Max Subar Sets the Tone With Debut Album Anything Could Be, Shares Title Track

Max Subar is stepping out on his own this summer. The Chicago guitarist, who recently stood out onstage with Case Oats, has signed to Merge Records for his debut solo album, Anything Could Be, due out in July. The title track is out now, and it makes a pretty clear case for Subar as more than just the player who caught your ear from the side of the stage.

If you saw Case Oats last week, you already know the feeling. That set, by the Chicago indie folk-rock band led by singer-songwriter Casey Gomez Walker with drummer Spencer Tweedy, was one of those live shows where songs land differently in person. Subar was part of what made that happen. His guitar work was sharp enough to command attention, which makes the contrast on his own record even more interesting. Here, the music is quieter, worn-in, and deliberately restrained, closer to latter-day Wilco and solo Jeff Tweedy than to any showier display of six-string firepower.

On the title track, Subar sings,

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

The song moves with a soft, looping guitar pattern and a kind of patient melancholy that gives the line room to settle. It is gentle, but not flimsy. There is a real sense of space in it, and that matters when the whole album seems built around reflection, drift, and the small shift in perspective that can make ordinary life feel newly open.

Subar describes the song as being about “waking up to life and its offerings” and about how “choosing curiosity can spark, growth, meaning and a sense of possibility when we’re left feeling stagnant or lost.” He adds that he hopes it can serve as “a beacon for others” during “trying times,” and explains the record through a childhood memory: sneaking onto a nearby golf course at night with a friend to fish a pond by headlamp, drawn to the discovery of it all and the patience it required. For him, that sense of no expectations and no need to force an outcome has carried into adulthood, and into this album.

Anything Could Be runs 11 songs deep:

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”

Subar also has a handful of dates lined up around the release, including shows in Evanston, New York, Philadelphia, Columbus, Chicago, and Green Lake. The run begins 07/07 at Harbert Payne Park in Evanston and wraps 08/22 at Avrom Farm Party in Green Lake, WI, with a Chicago date at the Hideout on 07/24.

Anything Could Be is out 7/17 on Merge. Pre-order it here.