by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
About forty seconds into “Flower,” the opening track of Mega Bog’s Life, and Another, Erin Birgy provides one clear desire for the audience, “Take me for the music; Take me for a human”. Served under a Tropicalia sunrise, it’s the one lyric that has rattled around for a while as I sat down to file this review. It recalled Sandro Perri’s own puzzle box opuses, which themselves can be inscrutable if you forget to emphasize the underlying heartfelt feelings. Recently though, I was reading Miranda Reinhardt’s Endless Scroll newsletter. She often touches on the happenings in music genres that do not quite pertain to Mega Bog. Although this time her close analysis on her own listening and move towards “songs that feel” felt pertinent when considering Life, and Another — after all, Birgy did admit it would “take a textbook to decipher” its lyrics and their points of view.
Life, and Another is a fourteen-track, 44-minute affair, transmitted to my laptop with the descriptor, Sci-Fi (“skiffy”) Pop, and yes, with James Krivchenia of the notorious B.I.G. Thief producing the sound palette is ripe of the sort. Satellites orbiting high above on “Station to Station” (an eerie, heartfelt waltz), while “Maybe You Died” features synths that convey the grandiosity of a Covenant lift from Halo; there’s also a litany of small dub-vocal quips that stretch out Birgy’s voice across the time continuum. None of this is exactly a novum—let alone the crux. The latter is of course the four piece’s fusion of lounge, jazz, and no-wave weaved into vibey maverick pop structures. Bigger than in 2019, it sounds of a bountiful synthesia, akin to Kate NV’s world-building and nodding winks on Room for the Moon.
So, what was the album’s “novum”? It was not something that had exactly occurred to me across a dozen listens. Mostly because it was comically easy to lose myself in the most infectious four song run of the year—from “Weight of the Earth, On Paper” through the title track. These guitar pop nuggets brim with quips, one-liners, and various nuggets of truth that recall Cate le Bon’s situationist heartbreak. Yet, there is an underlying strife that is felt throughout the sudden “turn-on-a-dime” shuffles of this modern dance; “Crumb Back” shuffles back and forth with an invitation if at all one. “Butterfly” tosses and tumbles through its no-wave anger into a loungey plea for a Butterfly to “please fly!”. When she declares a dozen seconds into the title track, “Let me tell you about the dream” of another life, the arrangement dampens its jitters and pushes full steam ahead, with a most flush horn arrangement that’d make any mid-90s 4AD dreamfolk act blush. The aforementioned “Weight” saunters, all while it practically rolls with the punches that only that whirly drum line could bring. Its intensity hits a boiling point when Birgy asks “Where are my girls?” she can practically summon a chorus to respond. I hadn’t the slightest thought what the call meant, even as it gripped me in a most sublime manner.
With an almost mystical prowess, like scratching an itch you didn’t know exist, Birgy had fully won me over by side B. Instead of another blow of this maverick pop, the arrangements slowed and scaled back. More space for interludes and the abstract, as much Krivchenia’s as microscopic minutia that capture the amber-clad memories of an argument (“Beagle in the Cloud”). Meanwhile, “Bull in Heaven” suddenly throws out a stomper that would not be outside of the aughts garage rock wheelhouse before “Obsidian Lizard” completely resets things with a synth lullaby that had me cooing “Debbie Dubai,” arguably the first time an indie act has had me cooing “Dubai” since Aldous Harding’s (another master of the inscrutable) “Zoo Eyes”. It’s around this side that a heartfelt admittance like “Adorable”’s admittance “I’ve never been a human, but I’m a good friend” fits like a puzzle piece snapping into place. It is a rare moment of when Birgy admits to who she is and how this world—sonically and lyrically—is meant to operate.
If there is a novum for what Mega Bog is currently accomplishing and presenting, then it is found within that synthesis of Birgy’s lyricism and madcapper sonic arrangements. To do so with a flush music palette—one that sounds like a sonic cousin to many artists I’ve mentioned out here—is no small feat. Many of these artists chew at the scenery or find themselves playing with entendres. Yet, Birgy’s words are deep in lockstep with the sound. Right now, it all works to convey inscrutable, cryptid feelings better than anyone in the game—the kind that makes you silently weep as much as laugh with your belly. On Life, and Another, Birgy excels at that tightwire act.