They say you should write about what you know and Meryl Streek certainly has a lot of experience to draw upon. Coming of age during a period of economic depression and austerity, Meryl left his native Ireland for Canada but one thing he couldn’t leave behind was a sense of anger and injustice he felt in his homeland. Now he’s back and armed with a sophomore album that seethes anger and indignation and, proving that music is the best weapon, takes aim at the heart of the establishment.
Acting as something of a welcome mat to usher you into Meryl Streek’s world, the aptly-titled ‘Welcome’ succinctly sets out what is to come for the 45-minutes. A sound collage that highlights all the inequalities in modern day Ireland, it is a sobering introduction and gives an indication of the fuel which fuels Meryl’s fire. It means that when ‘Fine Jail’ kicks in, it kicks in hard. Stopping at all points along punks long and illustrious history ensures that this won’t be your average punk album, rather in the genre’s original vision he’s ripping up the rule book and starting at his own year zero. Heavy on samples and with political diatribes laid on top, ‘Bertie’ is the kind of song Public Image Ltd. would have wrote had they been born thirty years later. While much music with political lyricism can age very quickly as times change, the forward facing and visionary nature of Songs For The Deceased ensures it’ll sound fresh many years hence.
With his 20 Marlboro-a-day, oak-aged voice, Meryl Streek has the perfect tone for this brand of incendiary punk. Like a modern day pied piper, he’s a balaclava-wearing, urban soldier standing atop a burning barricade, calling the masses to arms and it’s only a matter of time until they wake from their slumber and follow him into battle. The arresting vocals and the sudden, startling, sonic shifts makes songs such as ’Counting Sheep’ the complete antithesis to easy listening. For a while punk became cute and cuddly; all tartan kilts and studded wristbands, but it seems that Meryl Streek is here to put some spunk and phlegm back into the scene and he gives us a healthy dose of both with ‘Dogs’.
If I’ve made Songs For The Deceased sound like an angry album, that’s because it i,s yet there’s a lot of love on this album (albeit expressed with a bouquet of barbed wire), it’s love for the downtrodden, dispossessed, disadvantaged and it is the rage with which it is delivered that makes Songs For The Deceased so authentic. And when it comes to punk rock, authenticity is everything.
- Songs For The Deceased is released via Venn Records on 25th October 2024.
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Track List:
- Welcome
- Fine Jail
- Bertie
- If This Is Life
- Counting Sheep
- Dogs
- By One’s Own Hand
- Paddy
- Interlude
- Gambling Death
- Terrance
- The Industry
- Murder
- The Stardust
