INTERVIEW: Maz from WAAX on the band's second album 'At Least I'm Free': "I'm more than what you think I am, why are you putting me in a bloody box all the time?!"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Finnian Mullen

Four piece indie-punk-rock band WAAX formed in Brisbane/Meanjin in 2012, lead by vocalist and songwriter Maz DeVita. After releasing their debut single in 2014, they came to national attention winning the Triple J Unearthed Bigsound contest the same year. After signing with record label Dew Process in 2018, their debut album 2019’s Big Grief shot to number 11 on the Australian album chart.

Today they release their second album At Least I’m Free. Working with the same team as they did on Big Grief, Bernard Fanning (Powderfinger) and Grammy Award winner Nick DiDia (Rage Against The Machine) the album is in many ways a rebirth for the band, as well as an emotional one for DeVita who was inspired to write the album while recovering from a relationship breakup. She has come out the other side with a greater maturity and understanding of the complexity of human relationships which have contributed to some of her most sensitive and insightful lyrics yet.

“I feel like with our last record, it was all ‘Fuck you’,” DeVita says. “[Now] I don't want to hate people — I feel like as I'm getting older, I just don't have the time to hold on to grudges.”

While the album still maintains the raw, thunderous punk sound of their previous work, there is a new emotional depth to the music which enables it to connect more deeply. “I should be careful who I trust / And should be careful with who I love”, DeVita declares on opening track ‘Mermaid Beach’, which starts as a gentle acoustic track before bursting into a full blooded rock track. ‘A Man Like Me’ is a visceral confrontation with the realities of a relationship that is no longer there. ‘Why can’t you pick up your shit? / Before I get lost in it / I hope you learn to love yourself / I hope you find peace / I hope you remember me’.

Single ‘Dangerous’, co-written by DeVita with Linda Perry (P!nk, Alicia Keys) is an album highlight. A gorgeous ballad with hints of electronica in the background, it looks back on the relationship, seeing things with clarity now it is over: “Tiptoed around the fights til all the love was compromised / I remember, I feel everything.”

The album wraps up with ‘Whoever’ which is another brutal deep dive into DeVita’s psyche and trauma and in many ways sums up the experience of the album, with her trademark screams launching a blistering takedown of her ex - “You could have kept me as a friend but you pushed me to the edge’ - before coming to a gentler ending and, if not peace, a form of acceptance with the final lyrics “Some things just don’t work out right.”

At Least I’m Free is an album that almost infiltrates your subconsciousness without you realising. A collection of classic punk-rock on the first listen, the deeper you delve into the lyrics and DeVita’s emotive vocals the more enamoured you become. There is real life, emotion and feeling here and calling attention to DeVita’s vocal scream is a complement - a shouty, screamy vocal is almost a cliche in punk, but DeVita takes it and transforms it into a thing of beauty - gut wrenching, primal and perfectly used to brilliantly represent moments of real pain. This is not an album that can match any mood you fancy, but it is guaranteed to soundtrack your life in the moments you need it the most. We recently caught up with DeVita to chat more about its creation.

Hi Maz, so wonderful to chat with you today, and thank you are creating such beautiful music for everybody.
Thank you so much. It's my pleasure. It's what I love to do!

I've had such a wonderful time listening to your latest album, At Least I'm Free. It's so good, what a blast. Talk to me about it. How does it feel to have it completed and pouring into everyone's ears?
I'm so ready for it to finally be out there. It's been three years in the making, it's been a long process. I've pretty much rebuilt my life in this period, I've gone through a lot. The record is really close to me and I've really nursed it, but I'm really ready to let it be everyone else's. I'm ready to let it go and look on to the next thing. I hope it brings some joy to people and is relatable. I'm excited to see how people digest it, it's gonna be interesting.

Of course, it's such a big part of you. And as music does, we, as a listener, always, take our own perspective and, and imprint in on the sound and lyrics. What was the motive, or did you even have one, going into this collection of songs?
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it again, first and foremost. We'd had a change within the band, the primary collaborator that I worked with parted ways with the band, and it was quite a chaotic and brutal ending. So at that point, I was I guess at the end of my rope. I wasn't really sure what to do, I had to rebuild my confidence as a songwriter again, and rebuild the band. I kind of went into autopilot and was like, right, I need to find another central collaborator, because this band works the best when you've got someone to bounce off of in the songwriting sense before we take it to the rest of the guys. I'd seen James [Gatling] play in his other band at the time and I thought he was amazing. I just hit him up and he came with us to America. We got along like a house on fire, and then we asked him to join the band. I had written a song and we worked on it and that turned out to be ‘Whoever’ which is the last track on the record but ironically, it's the first track that we wrote together. And I just I slowly rebuilt the band again, and myself. It was a big undertaking.

And what an incredible confidence shift as well because of course, we all go through stages of where you think ‘I'm done, I've created everything I can’ , but you have picked yourself up and created such a beautiful album that is still so very much your sound but it's definitely altered. The album opens with ‘Mermaid Beach’ and I just love this track because your have this beautiful, low key intro and then it shifts and I feel that sets up the record so beautifully. Did you know from the get go that was always going to be your opening track?
Yeah, we knew straight away - we were like ‘this is an opening track’. It sets the tone for the whole record, you know? You know that feeling where you're fucked up and you're going through so much, but you're at a show with your friends and you've never been so sad, but you've never danced so much? When those two vibes meet, and you're like, ‘I'm so unhappy right now, but fuck, I'm having a good time!’ You know what I mean? That kind encapsulates the vibe of the record. I just remember in my early 20s, going to festivals and still trying to figure myself out and all that sort of thing. I still got a lot of stuff to work through, but I'm happy being here dancing and trying to forget about it.

That's absolutely brilliant, and it's so true. I haven't unpacked everything, but I'm just gonna have a dance while I do.
Yes, exactly!

You also reached out and worked creatively with some incredible women on this album. ‘No Doz’ with K Flay, that's so great. How did that collaboration come about?
At the end of 2019, I wanted to branch out as a songwriter and learn more about what's happening over there and work with some new people. My team pretty much sent Big Grief, which was our previous album, to anyone that they knew, any writers, all walks of life. K Flay came back and was like, ‘Oh, I love this band, I've been wanting to work with Maz for ages’. So I went over [to the US] and in two sessions we knocked it out. We just had such a fun time, we just clicked immediately creatively, there was no need for any discussion about what we wanted, we just went straight in. She found a beat and we just went from there. It was really seamless and easy, so I'm definitely looking forward to working with her more in the future, we're still really good friends. It was really fun.

And then you've also got ‘Dangerous’ which you wrote with the wonderful Linda Perry. It's a beautiful ballad, you're really going into other realms of creativity. How has that process been for you? You said before you were searching obviously, with this album - can I do it again? Has this been completely freeing to open it up so wide?
Absolutely. I've rebuilt my confidence tenfold, because I've worked out I'm an artist in my own right. And even though it's taken me like four records to get there, I'm not afraid to get in the room with anybody and try and see what happens. If it doesn't work out, so be it, but if it does, it's really exciting. Since then, I've just been so hungry to write with as many people as I can. I'm actually relocating to LA next year, because I just missed the inspiration that I had when I was there.

Working with Linda was probably the most nerve wracking and exciting thing that's happened in my career so far. She really took a shine to my vocal in particular, and my lyric, and she was like, ‘I want to have a session with this girl. And I'm like, ‘what me, this basically unknown artist from Brisbane in Australia?!’ She's written with Gwen Stefani and P!nk and all these great artists. She taught me so much in that small window of time that we worked together. She taught me to really embrace and, and celebrate my vocal as it is without putting anything on it. Previously, I felt like I was under a bit of a cloak of embellishing my vocal with vibratos or screaming a lot, and she was like, ‘no, let's appreciate your vocal as it is in its rawest form’. Now going forward, I'm so much more confident and comfortable with my vocal without having to overdo it. Just letting it be itself.

Gorgeous, you can definitely hear the range there. Obviously you're the lead singer and writer and creator, here, but you started out pretty much one band banding, doing the whole thing musically, you've had your hands in all of it. Where did it start for you? Were you always a writer, or a singer?
It's interesting. I started writing songs when I was about 12 years old but I didn't actually know what a songwriter was. It was just something that I did when I was alone and wanted to get something out. I never really took it very seriously, I never wrote a thing down. I would just write a song literally, nearly every day after school and be like, that was fun, anyway, whatever, go and have dinner! I didn't understand what I was doing, but now I look back and I’m like, I was writing songs. I should have written something down!

It wasn't until I was about 20 that I decided I wanted my own band. I’d always been musical, I played bass for a while in a few bands and I always played music at school, but it wasn't until I was 20 that I was like I want to give this a red hot crack, I think I can do this. The main driver was to perform, I just loved performing more than anything. The craft of songwriting and developing as a recording artist kind of evolved over time, but the the performance aspect was always the driving force for me.

And you put on a damn good show as well! You said you're moving out to the States. Australia's predominantly known for dude rock, it leaves very little space for women in the industry. And although you are playing alt-rock, it still has this trope, or this habit here, of going ‘we have a woman, we're fine now’ and just carry on being what it was. Do you think part of that reason you feel you have room to breathe abroad is there's much more appreciation and acceptance for women as creatives within the music industry?
Absolutely. You've just hit the nail on the head. A big reason why I'm drawn to being overseas for a while is because I feel as an artist, I am typecast as this woman in rock, and that's all. I feel like I missed out on so many opportunities because they don't appreciate me for my artistry or my songwriting as it is. I like making different genres of music, I like to work with different types of people. I just feel like in Australia, this is what you are, this is your career. The industry here is so narrow minded. And it's frustrating, because I feel if everyone just got out of their own bloody way, they would be able to realise that Australia has so much more to offer. It's very claustrophobic. I feel like I can only do a certain thing here, and I can only play certain festivals, and I can only be this certain artist, which I'm not - I'm adaptable. I've got a lot to say on this topic, because it's very annoying, especially in the rock category. It's a lot better now, I'll be honest with you, in terms of diversity in the genre, which is really exciting. But even then our opportunities are still quite slim. Being the only woman in the room is very annoying a lot of the time, it's a very dude dominated genre.

The industry can also be quite patronising to me. I'm so glad now that I work with a lot more women in my team, but when I first came up, everyone tried to tell me how to run my career and if I just gone with my gut, I might have been in a different place. This band has been a thing for almost 10 years and I feel sometimes I’m pushing shit up hill, because I'm screaming at no one: ‘I'm more than what you think I am, why are you putting me in a bloody box all the time? It's very annoying’. So that's why I want to start fresh because the industry here is very typecast-y and annoying.

And look how well it's kicking off. You just wrote a song with K Flay and Linda Perry, talk about showing them what you can do!
Exactly. And now they don't know what to do with us. They’re like ‘okay, now what?’ Oh, god, it's so annoying!

Congratulations again on such a beautiful album. It’s a beast of an album and I hope you enjoy the hell out of the ride.
Thank you so much. Honestly, that means the world to me. I can't wait for everyone to hear it. It's really exciting times.

At Least I’m Free is out now via Dew Process. You can buy and stream here.

To keep up with all things WAAX you can follow them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

AT LEAST I’M FREE TOUR DATES - Tickets are on sale now HERE
6 October - Kambri, Canberra ACT
7 October - Metro Theatre, Sydney NSW
8 October - Unibar, Wollongong NSW
13 October - Pub Rock Diner, Devonport TAS
14 October - Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
15 October - Altar, Hobart, TAS
20 October - The Northern, Byron Bay NSW
21 October - Hoey Moey, Coffs Harbour NSW
22 October - Burleigh Bazaar, Gold Coast QLD
4 November - The Tivoli, Brisbane QLD
5 November - Eleven, Sunshine Coast QLD
10 November - Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide SA
11 November - Freo Social, Fremantle WA
12 November - Prince Of Wales, Bunbury WA
18 November - The Cambridge, Newcastle NSW
19 November - Sunken Monkey, Erina NSW
25 November - Seabreeze Hotel, Mackay QLD
26 November - The Warehouse, Townsville QLD
27 November - Edgehill Tavern, Cairns QLD
1 December - Volta - Ballarat VIC
2 December - 170 Russell, Melbourne VIC
3 December - Torquay Hotel, Torquay VIC