From Massachusetts, indie artist Mason McMahon turns memories of college, quiet routines and the uncertainty of life after graduation into the intimate four-track EP “town of cliché.”
At 27, McMahon looks back on a brief college experience and the years that followed without a degree, revisiting an unresolved stretch of young adulthood with nostalgia and quiet reflection. “town of cliché” never pushes those memories toward drama. McMahon is more interested in the ordinary details: empty streets, repetitive commutes, familiar landscapes and the thoughts that emerge once everything around you goes still.
Minimalist, guitar-driven arrangements give the EP its distinctly lo-fi character. The production leaves ambient imperfections intact, alongside warm textures and the natural closeness of Mason’s voice. Each song feels immediate, as though these memories are being caught while they are still unfolding. Across four tracks, that intimacy carries from one song to the next, giving the record the shape of a long late-night reflection.
The title track, “town of cliché,” is the EP’s emotional center. Mellow indie-folk instrumentation frames Mason’s recollections, while images of cracked sidewalks, streetlamps and weeping willows call up the kinds of familiar places that become inseparable from certain periods of our lives. His close-mic’d, understated vocal has a bedroom-pop intimacy. Soft, airy and conversational, it makes the lyrics feel almost privately spoken.
On “walk #562,” repetition becomes the track’s language. A persistent acoustic-guitar figure recreates the steady rhythm of walking alone at night, and subtle room ambience gives the recording a raw, nearly field-recorded quality. Mason’s carefully shaped guitar work and restrained vocals deepen the meditative mood, capturing the peculiar clarity that can arrive on solitary walks.
“daily commute” picks up the pace slightly with layered textures and a busier arrangement. The EP’s shortest track draws out the hypnotic monotony of routine, turning the familiar motion of travelling to and from somewhere into a portrait of a mind that has drifted elsewhere.
On “foggy,” McMahon moves further into abstraction. Deeply voiced guitars, buried vocals, reverb and tape-like warmth create a hazy sonic space that reflects the literal and emotional ambiguity of its title.
Ultimately, “town of cliché” is a record about memory without a rose-tinted filter. It stays with the unfinished, repetitive and uncertain moments that often shape our formative years, finding beauty in experiences that barely seemed worth noticing while they were happening.
Quietly nostalgic, deliberately imperfect and intensely personal, “town of cliché” becomes Mason McMahon’s portrait of a place, a period and a version of himself that now exists largely in memory.
“town of cliché” is streaming now.