Meryl Streek on his new album, and the importance of being loving

Since emerging in 2022, Meryl Streek has made a name for himself in the “angry” UK and Ireland music scene. With his album ‘796’, he displayed his striking and original style, mixing often gritty and grimy post punk style beats, with vitriolic, emotional spoken word, lambasting the countless wrongdoings and great tragedies he sees in his home country of Ireland. He’s played over 200 gigs, and even been on a nationwide tour with Public Image Limited. Now, Meryl is back with a new album, ‘Songs for the Deceased’, releasing on Venn Records on October 25th, and a new single, ‘Dogs’, just released. So, I sat down with him to gain some insight into this new album and try to ascertain what it really was that Meryl was trying to accomplish through his music.

Obviously, there’s a lot to discuss because you have a new LP [Songs For The Deceased] coming out, which is very exciting, but to start I wanted to ask you how you got started in music. Was there a moment where you heard something or saw something, and you looked at it and you went, “I think I can bring something new to the table.” 

Yeah, definitely. I was a drummer for 15 years in bands, so I’m not new to this, but I really started when lockdown happened. I started smoking a lot of weed, and I just went down this rabbit hole of, like, the electronic side of using samples. I play a lot of the bass on the Meryl Streek songs on my fucking Windows keyboard, so it’s really a mad project. So once I started to figure out that that was possible and that any fucking idiot in this world could make music, I just said, “I’m throwing myself into this.” So that’s pretty much how it started. Also, really, looking at bands, there was a band called For Those I Love. He’s an Irish guy. A friend of mine, a friend of a friend. It was his project, and probably Sleaford Mods, that put it into perspective for me that music is quite different nowadays. For Those I Love is just brilliant. He’s from Dublin, He made an album about his friend who committed suicide, and it was just so different, man. He was on Jools Holland and stuff. It was a very harrowing listen. You should give it a look. 

Growing up in Ireland clearly had a massive effect on you, both in terms of you personally, and a lot of the issues that you  write about, like the mass grave in Tuam. [Your last album] ‘796’, that’s kind of the base concept for that whole project. Was there a time when you realized that stuff was going on in Ireland that you wanted to write about? Was it that mass grave issue that kind of galvanized you to write about some of the stuff that you were thinking? 

Yeah, totally. When I was living in Canada and I was making this album, I just got so frustrated looking at the news of the Catholic Church abuse in Ireland, and I’ve been brought up listening to this. Every fucking day, we hear about these problems, but then I started looking at the families on the other side, speaking about losing a brother, or a sister, or a loved one, and the government here in Ireland and the Catholic Church are stopping them from ever finding out that information, because they fucked up many years ago and trying to hide it. So it was that that moment where it just kind of hit me in the heart and I was like, “man, it’s just not right.” I can’t comprehend what it would be like to have information on your family withheld from you your whole life. I just think that’s too far. It’s just it’s too wrong, you know?  

I never thought I was going to change the world by making an album, but it definitely made me feel better shouting about it. That was really the foundation of Meryl Streek. The last song on this new album that’s coming out is called ‘The Stardust’, and it’s about a fire that happened back in the 80s, and it was just a really horrible case as well, where the families got nothing, and then the owner of this nightclub got rewarded a lot of money for damages, even though it was technically his fault that the fire happened. It’s just stuff like that. That was another case that I really set forward to write about as well. So yeah, a lot of cases in Ireland. It has to be done. It does upset me. I am genuinely pissed off at Ireland. I feel let down that they haven’t looked after the people that need to be looked after. 

Like we’ve mentioned already, you’ve got a new album, ‘Songs For The Deceased’ coming out very soon on October 25th, and from what I’ve heard of the album so far, there’s still those wider reaching issues present, with, like you say, the nightclub fire on the last track, or ‘Counting Sheep’ is about the housing crisis. It also seems though, like some of the lyrics are more personal to you, or slightly more introspective or inward looking. I think particularly with songs like ‘Paddy’ or even the new one, ‘Dogs’, that’s just come out. Was that a conscious effort to make songs that were a little bit more autobiographical? 

I don’t really know. I just started writing the songs and they just kind of turned out that way.  I kind of got a little bit more comfortable, and opened up about the personal side of stuff, because that’s really where the anger comes from. I’ve lost a lot of family over the years, my dad committed suicide, you know, stuff like that. So there’s a lot of a lot of emotions in Meryl Streek. The album is heavily based upon the housing crisis, suicide prevention, drug abuse, gambling addiction. it’s based upon everything, and how all of these issues are just ignored and played down as if they’re something they’re not. It’s another chapter, except I’m telling stories about people I knew, or I knew of, that have unfortunately left us too early. There’s certain cases in Ireland that need highlighting, and the very least I could do is talk about them in interviews like this. 

It’s a difficult question to answer, because there’s a lot of angles that you’re covering, but if there’s one overarching theme to the album, or a message you wanted people to take away from it, what do you think that might be? 

I just think in this day and age, the media are controlling a lot of what goes on around us. That covers everything, like these ragged politicians being landlords, and ruling the roast. It all comes down to the media riling us to be fighting amongst each other, and take our eyes off what’s actually happening in the world. It’s quite sickening and frightening to think about the control they have. It just comes down to money really. So that would be a huge contender for what the album is written about: a big “fuck you” to people not wanting to speak about these issues, and to let them out, and let people grieve, essentially. 

I wanted to talk briefly about the new single ‘Dogs’ as well. I think it’s a brilliant track, but I wondered if you could maybe give some insight into how that came together, like how you maybe wrote the music, or the inspiration for the lyrics, or how you got The Chisel involved? 

I never really had a plan in place for ‘Dogs’, it just kind of happened. I really liked the melody of the tune, so I figured that we put it out as a single and see. Cal from The Chisel has been a fan of this project from the start, and I love The Chisel. I love Cal, he’s just a gent, so I asked him to play on it, then it collectively started to grow . I also got an American singer-songwriter called John Murray, who plays the barista in the video. John Murray is huge himself. His documentary [The Graceless Age: The Ballad of John Murray] is absolutely incredible, and he’s a world renowned musician. So it was just good to have him in the video, and to kind of ask people and friends around me if they waned to add their parts to the album and songs. So, ‘Dogs’ was never really a planned thing. It just kind of happened. It was pure luck. 

I was actually just going to ask you about the songwriting process, nicely leading on from that. Is it always quite spontaneous? Or do you start with maybe a beat that you’re messing around with? Or do the words normally come first?  

Honestly man, I just get so stoned, and then I just stay up all night, and I’ll make a beat, and then I’ll layer the beat with some sub bass, and then I’ll just keep layering the song until I feel it, and then then I’ll write the lyrics, or I’ll come up with a story that I want to fit around the song, and that’s generally how it works. 

There’s been many cases of artists getting stoned and making great music. So I guess this is just another example in that long line. 

Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m happy to add to that category. 

You’ve talked about For Those I Love and Sleaford Mods being some of your influences already, but are there any other musical influences or lyrical touchstones that come to mind for you in terms of what you do? 

Yeah. If we go back to the early punk days. Crass, and stuff from the late 70s would be a huge influence on me lyrically. Also Chumbawamba as well. They’re a band that were doing this really pop style music with heavy political lyrics, so they would definitely have been a huge influence as well. 

You’ve talked briefly in interviews before about the “angry music scene” that’s happening in the UK and Ireland, and it seems like, with the more press that that kind of music gets, more people are having their voices and messages heard. Have you seen the impact of that, either with the stuff that you do, or the stuff that you see your contemporaries doing? Like how the messages and the music they put out have been heard on a wider scale. 

I think so. I’ve done nearly 200 gigs since this started, and I always level it up, like I just played a gig on in Manchester on Saturday with Sultans of Ping F.C., and some guy in the crowd called me a wanker. So, I just jumped off the stage, and went right up to his face and said, “what did you say?”, and I said, “say it again, and I’ll fucking punch your lights out.” He didn’t say it again, but that that guy is a fucking landlord. He’s not happy with what I’m giving out, but the thing is, it’s very real, so you’re gonna get hit back if you question what I’m saying. That’s that comes from the love of me standing up for people against these fucking rich pricks. You’re always going to get them. Again, I never thought I was going to change the world with this music, but I hope that I can change certain people’s perspectives on life, and maybe have some people who are not always as caring maybe just think a little again and be a little bit more loving in their day-to-day life. 

I’m giving out about these issues in a ruthless way, but it’s also important to see past that, and see what I’m trying to say to the younger generation as well, that we’ve been snookered by our governments to an unbelievable level, and it’s just something to be very concerned about. 

Speaking of your live shows, a lot of them that I’ve seen videos of seem like very intimate, close-knit things. You’re always going out into the crowd, and really trying to involve the audience. Is it important to you that the barrier between you and the audience is at a minimum? 

Yeah, I think so. I normally get into the crowd when I sing ‘Paddy’, and I also sing a song called ‘Terence.’ ‘Terence’ is about a kid who was murdered in Ireland 20 years ago. It was a case that was covered up, but it’s just a really real case. I love true crime. I love watching ‘FBI Files’ and all of that, which I’ve even referenced in songs, but I just get out into the crowd for those songs because I don’t want people fucking around, and I want people to listen to what I’m saying and not be sipping their pints. Listen, because they’re important. When I get into the crowd, the mood changes. There’s no messing around then, because people can see that I’m not fucking about. It was never meant to be an intentional thing, but also I just love getting crowd. I like being a one-man band, and obviously you have to make up for the fact you’re a one-man band by giving people something a little bit different, and that’s going to be me, in your face, making it a little bit more real. 

With ‘Paddy’, we all have a friend or an uncle called Paddy who dies, you know, and it just hits people in a certain way. It’s good to get out into the crowd and show people that you’re not just standing up on stage bouncing around, it means something to me, you know? 

You went on tour with Public Image Ltd. Around the UK last year. Was there anything that you took away from that experience as being something particularly noteworthy that you learned? Or maybe like a conversation you had with John [Lydon]? Or really anything that you took away from it? 

John was super nice. We were just sat backstage talking about Sid Vicious and Lemmy from Motörhead and all these people. That was one of the one of the moments of my entire life where I was like, “holy fuck, that was a bit mad.” I live in a Council estate in Dublin, and it’s very strange to go from touring like that, to back to your normality. That PiL tour really, really took it out of me, but in a good sense. I was getting a mixed bag of politics in the room. I was getting Tories and you name it at those gigs, and if people wanted to argue with me, I was willing to argue back. So a lot of those gigs, I never knew what was going to happen. It was very volatile. I think that did wonders for me as an artist,  because if I got through that gig screaming at Tories for a month, then I could do anything. It definitely gave me a challenge. 

Just one last question. The music that you make, on a surface level, is obviously very angry and very raw and very full of emotion, but a lot of what I’ve heard from you also has an undercurrent of hope to it, and it very much seems like you are hoping for things to get better. It’s quite a deep question, but I wondered if you had any idea as to what the things are that people can do to make that hope a reality, and to make their day-to-day lives better? 

Honestly, I just want the younger generation to open their eyes and realise what the government has done over the last 20 years in power. They’ve snookered everyone in my age range and younger out of ever owning a home, and they’re just purposely making this absolutely impossible. The Irish government have purposely made a housing crisis exist to profit from it. All of these fucking arseholes are so outdated in their thinking. They don’t want to fix these problems. I just want the younger generation to get out and vote appropriately, you know, and try and make a change. That’s basically all. Meryl Streek is about. I just want the younger generation to open their eyes, and realised that Catholic Ireland is dead. The Catholic Church are fucking non-existent. There’s no problem believing in a religion or anything like that, I’m not squashing that, but I’m talking on the premise of the Catholic Church’s history in Ireland. Stuff does need to change. 

Before we go, Meryl wanted to give some shoutouts to some of his friends who worked on the album with him. So here we are: A Place To Bury Strangers, Post Punk Podge & The Technohippies, Molly Vulpyne, The Chisel, Phil Wyer, Bratakus, Pete Holidai, and Benefits.

Meryl Streek’s new album, ‘Songs For The Deceased’ releases October 25th on Venn Records. You can pre-order it here. He’s also touring the UK and Ireland throughout the rest of the year. You can find a full list of dates below, and buy tickets either here here (UK) or here (IE).

Tour dates:

ANNOUNCED LIVE DATES:
17th-18th October 2024 – Left of the Dial, Netherlands
6th November 2024 – Glasgow – King Tuts (as part of Curve Festival)
3rd-5th January 2025 – Rockaway Beach, Bognor Regis
23-24 May, 2025 – Sonic Rites, Helsinki (Finland)

OCTOBER ALBUM INSTORES:
25th October 2024 – Just Dropped In, Coventry
26th October 2024 – Venus Vinyl, Norwich
27th October 2024 – Banquet, Kingston (Fighting Cocks)
28th October 2024 – Pie and Vinyl, Southsea
29th October 2024 – The LP Cafe, Watford

NOVEMBER UK HEADLINE TOUR DATES:
15th November 2024 – Birmingham – Actress & Bishop
14th November 2024 – Bristol – Crofters
13th November 2024 – Brighton – The Hope & Ruin
12th November 2024 – London – Lower Third
10th November 2024 – Southampton – Joiners
9th November 2024 – Sheffield – Hallamshire Hotel
8th November 2024 – Manchester –  Soup Kitchen
7th November 2024 – Newcastle – Lubber Fiend
29th November 2024 – Dublin – Whelan’s
30th November 2024 – Belfast – Ulster sports club