Madi Diaz – Fatal Optimist (Anti-) (13th Floor Album Review)
Madi Diaz’s Fatal Optimist is an album built on restraint, precision, and feeling. Each song seems to breathe in time with her voice, which carries both melody and emotion.
Around it, the instruments move sparingly, filling space only when the lyrics demand it. Gabe Wax’s production keeps everything close and natural, the mic just inches from her breath. What emerges is a sound that feels unguarded yet composed, an album that finds strength in quiet control.
Around her, a small circle of musicians helps to shape the emotional intensity of the record. Jake Weinberg plays piano, bass, and light percussion; Waylon Rector adds texture on guitar; Dylan Day brings delicate acoustic and electric touches; and Hudson Pollack contributes understated rhythm. Typically it is just Diaz’s guitar and one other instrument, colouring the edges of each song without disturbing its centre. This is an album of composure and compassion, where a pause, a held note, or the soft scrape of a string feels intentional, designed to serve her voice, which remains the main instrument and emotional anchor of the album.
The opening track, Hope Less, begins with a hiss of string and a single hit on the guitar before Madi Diaz enters: “Better half of me, better half of you.” The words stretch and rise as if searching for equilibrium. The guitar mirrors that motion, filling the air but never crowding it. When she sings “I hope I can hope less,” the guitar strumming grows more urgent, matching the intensity of a thought that refuses to settle. It sets the pattern of the record: voice and guitar moving together, building understanding through repetition and the simplest of changes.
For Ambivalence she stands in a hotel lobby at seven in the morning, somewhere foreign, her voice sounding suspended and uncertain, caught between staying and leaving. The guitar circles, bass rumbles in, and the chords begin to push forward, even as her voice holds back. “You’re so close, but you won’t hold my hand,” she sings, and that gap becomes the whole world of the song. Every repetition adds weight until the song title describes the music and emotion we are holding.
Feel Something opens with light percussion and faster phrasing. “Why can’t I feel something? Hmm”, she asks over restless guitar notes that seem to send the question back. As she tries to talk herself into action, the sound becomes unsettled, her voice rising against the growing confusion until she can tentatively answer, “I might feel something.”
With Good Liar the tempo slows again. A quiet guitar leads her back into herself. She admits “Rose-coloured glasses,” allow her to “cover up the sad and be a good liar.” The song is about the dangers of denial, and the guitar colours each line, brightening and darkening in response to her phrasing, until she confesses, “I just wanna feel a little bitter.”
Lone Wolf follows the animal instinct of solitude. A low bass and a shaker add movement under the guitar, giving the song a darker, more visceral pulse. “Lamb’s gonna lamb, God planned it / Wolf’s gonna wolf, god damnit.” The sound becomes a slow gathering of strength, and Heavy Metal stays with that impulse. She looks at a photograph of her mother and recognises herself and where her feelings come from. The strummed guitar sounds like resolve being built. “I wouldn’t wanna be any different,” she sings, and the line lands as both a gathering of strength and an embrace of inheritance.
If Time Does What It’s Supposed To opens the window a little wider as she embraces the promise that time may help her heal. The voice sits higher, the strum lighter, and the lines begin to skip forward with quiet acceptance. “One day I’ll wake up, and I won’t think of you,” she sings, testing the words like a promise she might one day believe. The guitar marks the rhythm of moving on, but not before coming to terms with an ending.
On Flirting, piano replaces guitar. Weinberg’s playing gives the song its shape, each phrase hanging in the silence before the next. “I can’t change what happened,” Diaz says, half-speaking, half-singing. The question that follows, “Can I still be the person I was when we first met?”, is left unanswered, its ache resting in the pause that follows.
Why’d You Have to Bring Me Flowers unwinds as an argument with herself. The guitar stops and starts, echoing the hesitation in the lyric. “My toxic trait is hanging on / Your toxic trait is showing up,” she sings with a questioning calm. It is a song about contradictions, about the kindness that cuts deepest when a relationship ends. Her voice withholds judgement, and with each repetition sounds more certain of what must be left behind.
With Time Difference it is just Diaz accompanying herself on guitar. Her strums grow and fade like waves, each one carrying a new confession. The vulnerability of “I’ll always love you” lands hard because of its plain and tired delivery. The song becomes a portrait of distance, with time difference the metaphor, and it ends not in despair but in understanding.
Then comes the release. Fatal Optimist gathers a full band for the first time, with guitars, bass, drums, piano, and synth lifting her voice into motion. As the song progresses the pacing quickens, the rhythm skips forward, and the guitars shift and grow louder. “I hate being right,” she repeats, almost laughing at herself, before declaring, “I’m a fatal optimist.” The sound grows freer as the lyric grows clearer. After so much personal reflection, this is the burst of energy that carries her out into the world again.
Across Fatal Optimist, Madi Diaz lets her voice lead everything. The melodies are inseparable from her phrasing, and the music follows her thoughts and emotional arc. The songs are simple in structure but never in feeling. Each repetition adds a layer, and each small change reveals something new. Its restraint is powerful. Wax’s production and Ruairi O’Flaherty’s mastering capture every detail, from the scrape of a string to the intake of breath, turning absence into depth.
The result is a record that feels intimate and immense, personal and universal, about looking back and moving on. It charts the slow movement from hesitation to hope, and the tenderness of continuing to care, both for oneself and for the person who once shared your heart. Fatal Optimist is clear-headed and full-hearted.
John Bradbury
Fatal Optimist is out now on Anti- Records
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