Music Review: Daydreamer by Maxwell Young

Daydreamer is the debut project of 18 year old Wellington based teenager Maxwell Young. Rising to internet prominence within the digital hip hop beat making community, he had his beats featured in Casey Neistat’s videos and made the switch from hip hop to pop a few years ago. Maxwell describes this as a “debut diary” and Daydreamer is dreamy bedroom pop at is core with songs like “Goldeneye” showing the beauty of this personal, intimate, and stripped back sound. Maxwell’s voice with its effortless simplicity shines through alongside the production which shows a ton of diversity both for a musician so young and for an album that consists of 9 songs.

The DIY pop self-produced album is sonically diverse with elements of autotune, vocal layering, heavy drums and brooding guitar all melding together in a way that creates a captivating experience for the listener. The vocals on this album with assistance from fellow indie artists like Clairo and Lontalius are delivered well, but the subject matter veers into grating territory on some records like “1999”. The lyrics on some songs also lean heavily into teenage stereotypes and cliches such as “manic pixie dream girl”, however Young’s production saves them by making the tracks interesting and captivating.

If the strength of an entirely self produced album like Daydreamer is anything to go by, Maxwell has a unique voice that’ll take him very far.