“What if I got what I wanted? What if I was who I wanted to be?” This is the question at the heart of Maitreya Corso, the latest album from singer and actress Maya Hawke. Her visit to Somerville comes on an auspicious eve – that of the album’s release, which lends an extra emotional charge to the show. The very sold-out Crystal Ballroom has hosted all varieties and genres of music, but the ballroom and its glimmering chandeliers feel particularly suited to this gathering.
In traditional “An Evening with…” fashion, Hawke is the only act, and the entire affair is pared-down and intimate. She’s joined only by violinist Odessa Jorgensen, as well as co-writer and husband Christian Lee Hutson. The two married in a Valentine’s Day ceremony earlier this year, and Maitreya Corso, though it wields the name of an alter-ego Hawke created for the record, very much reflects the multi-dimensional partnership the pair have. The minimal accompaniment ensures they’re able to explore the breadth of the record, while still retaining every bit of its delicate nature.
Hawke takes the stage to huge cheers, with many of the smiling faces in the crowd adorned with paper sailor hats, a nod to Hawke’s role in Stranger Things. That’s the first thing she notices and compliments upon sitting down, and then, to a question I don’t hear, she replies, “Of course I want mine!” She stands and leans down to receive the item in question – not a sailor’s cap, but a seafoam-green paper crown with “Maitreya” written on it in colorful letters. She pops it on her head, where it remains for the entirety of the show as she weaves through most of the new album as well as a small handful of other songs from her now-four-album discography, taking questions and elucidating on the nature of the songs. ‘Terms of Estrangement’, for example, she says, is about running into an ex with Hutson, and while the interaction went well, it also helped her better realize how to close the door fully on an old part of her life.
During a tuning break, she says that asking the question, “What if I got what I wanted?” in the opening song is “like a wish” – and then the question becomes, “What if I’m not ready?” Maitreya Corso takes the listener all the way through to ‘Maitreya and the Way Back’, which directly references the queries of ‘Love of My Life’ from a more surefooted place, stronger for all the lessons learned along the way. ‘Dream House’, then, functions as an epilogue – “Somebody’s son and somebody’s daughter”, renewed in a fresh context, falling in love with life itself the way falling in love with another person tends to make one do.
This release-night show is awash in positivity and the air of quiet celebration – not only for the release of the album, but it’s also the 60th birthday of someone in the audience, who gets a room-wide serenade of the ‘Happy Birthday Song’, sparking musings from Hawke and Hutson about the possibility of someone coming to collect royalties on that one. When asked her favorite lyric she’s written, she settles on “Give up, be loved” – from ‘Black Ice’ on 2024’s Chaos Angel, which Hutson also produced. Thinking just on Maitreya, though, she first describes how ‘Heavy Rain’ felt like it “came from space”, but lyrically says she thinks ‘Bring Home My Man’ might be the best, though she doesn’t settle on a passage – but the opening couplet immediately makes a case for itself. After this song, she says again how beautiful it sounds to have everyone singing back to her, even songs whose time in the world is measured in hours, not days. “It felt like church there for a second -” adding after a pause, “in a good way”.
After kindly recalibrating the encore a bit to accommodate a birthday request, the night closes with ‘Thérèse’, from sophomore record MOSS, which features more of a shadowy sort of wistfulness, and remains a standout of her catalog as a whole. With Maitreya Corso, Hawke makes a complete, conceptual addition to that body of work – it declares who she is and how she got there, and absorbs the abundance of creative energy around her from Hutson and others to make a record that both heralds and celebrates this nascent era.
Photos and words by Collin Heroux
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