MXMTOON Comes Home to End Tour with Sold-Out Show in Brooklyn
MXTMTOON – Roulette – December 15, 2023
A native of Oakland, Calif., transplanted to Brooklyn, Maia (who keeps her surname private) is best known by the moniker MXMTOON (pronounced: em-ex-em-toon). The singer-songwriter earned online recognition when she began uploading songs filled with ukulele compositions and earnest lyrics to her YouTube channel a decade ago. After releasing her second full-length album, Rising, last year, Maia returns to the original bedroom recordings of her debut EP, Plum Blossom, on her current tour, working up reimagined takes of the 2018 material. She has a history of releasing multiple renditions of her music, offering studio-produced and stripped-down, acoustic versions of her first LP, Masquerade. On Friday, MXMTOON concluded her tour for Plum Blossom (Revisited) with a sold-out homecoming at Brooklyn’s Roulette.
Despite admitted nerves, Maia happily took the stage to open with the fitting lyrics “I walked into the room” for “Cliché.” With her performing acoustic, everyone in the room was singing along from the jump and continued throughout the show. The East Coast transplant shared that revisiting her past material was quite the welcomed reflection on the teenager she was then to the 23-year-old she is now. “The Idea of You” expressed the overwhelming build of a high school crush, but since its writing, the more-confident-with-age singer admitted that her younger self was overdramatic.
MXMTOON’s natural ability to be vulnerable translates to her fans not only knowing all the background vocal queues for her songs but also various vlog references like a Josh Hutcherson “Whistle” edit and the “yipppeee” calls. As an outsider to the fandom, I was repeatedly astonished by her followers’ antics, especially on “Stuck” when about a third of the people in the room lifted signs that had Maia happily in tears. The song is an expression of feeling in between identities, which she shares being mixed-race and bisexual. Her musing deeply connected the collective space and culminated with a boisterous cover of Vance Joy’s “Riptide.” —Sharlene Chiu | @Shar0ck
i’m so indecisive when it comes to layouts for my account but this is my “christmas” one for now even though it’s not christmas-y at all. eh i’ll probably change this in a few hours anyways lmfao