Max Subar Announces Debut Album Anything Could Be, Shares Title Track

Max Subar’s first solo album is arriving through Merge Records, and the timing feels neatly aligned with the small Chicago ecosystem that keeps circling back through this story. The guitarist, who recently impressed onstage with Case Oats, will release Anything Could Be in July. The title track, which opens the record, is out now.

That connection matters, if only because Subar has already been showing up in the same orbit as Case Oats, the Chicago indie folk-rock band led by singer-songwriter Casey Gomez Walker and drummer Spencer Tweedy, known for work with Waxahatchee, his father Jeff Tweedy, and others. Last week, watching the band play live, Subar’s guitar playing stood out sharply. On his own song, though, he takes a quieter route. The new material leans into weary, restrained singer-songwriter writing, with a sound that brings to mind late-period Wilco and solo Jeff Tweedy, another thread in the city’s already tangled family tree.

On the title track, Subar lands on a line that feels representative of the record’s mood:

“Walking through our memories / I guess they’re really mine / You can have any you please.”

It’s gentle, hushed, and more interested in drift than declaration. The guitar figures do a lot of the work, cycling beneath the vocal with a calm that never quite tips into stiffness.

Subar describes the song as being about “waking up to life and its offerings” and about how curiosity can create “growth, meaning and a sense of possibility when we’re left feeling stagnant or lost.” He says he hopes it can serve as “a beacon for others, a reminder during trying times that anything could really be.” He also traces that outlook back to childhood, recalling how he and a friend used to sneak onto a nearby golf course late at night to fish a pond with headlamps. What stayed with him, he says, was the feeling of discovery, the patience of it, and the lack of expectation.

“Life for me has continued to feel better as I learn to live this way,” Subar says. “That’s a lot of what this record is about, too.”

Anything Could Be is out July 17 via Merge. Pre-order it here.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Anything Could Be”
02 “See Saw”
03 “Cat At My Door”
04 “I Never”
05 “Like You’ve Known It”
06 “History”
07 “As The Weather”
08 “Way Up”
09 “Everything Is”
10 “Words Unkept”
11 “The Day Will Be New”

TOUR DATES:
07/07 Evanston, IL @ Harbert Payne Park
07/21 New York, NY @ Nightclub 101
07/22 Philadelphia, PA @ Ortlieb’s
07/23 Columbus, OH @ Rumba Cafe
07/24 Chicago, IL @ Hideout
08/22 Green Lake, WI @ Avrom Farm Party