by David Williams (@davidmwill89)
The monsters that lurk in the shadows haunting our psyches can bring upon paralyzing dread and fear throughout our bodies. These monsters shape-shift in our lives into unidentifiable forms both internally and externally. The experience of external fear is bone-chilling, especially amid the existential angst of the world today. Our internal monsters prowl around, striking us with ideas of self-doubt, body dysmorphia, and addiction seemingly at a moment’s notice. Rae Haas, lead vocalist of the Brooklyn, New York-based band MX LONELY, is slaying these creatures one by one on the band's debut record, ALL MONSTERS.
Creatures of the macabre visited Haas in her dreams, inspiring “Mr. Lonely,” a song about a sleep paralysis demon, hence where the band name originated from. “It's sort of like a cousin of the Hat Man,” Haas said. “I had night terrors all the time as a kid. I'm a spooky bitch. When I think of MX Lonely, I think of that character, it’s sort of our mascot.”
The band was formed by happenstance in the unlikeliest of places; Alcoholics Anonymous. Haas explains, “We met in AA, which makes it not anonymous, you know, but it was just like meeting people in a sober space with music. We didn't have any intention of even being a band at first.”
After meeting guitarist Jake Harms and bassist Gabriel Garman, the band hit the ground running, creating their EP Dog within a week. There’s strength in numbers when it comes to fighting monsters. Banding together to form a community of like-minded people can lessen the burden of their personal struggles. That’s why MX LONELY has a different kind of connectivity with one another than most bands, and you can feel it through the music.
On their debut, the band slays more monsters than Bruce Campbell in an Evil Dead film. Every grunge-twinged riff, angst-filled vocal hook, or introspectively laced lyric feels entirely cathartic for each member of MX LONELY. By the end of the runtime, the emotional loads lifted off the band felt like a boxer shedding weight before a prize fight.
ALL MONSTERS succeeds at capturing the intense, in-your-face live experience of an MX LONELY show. Songs like “Shape Of An Angel” and “Return To Sender” pack a punch with Haas' searing vocal hooks and the band’s spacious guitar textures. There’s a real community out in the world looking to connect with people who have their own monsters tormenting them. The MX LONELY live experience is far from lonely, and feels much more like a communal experience. I would describe it as similar to a musical séance of sorts, even if it’s just for one night, to exercise every bad feeling or negative thought out of one’s body, losing oneself in the moment.
I talked to Rae Haas over Zoom about defeating your monsters, running through graveyards, being haunted by Mr. Lonely, and their favorite karaoke song.
MX LONELY by Luke Ivanovich
David Williams: What kind of music did you listen to growing up? Did you have any favorite bands?
Rae Haas: Growing up I listened to a lot of rock radio. I also feel I was really big into nu metal as a kid. I loved Deftones, Korn, Creed, and Staind. That kind of thing. I listened to Queen, Bowie, and a lot of riot grrrl stuff too. I think I found riot grrrl in high school. L7 and Bikini Kill were definitely bands that shifted my perspective of what was musically possible.
But I was late coming into music. In my own personal life. I came from a music background. I did theater and dance mainly, and I was always attracted to the more fringe, the more experimental stuff. I found DIY music later. I started going to a collective in New York called King Pizza Records. They had a lot of great bands. Rizzos, Skyeye, and The Mad Doctors. I went to a lot of heavy, more politically angry shows.
It was mostly benefit shows, where we're all getting together. It's a place to kind of collectively rage out and organize. And that was another thing that tipped me off too. In 2018, 2019 I started doing karaoke at a local bar and met a bunch of musicians and came into music that way. I wanted to figure out more ways to play music with a band. I have tried to play guitar. I might play guitar on upcoming releases. I'm still learning but my brain doesn't move as fast as my skill level.
DW: How did MX Lonely come together?
RH: So after I met different kinds of musicians from karaoke, I went on tour with this band called Fruit and Flowers. I was driving the truck and doing merch. I’d never been in a band or really thought about being in a band until I met Jake Harms. I think Jake has a high level of guitar playing and song structure abilities in his brain. He is just such a great composer. I came from a more experimental dance and drag worlds. We have the perfect mismatch of skills where we both teach each other a lot of things.
I had all these melodies and things that I didn't quite have the skill to form into songs. I think I learned a lot about the recording process with Jake. I was able to figure out ways to blend my voice. We wrote our first EP Dog in a week. The pandemic hit and soon after that, with everything shut down, we met this current arrangement of MX Lonely.
I feel funny saying this, I'm gonna say this on record. We met in AA, which makes it not anonymous, you know, but it was just like meeting people in a sober space with music, and especially playing music out of the pandemic was very cool. We didn't have any intention of even being a band at first. We wrote Cadonia and it was the same sort of feeling that happened when I think we wrote Dog, where I was thinking “wow, this is an album.” That’s how MX Lonely started.
DW: What's your go-to karaoke song?
RH: “I’d Rather Go Blind” by Etta James.
DW: Love that song. Mine is Give it Away by Red Hot Chili Peppers.
RH: Whoa. Okay. I'm bringing them down and you’re building them back up again (laughs) Let's go tag team.
DW: I love your music videos. They’re really creative and attention grabbing. How fun were those to make?
RH: Super fun to make. I feel it’s the tip of the iceberg. I would love to make more stuff. I really wanna direct things. I feel we're on tight budgets and quick turnarounds. There's something kind of spiritual about being in it and writing it.
Owen Lehman directs and films for most of our videos. He's a sick friend. I sent him a voice memo of some crazy idea I think for “Return to Sender.” I had just had a dream and I was like, “yo what if there's an egg?” He says “What if the egg is huge?” We kind of just riff off each other. I think they're weird and special and cool. Mostly it's just me trying to find the most honest form of my vision. I wanna pop my pussy on some music videos coming up. I'm dying for a cast and a budget.
DW: Do your ideas come mostly from dreams or are they spontaneous?
RH: Ideas sometimes come from dreamy things. Sometimes I bounce it off the band more. I think there's things that come from locations. For instance I met my friend Tom, who runs a collective called Queer Punk Outlaws. I met Rosaline, who's the wrestler in the “Shape of an Angel” video.
I was just thinking “wow, I want this person to dominate me.” I feel I’m getting into the indie queer wrestling scene. I feel a connection to this space and specifically like this ring through its technique to training. But it’s location based where we have this location, so I think about how I can build an idea for the music video. I feel it worked well in my mind because it’s about a battle with either yourself or something outside of yourself. I liked the idea of it being an actual physical thing. It was super fun to wrestle with Rosalyn. She's awesome.
DW: Your shows have such a unique energy to them. What's your favorite part about performing live?
RH: I like being able to be with people. I love when people move. I’m thinking of the performance as this generous kind of space where people are allowed to release something for themselves too. That's what makes music feel good to me is when it's this shared experience. I'm learning to have your own self-confidence in that. It’s more about empowering people. I don't know. I like to think of our music as music for people that are a little bit of an outsider. I think to make a space for people that maybe have those sorts of feelings that they need a release and they don't necessarily know where to go. I just personally think that's my medicine. I need to mosh with people. I need to move around.
DW: Are there bands that have that effect on you when you see them live?
RH: Oh my God. Wiring is one of my favorite bands of all time. I just got a Walkman and it's the first thing that I put in my Walkman. I recommend getting a Walkman as physical media. Cohort B is awesome. There's this band BOYSCOUTMARIE that rocks. I’m always moshing at the Halo Bite show. These bands sort of shaped my view of the community and my view of being around people like them.
DW: Is there anything you learned about yourself after creating All Monsters?
RH: I’m still learning about myself. I think the learning kind of comes in performing the songs too and sharing it. My mind is such a tangled, fucked up mess that no one could understand. But you try to make something of it. I really realized we're all in this together. No one that I really connect with or trust is truly thriving right now. I think we're all collectively feeling the weight of the world and this sort of cognitive dissonance that goes with existing in America.
I'm saying America 'cause that's just where I'm at. I think All Monsters has been mostly another sort of exploration in trying to find what's true and honest and hard to put out.
A lot of these songs were honestly kind of difficult for me to put out. It’s me thinking that my thoughts might be too dark or might be misconstrued. I try to just be brave with it and just say what's on my mind. It's been comforting but also sometimes disturbing, like how connected we all are in our thoughts. I think depression right now is kind of collective. I am gonna keep learning more from the performance of it.
I feel selfish for having issues with my own brain. I almost have trouble admitting to myself there's so many things going on in the world, “why am I anxious about how people perceive me?” These things that feel so vain, you almost feel guilty for feeling them. I think so many people have those problems and they turn into these cycles that keep us isolated and it's part of the larger issue. I hope the shows turn into something like “yea this sounds heavy, but it still wants to make people shake ass too.” That's sort of the goal to have a space again where people mosh this feeling out. I want it to be the weirdest exorcist party ever created.
DW: What are you looking forward to most going on tour?
RH: I'm really excited about a specific energy in New York. I think people come from all over the world to live in New York. There's a reason for that, it’s a magnetic kind of thing. Maybe it’s psychospiritual or astrological to me. I'm also excited to see how everyone else is kind of doing and feeling in America. I wanna hear people's stories. I want to have resources for people at the merch stand. I've been wanting to have reading materials for immigration, knowing our rights. For organization and fighting tyranny. Which again All Monsters is sort of about.
DW: I read your band name came from a creature that haunted you during sleep paralysis?
RH: When we wrote “Mr. Lonely,” that song was sort of about the sleep paralysis demon. It's sort of like a cousin of the Hat Man, which is a phenomenon if people have sleep paralysis or are into kind of spooky shit. People see this person it’s sort of an entity that I feel I witnessed or experienced a lot as a kid. I had night terrors all the time as a kid. I'm a spooky bitch. When I think of MX Lonely, I think of that character it’s sort of our mascot.
DW: What does that character look like? Do you have a vision in your mind?
RH: It's a crude drawing of it on the cover of All Monsters that you could see. It's a little, where's Waldo's situation? It's sort of shadowy, like long-eared, almost like an evil tower.
DW: Does the monster still visit you?
RH: Sometimes but in a more benevolent way. I don't think it's actually a scary monster. It's literally a kind of reflection of my own psyche. I don't think it's evil though. I don't think the creature is an evil entity. It’s more of a genderless genre kind of a spiritual guide, that just shows up in my dreams. Whenever shit's turned around, it just stops by to say hi.
DW: I talked to Total Wife, who are also on Julia's War. They told me sometimes they will go to graveyards on days off just to hang out. Have you ever done anything like that before?
RH: Yes, of course. I have a music video in a graveyard of me running where I used to run in CFA Park. I love the energy of graveyards. There's something just beautiful about being around bodies or spaces of where people have passed. There's actually somebody in the graveyard where we shot the cover. Their name is Rae Haas, spelled the same way, which is weird. I find this weird comfort in the idea that we all die. It’s kind of dark and maybe emo of me, but it's like a cheerful nihilism. I think there's something beautiful in trying to learn and understand all the pain and all the joy we feel in this life is finite.
DW: Do you have an ideal setting for people to listen to All Monsters? Is it a car record? Is it a getting ready to go out type of record? Is it a walk around the city record? How do you feel?
RH: I don't know how to answer it because it's so personal. I think “Big Hips” is a gym song. But I think listening with headphones is a good start. I think there's always subtleties of music that you're gonna find in headphones with certain tones and things.
I think listening live is just a totally different sensory experience. Because we play really loud. Jake has a whole spaceship of pads and pedals, Gabe is an amazing bassist, and they just have this wall of sound, crazy tone. We'll be out touring with Josh Skoudis, who's in this band, Kouscous Heaven which is a fucking awesome band. He’s a really sick drummer. I love my band, everyone come see them live 'cause, they're those boys. I'm also that boy, you know? I’ll come and do a death drop on you in a minute.