Fatal Optimist by Madi Diaz
In her mid- to late 30s, Madi Diaz has become the indie-music poet of romantic realism. On 2021’s History of a Feeling and 2024’s Weird Faith, she gave beautiful, if often stark, form to the damage lovers did to each other and to the methods by which they either hurt or healed themselves.
Fatal Optimist is no less beautiful than its predecessors, and it feels even starker: if Diaz shines a lantern into the fog of emotions, then Diaz’s co-producer, Zach Bryan and Soccer Mommy collaborator Gabe Wax, simply intensifies and focuses the beam rather than trying to clarify the murk.
With the careful phrasing of a folk singer who could silence the most gregarious coffeehouse audience and the melodic assurance of a pop singer who can hit the right notes rather than the “correct” ones, Diaz illuminates the most electric portions of her mind and the most haunted chambers of her heart.
Her accompaniment is simple—only the final, title track features more than four non-vocal instruments—yet not simplistic: two acoustic guitars, largely and deliberately strummed, keep the slow weight of “Heavy Metal” from becoming leaden; two sets of piano hands add tenderness to the guilt of “Flirting”; and a touch of floor tom puts a nervier pulse into “Feel Something.”
The lyrics are similarly simple, and clear-eyed: resignation and desire result in a hope to “Hope Less,” the need to convince oneself that hurt will fade resides in “If Time Does What It’s Supposed To,” and the power of positive thinking meets the negativity of feelings and facts in “Good Liar.”
Positive doesn’t triumph over negative on Fatal Optimist, but, in her modern woman’s take on a very old human story, Madi Diaz negotiates a tuneful détente between them and between the listener’s attentive ears.
Buy Fatal Optimist on Amazon here.
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