When first taking in Mae's record, Singularity, my reaction was quite in tune with the title of their opening track, “Brink of Disaster.” Quick to judge, I saw it as a genre pandering letdown that I couldn’t connect to. The listening experience of Mae’s prior two records was far and away from this new sound; and is it ever a new sound.

Several months after those short-lived listens, a few songs resurfaced and opened the gates to the album, sinking in without any pretense of who I expected Mae to be. I can’t explain why it finally makes sense to my ears, but I now understand everything and nothing about Singularity. It is a great ride.

Their performances since the record release have been just as trying and rewarding. Their first three Philly performances since this summer seemed to leave the crowd feeling a bit out of the loop. Yet, Mae’s show at The Fillmore at the TLA on Mar. 16 was a bit of a renaissance; a romantic period that revived every reason they used to be a personal top-five band. With a new bassist and keyboardist, they’ve hit their stride and if you haven’t caught my drift - Mae is so back.

The new Mae centers around three members from the original five-piece – Dave Elkins, Jacob Marshall and Zach Gehring. In the future, the core ideas of Mae’s songs will start with those three, but in their live performances, they’re hoping to have Josiah (bass) and Robert (keys) continue to play with them.

The two fill-ins are in a band called Tokyo, who they got to know in their hometown of Norfolk, VA. Make no mistake, Mae embraces change, and there are more changes on the way. They’re managing themselves, doing the sound and video backdrop for their own show…and traveling in vans.

“You can sort of get jaded and get overwhelmed with details of what it takes to be a band,” Elkins said a few hours before their TLA show. “So, when we got off of that [previous] tour, we really decided to change some things and really take control of the band, because you really have more of an understanding about who you’re affecting.

“I feel like even though we’ve cared from beginning to end, it’s like starting over right now. This tour in particular, it’s really refreshing to get back in a van.”

Coming from a band on a major label that has traveled the country on a luxurious tour bus, I had to stop him for a moment. Are you serious?

“It’s weird, but sometimes being pampered or being sheltered within the bus experience, you can get into your bunk whenever you want and not say a word to anyone,” Elkins said. “I think that was part of why we lost some members; the relationships weren’t as strong as they were in the past.”

Mae is now fully committed to living life through music and connecting with the fans that support them. Combined with frequent touring, they’re relying on their strengths of building the relationships that make being a fan worthwhile and want to find ways to keep fans interested when they’re not on tour. Elkins has had to learn the business of being in a band and it seems that it’s something he will continually re-adjust to.

Business aside, Elkins is confident about the health, growth and direction of Mae, but admittedly, not everything that goes into songwriting is self-assured. Much of Singularity is about questioning the nature of how we’ve arrived at moments. He’s had to confront questions much more complicated than science or religion can explain. More recently, Elkins has asked himself ‘Why are we here?’

“It seems like the older you get, the harder it is to really find a period at the end of that statement.” Elkins said. “It’s more like a question mark. I think that’s where we got to when it came to write Singularity.

“We’ve had these moments and they’ve been beautiful and they’ve been amazing, but what are they all for? What do they all mean? So, Singularity has been asking a lot of questions that we couldn’t get answers to.”

When Elkins writes music, it becomes a reflective learning process. Singularity is an album full of questions and Elkins admitted that he can sometimes only see the “bigger picture” long after the music and lyrics have been put together. No matter the scope of the question, he believes that music is the best way to communicate the unknowable. That unknowable, recalling lyrics like “Where does the physical meet the spiritual?” on the song “Reflections,” came from Elkins’s perspective on his religious upbringing.

“I just saw a lot of confusion and was very disillusioned over the years of growing up that way,” Elkins said. “I know we’re all human, but when you preach something so passionately and strongly and your lifestyle has nothing to do with that – you see it first hand and you wonder, ‘Why are these people even saying this day-in and day-out,’ when you know and they know they’re not living it?

“I think that for me, I didn’t want to necessarily try new things, but I wanted to search for myself, as opposed to being told how life works. That’s in the greatest scheme of things and the small things.”

As Mae continues to search for answers, Elkins hopes that the band’s changes in musical direction don’t turn off fans off as much as Singularity may have. He said their next record won’t sound like Singularity or The Everglow, but more like a combination of everything they’ve ever done. It only makes sense and may seem like a typical answer for a rock band, but there is a huge pocket of potential now that Mae has taken on a new identity in its three members.

“It’s a new band and you can totally tell,” Elkins said, brimming with enthusiasm. “And when we play with bands recently that we’ve played with in the past, they’ve been telling us ‘Something has changed, and it’s really good. Like, there’s something new going on and it’s tighter and it’s more tangible than it’s ever been.’ …especially someone who saw us play like 18 times in the last five years. There’s a fan in Chicago who has seen us 40 times and when she told us that that was her favorite show of us she’s ever seen, then we’re doing something right.”