Breakup songs have been a staple in our earbuds for just about as long as music has existed (well, for as long as earbuds have existed, but you get the point). There’s no other form of pain that necessitates creative catharsis quite like heartbreak, with vocalists and instrumentalists channeling that hurt through carefully crafted beauty or punishing noise through a vast range of genres.
Yet all of that can often seem a little two-dimensional for feelings as nonlinear and deeply convoluted as those a deteriorating relationship can bring about. Hence the “x3” in MAITA’s new track “breakup song x3,” a tacked-on clarifier that refers to three breakups with the same partner rather than three dimensions. But the second single from the Portland native’s upcoming LP, want, explores the ways in which breakups—and any other fallings out, really—are generally less of an open-and-shut case and more of a repetition of serious examinations of a partnership, dissecting the past and present and struggling to forecast a future.
“It explores the way the hot and cold nature of an uncertain heart can keep another held in suspense and trying to figure out what went wrong with each separation,” MAITA shares of the track, which sets these explorations to a moody indie-rock instrumental marked by tight drumming and a near-ambient bed of ominous sound. “I encountered this in the early days of my first relationship: the power imbalance of reaching for somebody who is pulling away. It did wild things to my brain. I ruminated, I second-guessed, I created narrative upon narrative in my head to try to make sense of it all. It was an anxious obsession that, at the end of the day, clouded my understanding of what it was that I actually wanted for myself.”
Dive into the track below, and pre-save want ahead of its July 26 release via Fluff & Gravy Records here.
