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MAX SUBAR
Anything Could Be (Merge)
Add date: 7.21.2026
Release date: 7.17.2026
Links:
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Merge
Spotify
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Picture, if you will, a house on the shore of a frozen lake. Icy waves lap the shoreline. Wind blows gently through chimes. Beneath sheets of snow and ice lies ground that is seemingly dormant but has the potential to bloom. Chicago singer-songwriter Max Subar laid down the bones of Anything Could Be, his July 17, 2026 debut full-length album, in a house like this, on a mobile recording rig in a room overlooking a lake in Wisconsin. What he emerged with after ten days of solitude was neither fallow nor verdant earth, but, staggeringly, a record that occupies the threshold between the two, a space that accommodates the potential for stagnation and growth: their hopes, their worries, the time it takes to arrive at an unknown destination, and the courage to accept what’s there, waiting to be realized.
“There is so much room for newness in the weightiest or seemingly most paralyzing of times,” Subar explains. “No matter how foreign, frightening, anxiety-ridden, or unfamiliar chapters of life can feel, there is always an opportunity to tap deep into ourselves and land somewhere new, somewhere forward.”
To arrive at Anything Could Be, Subar returned, again and again, to the sonic and spiritual landscape he’d cultivated during the initial session, remaining present in that moment by working when he could truly occupy its heart, as opposed to forcing it to completion in snatches of stolen time. Most of the additional sessions that add texture and color to the album were recorded in Subar’s home studio, in the same house where Case Oats, the Casey Gomez-Walker-led outfit in which Subar plays guitar, recorded their 2025 debut Last Missouri Exit. In one session, he added bass. In another, his brother, Sam Subar, played drums. Further instrumentation was provided by Case Oats bandmates Spencer Tweedy (drums on “I Never” and “Way Up”), Jason Ashworth (upright bass), and Scott Daniel (violin), as well as frequent collaborators Chet Zenor (electric guitar), Kelly Hannemann (piano), and Sarah Weddle (vibraphone, organ, and electric piano).
The arrangements that took shape over the course of these returns are generous and illuminative, giving flesh to the bones of Anything Could Be’s live guitar and vocal takes without sacrificing their spontaneity. “Performing no more than a few takes of these parts was crucial to keep the songs from ever feeling laborious, tired, or overworked,” says Subar. “If I couldn’t get it in about three takes, something wasn’t right. Maybe the part was too busy. Maybe it was my approach. Whatever it meant, I took it as a sign to move on. These songs challenge ego and one’s sense of control. They invite newness, and I wanted the recording process to do the same.”
The result of this process is a mesmerizing, open-hearted debut that grows with the listener, rewarding time and close attention with an ever-deepening resonance. Title track and lead single “Anything Could Be” is an invitation to meet Subar on this wavelength, his voice invoking the memory of a dream while his guitar gently pulls him through its logic, arriving at the desire for freedom, openness, and growth that animates the record. On “Like You’ve Known It,” the arrangement — which features Ashworth’s upright bass, Daniel’s violin, and Weddle’s vibraphone, organ, and piano — recedes into the sound of windchimes and waves breaking on the shore, an organic pulse that bears the song out into the water.
It’s here, in these open spaces, where time seems to bend around Subar. A struck match burns quickly, life passes in a blink of the universe’s eye, but, held by his awe-hushed vocals, those moments feel boundless and profound, the world’s ceaseless tumult slowing just enough to honor their passing and what they pass into. His use of pedal steel on songs like “See Saw” allows him to stretch time even further, following its undulation to a stunning moment of witness where what’s stirred to life is nothing less than a once-stagnant spirit, a long-simmering breakthrough that comes to fruition, at last, on “As The Weather,” where his voice rises to meet that breakthrough with grace and gratitude for what he has weathered.
Anything Could Be offers the listener both the transformative space in which the album was shaped, and a portrait of the artist, and person that artist became in making it. Its 11 songs are imbued with what the poet Adrienne Rich called “a wild patience,” a radical stillness that is, itself, a journey towards consciousness, peace, and self-awareness. It makes no promises about what’s next. Just the same, it leaves you in breathless anticipation for what that may be, so long as it stirs Subar to pick up his guitar and play through it as he did this chapter of his life.
Photo Credit: Shannon Marks
Apple Music
Bandcamp
Merge
Spotify
Tidal
YouTube
Picture, if you will, a house on the shore of a frozen lake. Icy waves lap the shoreline. Wind blows gently through chimes. Beneath sheets of snow and ice lies ground that is seemingly dormant but has the potential to bloom. Chicago singer-songwriter Max Subar laid down the bones of Anything Could Be, his July 17, 2026 debut full-length album, in a house like this, on a mobile recording rig in a room overlooking a lake in Wisconsin. What he emerged with after ten days of solitude was neither fallow nor verdant earth, but, staggeringly, a record that occupies the threshold between the two, a space that accommodates the potential for stagnation and growth: their hopes, their worries, the time it takes to arrive at an unknown destination, and the courage to accept what’s there, waiting to be realized.
“There is so much room for newness in the weightiest or seemingly most paralyzing of times,” Subar explains. “No matter how foreign, frightening, anxiety-ridden, or unfamiliar chapters of life can feel, there is always an opportunity to tap deep into ourselves and land somewhere new, somewhere forward.”
To arrive at Anything Could Be, Subar returned, again and again, to the sonic and spiritual landscape he’d cultivated during the initial session, remaining present in that moment by working when he could truly occupy its heart, as opposed to forcing it to completion in snatches of stolen time. Most of the additional sessions that add texture and color to the album were recorded in Subar’s home studio, in the same house where Case Oats, the Casey Gomez-Walker-led outfit in which Subar plays guitar, recorded their 2025 debut Last Missouri Exit. In one session, he added bass. In another, his brother, Sam Subar, played drums. Further instrumentation was provided by Case Oats bandmates Spencer Tweedy (drums on “I Never” and “Way Up”), Jason Ashworth (upright bass), and Scott Daniel (violin), as well as frequent collaborators Chet Zenor (electric guitar), Kelly Hannemann (piano), and Sarah Weddle (vibraphone, organ, and electric piano).
The arrangements that took shape over the course of these returns are generous and illuminative, giving flesh to the bones of Anything Could Be’s live guitar and vocal takes without sacrificing their spontaneity. “Performing no more than a few takes of these parts was crucial to keep the songs from ever feeling laborious, tired, or overworked,” says Subar. “If I couldn’t get it in about three takes, something wasn’t right. Maybe the part was too busy. Maybe it was my approach. Whatever it meant, I took it as a sign to move on. These songs challenge ego and one’s sense of control. They invite newness, and I wanted the recording process to do the same.”
The result of this process is a mesmerizing, open-hearted debut that grows with the listener, rewarding time and close attention with an ever-deepening resonance. Title track and lead single “Anything Could Be” is an invitation to meet Subar on this wavelength, his voice invoking the memory of a dream while his guitar gently pulls him through its logic, arriving at the desire for freedom, openness, and growth that animates the record. On “Like You’ve Known It,” the arrangement — which features Ashworth’s upright bass, Daniel’s violin, and Weddle’s vibraphone, organ, and piano — recedes into the sound of windchimes and waves breaking on the shore, an organic pulse that bears the song out into the water.
It’s here, in these open spaces, where time seems to bend around Subar. A struck match burns quickly, life passes in a blink of the universe’s eye, but, held by his awe-hushed vocals, those moments feel boundless and profound, the world’s ceaseless tumult slowing just enough to honor their passing and what they pass into. His use of pedal steel on songs like “See Saw” allows him to stretch time even further, following its undulation to a stunning moment of witness where what’s stirred to life is nothing less than a once-stagnant spirit, a long-simmering breakthrough that comes to fruition, at last, on “As The Weather,” where his voice rises to meet that breakthrough with grace and gratitude for what he has weathered.
Anything Could Be offers the listener both the transformative space in which the album was shaped, and a portrait of the artist, and person that artist became in making it. Its 11 songs are imbued with what the poet Adrienne Rich called “a wild patience,” a radical stillness that is, itself, a journey towards consciousness, peace, and self-awareness. It makes no promises about what’s next. Just the same, it leaves you in breathless anticipation for what that may be, so long as it stirs Subar to pick up his guitar and play through it as he did this chapter of his life.
Photo Credit: Shannon Marks