Maximilian

“The Jersey-born singer-songwriter bears petals that lilt with a drowsy, introspective longing” Hard of Hearing

“filled with passion… and a quest for genuine connections.” Still Listening

“transcends its DIY roots, weaving a majestic sonic tapestry” Daily Music Report

“powerful and introspective” Acute Pop

No matter how, why, or when, for Jersey-born Maximilian Feighan - or simply, ‘Maximilian’ - there was only one thing that mattered: make a record. Between 35-40 minutes. No more than 11 eleven songs - just like his favourites - In Rainbows; Grace; After The Gold Rush. And after three years, three house-moves, numerous rewrites, headaches and changes of heart, the end result of all this blood and sweat is Surrender - a ‘bedroom’ record in theory, but in practice sounding like anything but.

Here ‘Bedroom’ is a misleading term, not just because the drums were recorded in Feighan’s living room in Brighton (even though literally every other voice or instrument was) but because the music of Surrender sounds richer and more far-reaching than anything that could be possibly contained within four walls; some moments on the album, take balladic ‘Red Wine’, have a kind of sonic full-blown panorama that would make the likes of Grizzly Bear blush. “Though it was done in DIY Fashion”, Feighan bluntly states, “The aim was for a high quality professional outcome”. Using every bit of knowledge garnered from his music production degree, many a low-budget microphone was begged for or borrowed, many a part was rigorously edited - recorded, re-recorded, re-written, recorded again - across various rooms, by various people, over a mammoth two year period.

“Over this period of time I grew to love, then hate, then love and then hate again each of these songs”, confesses Feighan. Indeed - struggle, heartache, and outpourings of gushing sentiment - seep through each second of Surrender - as if the struggle to squeeze out the music had translated into Feighan’s own songwriting intentions . Take punching single ‘KIll Time’ - a track that plots the anxieties of the early stages of a relationship also took over a year for him to write and finally come to terms with. And that’s just one example of romantic longing found here. Take the steady, brit-pop leaning ‘Latent Love’, which exuberantly bursts with passion with its yearning refrains “I want to be with you / I want to be near you… if not now I don’t know when”.

Across Surrender, you hear a record packed to the hilt with emotion, with all its haunting harmonies, sky-surfing rock riffs, avalanching drums and pained lyricism ostensibly primed for a deluge of tears to come in its wake. But Feighan, crucially, is all too self-aware by how overblown this must seem. In his own words, his Maximilian persona adopts the “main character energy” of “walking through a town while hungover”, to express sentiments both deeply private, yet drenched in a cinematic sense of escapism: “The songs are very personal and all drawn from real experience, but totally dramatised and blown up”, notes Feighan. “ I’m often inspired by poetry, novels and films. “I have often felt inspired to write after watching a good movie,” he adds.

While Surrender without a doubt, is a solo record, with all Feighan’s life poured into it, it’s also a record which provides yet another emblem, if any more was needed, of the shining light that is Brighton’s nurturing, supportive grassroots community. While born and raised in the channel island of Jersey, relocating to study, live, and now work in Brighton was an essential event to Feighan’s musical development. With local producers Ally Jowett (Porchlight) and Bobby Smyth (Hutch), providing key assistance in the album’s creation - and Brighton scenester Jamie Broughton close collaborator in the recording process - Members of fellow Brighton up-and-comers Flip Top Head and Van Zon, notably play in Maximilian’s full strength six-piece line-up: “The Brighton scene has helped this album so much”, he notes, “ the people I met who ended up on this album are all so talented. In times of frustration I had so many great musician friends to lean on who showed me support the whole way. Surrender wouldn’t be the same without them.”

“I knew I wanted to make it an album before it had begun”, concludes Feighan. “With every song I was finishing, I was working my way towards having 10 that I loved. It’s not a conceptual album in that way, as much as it is just a collection of songs from a certain time in my life.”