2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

Meg Myers

4905

Meg Myers is dark. Meg Myers is sexual. Meg Myers is addictive. Meg Myers is humorous. Meg Myers is haunted. Meg Myers believes in few rules and no restraints. Her music is raw and sad and fit to freeze blood. It is the sound of a soul splintering as it soars.

There is no accurate way to describe her songs. That’s a standard issue statement for every inscrutable artist, but there’s something even more iconoclastic about the girl from the Smokey Mountains. She’s neither a plasticine made­up pop artist nor a singer/songwriter in the acoustic guitars and coffee shop mold. Maybe you should just listen to “Heart Heart Head,” her newest track since signing to Atlantic Records.

‘"Heart Heart Head" is about something that doesn't exist, or only exists inside of you. It's about having this deep yearning for true love,” says Myers, now based in Los Angeles. “It's about sleeping around, hoping to satisfy that craving, but in your heart ­ mostly your heart ­ and in your head, you know these people aren't going to make you happy.”

Meg’s live performance of the song is imparted with a searing intensity. Myers’ voice ascends to ethereal quarters; her body breaks into spastic dance. This is no put­on for purpose of entertainment. This is an attempt to expunge the poison and pressure. Think Fiona Apple covering a tearful Ghostface Killah song.

Produced and co­written by Dr. Rosen Rosen, last year’s Daughter in the Choir EP is suffused with similarly forceful fervor. Her first video for “Monster” racked up over 150,000 views without label involvement. Naming her their “Band of the Day,” The Guardian described Myers as “looking like a Laurel Canyon throwback,” but singing like “Stevie Nicks in Hell or a mini Alanis Morissette.”

Her follow­up single, “Tennessee” serrated eastside LA hipsters—mocking vegan BBQ trucks, lame bands gigging in abandoned synagogues, and men with mustache tattoos on their fingers. It revealed that for all the pain and power of her songs, Myers steers clear of melodrama through caustic wit. Legendary British radio DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, best known for breaking dubstep to the world, named it her “Game Changer” track of the week, hailing it as the “toughest, sharpest, funniest, freshest tune that I’ve heard in recent memory.”

“I don’t think the humor would exist without the dark stuff and vice versa,” Myers says. “It just has to be there. Love and death and heartache are really funny. They have to be. Otherwise it’s too painful."

So what does this all mean? That’s up to you. The point is that nothing is left behind. These songs are delicate and damaged and powerful and impossible to pin down. They are proof that Meg Myers has arrived.

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