Mae Powell - Making Room for the Light (2025) Hi Res

Making Room for the Light, Mae Powell’s debut for Karma Chief Records, is the campfire at dawn, when the firepit is replaced with the first stirring of day. Embers, ashes, and smoke of memory give way to percolating coffee and cast-iron breakfasts. Powell’s jazz-assured vocals wrap around the headphones with a gauzy dew, as shimmering chords and keys radiate with coming warmth. Its sound is dream, fully giving way to morning, shared with friends and lovers both absent and present.

Writing the album over a transitional period in her life, Powell’s sophomore album presents the singer/songwriter as both healer and healed, grounded by her connection to nature and sound, ever seeking out spaces to stretch and grow as an artist. The sketches that compose Making Room for the Light’s eleven-song cycle began while Mae Powell was living on her mother’s farm, two hours north of San Francisco.

Produced by Loving’s multi-instrumentalist David Parry, the album was recorded at Risque Disque studio off the coast of Vancouver Island.

The relaxed pace, spurred on by a pastoral Canadian summer, provides breath and a sense of repose to tracks like album opener “Tangerine,” “Meet Me in Memory,” and lead single “Rope You In” a reflecting pool of nostalgia, striving to balance being in and of a moment while seeing the ripples of what has come before, and what stretches out as part of the continuum.

“Contact High” may be the energetic high water mark of the album think Julie London fronting a jazz-disciplined Beat Happening. The song was inspired by Powell’s dear friend Dylan Mulvaney. “The world was trying to tell her that she didn’t exist, and there were so many evil vibes pointed at her. I wanted to cheer her up.” In the process, Powell created a song that is a celebration of friendship and solidarity.

Mae Powell’s confessional lyrics transform self-love and validation into a communal meal, tables set with an insight that belies her age and influence. “Where Will Our Love Go?” recasts Karen Dalton as Walt Whitman, singing a song of self that echoes with connection and confidence. While album closer “Again” with its lullaby-inspired sound, feels like the 3 A.M. whisper that first inspired the track. “It’s really important for me to be vulnerable and open with the feelings I have, the good and bad… the anxiety and anger, changing and growing,” says Powell.

“Hot Headed” explores that inner conflict with lyrics that explore “how I can feel like an angry little gremlin sometimes,” laughs Powell. “It’s my attempt to heal it out of me...The album title comes out of this song.”

Making Room for the Light is as much an album title as it is Mae Powell’s artist manifesto. Join Mae Powell at the creekside campsite, dip your toes into the warm waters, and luxuriate in the afterglow of this summer record.