Massachusetts indie/alternative artist Mason McMahon turns a brief college experience and the uncertain years that followed into “town of cliché,” a four-track EP steeped in memory, routine and the places that stay with us. McMahon’s time in college was short-lived, and he moved into the years afterward without completing a degree. Here, that seemingly ordinary stretch of young adulthood becomes something intimate, nostalgic and quietly cinematic.
Across four songs, McMahon builds a world that feels recognizable but unmistakably personal, lived-in, imperfect and caught somewhere between recollection and the present. The EP’s minimalist, guitar-centered sound gives that world its shape. Acoustic guitars, restrained arrangements, faint ambient textures and lo-fi imperfections make the music feel discovered rather than manufactured. Each track flows naturally into the next, giving the EP the sense of one continuous passage through a particular frame of mind.
The title track, “town of cliché,” sits at the center of that atmosphere. It is a gently unfolding indie-folk song built from atmospheric guitar work and details that seem small until memory gives them weight. Cracked sidewalks, streetlamps and weeping willows become emotional landmarks as McMahon looks back on the landscape of his college years.
His vocal performance stays deliberately understated. Singing close to the microphone, McMahon leaves the natural grain of his voice exposed. The delivery feels closer to someone recounting a memory than presenting one for an audience. His soft, airy vocals sit comfortably inside the arrangement, and the relaxed, conversational cadence keeps attention on the story.
“walk #562” carries that inward-looking mood into motion. A repeating acoustic-guitar figure evokes the hypnotic rhythm of a solitary late-night walk. Repetition becomes meditative, while the guitar phrasing and tuning add a tactile, carefully considered quality. Underneath it, McMahon’s pensive vocal gives the track its emotional weight.
“daily commute” brings a little more movement. The EP’s shortest and comparatively busiest song layers softer-toned guitar instrumentation over a subtly quicker pulse. Its arrangement captures the peculiar mental rhythm of routine, moving through familiar roads and familiar hours while the mind drifts elsewhere. An uneventful daily ritual gradually takes on a quiet, hypnotic pull.
On “foggy,” McMahon pushes the same minimalist instincts toward something more abstract. Deeply voiced guitar tuning sets an unusual, almost dreamlike atmosphere from the opening moments, while his vocal sits intentionally lower beneath the guitar. Instead of bringing every word sharply to the surface, he lets the lyrics emerge through the haze. The production reflects the song’s central sensation, the uncertainty of being unable to fully separate where you are, where you have been and where you are going.
Taken as a whole, “town of cliché” feels intimate and open, melancholy but never crushing, and nostalgic while remaining grounded in the present. Its emotional force comes from restraint. McMahon does not inflate these experiences into grand revelations. He lets streets, walks, commutes and blurred recollections carry their own weight.
The songs work as snapshots of a specific period of becoming, extending beyond straightforward reflections on college or the years that followed. The EP quietly documents what it can feel like to look back at a life that did not unfold according to plan and still recognize something beautiful at a distance.
Like they say, “Sometimes the places we remember most aren’t extraordinary places at all. They’re simply where we happened to be when we were becoming who we are.”
Mason McMahon’s “town of cliché” is one such place, and it is streaming now everywhere.