March 27, 2024
Merce Lemon Returns with "Will You Do Me a Kindness"
Including Greg Freeman-directed music video
Merce Lemon returns with her first original song since 2020, and boy is it a stunner. "Will You Do Me a Kindness" brings together so many aspects of what make her work special: the visceral thrill of her lyrics, the organic swell of the build, and the triumphant, well-earned conclusion.
“The phrase ‘will you do me a kindness' came from a YouTube video Colin showed me while we were recording last spring,” says Lemon. “This song started with those words, and I built a story around it. Some of the imagery came from pictures Colin sent me of his home at Haw Creek - especially the collection of outdoor chairs that the storms often blow around in his front yard. I wanted to make a flip book of those images.”
It’s a song at once full of yearning and spite, a faded scrap from an old photo album, adorning the foundation of a porch reinforced by the conversations it’s witnessed wind deeply through the night. Like those familiar, amiable tirades under a silver moon, it waxes and wanes in energy, as if fighting to decide whether to absorb or expel overwhelming, melancholic feelings of solitude, ultimately always relenting to the weight; “Will you do me a kindness? / Point the sun right into my flesh / I want nothing left.”
In Lemon’s romantic deference to the power of memory – past, present, or a nostalgia to come – lies a formidable strength, manifested through the rip current of her vocals and guitar dueling with the open wildness of her band. It is entropy with intention, a tear in the fabric of domestic quietude.
An ace up the sleeve of a veteran card player, “Will You Do Me A Kindness” cements Lemon’s place within the contemporary canon of a burgeoning “countrygaze” scene, directing its irreverent bow toward even more earnest, exciting waters.
"If the year ended tomorrow, this song would be #1 on my list with a bullet. At nearly six minutes, Lemon channels one of the warmest, most compelling indie rock confessionals you’ll hear"
"slow-churning indie-rock splendor"
