Meh is but one of the musical projects featuring Alex Petralia, a songwriter perhaps best known as a member of the Oakland four-piece, Nopes. Nopes have made their name through a number of releases on Magnetic Eye Records. The hyper, raw sound of the Nectar of the Dogs EP set out their stall of vociferous punk, and subsequent releases expand the noisy style in a variety of directions—incorporating the viscous noise of No Age and the brooding dread of The Jesus Lizard into a sound that is frantic, joyous and dangerous all at once.
When not playing with Nopes, several members of the band also release under the name, you guessed it, Yups. April’s Man on the Moon Man on the Moon highlighted a sound which dials down some of the aggression and menace in favour of a joyous garage rock aesthetic. If Nopes take the base mix of DIY spirit and loud noise and add an ominous edge, then Yups leans toward the celebratory power pop end of the spectrum, excising the dark in order to embrace the jubilant energy.
But why settle for two bands when you can have three? Slotting itself into an ambivalent middle ground, Meh finds Petralia and co. push their noise rock sensibilities through the prism of jangle rock, ending up closer to Teenage Fan Club, Guided By Voices and Yo La Tengo. Released in 2017 with the good people at Reflective Tapes, the EP Firsts showed off this new dimension, maintaining the lo-fi authenticity of Nopes and Yups while adding a nostalgic breeziness to lighten the mix. If the other two projects speak to instinctive, black and white emotions then Meh favours a more indirect approach, muddying the water with a bittersweet and reflective air.
Meh have again teamed up with Reflective Tapes for their first full-length album, Red Kite Crane. The title track premiered over at Post-Trash last week, who described how a “serious folk vibe” and “a touch of twang” pokes out from beneath “the layer of dense guitar fuzz in a way that recalls early Sebadoh.” As such, the track exists at the intersection of rough and smooth, refusing to lean closer to one or the other and keeping the tone conflicted.
Today we’re delighted to share the second single, ‘Stalemate’, the above sensibility is consolidated. From the sparkling opening notes to the vocals buried within the track’s lo-fi textures, the track is carved from a nostalgic air, neither positive nor negative but both at once, any fondness tempered by the lurking knowledge of time’s constant march. Therefore, if Nopes and Yups deal in immediacy, Meh concerns its self with emotions repressed and deferred—the the hoping, the backwards looking, the longing for things that have been, or might be no more.
