Alex Maas, of the Black Angels, released an album called Luca dur­ing the last days of 2020 – a work that utter­ly blew us away (it was on the Gourmet Gigs faves of the year list). We’ve been secret­ly wait­ing for a fol­low up to that haunt­ing­ly melan­cholic work, and just as 2023 reach­es its final moments, up comes anoth­er Alex Maas solo release.

Called ‘X MAAS (Take Me Away)’, the sea­son­al track car­ries with­in it the trade­mark ele­ments we have come to expect of this gift­ed singer song­writer, melan­cho­lia, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and haunt­ing lyrics. There’s a retro feel to the instru­men­ta­tion on X MAAS (Take Me Away), cre­at­ing a back­drop that acts of a foil to the lyrics. This is an out­sider’s view of Christmas:

“I’ve nev­er writ­ten a Christ­mas song. Christ­mas has a very dark side that not many peo­ple take into account. The hol­i­days are as painful as they are beau­ti­ful for most peo­ple. This song is for peo­ple who fall in love dur­ing Christ­mas and for those who want to escape com­plete­ly from the hol­i­day,” reveals Maas.

‘X MAAS (Take Me Away)’ stream­ing every­where now on Basin Rock.
Alex Maas