Merce Lemon Shares Video For Title Track “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild”
Today, Pittsburgh-based artist Merce Lemon has shared the title track from her highly anticipated new album Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, due out September 27th via Darling Recordings. Serving as the album’s closing track, “Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild” is a lonely ballad of forlorn projection into an unknown future, forever protected by the comforting green of Pittsburgh’s hills, rivers, bridges, and homes. “This song is really the first time I collaborated with someone from the early stages of writing,” shares Merce, “my friend Spencer Smith, who was playing keys in my band at the time, sent me a voice memo of a chord progression he had written. I had been toying with an idea for a song based on a story my friend had told me about Michael Hurley, but I hadn’t found a home for the lyrics. This song came to life singing over Spencer’s piano on loop until the melody settled in.” Alongside the new single, Merce was named an ‘Artist to Watch’ by Stereogum, and the ‘Best of What’s Next’ by Paste Magazine, both rising features praising the breakout moment this album presents.
Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild emerged from a time of rediscovery and reconnection with nature. The album emerges, enveloped in propulsive guitars and saccharine-sweet songs of blackbirds and blueberries, from the dead-calm center of a pastoral frenzy in a manner that one could argue as erratic, reckless — a grave misconception, as Merce is just as aware of where she’s being pulled from as she is curious about where to go next. Her sound is built upon a reverence and gratitude for the natural world, how paying respect to it charts a more confident path through the choppy waters of the heart. Watch the video for the title track below, which was filmed by Matthew Reed, who has painted several of MJ Lenderman’s album covers. Merce shares “I asked my buds Colin Miller and Landon George if they would dance in cut off shirts with knives in a not scary way to my most dramatic song down at Haw Creek. They asked our mutual friend Walker Rider to send us footage of him flexing. I stitched it all together.”
After the release of her 2020 album Moonth, Merce took a step back to reassess during an era of anxiety and lockdown – even the reliably nourishing exercise of sharing and playing music felt precarious. “I got dirty and slept outside most of the summer. I learned a lot about plants and farming, just writing for myself, and in that time I just slowly accumulated songs.” A never-ending creative hunger, supported by the community framework she’d always been able to depend on, had been newly fertilized by the wide-eyed inspiration that came from plunging her hands into both the earth’s soil and her own. Rooting around for an answer, finding and turning in her palms what had been buried there all along – from this rediscovery, imbued with the vitality of earth’s green magic, Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild sprouted forth.
Today’s track is preceded by last month’s “Backyard Lover,” the album’s honest and incisive lead single. A warm memory gently meanders alongside warbling steel and guitars, tinged with a classic outlaw haze, before it suddenly erupts with the frustration of a broken promise. Earlier this year Merce shared the standalone single “Will You Do Me A Kindness,” her first song in years and a tour de force demonstration of her newly evolved, smoldering sound. Accompanied by a Greg Freeman directed video, the song was universally acclaimed, praised by Stereogum, Pitchfork Selects, Brooklyn Vegan, and Consequence & Paste Magazine naming it one of the year’s best songs.
A staple of local bills, Merce has performed alongside feeble little horse, Horse Jumper of Love, Squirrel Flower, Water From Your Eyes, and more. She’ll be heading out this September for a run of shows with Teethe, before a headline run in October with stops in Vermont, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and her hometown of Pittsburgh.
Tour Dates:
9/9 – Morgantown, WV @ 123 Pleasant Street *
9/10 – Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar *
9/11 – Toledo, OH @ The Ottawa Tavern *
9/26 – Pittsburgh, PA @ The Government Center (Vinyl Listening Party)
10/3 – Catskill, NY @ The Avalon ^
10/4 – Burlington, VT @ Radio Bean ^
10/5 – Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right ^
10/6 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s ^
10/8 – Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
10/18 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Bottlerocket
* w/ Teethe
^ w/ Greg Freeman
