Maxim Mental, the solo project of Say Anything​​ ‘s Max Bemis, announces an album, Make Team Presents Maxim Mental in Maximalism out July 8 via Dine Alone Records. The album was co-written and produced by Grammy nominated producer Will Yip (Code Orange, Title Fight, Turnstile) who is also a longtime collaborator of Max Bemis. 

Maxim Mental has also released a new single “Girls The Truth.” Bemis spoke on the new track noting “I’m looking at my daughter, she’s definitely smarter than me, and she’s wiped food all over her face. Some kind of, probably bodily fluid, but she’s still smarter, and so this song is about how I’m glad to be eclipsed by my kids & everyone else who knows better than me. And it gives me purpose in waking up in the morning, not for myself, but for them, & that pretty much defines this second half of my life.”

“Girls The Truth” follows the project’s debut track “Evermore (and the Grammy goes to)” which was written during a period of time when Bemis’ wife Sherri Dupree-Bemis was struggling with a years-long battle with postpartum depression.

Say Anything was, despite its place in a genre known for sincerity, somewhat of a satire of the quintessential emo band. Bemis being the Andy Kaufman of it all was enough to delight and confuse an entire generation as to whether he was a “real boy” or Ziggy Stardust infused with Curb Your Enthusiasm and the Vagrant Records discography. The final Say Anything LP was written from the point of Oliver Appropriate, a personification of this intentionally confused public persona; his death during climactic “Sediment” echoed the end of an era for the band itself. When ready to recover from twenty years of trauma making music, Max’s answer was more natural than obvious.Bowie and other musicians invented “characters” to escape pigeon holes; with Maxim Mental for the first time, Max had to be solely himself.