“I’m giving you permission to be honest.”
It will soon be a decade since Meg Myers dropped her debut EP, Daughter in the Choir, back in 2013. Since then she has weaved through singer-songwriter, folk and ’90s inspired pop sounds and aesthetics. The most recent thread has seen Myers embrace the early-’00s pop-rock wholeheartedly, with a sprinkling of modern day influences as an added texture. One of my entry points into TZIA was the discovery of Andy D. Park working on the production and writing of the 53-minute record. With his previous engineering work including Deftones‘ record, Ohms, as a vocal Deftones fan, I entered with a certain expectation of seeing a correlation in quality between Ohms and TZIA.
As TZIA begins with “CHILDREN OF LIGHT II” the warning signs begin to appear. The modified vocals with an audible pitch-shift doesn’t sit pleasantly on the ear. In moments, especially on the chorus, it’s enough to want to shut the record off, even as early on as this. Looking toward the production and mixing, “CHILDREN OF LIGHT II” showcases TZIA in a relatively positive light, yet it only provides a limited amount of leeway in terms of tolerance for its overall sound.
The run between “A NEW SOCIETY” and “T33NAGERS“ displays overly cheesy and horrendously out-of-touch songwriting, especially within the context of progression of pop music as it is today. With the previous issues persisting, “A NEW SOCIETY” delves into worn through concepts, leading it to be come off as inauthentic at best, and offensively bad at worst. “ME” contains a decent bridge within the chaos, yet still somehow manages to replace Taylor Swift‘s achievement for the most dreadful song to don that moniker.
“HTIS”, which stands for “hiding that I’m sexual”, has an undeniably important purpose; speaking on the repression of women’s sexuality. I don’t think it’s talked about enough whatsoever, even within the general music space, but I just cannot overlook the atrocious delivery of the subject on this track. At best, this rendition is cringey, and at worst, uncomfortable. In addition to that, the pre-chorus in particular is just so plainly aggravating. It’s incredibly deflating to hear such an important subject tackled with such a lack of grace, but given the impression throughout the album thus far, it hardly proves surprising.
TZIA reaches its absolute nadir with “T33NAGERS”, largely due to its lyrical content. With continuing issues becoming exhausting by this point, keeping in mind this is only a third into the record, it doesn’t bode well for the album as a whole. The experimental vocal performance across this cut is daring, but it simply does not work here, or anywhere else on this project for that matter. One line that stuck out and continues to haunt me as I type this is “wakey wakey, slumber party”. The track poorly spoon feeds attempts at social commentary that would likely describe itself with the word ’empowering’, but ends up feeling underdeveloped and eyeroll-inducing. I’d like to be constructive and say that at least the continua build-up on this song actually goes somewhere, but the climax proves to, disappointingly, just be a slightly louder version of what comes before it.
Eventually, we get to “MY MIRROR”, and I’m ecstatic to reveal with great generosity that this serves as the crest of this project. This would be my “favorite” of hers on this record, because it just doesn’t try to do anything valorous only to fail miserably, like almost every other song on TZIA. I actually kind of like the short instrumental passages after each chorus, but that comes with another fault of its own; no proper bridge. This cut is just a few verses with a chorus in between each, leaving almost no room for diversity or imagination. Nonetheless, comparing it to the last few tracks, I guess that’s what ended up improving the quality here. Unfortunately, after this brief intermission for my ears, the saga of suffering perseveres.
“I just want to touch somebody, so they can be their own somebody.”
It’s quite difficult to get behind any of the writing on TZIA, as while the intent might be there, it comes across as lacking in integrity in many cases. It could be argued it may not always be necessary, and that being blunt in your writing is acceptable, but there is just nothing to make up for the obscene amount of juvenile penmanship seen here. Historical listeners of Meg Myers might be perplexed by the addition of “Numb” on the tracklist, which is a cover of Linkin Park‘s hit song, rather than her 2018 track of the same name that featured on Take Me To The Disco. Covering any Linkin Park is deceptively difficult, and I’ve yet to come across a cover that has captured or put an improved twist on the much loved music they produced. Unfortunately, this cover of “Numb” will simply join the ever-growing landfill of Hybrid Theory and Meteora covers that aren’t particularly good.
I wrote down in my notes that I “zoned out” for the next few tracks, and after re-listening to them, that definitely checks out. This following tracks stand as TZIA‘s most insignificant, simply bringing nothing new to the table, both in terms of content and sonic variation. Although, “SOPHIA <144>” caught my attention, perhaps for the wrong reasons, due to its completely misplaced rap verse it features from Nicole Perretti. This is encased by more of Meg’s shoddy lyricism about being “all in this together” and fighting “the same battle”. It brought back memories of the irritating High School Musical song we all know and love, except repurposed in a fashion that both takes itself far too seriously and has nowhere near the fun factor of that 2007 classic.
This brings us to the fifteenth and final track, “ELEVENELEVEN”, I have little to say about this song but to reiterate that this is a combination of everything I dislike about this album, expressed by the lyric “we can break the matrix babe, eleven eleven”. She naively leans into this infuriating stereotype by misusing the idea of angel numbers as a cherry-on-top of every single cringeworthy moment on this album, and closes out TZIA exactly as the album persisted throughout: unremarkable.
For an album that doesn’t try to conceal its rather uplifting themes, it’s arguable, and highly conflicting that TZIA actually has very little to say, both sonically and lyrically. Between antiquated analogies about turning your darkness into light, standing together as one against… something, and an obvious attempt at experimental production, I’ve come out of this record the exact same person as I was before. It’s certainly a shame considering all of the positive things I’ve heard about Meg Myers’ previous work, and I don’t doubt that there’s been a significant dip in quality here, rather than being emblematic of her work as a whole, however I feel as though I have no motivation or patience to listen to any of it anymore, as TZIA proves itself to be one of the most insignificant and hamfisted pop-adjacent records I’ve ever heard.
1.5/10
TZIA is out this Friday, March 24th via Sumerian Records.