INTERVIEW: Merpire talks her new single 'Dinosaur': "Older women get overshadowed after having spent the time working out their success, who they are as artists and their place in the music industry."
Image: Nick Mckk
Rising indiepop artist Merpire recently released her new single ‘Dinosaur’, her first release on record label ADA (via Warner Music).
Inspired by both social anxiety and a line in the movie Jurassic Park, the track is a warm, jangly indiepop track with a melancholic touch. Smooth and mellow to begin with, the track drops to a stripped back section mid way with Merpire repeating the lyrics ‘I made the cage I’m in…I’m tired of my skin’, before it roars back into life with a raw, passionate guitar driven climax.
The song is accompanied by a music video, conceptualised by Merpire, which recreates the look of her teenage bedroom in the early 2000s and was filmed entirely under a trampoline in Merpire’s front yard. Designed by Grace Goodwin, the video was brought to life by Merpire’s long term collaborator Nick Mckk.
Merpire first burst onto the scene in August 2018 and quickly made inroads into the music scene, with a showcase performance at Bigsound festival and performing support slots for major artists such as Julia Jacklin, Angie McMahon, Olympia and Didirri. This new era in her music journey sees her producing some of her best music to date and we recently caught up with her to find out more.
Hey Merpire! Thanks for chatting to us! How are things in your world right now?
Hello! It is such a pleasure. I am privileged to say things in my world are going pretty great, thank you. Lots of learning and growing through some challenging but necessary changes last year have led to being in a better place mentally this year so far.
Congratulations on the release of your new single ‘Dinosaur’ it is such a beautiful track. You have said the song was inspired in part by social anxiety - can you tell us a little bit more about the genesis of this song?
Thank you! I’m really happy to have this one out in the world! A few songs I’ve written are about my experience with social anxiety and anxiety in general. Writing about it is a way to help myself, take the fear and power out of anxiety’s unhelpful and sticky little hands.
There’s a line in the first Jurassic Park - such a classic jurassic - where Sam Neill’s character says to the kids while they face a t-rex, in the rain, at night, “If they stay still, they can’t see you.” Their fear and wishing to be invisible in that moment is their body’s correct response in hope of avoiding danger and death. Annoyingly, through genetics, our very short time here on earth combined with a very rapid rate of environmental and cultural development, our “fight or flight” response hasn’t quite caught up to modern day and has in fact become our internal default button. For some people (me) that default button is worn right down and our brains think there is potential danger pretty much everywhere. My stomach even flips walking out of a cinema because of the sudden and drastic light difference.
Given the last 12 months we have had, social anxiety is an ever-increasing problem as most of us haven’t socialised in the real world for a very long time. What do you think are the important things to remember when we struggle with social anxiety?
As someone who’s spent a lot of dedicated time self-researching anxiety as well as practising techniques given to me by my psychologist I do indeed have a few tips.
Quick, immediate helpful hints:
- Breathe. Sounds obvious but you don’t realise how much you forget to breathe deep and come back to your body.
- Take it easy on yourself. You’re living through a pandemic after all!
- Anxiety’s biggest power is making you feel like you’re alone in the feeling. Talk to you friends or family about it. Chances are they have some form of anxiety too.
5 senses:
5: Acknowledge FIVE things you see around you. It could be a chair, a spot on the ceiling, anything in your surroundings.
4: Acknowledge FOUR things you can touch around you. It could be your hair, a button on your outfit, an earring.
3: Acknowledge THREE things you hear. Focus on things you can hear outside of your body. A bird chirping, someone laughing or burping.
2: Acknowledge TWO things you can smell. Maybe it’s the bar’s grimey carpet you’re standing on or your friends’ sexy perfume.
1: Acknowledge ONE thing you can taste. What does the inside of your mouth taste like—gum, coffee, or the sandwich from lunch?
It’s definitely a long learning process but the biggest thing is changing your relationship with anxiety. Look for the times anxiety has served you well. For me, it’s that anxiety has led me to writing these songs and being more attune with other people’s feelings. It’s different for everyone but is very important to help stop the cycle of being anxious about being anxious and hating yourself for hating that part of you. It’s terrifying and difficult, rewarding and life-changing.
Can you share with us a bit about the creative process behind the song?
I took myself on a writing trip on the South Coast of NSW to my aunty’s beach house in Narooma. I spent the majority of the time worried I wouldn’t be able to write something good enough and funnily enough that thought became the idea for the opening lyrics, “I used to be afraid of my mind and being left alone with whatever I found, but now I’m more afraid of what I won’t find and all that’s left will end up letting you down.”
I wrote it on ukulele after jamming along to an Unknown Mortal Orchestra song. Once I had those first lines, the rest of the song came pretty quickly and I’d finished it by the next day by transposing it to guitar.
This song actually lay dormant for a couple of years until I met my now producer and band mate, James Seymour and we commenced our archaeological expedition to recover it. He wrote that huge outro and we edited a little of the arrangement too. We recorded some parts at his house in Fitzroy and some in his mum’s sewing room at his parents’ house! It’s been quite the ‘Frankenstein's monster’ from start to finish. I’ve never written a song like it in the way that it was written too.
You have also released a music video for ‘Dinosaur’ which is a magnificent throwback to your teenage bedroom. Can you tell us a little about the experience of creating the video?
The deadline for having a video was creeping up quickly and I put so much pressure on myself to come up with something great. There were a few nights of just laying awake in bed trying to force something from my brain. In the end, the idea came suddenly while on a walk around my neighbourhood, taking a break from trying to think of something... ha! Isn’t that always the way?! The whole video played out in my head like a finished gift from above. I raced home, jumped on Pinterest and started building the visuals and writing out the idea. I’m lucky enough to live with Melbourne’s best videographer, Nick Mckk. He was sitting across from me while I couldn’t type or speak fast enough. It was such a beautiful relief. I really wanted it to be like a 90’s sci-fi thriller where as an audience you can see the monster creeping in the background while the character is completely oblivious. I took references from the Jurassic Park movies as well as The Labyrinth. Having worked together a bunch now, Nick was able to understand fully and bring this idea to life in an amazing way. With the help of set designer, Grace Goodwin and another housemate who also shoots beautifully, Rick Clifford, we built this truly nostalgic set underneath this huge trampoline in our front yard.
It’s funny, but just the act of putting a CD in a discman and putting on those felty headphones brought back so many feelings and memories of listening to CD’s in the back of the car on family road trips and daydreaming about whoever I had a crush on at the time. The creepy hands in the clip also represent those anxious thoughts that I had as a teenager but didn’t have a name for at the time.
For the band posters on the walls, I asked a bunch of my Melbourne friends if I could use photos of them and their bands’ work. Community is very important to me and I like to include them in my art any way I can.
Who were the artists that you loved, or inspired you, when you were growing up?
The Spice Girls. I was always Sporty Spice because I was a bit of a tomboy. They were probably the closest female music idols I had growing up until discovering Missy Higgins. She was a great example of a woman writing strong songs without the distractions of glitz and glam and revealing outfits. I learnt to play guitar and songwrite by learning the songs from her first album. Fleetwood Mac, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana, No Doubt all played a part in my teen years too. Pretty much anything on the 100% Hits or So Fresh compilations of that time.
How did you get started in music? Was it something that you always knew you would do?
Undeniably. My family has one childhood VHS of me as a two year old singing naked on a trike. Not much has changed really. You could say that was the first song I’d ever written - “I am sitting in a car, a car, a caaaaar.” Straight to the point.
Yes, from high school eisteddfods to singing in pub rock bands, jazz wedding bands and playing my own songs in cafes, not playing music was simply out of the question.
Over the years I’m lucky enough to say my music has become more and more the centrepiece of my life through saying yes to as many opportunities as possible, taking risks, even when my anxieties tried to tell me otherwise. Also through meeting the right people at the right time and genuinely building upon my community, especially since moving to Melbourne and finding my people!
For so long the music industry has treated female artists poorly, mostly in part because it is run by older, white, straight men. What are your thoughts on gender equality and sexism in the music industry?
We definitely still have a long way to go. The patriarchy is very much entrenched in our society. It’s a sneaky undercurrent. Sometimes you don’t even realise what’s happening is wrong because you’re so used to it. I would say from what I’ve seen around Melbourne, in some spaces it’s getting better but other spaces, definitely not.
Age and women is a big one. The obsession with teenage female artists does not appear to be lessening within Australia. A five-piece rock band of dudes with an average age of 35? Yep, sign them. The female equivalent? No thanks. We’d rather the 16 year old girl yet to release her first song and yet to perform live, at all, ever. Much more exciting, easily moulded and marketable.
The Australian music industry is tiny compared to say Europe and the U.S because we’re obviously younger as a nation. Our popular music market is the size of a niche market overseas so maybe it’s that we’re trying to prove ourselves as worthy by giving attention to what older, white, straight men see as the most marketable. It’s really wrong. You wouldn’t make a teenager the CEO of a small business and trust their little experience to make it a success. Of course, this generation now has the most access to information ever but they’re still working out who they are and what kind of artist they want to be if they even still want to be one by the time they’re 20!
There is decades of evidence showing how dangerous it is to throw wealth and fame at a teenager. It’s not that I don’t think they deserve attention for the incredible music they’re making at such a young age, it’s older women - and I mean women in their 20’s and above who are crazily considered “older artists'' - who get overshadowed after having spent the time working out their own measure of success, who they are as artists and their place in the music industry for the long haul. They’re dangerous because they could be so powerful and influential! If the patriarchy wasn’t enough to squash us, we also live in a cultural society that focuses its values on quick money, even if it means that the artist drops off by the end of the year because there’ll be hundreds more ready to go. Don’t even get me started on women wanting to become sound engineers and managers etc. However, as I said, within the immediate friendship groups I surround myself with, I would say it’s almost equal in all aspects of the music industry which is pretty amazing and motivating!
You predominantly have an all female band when you perform live. It’s crazy that is this still seen as unusual, but how important is this for you to always ensure you do?
So very important. Growing up I had one strong female music mentor in my life and she was my very encouraging singing teacher. I didn’t have any friends who wanted to pursue music seriously until I was in my mid-20’s and when I started playing in cafes and bars. For a long time, the pursuit of making music my career felt like an unrealistic goal to even dream up. After a while my drive to take risks and meet new people plateaued in Sydney. I became too comfortable and distracted by other things. Moving to Melbourne was the best decision of my life. From meeting one magical human - that James Seymour guy - in Sydney just before I moved down, I managed to land very softly in the welcoming arms of an entire community of incredible, empowering, forward-thinking artists. Within a month of living there I’d found my band! There were a bunch of female musicians to choose from. It was very, very new to me, intimidating and extremely exciting.
I chose mostly females because I’ve always wanted an all female band. The energy is different, and for a sensitive type like me, just what I need to feel supported in my own band. It was also a decision to try to help close that gap of inequality and to show younger female-identifying artists they can do it too. I’ve had the same band members since I moved down three and a half years ago and I love them so much.
What else is coming up for Merpire in 2021?
I’ve got a stop-motion lyric video coming for ‘Dinosaur’ too! It was made with a few friends and our phones during lockdown.
I’m really excited for all the music and art I’ll be sharing this year with the help of my wonderful team. I can’t reveal the biggest news for the year just yet but the release of one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written is just around the corner. Like ‘Dinosaur’, it’s creation has a bit of a quirky story involving birds, a lake, a boat and a new relationship. The music video for that one is also filmed at my house with my band! We’ll chat about that again when it comes out though.
‘Dinosaur’ is out now via ADA/Warner Music Australia. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Merpire you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.
