Good Riddance To Ya!!! Meryl Streek's "Death to the Landlord"
SOTY contender recommended to me by a human via an algorithm
The other day my brother sent me two texts. First, a Spotify link. Then, “ever heard this dude? came up on my release radar today. great song.”
So many music recommendations—some regrettable, some eternal classics—have come this way: via digital communication from my eight-years-older brother. Like when he told me through AIM that he’d been listening to The All American Rejects and Brand New in 2002, around when those bands released their first albums. The message arrived on my family’s desktop computer instantly, a brief one-sentence letter home to Champaign from Ann Arbor, where my brother had left for college and taken his zipper CD case with him.
Now, I can jump into his digital CD zipper case whenever I want, without fear of being pummeled for stealing his favorite discs. His Release Radar has been finetuned through his particular algorithm, which, if we had to compare, would probably have similar DNA.
Technology has changed the process but not the outcome. The other day a computer presented a song to my brother who listened, enjoyed, and suggested. Ignoring the many flaws algorithms have, algorithms have, on several occasions, delivered humans the musical content they didn’t know they wanted to hear. But they have yet to replace the heightened relevance of one human who knows another human’s music taste at a deeper level than any data points can reveal recommending a song or band. A human asking me, via a pocket computer, “ever heard this dude?” is somehow preferable to an algorithm shoving said dude into my ear, even if that’s how it came to the other human in the first place.
I clicked the link. Pressed play.
A thick, driving bass line started up. Then, heavy drums. A steady beat, chugging along. With my only reference being Meryl Streek’s Spotify profile—pale face, near-translucent eyes peeking under a knit cap—I had no idea what the lyrics would sound like.
The song artwork—in which the artist’s eyes are again the only feature visible beneath a knit cap and hoodie jacket—gave off vibes of slowthai or Wiki. The music wasn’t quite a hip-hop beat, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Kenny Beats produced it, like he did IDLES’ 2021 album Crawler. The production was rich and crisp, shiny and polished. Almost pleasant. The drums were digitized or quantized (or, because I learned later that Streek is a drummer, just technically precise), with snare-claps doused in tightly-controlled reverb. I expected someone to either rap in a snarly voice or sing in some sort of New Wave or indie New Wave influenced style.
Instead, nearly one minute in, I heard this:
“YOU’VE LIED SO MUCH YOUR TEETH HAVE TURNED ROTTEN! / YELLOW AND STAINED FROM ALL THE SHITE YOU’VE BEEN TALKING!”
Meryl Streek spends the remainder of the song spewing straightforward lyrics in an angry Irish growl, directed at the politicians responsible for ignoring the country’s growing housing crisis.
I texted my brother:
“Never heard of him but this is awesome.”
Then, a quick follow up: “Was wondering what the voice was going to be like and it surprised me but in a good way.”
Then, a few minutes later, as the song was progressing into its dancey rhythm, with synthesized strings leading a light melody that contrasts with the singer’s fury, I texted again:
“This is awesome.”
Then, another follow up:
“Already said that haha but it’s great.”
My brother responded:
“Yeah it’s so weird but, as you said, awesome.”
I wrote back, “DEATH TO THE LANDLORD! GOOD RIDDANCE TO YA!!!!”
“Death to the Landlord” represents an un-ironic, not-detached sort of anger missing from most contemporary music that purports to have a subversive political edge. When an issue is as serious as common working people not being able to afford rent in a city and country whose politicians fail to act in their service—which is as relevant in the U.S. and across the world as it is in Ireland—someone needs to outright speak up against it. Even if emotionally-charged music like this will never convince the recipient of the outrage to change their misguided thinking, at least it allows the likeminded listeners a welcome respite of catharsis. It reminds me of the way groups like Leftover Crack or, on the poppier side, Anti-Flag, would structure their songs. Writing about societal injustice or issues from a denser, more poetic perspective—like, for lack of a better example, Kendrick Lamar—has its place and value. In many instances it’s better. Blunt political lyricism too often risks a perceived devaluation of quality, or detracts from the surrounding musical accompaniment. But as society fractures further, we need voices like Streek’s. Voices which aren’t afraid to lay bare in concise terms what they’re thinking, whether or not masses are already thinking the same. Lyrics like:
“SAY NO TO HAVING TO PAY YOURSELF INTO DEBT TO KEEP ON TOP OF YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AND STABILITY! JUST SAY NO! SAY NO TO BEING TOLD LIES YOUR WHOLE EXISTENCE! SAY NO TO GENTRIFICATION! SAY FUCK OFF TO FIVE DAYS A WEEK! LISTENING TO SOME PRICK TELLING YOU HOW TO LIFT A BOX! JUST SAY NO!”
In a quote given to DustyOrgan.com for a post discussing the band’s single “False Apologies,” which takes similar aim at the Catholic Church, Meryl Streek mentioned that he’s intentionally trying to carry on a longstanding tradition of politically-motivated music that speaks straightforwardly about issues. In that article, he says,
“The album is for anyone that has been affected by the Catholic Church’s crimes and those that feel that the government not only mistreated them but took away their voice along with it. I’ve always been drawn to bands that say what they think loudly and clearly. I grew up hearing A House, Guernica and Sack speaking their minds, the punk movement too. I’m coming from the same place but with melodies and pop music so hopefully people will stop and listen to what I’ve got to say.”
This quote nails the effectiveness of a song like “Death to the Landlord.” Streek’s persona and voice are as angry as any punk frontman, but the music behind him is shiny enough to evade obvious genre identifiers, and clean enough to appeal to those with poppier sensibilities. It’s impossible not to stop and listen to what he’s saying, when he says it in the way that he does over that kind of music. Meryl Streek’s music is not a puzzle. Or if it is, it’s already put together, and the resulting image is almost recognizable, just not quite right, like maybe there’s a piece missing or added that’s throwing everything off, or somehow making it better than whatever you expected.
The video for “Death to the Landlord” is somehow exactly what I expected. Meryl Streek walks through the gray city smoking a cigarette, hoodie pulled over a hat like in all the album imagery. He stops in a pub to rip off the hood and scream at the skeptical bartender pouring pint after pint of Guinness. His eyes are intense. The singer converts the bartender by the end, and both of them dance in a chaotic rage.
Further Googling informed me that the bartender in the video is Joe Rooney, who was an actor on the sitcom Father Ted and also was the lead singer of the 80s new wave band Guernica, which Streek referenced in his interview with DustyOrgan as one of his inspirations for straightforward lyricism.
Guernica is an intriguing band who I knew nothing about until Meryl Streek introduced them to me. Another human recommendation that holds more weight than a computer-driven one, because I can’t find Guernica’s music readily available on the computer anywhere. There are a few live performances in one YouTube compilation. There are stories circulating out there in various pockets of the web about how influential Guernica was to a specific Dublin scene of the 80s. How their debut album Duke Street was lost for decades after their disbandment, and will finally be released, with Streek’s help, in 2023. There is more to the Guernica story that my brother relayed to me, including a direct connection between the band and Meryl Streek, but it’s not worth putting that puzzle together in this lil’ newsletter.
Meryl Streek’s debut album will hopefully not be lost for decades, but hopefully will be an undisputed classic to listen to for that long. It comes out on Venn Records—home of Gallows, another semi-relevant comparison—on November 4th, 2022. I’ve already pre-ordered the vinyl that’s printed in the colors of the Irish flag. This isn’t a sponsored post but I’m happy to shill for a band that I had never heard of but now have heard of. To be one more human writing on a computer in this ongoing chain of humans and computers, with the sole aim of spreading good music. Plus a wee bit of much needed anger.