Molly Drag Releases New Album 'Mammoth'

Molly Drag, the long-running project of Montreal’s Michael Charles Hansford, releases his new album, Mammoth.

His seventh album under his Molly Drag guise, Mammoth is the first for the project’s new label home, I’m Into Life Records (Fraternal Twin, Finnish Postcard). His new album contains some of Hansford’s most impressive work to date and was written, recorded, and produced by the artist himself. It was mixed and mastered by Bennett Little John (Katy Kirby, Claire Rousay, Sinai Vessel). Mammoth was preceded by the singles “Dogfight,” “Wild Life,” and “Hell Raiser” which accompanied by a video directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick (Weyes Blood, Jessica Pratt, Kiwi Jr, TOPS).

In practice, Molly Drag’s discography up to now has arguably fit the “bedroom” label by which it’s historically been tagged. While songwriter Hansford’s self-produced recordings across his prolific discography have explored a wide range of textures since he began the project in 2015, they’ve always served as a deeply personal – and immediate – method of catharsis. Songs were recorded quickly with whatever equipment was close at hand, takes were rarely belabored. The spirit, too, fit this descriptor – one got the sense that Hansford couldn’t afford to delay the relief of expressing his emotional turmoil, and his songs were consequently laden with a compelling urgency. His music typically read like dispatches from an ongoing private exorcism, fittingly becoming comforting points of reference for audiences wrestling with a similar darkness.

But it’s one thing to feel kindred to someone’s private experience, and another entirely to be directly welcomed into it. Mammoth – Molly Drag’s seventh LP – does the latter. Every one of the record’s nine tracks feels like a different kind of embrace, flourishing in sunlit, boundless space where Molly Drag once struggled behind locked doors. “All that I want is for you to be warm,” Hansford sings on early highlight “Coming Back For More,” and it feels like Hansford has warmth of his own to extend. It’s a change you can hear beginning to take shape on his prior LP, 2021’s Resemble Another: “If Molly Drag was an old farmhouse full of dust, that record was me opening the windows and letting some fresh air in,” says Hansford. Mammoth delivers on that emergent spirit, relishing in a hard-won sense of lightness.

Mammoth Tracklist:

1. Dogfight
2. Wild Life
3. Turpentine
4. Mammoth
5. Hell Raiser
6. Shoplifter
7. Coming Back For More
8. Jump
9. Knife In The Mud

Credit:  Gemma Else