Merce Lemon Shares New Single 'Crow'
The new track is preceded by last month's “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild."
By: Josh Sharpe Sep. 10, 2024
Pittsburgh-based artist Merce Lemon has shared the third single from her highly anticipated new album Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, due out September 27th via Darling Recordings.
”Say I was a lonely gust of wind / could I redirect them,” she muses in “Crow”, one of the more hopeful tracks on the record. Its structure is simple, gentle acoustics pushed forward by an ever-present and fluid percussion that guides the song as naturally as Merce hopes to guide the “murderous flock,” forgoing the voyeur in all of our hearts and comfortably settling in the supportive role of a shepherd. "Every year the crows migrate over Pittsburgh,” says Merce, “I wrote this song after sitting on my roof in 2019, watching the sky turn black with fluttering wings, flying in mass towards the blue water tower planted on the hill in the distance.”
Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild emerged from a time of rediscovery and reconnection with nature. The album emerges, enveloped in propulsive guitars and saccharine-sweet songs of blackbirds and blueberries, from the dead-calm center of a pastoral frenzy in a manner that one could argue as erratic, reckless — a grave misconception, as Merce is just as aware of where she’s being pulled from as she is curious about where to go next. Her sound is built upon a reverence and gratitude for the natural world, how paying respect to it charts a more confident path through the choppy waters of the heart. Merce was recently named an ‘Artist to Watch’ by Stereogum, and the ‘Best of What’s Next’ by Paste Magazine, both rising features praising the breakout moment this album presents.
After the release of her 2020 album Moonth, Merce took a step back to reassess during an era of anxiety and lockdown – even the reliably nourishing exercise of sharing and playing music felt precarious. “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I just slowly accumulated songs.” A never-ending creative hunger, supported by the community framework she’d always been able to depend on, had been newly fertilized by the wide-eyed inspiration that came from plunging her hands into both the earth’s soil and her own. Rooting around for an answer, finding and turning in her palms what had been buried there all along – from this rediscovery, imbued with the vitality of earth’s green magic, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild sprouted forth.
The new track is preceded by last month's “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild,” a lonely ballad of forlorn projection into an unknown future, and the honest and incisive lead single “Backyard Lover.” Earlier this year Merce shared the standalone single “Will You Do Me A Kindness,” her first song in years and a tour de force demonstration of her newly evolved, smoldering sound.
A staple of local bills, Merce has performed alongside feeble little horse, Horse Jumper of Love, Squirrel Flower, Water From Your Eyes, and more. Merce is on tour now with Teethe, before a headline run in October with stops in Vermont, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and her hometown of Pittsburgh.
Tour Dates:
9/10 - Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar *
9/11 - Toledo, OH @ The Ottawa Tavern *
9/26 - Pittsburgh, PA @ The Government Center (Vinyl Listening Party)
10/3 - Catskill, NY @ The Avalon ^
10/4 - Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean ^
10/5 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right ^
10/6 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's ^
10/8 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
10/18 - Pittsburgh, PA @ Bottlerocket
* w/ Teethe
^ w/ Greg Freeman
Tracklist:
01 Birdseed
03 Window
04 Foolish and Fast
05 Rain
06 Crow
07 Slipknot
08 Blueberry Heaven
09 Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild
Photo credit: Justin Gordon
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