I got to Rockwood’s in time to see the last song of Mree’s loop and acoustic guitar set and I wouldn’t mind having been there even earlier. Mree is a sort of disquietingly soft but deep hushed folkie and in the one song I saw she taped herself tearing up a piece of paper and used it along with a drum beat in a loop.
It is interesting, really beautiful, and not unlike her second album, this year’s Winterwell, Autumnal and a frosty warmth. The songs might not work without the arrangement, if you try and pull the album inside out you might well miss what is making it tick; the melodies are ethereal in a way that her self-proclaimed influence Justin Vernon isn’t.
The album seems to float somewhere, the sounds seem to be working and it is an odd pairing of a rugged structure to a dissolving aesthetic of sound. In the one song I heard her play, nineteen year old Mree doesn’t seem particularly heads in the clouds, the one great thing about loops is it forces the musician to concentrate and that concentration pays off immediate dividends but on Winterwell (the most apt name for an album ever), she sounds like Laura Marling looks, it is a cold winter couyntryside type rose on the cheek, leaves turning brown and dying feel.
And it isn’t lame, if it is soft it is soft in the same way a ghost might be, or thick air, her feelings are so strong yet you feel you could tear the sounds with your fingernails; a spooky, sweetness. Like casper the Friendly Ghost with out the kidstuff.
I make Mree sound morbid but she really isn’t all the time. “To See The Light” is lively and fun and the use of loops and multi-instrumental arrangements gives it shadings within shadings. Some of the pacing drags and some of the melodies aren’t there, but somng for song it works into a unique folk sound.
Winterwell – Mree – B+