Making peace with uncertainty: Max Clarke brings Cut Worms to Murwillumbah

WHETHER it’s the uneasy calm of suburban America or the tension between technology and the natural world, Max Clarke, the artist behind Cut Worms, has built a body of work from details many others would overlook.

This July, the New York-based artist will bring those observations to The Murwillumbah Citadel, touring alongside his new album, Transmitter, which confronts the hidden costs of comfort while arguing that beauty, connection and love are essential to human survival.

Even the name Cut Worms reflects a fascination with nature and the overlooked.

The moniker comes from the phrase “‘the cut worm forgives the plow”, often attributed to William Blake – an image that has stayed with Clarke since he first encountered it.

“Identifying with the natural world, I guess… something as lowly as a worm, had some kind of appeal to me,” he said.

“I just liked that image when I read it.”

Clarke said the name continues to resonate because it reflects a recurring theme in both his songwriting and worldview: the tension between technology and nature.

“It has a lasting appeal to me,” he said. “There probably is a recurring theme, not necessarily only in my work, but in the way that I look at or view the world, as far as like technology and machines versus nature.”

That tension between the artificial and the organic runs throughout Transmitter, an album that explores uncertainty and memory.

Clarke’s songs are often described as nostalgic, though he sees that impulse as something nearly universal.

“To some extent, I think everyone’s kind of a little nostalgic… you try to live in the moment, but you’re often thinking about being stuck in the future or being stuck in the past, so I think I’m no different than anybody else in that regard,” he said.

The suburban landscapes that often populate his songwriting can be linked to his upbringing.

 

“I grew up in a suburb near Cleveland, Ohio, here in the United States, so I’m well acquainted with that region and that kind of life, and I guess I’m just drawn to that,” he said.

His attraction to those settings is partly why he remains inspired by filmmaker David Lynch, whose work often revealed the darkness hidden beneath idyllic American facades.

“I think that’s probably why I’m also so drawn to people like David Lynch and his work, because I feel like he explored that a lot in terms of the kind of darkness that is just under the surface of all of the pristine facades in the suburbs,” he said.

“There’s a lot of people that are kind of holding on for dear life, but in a very repressed way.

“Everyone’s just kind of burying their emotions a lot and it tends to come out in violent ways when it does come out, rather than in a healthy expression.”

Clarke said his songwriting is often focused on elevating everyday experiences and objects through close observation.

“With any kind of art, I think that generally the idea is to take something ordinary and elevate it into this realm of like, not reverence, but just paying attention to things,” he said.

“Anything can really be beautiful if you pay attention to it.”

Part of that attentiveness comes from his practice of transcendental meditation, which he describes as a way of creating the right conditions for creativity.

“It’s not a sort of thing where it’s like, I can meditate and all of a sudden I come up with a song or something,” he said.

“It’s more like, if you do it often enough, you kind of can set the conditions right to be able to create something or think in a certain way.

“The paths are kind of opened up a little bit.”

 

He said the process often allows buried memories and associations to emerge.

“You get relaxed to a certain point where, yeah these things just kind of come up where if you were trying to think about it, you probably wouldn’t remember it, but I feel like it’s stuff that’s in your subconscious,” he said.

“I’ve always been interested in the subconscious aspect of like art and music and stuff like that.”

That interest in the subconscious dovetails with one of Transmitter’s central ideas – accepting uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is really all there is, it’s like we can’t ever really be certain of anything,” he said.

“So, I think, what other choice do you have but to accept that?”

For Clarke, uncertainty is not only unavoidable but essential.

“It’s not comfortable to not know things, to not know that it’s going to be okay,” he said.

“But that’s really the only way that there is.”

“And, you know, that’s also what kind of makes life worth living, because if you knew what was going to happen, it really wouldn’t be that fun to be alive,” he said.

For audiences at The Citadel next month, these ideas will arrive wrapped in the classic melodies and evocative imagery that have made Cut Worms one of independent music’s most distinctive voices.

Cut Worms will perform at The Murwillumbah Citadel on 2 July from 7pm-9pm. Tickets are available via Humanitix.