Pittsburgh-based artist Merce Lemon has announced her highly anticipated new album Watch Me Drive Them Dogs Wild, due out September 27th via Darling Recordings. Lead single “Backyard Lover” is an honest and incisive exploration of confused, raw intimacy. 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.
On the song, Merce shares “So many of my songs are touched by and explore death specifically in relation to the loss I experienced of my best friend when I was fifteen years old. That loss has forever changed me and who I am in my relationships to lovers, friends, family.”
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. Watch the video for “Backyard Lover” below, and read the cover feature with Pittsburgh City Paper, who called the album “a full-bodied triumph that positions Lemon for a legitimate breakthrough beyond the 412.”
WATCH ME DRIVE THEM DOGS WILD
OUT SEPTEMBER 27TH VIA DARLING RECORDINGS
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