Max Bemis

Maxim Mental is the sequel to Say Anything and he doesn’t care who knows it. Men in popular rock bands adore the idea of “the solo project.” A project in which they call the shots, the contract is in their name, and they don’t have to fight with four slackers they’ve lived with since college to stand in the front at photo shoots.

Unfortunately Say Anything already had in spades. Singer/Songwriter Max Bemis was a “frontman” to an extent that might make Dave Grohl or Conor Oberst feel like the drummer of Spinal Tap. Twenty years of wearing too many hats and the endless misperceptions of his divisive outpourings resulted in a mental health crisis, just as Say Anything secured a comfortable legacy and Bemis had settled into a newly successful career as a Marvel comic writer; Max had actually been “asylum free” since his debut LP earned him a ubiquitous reputation for being emo’s Brian Wilson.

Say Anything was, despite its place in a genre known for sincerity, somewhat of a satire of the quintessential emo band. Bemis being the Andy Kaufman of it all was enough to delight and confuse an entire generation as to whether he was a “real boy” or Ziggy Stardust infused with Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Vagrant Records discography. The final Say Anything LP was written from the point of Oliver Appropriate, a personification of this intentionally confused public persona; his death during climactic “Sediment” echoed the end of an era for the band itself. When ready to recover from twenty years of trauma making music, Max’s answer was more natural than obvious.

Bowie and other musicians invented “charecterrs” to escape pigeonholes; for the first time, Max had to be solely himself. . This foreshadowed a mental health crisis that didn’t, for the first time, revolve around Max. His cherished wife and partner Sherri Dupree-Bemis endured a dire, years-long battle with post-partum depression and a struggle with sobriety. It was being of service to his wife and family that proved to Bemis for the first time that he had more to offer than parodying himself and that he had been repressing his confidence, jubilance, and romanticism to remain safe embrace of his previous project. Max set out to express himself in the same manner of “non -solo project” solo projects that involved both collaboration and being okay with simply just being the performer, inspired by the likes of Beck, Bjork and the plethora of hip-hop performers he idolized.

Max enlisted longtime collaborate Parker Case and super-producer Will Yip to collaborate with him on writing the music for him write and sing over, leaving him in the role of just being as mental as possible. The collaboration even gave birth to the trio’s new production collective, MAKE TEAM. Make Team enabled Max to make a truly diaristic album in Bemis’ home studio/gazebo as personal chaos swirled around it in real time. Maximalism is a collection of songs influenced by the music that helped Bemis stop hating (and creating) music after too much time behind the curtain i.e , an excess of shoegaze, trap and comedy records. It’s also first of several creative projects proudly bearing the MENTAL flag planned, all revolving around the social and individual need for empathy towards one another’s “dysfunctional” minds.

Maximalism communicates true emotion from one invidual rather than being a comment on it, and it’s aptly named for its indulgence in unbridled Bemisiscm; by donning a new, partially made-up name, Bemis may have allowed both himself and listeners a snapshot of who he really is.