PMX explore time, transcendence and… vinyl

The Paige McNaught Experience (PMX) are set to launch their new album Temenos on 12″ coloured vinyl with a special afternoon show from 3pm-6.30pm on Saturday, July 6, at The Bird with Veruca Moon, ️Veils and special guests. BOB GORDON caught up with McNaught to find out about the writing process behind the album.

Some six years on from the Paige McNaught Experience’s (PMX) first album the band have released its follow-up, Temenos. It’s a rich feast of considerations, both theme-wise and musically.

“Much has happened personally and universally in those six years,” Paige McNaught reflects. “I’m quite interested in the idea of post-traumatic growth. The album art reflects this with its super-bright colours. It’s the way we see life after living in darkness…the way we evolve, because of the terrible things that happen to us, the connections we find and make when we are broken and have to put ourselves back together again.

“The light that comes in and out of a broken heart, a broken world, when we are brave enough to be vulnerable and reveal what is human, what is real of our lived experience.”

It has, of course, been an interesting and challenging time since 2018 for PMX, with band members changing, not to mention the COVID era presenting its own challenges for all creatives. Such things have very much found their way onto the new album.

“We’ve had more than a few trials and tribulations on our way to making this album as a band,” McNaught notes. “Finding the right combination of players is always essential. And after the first line-up blew up, Alex (Chapman, bass/backing vocals) and I were determined to find the right people, which not only meant being able to fit in with the music but also to provide a stress- and drama-free environment so that the music could be the focus. It’s a very personal process creating music together. It works best if it’s a safe place free of drama and ego.”

Like many musicians, McNaught had to find new ways to be creative in order to make meaning of her experience during those isolated COVID times. Unable to rehearse, perform, or write with her bandmates, she acquainted herself with GarageBand by way of filling out new songs with various instrumental parts.

“It made me focus on writing alone rather than co-writing,” she says. “I wrote the song Safe Inside, which is the first song on the album, during lockdown. The whole idea of personal safety became quite relevant at that time. Not only being safe inside our houses, safe behind masks from this unknown virus, but just as importantly, how that tapped into our need to be around others and as a trigger to what we find when forced to be with ourselves.

“Many people did not know what to do with themselves without work or the things that distract them from looking inward. COVID made us look at the way we deal with uncertainty in our lives. As an affectionate person, it felt very strange to see friends and family and to not be able to touch them, so I wrote that song as a way to reach and touch those I couldn’t at the time.”

In McNaught’s neighbourhood, someone had taken to leaving notes around the place that she spotted while out on walks. ‘Don’t forget to breathe’, said one. ‘Be Kind’ offered another. ‘It ain’t easy, love more, life is beautiful’ pondered a third. These kindnesses provided comfort in quiet times to a creative heart, and by the time that some normality returned and live performances resumed, there was a sense of gratitude felt onstage and off.

“Once gigs started happening again, there was this incredible feeling of sharing a present-moment experience through music together, between musicians and their audiences,” McNaught recalls. “Of music lifting us out of our isolation and loneliness. It felt like a privilege to play, and I wrote the song Scene of the Divine, which relates to performing and being on stage to a divine place.

“There really is nothing quite like being on stage and sharing something quite personal like my songs with a receptive audience. It feels like magic to be in a place of vulnerability where potentially everything could go wrong, but it doesn’t, and instead there is this amazing connection.”

Further to this audience connection is how much an artist is comfortable revealing about themselves in songs. A self-described shy person, McNaught loves how songwriting, through imagery and metaphor, can weave a world outside of the specifics of what may be personal to create an atmosphere to which others may be able to relate.

“I’ve always used songwriting as a kind of release,” she says. “Now I find that even if I start the song in a dark place, by the end of it, the feeling and my perspective have been transformed, and that transformation is within the song itself. It’s very healing for me. I actually say things in songs that I wouldn’t really talk about or tell people about. Writing my songs and singing them to others gives me the voice I probably don’t have in day-to-day life.

“I’m fairly deep, an introspective person, but I’m also fun, and I love sharing joy with others. I enjoy mystery. I love the way songs can hold personal meaning for the listener that is different from mine. Sometimes my songs just fall out of me, and I don’t really know what it all means until much later. Or the meaning changes depending on what I’m going through. Some songs are more blatant and allow me to respond or say things that I’d probably never say in person.”

The song Loose, as an example, allowed McNaught to stand up for herself and turn things around towards someone who had misunderstood her.

“You should be careful what you say to a songwriter, as you may find it later in a song,” she laughs. “Seriously though, I feel fortunate to have this avenue in which to process my experience.”

McNaught says that lyrically, there’s a thematic pull towards transformation and empowerment across the songs on Temenos, noting that band member and backing singer Jamie Mac describes PMX’s music as ‘Medicine Rock’.

“The song Medicine does perhaps encapsulate the essence of this well with its dual message that we and our art are the medicine we have been searching for all along,” McNaught ponders. “I think this is a reflection of my work as an art therapist, where expression walks hand-in-hand with the subconscious in order to process personal experience and guide the self towards new perspectives, transcendence and connection.”

Indeed, the title Temenos is a word that McNaught happened upon while studying art therapy. A Greek word meaning ‘sacred precinct’, Carl Jung used it to speak about the safe place he created for his clients so that they were free to be themselves without fear in order to reveal themselves and enter into a conversation with the subconscious.

“For me, the current band space is a safe and sacred place in which to explore and grow,” McNaught explains. “In alchemy, Temenos refers to a container for transformation, which fits perfectly in the context of the album and its songs, where we find our flow in order to break free of suffering in order to celebrate the world and our humanity.”

Band co-founder Alex Chapman, McNaught says, “is a rock of steadiness and enthusiasm.” She has known guitarist Shane Bender since childhood and has reconnected in the last five years. Raph Whittingham, on drums, is also a member of The Clouds, which is a huge inspiration for her.

Former guitarist Sze Guitardemon still joins the band onstage and played on Medicine. “The song really needed the Middle Eastern elements and the splendid noise tsunami that Sze brings to that track,” she notes. The album was recorded by Stu McLaughlan at Hopping Mouse Studio and also features Jamie Mac (background vocals), Madeleine Antoine (violin) and Mo Wilson (piano/Rhodes).

Following the coloured vinyl launch for Temenos, some WA touring, video clips, and more new music are on the horizon. In the meantime, the work is out there to dive into and make of what you will.

“I don’t tend to consider what is evoked when writing because I’ve realised that I’m not really in control of the meaning others make,” McNaught says. “I usually write as a quest to find meaning from my life and to transcend my difficulties. But in terms of my hope for those listening, I hope that they may find a connection to themselves, inspiration to create, a transcendence from the everyday… whatever they hope to find.”

Photo by Rodney Stratton