Meg Myers says she’s sorry — she even screams it during the title track — but there really is no need to apologize. Myers is one of the most talented and passionate artists on the rise today, and her debut full-length, Sorry, doesn’t disappoint. It opens with one of its best songs, “Motel,” which incorporates a Townes Van Zandt quote into its latter half: “Well, you know, I don’t think they’re all that sad. I have a few that aren’t sad, they’re like… hopeless. Totally hopeless situation. And the rest aren’t sad, they’re just the way it goes. I mean you know — you don’t think life’s sad? But from recognizing sadness you can put it aside and be happy and enjoy the happy side of life.”
This quote is important, obviously, for Myers, but it’s also crucial for understanding the songs on this album: that you don’t have to write slow, sad-bastard acoustic music to be sad — and this music isn’t meant to depress — it’s meant for release, to find light. There is darkness all over Sorry — Myers just channels it differently, in her own Nine Inch Nails kind of way.
“Sorry that I lost our love without a reason why,” Myers sings on “Sorry.” Later, on “Desire,” she gets more to the point: “Baby, I wanna fuck you, I wanna feel you in my bones.” And this is the way — and why — her songs work: she’s not worried about what you or I are going to think. She’s simply going to ask, “How do you want me? How do you want me?”
With Sorry, Meg Myers doesn’t just own her first album — she’s made one of the most authentic releases of 2015.
Grade: A