Transcending Genre and Welcoming Vulnerability: A Conversation with Macie Stewart of Ohmme

My first encounter with Ohmme happened on November 18th, 2017 as I stood in the living room of an apartment at the College of Wooster surrounded by friends watching them do their soundcheck. Once they started, my friends and I found ourselves standing in amazement, blown away by Macie playing on the lower half of the violin’s fingerboard, the speed at which Sima played notes on her guitar's fretboard, and Matt’s usage of tools that were not drumsticks to create a variety of sounds on the drum’s crash cymbal. It was that day that I decided to put Ohmme within the pantheon of groups that have truly mastered exploring the unlimited amount of possibilities that instruments and vocals are able to produce.

Utilizing the Tiny Desk Concert space to engage with themes of political suffocations, life within the city of Chicago, and the importance of softness, Noname proclaimed, “let’s heal the world through vulnerability” as a way for us to collectively move forward during these arduous times. As this life continues to shift and transform in exciting and simultaneously terrifying ways, conversations around vulnerability are becoming increasingly important. On Ohmme’s new album Fantasize Your Ghost , the Chicago-based duo fully commit themselves to exploring the power that comes with leaning into vulnerability. Full of songs that explore the nurture that is necessary in maintaining relationships and feelings of loneliness, Fantasize Your Ghost is an album that speaks towards working through what hurts and learning how to be tender with yourself amidst hardship. I was able to speak with the other half of Ohmme, Macie Stewart, over the phone to learn more about her approach to the band’s new record.

Sima Cunnningham, Macie Stewart, and their drummer Matt Carroll see Chicago as a place that supports a variety of musical styles, making space for everyone to explore the vast range of genre and communities that co-exist throughout the city. To contribute to these scenes, Ohmme experiments with their sound on each of their musical projects. Tasking themselves with expanding how we have been trained to approach music, Ohmme manipulates the sounds that their instruments create through continuously asking themselves how they can push past boundaries that musicians tend to place on themselves. Ohmme recognizes that classical music and singer-songwriter styles of writing tend to be rigid and explained to me understanding the expansiveness of music is what allows them to become more comfortable with breaking away from a set of rules that dictates how music needs to sound.

To walk outside of the boundaries that are being presented within the realm of music often feels scary, but to Macie Stewart of Ohmme, she could not have done it without trusting in herself and other folks who have encouraged her to expand her mind. Stewart touches upon her experiences with visiting many independent venues where she would “see a lot of the shows that made space for people to do a lot of experimental music.” When asked about how she approaches her own music, she stated, “it is really exciting to try new things and see if they work. The entire genesis of the band is that we wanted to play music together and make weird noises with the guitar. When we first started, we wanted to try something that we truly enjoyed and maybe other people would like it, too.”

On their album Fantasize Your Ghost, Ohmme continues their legacy of exploring the expansive realm of music. Upholding the notion that there are endless permutations of their creative duo, Fantasize Your Ghost continues their commitment to delve into the vast possibilities that music has to offer. For this album, there was a focus placed upon being a more vulnerable album. Stewart explained, “We simply needed to just let it out. This is the first record where we are much more direct with what we were experiencing.”

Drawing from Ohmme’s experiences with touring, spending more time together, having the concept of home change as well as different variations of change in their respective lives, Fantasize Your Ghost is unapologetic about embracing the complexities that come along with being human. Songs such as Ghost and The Limit speak towards Stewart’s stance that “vulnerability is what enables you to connect with other humans on an important level.”

This album also opened up the doors for the duo to be more vulnerable not just with their own selves and their listeners, but also with each other, as the band shared songwriting duties even more so on this record. They had to open themselves up to becoming even better communicators with one another, sitting down and taking the time to explain to each other their intentions behind their individual processes. Packed with songs that could seamlessly blend into a contemporary playlist featuring songs from Nilüfer Yanya’s Miss Universe, A.A. Bondy’s Enderness, Michael Kiwanuka’s KIWANUKA, and Kibi James’ Azúcar, Fantasize Your Ghost features many earworm melodies that remind its listeners to be more tender with themselves as they gently trudge along through life.