mxmtoon melts Nashville on a cold winter’s night

Nashville, Tennessee marked the first North American stop of mxmtoon’s liminal space tour. The fans of the New York-turned-Nashville-based artist, also known as “Maia”, braved the cold before the show at Brooklyn Bowl and were even greeted with snow at the end of the night!

Luna Li opened the evening with a mix of singing and instrumental jams.

She was the perfect artist to complement mxmtoon; her performance is smooth and groovy. She treated the audience with songs from her most recent albums, along with a medley of her 2021 jams EP. The multi-instrumentalist from Toronto jumped from a guitar to a violin to a flute, all during her opening set. Luna Li and mxmtoon collaborated on the song “now’s not the time” featured on mxmtoon’s most recent album liminal space, which they performed together later in the evening.

The lights shone red as mxmtoon took the stage, wearing a black babydoll dress and tall black boots. The stage was adorned with multiple, small LED screens, as well as a white door and doorframe that led to a larger LED screen. During a few of the songs, the singer-songwriter approached the door looking longingly at the different images displayed on the screen, which shifted from multiple bedroom scenes to trippy landscapes.

The tour is named after mxmtoon’s most recent album, but she made sure to perform tracks from the rest of her discography. Throughout the headlining set, a screen placed centerstage showcased home videos from Maia’s childhood. This offered a sense of nostalgia to her performance and paired well with the anecdotes she shared between songs. One anecdote related to her 2018 hit “cliché”, explaining how the song was written after a brief romantic interaction she had with a fellow Minecraft user as a young teen.

The 24-year-old perfectly mixed vulnerability with comedic relief.

During the acoustic portion of her performance, when she brought out her signature ukulele, she entertained the crowd with a brief Nosferatu impression and immediately followed it with one of her more solemn songs, “feelings are fatal”, from her debut EP, plum blossom. By the end of the show, the crowd fully embraced mxmtoon’s playful spirit and swayed with their hands in the air. 

Following the Nashville show, the liminal space tour has 26 dates remaining in the North American run, with mxmtoom being joined by two other openers, Juliet Ivy and Katherine Li.

Photography by Stephanie Swart

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