Now, this next band, took me by surprise after hearing them in a Karisma sampler two years ago after PROG Magazine featured the label in issue 128 which covered Yes’ 1972 magnum opus, Close to the Edge. When I heard MEER’s ‘Songs of Us’ which was featured on their second album, released three years ago entitle Playing House, I was completely spellbound on the way it was structured.
There are the folky elements, Jeff Buckley’s orientations, waltz-like themes, catchy textures, and the vocals between brother and sister duo Knut and Johanne Nesdal, this had everything in there. Pop-elements, orchestral sounds, and epic string sections to make you want to revisit the Norway scene to find out what you’ve been missing.
This year, the band are back in action. And this time they’ve taken the ante by going a step further with their third album, Wheels Within Wheels. While their previous album detailed themes of personal relationships, the Wheels album opens up Pandora’s box to reveal the complexity between individuals and the real world.
It’s a very unique structure that MEER has taken listeners into their opened world to go underneath the surface and finding their true self when you listen to this album from beginning to end. The opening 6-minute track ‘Chains of Changes’ starts things off with a bang.
The sound of this droning effect makes all of the fog surrounding this small little town, clear out to make the sun, rise into the west with a beautiful melodic structure between Ole’s grand piano and Eivind’s sliding guitar work before Mats’ drums sets up ignition to get things going. It becomes a flower opened sequence for the string section to reveal the complicated relationship that’s happening right in front of our very eyes.
Johanne and Knut tell the story of them growing up, competing on who was the better sibling, but they have a huge amount of respect with each other. And the chains they are holding them together, they know they have each other’s back.
The midsection becomes this cat-and-mouse chase which has a Gentle Giant-like brutal attack before coming back down to earth with Asa and Ingvild flying upwards with their violins to reach towards the end while ‘Behave’ becomes a burst of energy for the siblings to drop massive amounts of nuclear bombs towards the sky, with a mushroom cloud, exploding at any second.
Johanne takes centre stage, paying tribute to both Mark Hollis and Tears for Fears with a bit of the ‘80s, creating a ballad-like walk into the future with ‘Come To Light’. With its Queen-like epic fanfare, the rhythm section tackles before Johanne makes the journey home to be reunited with her family.
When I think of the fifth track ‘Golden Circle’ after hearing Eivind’s little nod to Allan Holdsworth for the first twenty seconds, it caught me off-guard. It caught me off-guard because I had no idea that MEER would go into this little jazz motif before hitting the dance floor with Nile Rodgers’ production levels to create this joyful celebration.
This track is probably going to become a live favourite for MEER as you can imagine audiences are going to dance and sing-along to the chorus that the siblings encourage them to join in. ‘Mother’ has this very Danny Elfman-sque arrangement, like something straight out of the scores for his 1989 superhero classic of Tim Burton’s Batman.
You feel the coldness, the corruption, the darkness of its dystopian world of Gotham City that’s on the brink of collapse with crime running rampant. And for Batman, it’s up to him to put a stop to this. The song fits his character very well. From being a billionaire playboy running Wayne Enterprises, and as The Dark Knight himself. You feel his pain, and the struggle between two people in one place, one time.
But that’s where the music fits in. You can vision his mother calming him down, letting Bruce know that both she and his dad are very proud of what Bruce is doing. And his keeping their legacy growing, stronger than ever.
MEER have come a long way since their formation in 2008 under the moniker Ted Glen Extended. And it’s been 16 years to see this band, coming back with more adolescents on Wheels Within Wheels. It’s a brilliant follow-up to show how much lyrical structures can hit your heart well enough to create these visual images to life.
