This piece was originally published for Tastemakers Music Magazine.
“Nepotism baby” – nepo baby for short – is a new label for an old phenomenon in the entertainment industry. The general public is slowly discovering that so many of their favorites have ‘made it’ due to having connections from famous family members, with common shockers including Maude Apatow, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Zoë Kravitz. It’s a label that’s applied independent of success or stumble, and one that Maya Hawke, daughter of A-Listers Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, has faced daily as she’s strolled her way into international attention. Initially gaining success for her acting ventures such as her breakout role on “Stranger Things” and the recent “Do Revenge,” Hawke has utilized her connected career to shift further into music with the release of her second mainstream album. Moss is a tame beast – an acceptable, albeit hackneyed in reference, indie venture into the gardens of Hawke’s complex, poetic brain that deserves at least a background stream.
It really takes something special to stand out from the too-large treasury of “pretty” acoustic music with elegiac storytelling and sweet, crooning vocals. Unfortunately, this record only brushes with that kind of creativity. “Thérèse” is the clearest — and perhaps only — example on Moss, painting a thoughtful, arhythmic, and personifying ode to the girl in the homonymous Balthus painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s obvious why the track was Hawke’s first single. It’s fun, artsy, and represents the best of what the still-young artist has to explore: breaths of life and playful resplendence into an otherwise intellectual analysis of things only she sees. “Mermaid Bar” is another intriguing admission at the album’s close, with dittiful vocal harmonies and encompassing imagery in an admittedly silly, aquatic concept.
Elsewhere, Hawke’s interesting motifs are often stunted by amateurish songwriting and underdeveloped concepts. While the opener, “Back-Up Plan,” wants to make a statement — “I want to be anything you’ve lost that you might be looking for” — choosing to frame that by banally listing commonly-lost items like pencils, eyelashes, and pocket change feels like a Maisie Peters-level understanding of emotional depth and trope. She too often relies on the literal to express emotion, locking outsiders out of her inner turmoil. Audiences drawn in by the comforting acoustics may be dissuaded by her exclusive thought processes.
Unfortunately, even the best-written songs on Moss listen like you’ve heard them before. Reference is beneficial for up-and-coming musicians; incorporating influences into their work helps develop a personal voice down the line while drawing in new audiences in the meantime. Yet, it’s too obvious before even reading Hawke’s promotional interviews that one of her strongest influences for the record was Taylor Swift’s critically acclaimed album folklore. More than just being mixed by Jonathan Lowe, the same sound expert who mixed the Swift album, Moss directly emulates the 2020 album’s drippy, woodsy storytelling motifs. The crescendos in “Crazy Kid” step in the footprints of Swift’s “my tears ricochet,” while the production and rhythmics of “Sweet Tooth” are almost a carbon-copy of those in “Renegade,” a Swift-Big Red Machine collaboration of the Folklorian era. The choices worked for Swift at the time, but Moss sloppily applies the same formula in a misguided game of industry telephone.
While nepo babies often have easier routes to the spotlight, they also have more to prove in the hearts and minds of others that they actually deserve it. Maybe it’s an unfair standard to apply, or maybe it’s just the right amount of scrutiny owed to those with advanced resources and opportunities. In either scenario, it’s hard to say that Moss is such proof of deserved laudability for Hawke other than being a small step up from her debut. The level of generosity one can muster for this record doesn’t go far beyond elementary praise such as “it’s an easy-listening album” and “her voice is nice.” Ultimately, it will likely go down in history as two sentences in a “Stranger Things” actor’s Wikipedia bio and a niche obsession for the very few.
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