Halfway between thunder and stillness, Merce Lemon’s “Will You Do Me a Kindness” is a scrapbook of life’s little, fleeting moments – an intimate song aching with the beauty and pain of a soul exposed.
for fans of Squirrel Flower, Skullcrusher, Adrianne Lenker, Julien Baker
“Will You Do Me A Kindness” – Merce Lemon
Sometimes a song spills out of you in one go, sometimes it comes to you in pieces. This one was a little bit of both.
Merce Lemon’s new single is the scab you shouldn’t pick, but you will.
It’s a scrapbook of life’s little, fleeting moments – the kind that normally pass us by too fast for us to record them or put them to memory. It’s a haze of love and longing; of intimate connection, of raw emotion, and of that special, unflinching and unfiltered introspection that comes to us only in moments of total solitude and isolation.
I cook dinner with some friends
Tidy up the house tie up loose ends
Now the sun has yet to set
A little staring at the ceiling
Pick a book I never read
And I get lonely for a bit
Comes in waves and then it split
Like a kiss
That missed my lips
Will you do me a kindness?
Point the sun
Right into my flesh
I want nothing left
Will you do me a kindness?
Halfway between thunder and stillness, “Will You Do Me a Kindness” aches with the beauty and pain of a soul exposed. Released March 27 via Darling Recordings, Merce Lemon’s second single of the year (following a double-single with Colin Miller in January) finds the Pittsburgh-based artist ruminating on her life and times in what amounts to a cinematic and smoldering, vulnerable and visceral outpouring.
Within the folds of six deeply cathartic and confessional minutes, Lemon dwells in moments of togetherness and loneliness, at once confronting and unpacking the many, often conflicting facets of the human experience. Her lyrics are vivid and poetic, her voice exceptionally expressive and just the right amount of ragged, her guitar overdriven and churning – all of which adds up to a breathtaking, soul-stirring fever dream of the alt rock-meets-indie folk variety. Lemon likes to call her music “countrygaze,” and she wears the name well.
The way a fly comes so quick
Through a door that’s swung open
Flung out chairs scatter the yard
While the wind does its whipping
From the porch a stranger’s song
And I get lonely I admit
Comes in waves and then it quit
Like a kiss that missed my lips
Will you do me a kindness?
Point the sun
Right into my flesh
I want nothing left
Lemon calls this song “a collage of moments, lines, and feelings I had gathered over the months.”
“One of the lines in this song is stolen from a haiku my mom wrote on a scrap of paper that was sitting on the kitchen table when I came over for dinner one night. Another line was given to me by a friend via text, something like ‘I wish I had the balls to use this line in a song.’ Sometimes a song spills out of you in one go, sometimes it comes to you in pieces. This one was a little bit of both,” she tells Atwood Magazine.
“The title comes from a quote I heard in the YouTube video of the crass Winnebago man and the rest kind of spilled out from there. It is a song close to my heart, the inescapable loneliness we feel as humans, the little things we notice when we are alone, the fear yet desire to give ourselves wholly to another.”
I’ll paint that hide cherry red
Leave no words to be said
Won’t wear my heart on my sleeve
So I can slip out, will you sleep?
Will you sleep? Will you sleep?
Will you sleep? Will you sleep?
For all those who love to get deep into the weeds of being alive, “Will You Do Me a Kindness” is a trip.
Merce Lemon holds nothing back in her journey of self-reflection and inner reckoning, taking us with her as she delves into her innermost depths and pulls out something fragile, heartrending, and truly, undeniably beautiful.
And will you do me a kindness?
Point the sun
Right into my flesh
I want nothing left
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:: stream/purchase Will You Do Me A Kindness here ::
:: connect with Merce Lemon here ::
“Will You Do Me A Kindness” – Merce Lemon
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© Nathan Cephas
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