When progressive ideals and pop sensibilities collide, the results can be variable; but Norway’s Meer seem to have found the perfect formula.
Led by brother-and-sister duo Knut and Johanne Nesdal, their second album, 2021’s Playing House, was almost overburdened with great melodies and tumultuous, theatrical arrangements, and frothing, elated critical responses followed. Now their distinctive sound achieves new levels of drama, bombast and melodic elegance on Wheels Within Wheels.
A sumptuous, hour-long stream of enormous hooks and fizzing ensemble chemistry, it reaches several goosebump-inducing, emotional peaks, powered in part by the siblings’ startlingly powerful vocals, but also by a production that wrings every last drop of grandeur from each song.
As razor-sharp and memorable as the songs on Playing House were, they were also introspective and intimate. The follow-up is full of the same striking melodies and their unashamedly overblown backdrops – but this time the band’s lyrical gaze is directed outwards, as the Nesdals contemplate the complex nature of how we each interact with the world around us.
This Is The End goes even more over the top, with tech-metal grooves and musical theatre crescendos
‘Oh how we learned the truth in “ignorance is bliss”!’ sings Johanne during the opening Chains Of Changes, an early indication that these songs are a little darker and edgier than those on their previous outing.
Scurrying along at a nimble, pacy gait, it skips from joyful, harmony-drenched verses and choruses to a wild, none-more-prog instrumental breakdown that ends far too soon. As it heads to a euphoric, West End-worthy climax, Meer’s big band-style line-up makes more sense than ever. Violins sweep, pianos resound, multilayered vocals cloud the foreground, and everything short of a kitchen sink is used to underpin them.
This is prog pop, maxed out and magnified; and to reinforce the point, Behave unfolds like a tiny symphony, with orchestral embellishments exploding from all directions, and a dizzying succession of melodic money shots. It’s very beautiful and very strange.
As the album evolves, it takes a meandering route through the plaintive, folk-tinged confection of Come To Light, the hazy pop-rock of Golden Cycle and the spiky, stuttering To What End; stopping off at Today Tonight Tomorrow, a pretty but downbeat ballad with an opulent, arena-levelling conclusion.
Somehow, the closing This Is The End goes even more over the top, with tech-metal grooves and musical theatre crescendos. In fact, Meer frequently sound like a band built for enormodomes.
These are such meticulously crafted, absurdly catchy songs that vast mainstream success should be, at the very least, a possibility.
Wheels Within Wheels is on sale now on CD and limited-edition vinyl via Karisma Records.
