SPOTLIGHT: WHY IS MER MARCUM ALWAYS STARTING OVER?
As mer marcum finished her makeup, we chatted about her various outfit options: a sweet cherry-patterned tee, her favorite baggy jeans with horse-printed loafers, a button-down paired with her infamous under-MER (logo-stamped-underwear-as-merch). She moved around her larger-than-average Brooklyn room while I perched on the bench at the foot of her bed - she joked that her roommates made a mistake letting her have the biggest space, because she would fill every inch of it.
And fill it she did. First, with a studio setup featuring a microphone, lap steel, sparkly bass, pink acoustic guitar with an image of Eloise (of “At The Plaza” fame) and a dark green tasseled stool. In another corner, a record player, half of an upright base, a vase of tulips, and a light-up carousel she found on the street a couple of days prior. Kismet, as it evokes imagery of the music video for her first release under Acrophase Records, “Starting Over.”
Shot on Super-8 film, the video sparks feelings of melancholia and nostalgia that match the lyrics of the track. mer says that she loves starting over, and in fact, romanticizes change. She recognizes that historically, it’s brought her to better versions of herself.
In a way, she actually starts over midway through the aptly-named song. The track is through-composed, which means that musical segments are never revisited once they are complete. mer abandons the traditional verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure and says, “I think it stems from the fact that my brain just wants to go onto the next thought, and if that thought sounds different in my head than the first one, that’s going to be reflected in the music.” The result is a texturally-rich, emotionally-vulnerable track that speaks to the out-of-body experience of change.
In part one of “Starting Over,” mer refers back to her sleepy 17-hour drives from Texas to Arizona with her dad, during which she always assured him she would stay awake and keep conversation. “I was like, 12, listening to my philosopher father. He doesn’t do small talk, he does ‘concepts of the existence of life talk.’” Consequently, mer always dozed off.
Part two of the track examines how that “concepts of the existence of life talk” impacted her lifelong processes of self discovery and starting over. “I ended up being able to process so much stuff through writing music about it.,” she says. “Memories I didn’t know I had would come up.” Memories of her upbringing in Texas, which she once resented and has now reclaimed, and of horse therapy (which subliminally inspired the name for Jonathan, the miniature horse who has become a beacon of mer’s visual identity).
On her project as a whole, mer speaks to the line between truth and fiction that she likes to walk. She says, “My music is rooted in acoustic, tangible instruments to provide a sense of rawness and reality. Then, I like to add the digital stuff. I love electronic sounds. For example, George Harrison’s album Electronic Sound has always been a huge influence of mine - there’s this fact and fantasy thing happening.” mer translates this balance visually through the pegasus emblazoned on her merch (baby tees, tanks, undermer, etc.). “That shit’s a horse, which is real, on our God-made Earth, but then you make that thing fantastical by adding wings.”
Looking to the future, mer says that her upcoming releases present vastly different soundscapes than “Starting Over.” She chose “Hours Off” as her second release for that very reason, and “Junkyard Dog” contrasts both of its predecessors (it’s a secret, third thing).
mer wants her art to remain unexpected. After all, she is always starting over.
