Oakland's Madeline Kenny recently joined MJ on West of Twin Peaks Radio for a revealing conversation about her moving, acclaimed new record, A New Reality Mind. A New Reality Mind is an exploration of the aftermath of a surprise and extremely unmooring breakup Madeline experienced during those already awful pandemic times.

“The song ‘It Carries On’ is kind of a theme for me in my life right now,” Madeline said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about the story lines that we construct. I’m living with this story that I wrote and all of these plans and decisions that I made, and then something comes along to disrupt it or completely upturn it. That's a moment where it's like, do you keep going with that same story that you wrote or are you going to craft a new one...or do you just accept that it's all chaos?”

MJ: Did you write these songs during the pandemic?

Madeline: I did start some of these songs during the pandemic, but a lot of times they were just half-finished, and I didn't know where to take them at all…I didn't have a lot of motivation to finish. I don't know why. I think the lead times on records being so long and knowing that touring was going to be hard, if not impossible, it just didn't motivate me to finish anything. Then early last fall, the lead times got shorter, and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I can finish something.’ And then I got broken up with very suddenly, and…well, I sort of just lost my mind. And then…it was weird. After that happened, I sort of remembered that I used to put out a record a year and make a lot of stuff, and I had just really–since the pandemic–been on pause…I just wasn’t writing as prolifically as I had grown accustomed to. I wrote two more songs. I finished the rest of the songs, and I finished all of the tracking–all in a matter of a couple of weeks. It was just so weird. It was like this horrible thing that happened made me want to go back to the person that I was before.

MJ: You can’t go back, so there’s got to be something forward, and that’s the new reality.

M: Right, and I think that A New Reality Mind is like…okay, I have to adapt. There is no choice. You have to either accept it or—I don’t know—live in intense regret. Which I feel like I have a healthy dose of both right now. But I feel like finishing the record was like…I don't think it's as simple as closing the book or [ending] a certain chapter. It’s not like, ‘Well, now that I'm done with this record, my heart isn't broken anymore, so I’m good to go.’ I feel that it’s just part of the grieving process, like in order to understand what I was going through, I had to finish making this thing and have it be done and out in the world so that I could keep going.

MJ: Did I see that you recorded some of these songs in your basement?

M: Oh, I recorded all of them in my basement. I moved into this house in August of 2019. The basement was just a dirt room and didn't have anything, and my ex and I built it out into a little studio. That's where I've been doing all of my work. It's really nice to have a place where I can record music just in my home. I think that a lot of people during the pandemic felt this, but there was no sensory input coming in, and it was really hard to just force yourself to make something. I think that processing my breakup, you know, I was like…the last thing I want to do is make music. I stayed in this home after the breakup. My ex left. So I'm in this place that we moved into together that we built for our life story, and now I'm living a new story that's separate from what I had intended this place to be. So it was pretty odd and difficult…and, in the end, transformative and positive, I think, to come into this room that used to mean something different.

MJ: Do you think you’ve hit a new level of maturity?

M: If I haven't, then I'll be very disappointed that I went through all of this. [Laughs] I mean, I hope so. I am sad for the part of myself that feels like my trust is completely broken and has completely left my body. I feel like I trust no one and nothing, and that can be very sad. I’ve always been self-reliant, but I do feel like I've really doubled down on that front. So when it comes to making a record without a producer for the first time—producing everything and recording everything myself–it was very much like, okay, this is me alone doing this.

MJ: Even though you think you’ve built a shell, you’ve opened yourself up with your album and your tour. You’ve busted out of your shell.

M: That’s sweet. I mean, I think it’s very dualist in nature. I feel very insular. Alone, perhaps. Very much like I’m doing things on my own…but you know, I may feel very alone and isolated, but shows are really moments for connection. It's nice to sing something and know, like, I'm not the only person that's felt this way.

Listen to MJ’s conversation with Madeline Kenney in full here. Madeline and MJ discuss what artists inspire her, how the Duncan Trussell Family Hour resonates, new communication toolboxes, and what she’s looking forward to on tour. Madeline plays The Independent on August 18 - details and tickets here.