Max Blansjaar has released his new single ‘Anna Madonna’.
Speaking of the single, Max said: “It’s not easy out there. It hurts! Sometimes you want to lash out, renounce all ties, retreat into yourself. Trust nobody; pull the plug on them all. ‘Anna Madonna’ is a manifesto to say that we stay standing by holding each other through the storm. There is no cosmic conspiracy, no grand plan — frightening, tiresome, but above all a reminder to hold on to what we have. I wrote the words on a Post- It note which I stuck to my bedside table and left there until a melody appeared. It is best sung in front of mirrors and on school playgrounds.”
To celebrate his single release, Max shared with us 5 tracks that influenced ‘Anna Madonna’.
Courtney Barnett – Canned Tomatoes (Whole)
One-chord song! And one of my favourites in that category. Courtney Barnett’s had a huge influence on me in the way she uses her songs to place the ordinary in a different light — which is what happens with the bassline on this track, which starts off pretty conventional and then gradually becomes set in a kind of psychedelic breakdown. It also happens with the lyrics. She has this way of being conversational while also making concrete objects feel like abstractions. Spacing out the everyday, I guess.
Beck – Soul Suckin’ Jerk
I tend to think of recording music like making a collage, and that’s down to Beck. Particularly in his early stuff, the way he moves between sections is by cutting whole chunks of the arrangement and pasting in entirely new sounds. It’s like you’re teleporting. First you’re in lo-fi hip-hop land, then blink and it’s all garage rock; now it’s freak blues on Mars. People have referred to Beck as a slacker, but the music is working way too hard for that to be true.
Katie Von Schleicher – Nowhere
An obvious one, since Katie co-produced my album. Her music strikes this perfect balance between gloss and grease. It’s always accessible as pop music, and it gives you something to hold onto once you’re in; but it’s never easy, it’s always a little slippery, a little cranked. And this song is just so beautiful. There’s definitely a bunch of tracks on my album where I had these guitar tones and synth sounds in mind.
Darwin Deez – Up In The Clouds
One of my great musical inspirations who sadly didn’t manage to prolong his brief period in the sun circa 2010. In a lot of ways it is very much of its time, this kind of nerdy Tumblr-core bedroom pop, but the interplay between the guitar parts and the drum machine is so perfect, still now. Slightly cutesy, but slightly sharp — and so hooky. On tracks like ‘Anna Madonna’ I was trying to tap into that flavour a little.
Jeffrey Lewis and the Voltage – Exactly What Nobody Wanted
I was lucky enough to play a show with Jeffrey Lewis in September 2022. He does what a lot of the anti-folk folk (sorry if the term anti-folk offends you) do so well, which is evoke these super complex emotions from really simple stories, simple melodies, simple chords, where the simplicity adds to the power in some way. At one point he sings: “you worked small to see what made this or that tick / then you flipped it over so it all seemed galactic…” and that’s exactly what he’s doing. So awesome, so awesome, just awesome.
Listen to the influences behind Max’s single below:
Listen to Max Blansjaar ‘Anna Madonna’ via Spotify below: