{"id":646654,"date":"2026-05-04T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646654\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T06:50:08","slug":"maya-hawke-maitreya-corso-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/646654\/","title":{"rendered":"Maya Hawke: MAITREYA CORSO Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Playing her new song \u201cBring Home My Man\u201d during a recent show in Pasadena, New York singer-songwriter Maya Hawke<\/a> cited one of its guiding inspirations: Leonard Cohen<\/a>\u2019s \u201cHow to Speak Poetry.<\/a>\u201d There\u2019s only one explicit reference to Cohen\u2019s poem in her song\u2014his \u201cYou look good when you\u2019re tired\u201d becomes her \u201cYou look so good when you\u2019re spent\u201d\u2014but the poem\u2019s influence on her fourth record, MAITREYA CORSO, goes far deeper than that.<\/p>\n

In his poem, Cohen commands that an artist offer radical honesty: no performance, all vulnerability. That\u2019s a core goal of MAITREYA CORSO, Hawke\u2019s hybrid folk\/pop record\u2014she wrestles with both overzealous ambition and crushing self-doubt in order to figure out who she really is. She faces several setbacks on that journey; these transformations are never linear. But her optimism is contagious. She beckons to the meek: Come, learn how to fill your shoes without getting too big for them. Move forward with me, and grow into yourself; let\u2019s find happiness together.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Three questions posed in the hopeful opener \u201cLove of My Life\u201d anchor the record: \u201cWhat if I got what I wanted? What if I was who I wanna be?\u201d and \u201cWhat if I knew how to be?\u201d The bright-eyed queries encompass love, identity, and success, but even accented with a buzzy guitar line, they\u2019re cautious, hyper-aware that wanting too much can be a curse.<\/p>\n

Ambition is frightening. As an actor and child of actors, Hawke\u2019s likely seen her share of big rises and huge falls; she surely knows that the desire to strive and succeed is terrifying because of how quickly it consumes. \u201cDevil You Know\u201d starts distorted and spare, like Sylvan Esso<\/a>\u2019s \u201cMake It Easy,\u201d then cracks into a fast-paced lyrical unscrolling as Hawke confronts the face of greed in the mirror. The verses are dense and slick, and sensual (an homage to the Beats, specifically album namesake Gregory Corso). In contrast, her paced, crackling chorus serves as a recognition and reckoning. She taps into speak-singing on her most anxious songs, stumbling to explain herself; her thrown high notes are a gasp, thin and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter if she gets baptized in \u201cheavy rain\u201d; self-consciousness hovers over MAITREYA CORSO like a cloud. She\u2019s comfortable when she can hide\u2014fit neatly inside a shadow, as on the twinkling, toy-piano-poppy \u201cGreat Minds\u201d\u2014but recognizes it\u2019s time to outgrow that.<\/p>\n

She tries to break through on \u201cLioness,\u201d which rotates between folkish fiddle and spacey, oscillating synth. Hawke\u2019s amenable, then feigns strength (\u201cFuck with me and you\u2019re gonna find out\u201d) only to crumble into a splintered \u201cthat I will back down.\u201d Trapped in an echo chamber of expectations\u2014\u201cTell me where to stand\/Tell me what to say\/Tell me who I am\/I can do it different\u201d\u2014she ascends, layering herself over those group vocals with a sole, insistent voice: \u201cI\u2019m not doing it wrong, I\u2019m just doing it differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s most direct in moments like that, where she\u2019s assuring herself (and the listener) of a truth. But across the rest of the record, whether retelling or daydreaming, Hawke maintains a writerly attention to assonance and rhyme. When she\u2019s singing quickly, each short line slips into the next, cascading. Her refrains center the desires underpinning MAITREYA CORSO. And the endlessly assured lullaby \u201cBring Home My Man\u201d is neatly buttoned by its persistent rhymes, which makes the future feel clear, easy, and impenetrable. Only her intentionally crass lyrics (\u201cI was all eyes, tits, and teeth\u201d) feel unmoored, heavy-handed in retellings. That\u2019s one thing that can\u2019t fit just right; it doesn\u2019t feel as honest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing her new song \u201cBring Home My Man\u201d during a recent show in Pasadena, New York singer-songwriter Maya…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[342,49,48,75,343],"class_list":["post-646654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}