Meat In Space’s ‘Tangerine’ EP is a Noisy, Confident Debut

Call it, if you will, an early Christmas treat: after a couple intriguing singles teasing a distortion-heavy, unrepentantly noisy yet well-rounded sound, the debut EP from Meat In Space has finally landed. Behind the moniker is Bay Area songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Shawn Stedman, the sole mastermind behind this project.

The general atmosphere of the weeks running up to Christmas is inevitably full of softer sounds and cosy vibes, so those who like their music with a harder, sharper edge will find in this EP a welcome place of refuge from the wave of saccharine feelings. Not that ‘Tangerine’ is gloomy or depressive in mood: on the contrary, this is a record that is in many ways uplifting – it just chooses to be so through a hefty dose of guitar noise.

Indeed, once you take a closer look at the lyrics you might notice that the main thread running through the five tracks that make up this record is one of joyous defiance against the dullness of the daily grind: “Doesn’t really matter what planet you’re on / If it wasn’t hard it wouldn’t be worth it / So cut the bitterness with the citrus / And bring the dawn”, admonishes title track and record-opener ‘Tangerine’. 

That these lyrics come in right at the beginning must surely be interpreted as a declaration of intents: while the type of sound Meat In Space has been pursuing can’t help but summon reminiscences of classic punk anger, it is also putting them to the service of something altogether more optimistic, a path of escape through rebellion at the end of which something better must inevitably lie.

Not that the music loses any of its weight because of this – perhaps surprising – uplifting take. Garage rock, in its purest form, is a huge influence on the EP and makes its presence felt pretty much constantly, particularly in the relentless onslaught of a dirty guitar sound which represents the ever-present undercurrent of the whole record. The closing track, ‘Call the Coroner’, is perhaps the best example of this. Straight to the point, hammering and liberating, it is a pure ball of energy dropped at the very end of the EP to leave the listener with the echo of a buzz in their ears. But this dirty guitar sound is a signature element that pervades every part of this record; it is what elevates it above the baseline of classic American post-punk (which can be less experimental than its British counterpart, and thus more closely fits what is otherwise a rather ambiguous gender label).

There are some portions of this EP that sound almost like Green Day on steroids, in a good way: see for instance ‘Hyperion Ham’, which takes some familiar chord patterns and song structures and runs away with them in a different direction, always seeking for more – this is not a minimalist record, and nor it should be, not with this loud of a voice.

Other tracks push a little harder on the pedal of experimentation. ‘Ruby Tourmaline’ is a prime example of this, a previous single offering which has in places an almost mantra-like quality. ‘Chromium Dioxide’, also seen before as a single, goes even further in this direction, introducing some elements of dissonance into the otherwise sweeping kind of sound the EP has been cultivating. Under the apparent accessibility of the sound there is some very interesting finesse in the guitar riffs that give this track a distinct personality, making it quite possibly the stand-out from a record that is very internally coherent and makes therefore most sense when listened to all at once. The end result is clearly more than the mere sum of its parts.

There are ways of making loud, brazen garage-rock-cum-punk that is still capable of saying something innovative in a personal way, without having to renounce its very well-defined identity. ‘Tangerine’ is – loudly, as it befits this kind of project – making the argument for one such way. The argument is, and especially for a debut, a compelling one. The goal of cutting through the bitterness by means of citrus may be regarded as achieved.

Chiara Strazzulla

@cstrazzull

Image: ‘Tangerine’ official EP Cover

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