyon, she has released two solo albums in French and penned over 12 top ten commercial radio hits for Canadian music artists, including Mother Mother and Serena Ryder.
In 2019, following the dissolution of an intense but ultimately toxic relationship, Davies also left her role at a notable Toronto-based production house and decided to shed all geographical allegiances. Taking on a nomadic lifestyle for a few years, she began traveling from BC to Halifax, then off to Europe’s Stockholm, Paris and Spain, landing in California for a long while, writing, dreaming up and carefully constructing her songs on the matter at hand: her devastated, roughed up and beaten, broken into a million pieces big heart. She toiled over endless lyric rewrites, explored sonic paths in her imagination and took novelesque notes on her hopes for the result. Landing later on back in Canada, she headed straight to the studios to commence recording what would become her forthcoming 9-song opus, Lovers’ Gothic. Skip ahead 18 months to the meticulously crafted, finished offering: the kind of achingly honest music that can only be generated from a wound so deep it needs space and time to heal.
“Songs and writing are the best way my body knows how to express pain to date,” Davies explains. “I was in a very dark place for a long time, but the songs helped me save and heal myself in so many quantifiable ways. Admitting that I was not ok and transforming that self-knowledge into my lyrics gave me a tremendous amount of emotional release and allowed me to start processing my deepest true feelings.”
In top tier studios across the country, Maïa recorded these raw confessions, pulling together an A list of friends to imaginatively co-produce with her. At Pierre Marchand’s legendary Montreal Studio Pm, Halifax’s Joel Plaskett-owned Fang Recording, Vancouver’s expansive and classic Hipposonic, to name but a few, she worked tirelessly on arrangement and instrumentation experiments with talented producers Marcus Paquin (Begonia), Erin Costelo (Kaïa Kater), TWIGG (Ben L’Oncle Soul), Andy Stochansky (Ani DiFranco, Lola Lennox), Sarah MacDougall (Ariana Fig), Brandon Bliss (Monster Truck) and David Mohacsi (Rêve, Mother Mother). Other notable contributions came from Edmonton co-writer Lyle Bell (Shout Out Out Out Out, The Wet Secrets), drummer Glenn Milchem (Blue Rodeo), drummer Jimmy Paxson (Stevie Nicks, The Chicks) and viola east coast darling Kinley (Hey Rosetta).
All in all, the hard work of recording and producing the album took just over a year and a half.
When Davies began to take in and assess the recordings, she came to see that she had created a chronological storyboard of her emotional journey in song. Lovers’ Gothic is a compilation of compositions that best encompass the visceral throughline of her euphoria, heartache, abuse, self-actualization and acceptance—a concept she jokingly now refers to as the stages of relationship grief.
One of the album’s most potent songs, “Stockholm,” reveals and explores the damages of the sexual harassment and assault she had survived in the music industry. Maïa Davies was adamant about acknowledging the song’s message (released as a single in November 2023), and the need to transparently address the issue of women’s safety within the music industry. It’s something she considers to be at the core of her beliefs and activism, and resolving it still has a long way to go. As with the other compositions, Maïa cleared away the thick underbrush of shame by therapeutic songwriting and singing, as well as by creating a striking and thought-provoking video collaboration with award-winning director Lisa Mann (The Used, Apocalyptica).
“The thing about surviving abuse and devastating grief is that it drops you off alone in a dark, locked room with only an unsought mirror for furniture. I eventually discovered that I could use this moment in time to not only navigate through the trauma, but also to understand what led me to allow toxic people into my periphery. I was no novice in that department. It was arduous work that provided a succession of small victories and losses, but in the end it led me to the kind of deep healing that is all-encompassing.”
Due out on Acronym/Universal on May 10, 2024, each new piano-driven offering of the album instantly and intentionally recalls Maia’s favorite incandescent baroque pop princess, Kate Bush, as well as the Kafkaesque etherealness of Beach House, with a classic singer-songwriter’s nod to her idol, Carole King.
Far from being a sad laminate, the new body of work wistfully weaves elements of pop and classical into well-crafted motifs, tempering the sting with nostalgic melodies and buttery vocals. The most recent radio single “Lift Me Up,” produced by The National producer Marcus Paquin from Montreal, is a sincere, lush tale of growth, from heartbreak to hopefulness.
Lovers’ Gothic is a musical tale shared with empathy and composed with passion, as confessional as it is comforting in its intimacy and scope.
“I’m now at a place where I can say I know myself so much better and understand that I owe all of it to self-compassion, a courageous journey of healing, and this new music that has been my best friend through it all. I sincerely hope it can invite other hurt souls into a process of healing. It’s painful to be sad. I know this through and through. I sincerely wish renewal to anyone who needs it. Hang in there. It will get better when you open yourself up to participate in both grief and healing as you slowly move away from denial.”
Such is Maia’s newly discovered truth, and she illustrates it expertly on Lovers’ Gothic, with abandonment … and just a little magic.
