Max Lawrence – If Only My Limbs Were Longer (2026)

‘If Only My Limbs Were Longer’, the debut album from avant-pop artist Max Lawrence is an expressive world exploring isolation, longing, transformation and ultimately togetherness. Their genre-fluid sound traverses trip-hop, ethereal RnB, experimental ambient, swampy orchestral chamber music and artpop folktronica, all tied together by Lawrence’s inquisitive vocal - probing the sky.

Taking inspiration from worldbuilders such as Björk, Kate Bush, Moses Sumney, Sevdaliza and Woodkid, Lawrence’s songwriting point of view is that of the outsider, simultaneously interwoven with reality yet separate from it, a beating heart behind gossamer veil.

Lyrically, Lawrence explores their place in the world, musing on existentialism and searching for threads of hope in the nothingness. The core of the album, ‘I Stretch My Extremities Beyond Their Breaking Point’ explores what it means to have a body, and how one can use that body to generate interconnectedness and a sensuality that transcends the borders of the self.

‘Dionysian Wine’ is a sweeping, romantic yet deeply melancholic suite questioning pleasure, its place in our lives and how much is too little or too much.

Unafraid of the conceptual, Lawrence writes from the perspective of a canary deserted in a coal mine on ‘Down Here’ and someone whose consciousness is uploaded to a digital cloud on ‘Blood Defies Gravity’, exploring surreal ideas of transhumanism.

The title, ‘If Only My Limbs Were Longer’ is heartbreaking irony - to long for more than you are, to be somehow different than you were made, but one cannot change the length of their limbs, and this desire creates a paradoxical suffering in which Lawrence stews. From this questioning come pearls of life affirming reprieve on ‘All I Want’ and ‘Ecosystem’ - realising that to give and receive love is an answer to isolation, and perhaps a way to live.

The album arrives after three years of experimentation, reinvention and investigation in solitude, with collaboration from producers Robbie Divine (Curveball) and Moses Carr (Plastiq, Quartz Pistol) injecting fresh life and perspective into the world.

The project began in Melbourne’s COVID lockdowns (some of the longest in the world) and this forced isolation transformed Lawrence’s perspective on their project and also gave them time to learn how to fully produce, mix and create visuals for their art. In 2024 Lawrence relocated to Berlin, finishing the album in their travels around Europe before settling down in a new city.