The lengths that Swedish pop outfit Merely has taken to showcase her artistic aptitude have been dynamic, divergent, and distinct. She has spent the entirety of her solo career solidifying the dynamic nature between the ethereal and organic in the artistic setting of dream pop. Over time, she has fine-tuned this dynamic with each successive release... steadily crafting music that sounds just as visionary as it does entirely native and essential. Her progress has finally reached an ideal apex in the form of Sculpture – her latest full-length album, and her most refined effort to date. This is synthetic realism in its most absolute form.

Each facet of Merely’s eminent artistic essence profoundly shines through every second of this experience. From her otherworldly yet ever-so-sentimental songwriting, to her sublime and captivating vocal performance, right down to the genre-leaping and atmospherically-rich production she sings over... everything here is by design in only a way that Merely herself could imagine and construct accordingly. It’s dream pop reaching as close as it ever has to being “real". In a certain sense, this is Merely’s “real".

The expansive production work throughout the album provides a vivid setting for Merely and the listener alike to bask in. The pounding riffs and daunting percussion that set the scene on the opening track “Blue” expand gracefully into the washed-out and sweeping synths found on “We’re Everlasting Energy.” Each of the seemingly endless amount instruments found throughout the album are all placed specifically and with such ideal intent. Take the exotic dulcimer arpeggios on tracks like “Bella Bugia” and “Far, far away” that carry these grooving tracks to their most engaging lengths. Riffs like these provide the album with its most exciting moments; its most suspenseful ones are found in the modern trance-like synths and pads that layer atop each other on “Lover’s Lane” and the title track among many others. Every song has its own setting, and by extension, its own purposeful experience.

In production settings like these, it’s easy for Merely’s vocals to sit atop them and serve as the main attraction. Her performance throughout the album is grand and all-encompassing, full of breathtaking falsettos and lengthy bellows that submerge themselves inside and around the instruments on each track. This vocal/instrumental blending is transcendental and uncanny. Her voice is just as much the standout feature of these tracks as they are an instrumental facet in themselves. Songs like “Ricochet Lullaby” showcase such a dynamic, as Merely slides over her own background vocals and dense instrumentation for one of the album’s most ethereal moments. Not a single track surges above another in terms of Merely “reserving herself” at all; she is always in command vocally, acting as the conductor to this blissful adventure with her voice alone.


What completes this otherworldly experience is the narrative role that Merely’s songwriting provides. This idea of “synthetic realism” and the abstract/organic dynamic it relates to is apparent in each facet of this album, but perhaps none more so than in the songwriting and album flow. Merely coats every single moment of this album – its most exciting tracks to its most drowning and atmospheric – in tales of ravishing, sentimental detail. She tells stories of mystic adoration... love in its most celestial and divine form. She is impassioned throughout this album not just in her vocal delivery, but its contents in full. Her songwriting fully centers around abstract affection -- love that can only be expressed through eloquent metaphors and brilliant scenery alike. It combines with the just-as-expressive production and vocal performance to conjure emotions that only Merely herself can truly put to music.

- Billie Bugara