Last year, under the moniker Warm Human, Meredith Johnston released Hometown Hero. It is an alt-rock album that marches to the beat of a soft snare and fuzzy lo-fi guitars, coated with tender, overdubbed vocals. Not unlike Death Cab for Cutie circa Transatlanticism, the sound waxes and wanes within the indie-rock realm, from sad and quiet to gutterally symphonic. However, Warm Human’s new project, Hamartia, takes a turn — both for the worse, and the better.
“Sludge pop trash princess making pop music for deranged people and the criminally depressed,” reads Warm Human’s bio. Across 10 thumping tracks, Hamartia is proof Johnston understands that assignment. It’s sharp left from guitar-centric alt-rock, demonstrating the artist’s natural prowess in the pop space, a space created for mass appeal — and simultaneously her prevailing authenticity, and the uniqueness of her art. Against odds, Johnston has identified an idiosyncratic pocket under the genre’s umbrella — one that’s all hers. She calls it “pessimist pop.”
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Hamartia, like the contrast between bubblegum pop and negativity, begins with a dark and moving heartbeat, the third single, “Mercy Me.” The kinetic, drama-drenched beat, and its chaotic climax, would fit wonderfully on the White Lotus soundtrack. The album’s midpoint is met with its title track — a moody, electronic art-pop moment that’s replete with theatrical energy. Hamartia’s final song, however, acts as a thesis to the album. The acoustic “Maybe” is reflective, wrapping up what’s been said and sung with a comically large bow while asking, “What would it take for me to be happy? And even then, will I really stop hating myself?”
Emma Howcroft
By definition, “hamartia” is the word used to describe a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero. By proxy, this album is Johnston’s main character moment, a dramatic display of self-mythologizing that uses pop music to paint the picture. Through allusions to tales through the ages from Shakespeare to Greek mythology, Hamartia picks apart the artist’s own flaws and tragedies, leaving nothing out.
A club mix that details the experience of self-loathing or devastating medical news might not sound like an easy pairing, but Johnston proves that’s not always true. She’s poured her life, traumas, fears, and character defects into the project, and it’s nothing if not addictively danceable. The duality of pop music and tragedy, she explains, “That’s [what’s] fun. The only other alternative for me would’ve been that acoustic girl open mic night vibe playing the saddest songs. It’s just more fun to celebrate these same things.”
If the last album was like wading through Ben Gibbard-like terrain, this one is on an entirely new planet. One whose sonic landscape, against the laws of nature, is populated by references to Portishead, Frou Frou, Madonna, and Disclosure. The domain might be of Warm Human, but it certainly feels like completely uncharted territory. To explore this, AltPress sat down with the LA-based artist to unpack the heavy, and light, album.
This album feels very personal and honest — diaristic. It feels like for a well-rounded profile, we should start by talking through some tracks.
MEREDITH JOHNSTON: Track one is “Mercy Me,” and that was one of the first songs that I wrote for the record. In the summer of 2021, I found out I had this grapefruit-sized fibroid on my uterus, and it was scary — I thought that I had uterine cancer for a while. I didn’t know much. I just knew that I had a big mass on my uterus, and I also had no idea what fibroids were. I wrote “Mercy Me” pretty closely after finding that out. It was about the feeling of leaving the hospital after getting my MRI; it was a beautiful summer day in Chicago, and kids were playing on the baseball field and everybody was having a good day, and I felt like the sky was falling. It was a weird feeling. I was in a really bad mood. So I came home and wrote the song.
As a nonfiction writer, songwriting is so baffling to me. I don’t understand how people do it — how you could go through that, and just sit down and write a song. If it were me, I would curl up in the shower and be there for a week.
JOHNSTON: My last record I wrote while I was having a mental breakdown. When I’m feeling an intense bout of emotions, I will write a song about it because usually it helps in some way.
I talk to a lot of artists about this, and it’s comforting to hear your take on it. Many artists tell me they put pen to paper when they’ve healed, and reflect. There’s something special and unique about those who work well in the turmoil. My favorite question to ask artists is, does all good art require pain?
JOHNSTON: Besides the things that I’ve learned in sobriety, it is the only thing that makes me feel normal. It’s good to be making something productive out of it, if I am sitting in extreme pain. And the thing with “Mercy Me” that was more baffling than just like, “Oh, I have this giant grapefruit inside of me” was that I went to four different doctors because I needed to get it taken out, all of which said, “You need to decide if you want kids now.” That was something that I had never thought about. It just felt like, all of a sudden, I was smacked into being a true adult. So in that song, too, it touches on infertility and the idea that if I had a kid, I hope they wouldn’t inherit my traits, because I think I’m poisonous. The world is ending right now, and I might be infertile. That was just a nice way to express it.
What was the first time that you remember going through something, and your immediate solution was to write a song?
JOHNSTON: I got sober, I was dry for 18 months, I got out of a relationship, and I moved into my own place — and I was not doing well. I was having really bad insomnia. I had started going to 12-step meetings, and I had a full-time job, but I just couldn’t fall asleep. So I was making music all the time, and then it just became the thing I’d do when something happened. The first song that I did that with actually was this song called “That Eminem Song That Mentions That Phil Collins Song,” which I wrote about one of my first friends in AA who relapsed on heroin and sent me a text. I went down to the heroin den to get him out of there, and he was trying to kick at my house and then decided to go back out, and I immediately wrote a song. I was like, “What the fuck am I going to do?”
What’s the song after “Mercy Me”?
JOHNSTON: The next song is “Father Father.” Oh, I got to be gentle with this a little bit. This is maybe my favorite song on the record, but it’s just a reckoning with things that happened when I was growing up and when I was a kid. I had bad paranoia, and at night, in every window, I thought that a person was watching me. It got so bad that I ended up nailing my curtains shut, which is not a super normal thing for a kid to do. I do phone therapy, and I was talking about when the paranoia flares up. It flares up if I’m stressed in general anywhere, but if I’m at my childhood home, it is most likely to happen. “Father” is this plea to my actual dad, not God — but it could be God — to help me get out of this old cycle.
If that’s maybe your favorite song, what’s the contender?
JOHNSTON: It’s hard. I have four that I like. “Hamartia,” the title track, is one.
What does the word mean?
JOHNSTON: It’s something that I learned in college in my history of dramatic literature class. It is the word for the fatal flaw of the lead character in a Greek tragedy. So it’s like Oedipus’ fatal flaw is pride. It’s like a theatrical device. It’s theater kid dorky. It’s very dorky!
Do you feel, as an artist, your project is theatrical in a way that’s authentically you or theatrical in the way that you’re putting on this grand act?
JOHNSTON: The musical theater phrase that people say is, “You sing in a musical when you can’t speak it anymore.” It’s like being so in love that you have to sing, or so sad that you have to sing. I take that ethic into songwriting. But “Hamartia” as a song, and as the concept for the record, is the most theatrical and heightened — whether it’s operatic or melodramatic, it has all these crazy highs and climaxes. There’s more drama. “Hamartia” is also the dorkiest song on the record. It’s all references to different Greek tragedies. The first thing I did for that song was build the bass pattern, and it was accidental. I was like, “This is a cool bass sound. It’s very dramatic.” Then the lyrics came, quickly, because I knew that the rest of the record would be dealing with this idea of, “Do we ever actually get better?” Even if I do get better, what then? I’m still myself, and I don’t necessarily like myself. So that’s what this song is about, through a lot of very floral language comparing myself to all of these different tragic figures like Orpheus, Madea, and Oedipus.
Transparently, I’m not very well-educated on the pop scene. But after chatting through the album, the lyrics, the intention — there’s something inherently alt about Hamartia. Had you just added one whiney hook, or an anxious little riff, a heavy moment, it could be emo music. I’m curious: What does pop music mean to you? Why a pop project?
JOHNSTON: To me, I can’t listen to sad music because I’m too sad all the time. I have to listen to pop music and I love it, and I have always loved it. I had hit clips of Dream when I was a kid! I used to dance in my room to those clips, and Top 40 was always such a big thing for me. Honestly, I feel a lot of freedom in the fact that it’s not necessarily cool. There’s no posturing of, “I know something that you guys don’t.” I’m just trying to make people move. I’m just trying to make people dance. I feel like shit all the time, and I feel better when I listen to pop music. So what if I make pop music about how I feel like shit?
It’s like a sneak attack, this album. I’ve been listening to your project a lot since the first single dropped. Typically, I don’t listen to pop music, or anything other than a few early 2000s post-hardcore bands, to be honest. But I have Hamartia on a loop. I feel like I was conned.
JOHNSTON: It’s a fun thing. Pop music gives you the security blanket of genericness.
True. Once you get into alternative or DIY or subculture, there are so many niche pockets, and not all pockets are entirely welcoming, to outsiders or to change.
JOHNSTON: You can look at these songs like “Love 2 Hate” — which is another one of my favorites — and just be like, “This is a funny song. This is just funny.” But actually, no, this is a huge flaw of mine. I hate how much I love to shit on things and tear other people and things down. In my mind, it’s a big character defect. It’s the duality that’s fun. I feel like the only other alternative for me would’ve been that acoustic girl open mic night vibe playing the saddest songs. It’s just more fun to celebrate these same things.
What are your other favorite songs?
JOHNSTON: Not to focus on all of the singles, but I do love “My Moods!!” It’s just so bitchy. That was another one that I wrote fast because I was in a terrible mood. I like it so much because everything in it is true, but the feeling of it is so true. The way that I sing it, the way that it’s delivered, the cattiness of it all — I feel seen by my own song.
How do you envision people digesting the album? What’s the ideal experience of a listener?
JOHNSTON: I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. I don’t really think about that. I try not to think about who will be listening to it. It makes me go crazy. My goal is just for anybody — and this is so cliche — who doesn’t feel good to vibe on it and potentially enjoy knowing that these darker parts of being a human are just being human. They don’t mean that we’re doomed.
For someone who doesn’t know you, how would you describe Warm Human? What are three words you would use to describe first, and then you can use full sentences.
JOHNSTON: Dark, witty, and hopefully danceable is what I would say. Then I tend to describe it as pop music for neurodivergent people, or pop music for depressed people.
This is exciting. I know you worked with Carlos de la Garza on one song, but who else did you work with on this?
JOHNSTON: The producer that I worked with on this is Conor Mackey. His project is called Lynyn. He and I co-produced the whole record. Then we had Brok Mende at Friends of Friends recording in Chicago. He mixed the rest of it. [Doug McBride] mastered it. Then we have NNAMDÏ on guitar on “2 Steps” and Nick Levine on guitar on “Maybe,” which is the last song. That’s my other favorite song.
Why?
JOHNSTON: Well, it’s such a left turn. All of a sudden, it’s a quiet acoustic guitar song, but also it feels like this tender rumination, reaching acceptance of all of these things. That song to me feels like what I think when I’m going to sleep and I actually fall asleep instead of when I get into cyclical thinking, and ask [myself] a bunch of questions; if I were a different person; if I were a prettier girl; if I were not an alcoholic; or if all of these things I think are my big problems didn’t exist, would I still be this way? And the answer to that question in that song is just like, “Maybe.” I might just be being a baby about all of this, and I might be worrying about nothing. It feels like a nice way to end the record. It feels like a very positive note, even though it’s totally ambiguous — it’s not actually positive.
We hit a lot of important songs on this LP, and I like leaving some for the listener to experience with no script, as well. Thank you so much — is there anything you’d want to add?
JOHNSTON: I’m excited to see how people take it. It feels like a new thing to me. In pop, when you have a song, you make it generic so that a wide swath of people can relate to it, and it gets more play. With Hamartia, it’s a pop format, it’s pop songs, and pop structure but speaks to highly specific things about me and my experiences. That’s why I feel like it’s fun, because it uses the anonymity of Warm Human and people not knowing my name or my personal life. They don’t know this is about this person or this is about this part of my life. But it is so specific. It creates a new dynamic.
It’s a great addition to the pop landscape. This is pop that’s heady and leans super alternative even though the sonic experience might not. It’s got that depth and weight. Lastly, being a pop artist, are you going to make a TikTok dance for any of the songs?
JOHNSTON: I felt like in the “Mercy Me” video, we do our Lynchian dancing together, and that’s pretty good — it’s just hopping up and down. I thought that would go super viral. You know what I mean? But maybe I should hire a choreographer.