A Track by Track Breakdown of Mynolia’s New Album “All Things Heavy”
Identity is complicated and the process behind nurturing it can be heavy, long, and sometimes arduous. Music can be something that helps make the journey a little less taxing. “I have no cultural or national identity whatsoever, and in that lack of anchor I think I just clung onto music like the lighthouse in the fog,” says Mynolia, whose debut full-length, All Things Heavy, is out today. Growing up in places like New Zealand, India, and Canada, took the artist (who is now based in Berlin) down a unique path that allowed her to absorb pieces of her surroundings. On All Things Heavy, Mynolia fleshes out her distinct and well-worn worldview, one she defines as “zooming out for perspective” alongside brutal scrutiny. “I have always felt just one step removed from the environments I’ve found myself in,” the singer says. That internal alienation, twinned with her globetrotting past, created a unique set of circumstances that Mynolia explores in vivid detail across the album’s ten tracks.
Ahead of the record’s release, Mynolia shared a track-by-track breakdown of the meaning, influences, and inspirations behind All Things Heavy:
“The Bear & Shell” is a step by step of a vivid dream I had, walking down a hallway of a grand wooden house. A grizzly bear shuffled around in an office at the end of the hall and came after me, deciding to not eat me at the last second and slapping giant glowing shells into my arms with its paw. An old man stood with us, and friends cried softly in the corner. The symbolism and chords remind me a little of how Devendra Banhart and Aldous Harding approach songwriting, but this song appeared from the dream haze, before I could consider any external inspiration.
“Stall Stickers” is just influenced by a generation under the influence.
“All Things Heavy” is inspired by walking in toxic city rain in toxic cities.
“Train of Thought” is based on a melody of an old Armenian folk dance called Erzrumi Shoror which just absolutely slaughtered me with its beauty. Tigran Ter Stepanian, who did a beautiful version of this song with his band, gave me his blessing to share my take on this ancient melody. Some layers of backwards guitar take me back to my first Radiohead experience, Hunting Bears, which was massively impactful to me.
“Holding Hands (in my dreams)” has the weirdest origin out of all the tracks on this record as I recorded it on my dying laptop, singing and playing into the computer’s mic, while completely isolated at the beginning of the 2020 global meltdown. A friend and I challenged each other to write songs with the words home office in them. We were trying to stay busy while everyone was losing their minds and emptying the shelves of toilet paper in particular. There is nothing more frightening or hilarious than witnessing what our instincts tell us to do in times of unknown and crisis. This song also includes field recordings of a Tui bird native to New Zealand. It was my way of reaching out to my distant anchors of home or past homes.
“Goldrush” arrived in pieces, the beat and bass line came during a rehearsal with my band, but lyrically it's so convoluted I can’t begin to share the inspirations, except for my favourite line “only time matters” which is something my parents said when I asked them what they value most. I credit Marissa.
“An Old Disguise” started as a riff I played with a friend in Canada, we wrote a song about being a kite. It was repurposed to tell a darker story but one I had to get through and over at the time. I think that drop D with its drone notes is a direction for accompaniment that I turn to a lot, melodies in the lowest notes. That comes from another old friend in Spain who played a baritone guitar and I thought that was the coolest thing over. I think it’s my destiny to play one someday.
“White Noise” is influenced by old minor swells in big band or old westerns. That desert distance on the guitar strums, lots of space. I think Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang did a number on me around that time. I programmed some drums in there and loved the contrast of the two worlds colliding. Vocally I can’t deny I am a forever Enya lover, it just always appears in my choral-y arrangements, I love creating that width and space with verb and layers.
“Hues of Blues” went through a bunch of surgery before it ended up in this version. It was tweaked by Jeremy Black who helped me restructure parts and create the slowed breakdown chorus that booms out from plucky folk verse. I feel Johnny Flynn in the picking sometimes, that classic English folk pattern sits in a few of my songs.
“Baby AI” was written sitting on a log in a garden getting pestered by a dog on a friend's farm next to the compost hill. It was this space that allowed me to sit there mulling over AI and its implications, having a good little inside joke with myself. Its final form is ethereal with inspiration from Cocteau Twins and Enya. The angelic weirdos of my dreams. At my core I just want to make music for people to swim in.
Stream the record below!
You can purchase All Things Heavy on limited edition vinyl via Bandcamp. The album is also available to stream on Spotify. Keep up with Mynolia by following her on Instagram.
