Meg Myers is known for releasing music with a dark, tormented feel; from her vocal tone, to the lyrics, to the instrumentation. Yet she’s managed to take that to the next level with her new album, Take Me To The Disco, and let go of any limits she previously had.
Tracks like “Take Me To The Disco,” “Numb,” and “Tourniquet” have an almost dream-like element, due to aspects such as strong ambiance and reverberation. The first track and namesake for the album essentially describes the feeling of loneliness and wanting to somehow break out of it. Her execution of this track is soft and flowing but for the following track, “Numb,” the build-up and burst of the chorus is very powerful and audibly shows the anguish behind the lyrics. But to more bluntly display their meaning, the music video shows Myers constantly being crowded and touched by masses of people; representing her relationship with her former label which continuously tried to influence and steer her in a direction that didn’t fit her. It can actually be applied to many different yet similar experiences in peoples’ lives and most importantly, it gives the idea of how uncomfortable it is to be in such situations. “Tourniquet” almost has a middle ground between the former two; it has a stronger sound than “Take Me To The Disco,” but softer than “Numb.” It addresses the struggle of not knowing how to let go of a relationship that needs to end.
The album gets more intense with “Tear Me To Pieces,” where she expresses pain from a damaging relationship mixed with anger. She starts off softly, almost lethargic, and then practically explodes at the chorus. “Jealous Sea” is one of the best examples of how you need to really immerse yourself in the instrumentation of these songs. The overall feel of it sounds eerily seductive, but some of the instrumentation, particularly what sounds like very high-pitched and harshly-played strings, resembles what you would hear during the most intense scenes of a thriller movie. The wordplay of “Jealous Sea” is also notable, as it cleverly gives the representation of how the jealousy she feels hits her harshly and uncontrollably like waves of the sea.
“Death of Me” and “Some People” both have a lighter and slightly more upbeat melody, but still have darker themes; the former revolving around a relationship that has a lot of rough times, but they’re still fighting for it. However, from another perspective it could also refer to oneself, or a certain quality of theirs. The latter sounds like it’s from the perspectives of both dealing with personality/mental disorders and those who love someone with those disorders.
“Done” is very dark and emotional. Of course this applies to the vast majority of Myers’s music, but in this she expresses intense stress from her life and speculates if she’s perhaps ready to let go of and escape from all of it. “I’m Not Sorry” is also about a relationship that’s been going through rough patches and Myers is trying to fight to keep it going. It starts off more in the style of a very grim ballad but grows into powerful electro-alternative rock as her soft pleas turn into desperate cries. “Little Black Death” follows the pattern of having lyrics about a damaging relationship. She expresses that the end of the relationship leaves her emotionally empty: “Now it’s over, no more feeling, nothing left to believe in.” It also follows the pattern of starting off relatively calm but eventually transitions to Myers screaming out the lyrics. It’s as though in reality, she initially responds to these problems with a sort of numb acceptance but eventually, the stress and emotions caused by everything build up and suddenly burst out.
“Funeral” is a very interesting song, by the melody of the vocals and instrumental alone. A great detail to it is the riff done by what sounds like a mandolin. The song is incredibly haunting, perfectly fitting the lyrics. Exactly what they mean could be debated, but she seems to talk about the danger of loving her. She says how “well-behaved” she’ll be, but ultimately she won’t return the love and will end up hurting the other person. “Baby, my love’s like a funeral” could potentially mean that loving her is like loving someone who’s dead. The album ends with “Constant,” a beautiful acoustic piece that rounds out how she seems to generally feel about her own mentality. It’s as though after all the frustration and intensity put into the other tracks, she finally tires and settles down to somberly explain her sadness and worries.
One of the truly amazing things about this album is the realness of it. It didn’t feel like Myers making up stories and putting a good tune to it; you feel her overwhelming emotion and passion in each song. Rather than simply being dark and grim, they’re all utterly entrancing in such a chilling way. A great aspect of artistry is how the artists can manage to put their whole selves into their work, and that’s something that Myers accomplished beautifully with Take Me To The Disco.
Meg Myers is currently on tour, you can find dates and tickets here:
https://www.megmyers.com/tour
