Mac Ayres‘ new album, cloudy, is a love letter to his past.
The slow-burning album consists of 15 tracks, including popular uploads on SoundCloud such as “alone with you,” “games” and “she just wanna see me rn.”
Lyrically, the album explores themes of love, grief, isolation and self-transformation over mellow soundscapes. “This project is an homage to my foundation as a musician,” says Ayres. “These are some of the first songs I have ever written or produced. I was learning a lot about not only my craft, but also myself as a person. At the time I wrote these songs, I had a lot of uncertainty in my life. I dropped out of school. I fell in love. I had some of my highest highs and some of my lowest lows.”
He continues, “I just hope you can hear the innocence, the naivety, and the pure love that I have for music in this project. These songs are an important piece of who I am today, even eight years after writing and recording them. I hope it’s a reminder that you can never know where you’re going, without remembering where you’ve been.”
The album’s current focus track, “alone with you,” was inspired by a past lover. “We would lay around in our apartments and listen to so much music. She was an amazing jazz pianist, so she had put me onto a lot of great jazz keys players I had never really heard before,” Ayres tells Rated R&B.
“One of those was Oscar Peterson, and the sample from this song comes off of her favorite record, ‘Pastel Moods.’ In spring of that semester, I had gotten an offer to open up for Pomo on tour. That was enough for me to quit school, move back home to Long Island and go all in on music. She and I had to be long-distance for a while afterwards, and I would listen to this record when I missed her.”
Cloudy is the follow-up to Ayres’ 2023 album, Comfortable Enough.
Stream Mac Ayres’ new album cloudy below.
