Warm Human - Hamartia (2024) [Hi-Res]

Hamartia is a narrative tool often determining a character’s arc (or fate) underpinning many of our favorite stories in film, literature, and music. Meredith Johnston, the singer-songwriter-producer at the heart of indie project Warm Human, borrowed the term for the title of her latest LP, and her first for Sooper Records. Hamartia finds Johnston probing the depths of her fatal flaw, self-hatred, without skimping on the catchy hooks and bracingly frank lyricism. “This whole album is pop music for deranged people” she says.

Hamartia is laden with references to the flawed figures and storylines of literary tragedies through the ages; reference points for the self-mythologizing of Johnston’s own flaws and tragedies, which she lays bare in an almost too-much-information display that is as deviously fun as it is psychologically disquieting. "This record is about my fatal flaw of always hating myself no matter how much better I get," she says.

Johnston wrote and produced the album with Chicago composer and producer Conor Mackey (Lynyn, Monobody, NNAMDÏ). Together, the pair crafted an album that draws liberally from its diverse influences, incorporating down-tempo electronics, drum n’ bass, indie rock, synth pop, and elegant, unstructured soundscapes. Hamartia finds humanity in electronic music, with warm synths, guitars, and shape-shifting vocal stacks frequently creating a one-woman choir.

Hamartia is buoyed by the best music of Warm Human’s career, from the probing “Father Father” to the insightful “My Moods!!” and the musical dish session “Love 2 Hate.” Inspired by Portishead, Sheryl Crow, Frou Frou and others, the LP can be both wryly funny and incisive in the span of a single couplet (“I asked for space and you gave me the moon,” she sings on “My Moods!!” adding, “I’m riding shotgun with my shit attitude”). Hamartia is a perfect pop soundtrack for our current moment because its irresistible hooks and quotable lyrics are the opposite of empty escapism–they’re an invitation to acknowledge your own struggles and flaws. To get in touch with your Hamartia.