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New Sounds: Meg Mac finds escape from her own sadness in ‘Maybe It’s My First Time’

When Meg Mac named her North American run of live shows the “Low Blows Tour,” after her upcoming EP, she most likely didn’t see the name as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yet last month, the Aussie singer had to postpone all of the her stateside appearances, including last night’s gig at Great Scott, a painfully ironic setback for her summer plans to promote her forthcoming EP.

Undeterred, the slick soul crooner born Megan Sullivan McInerney is pushing forward with recent single “Maybe It’s My First Time,” a slippery piano-blues ballad that kinda-sorta unintentionally channels Adele. And if you haven’t heard the tune yet, her unamused but intentional glare on the EP album cover says it all.

“I got trapped in my own sadness and had to get out — that’s why I wrote this song,” Mac tells Vanyaland. “I sat down at the piano and just sang, I said I would only look back once and then move on. But it’s hard to do that so I had to try it again and try it again until I was over it.”

The crackle and sass in Mac’s vocals are just a small sampling of her debut EP, out July 14 via 300 Entertainment. To cut the tracks, Mac dipped from Melbourne and recorded in Texas after meeting Leon Bridges, who hails from Fort Worth. Thus far, Mac has dropped both the title track and “Maybe It’s My First Time.”

“After falling in love with Leon Bridges’ album, I met him and the guys he worked with backstage at a festival in Australia and decided to fly to Dallas to spend a day in the studio at Niles City Sound,” she adds. “We recorded one of my songs live to tape and then I flew home. Because of those guys, the studio and the feeling I got that day — that is why I made my album in Fort Worth.”

The American influence of her music seeps slightly in to the songs, just enough to hear the effect that musicians like Carole king have stamped on Mac’s musical style. “Superstitious folk won’t ask me back again/I’m just bad news to them,” she bemoans on the new single, an unexpected premonition of her tour situation.

But when the time is ripe to reschedule her American tour, Great Scott will likely ask her back faster than Mac can cast another piercing stare.