Aural Aggravation

Christopher Nosnibor

Listening to Stories They Don’t Teach You in School earlier, I was – not for the first time – struck by the raw, unfiltered nature of Meryl Streek’s lyrics. On discovering supporting Pigs x 7 earlier in the year, my first impression was that he was a bit of a novelty act, although I’d changed my mind completely after about three songs. Explaining what he does to anyone has proven a challenge. Yes, I have to concede, it’s a bit like Sleaford Mods… but really not at the same time. We’ll return to this later. But for now, he’s the reason I’m here having been hooked by that last show here. And tonight is sold out. It’s the first night of the three-day One For the Road festival, which is an annual event here, and has been since 2013 – although as far as I can recall, this is my first time here.

When I arrive, I’m held up waiting at the door because the woman in front of me, who’s probably about 60, is getting stroppy with the door staff, first because she doesn’t want her to take the stub from her ticket, and then because she doesn’t want her wristband putting on, or too tight, and starts walking off before said wristband has been attached to said wrist. I report this aberrant behaviour because it’s in some way illustrative of a sector of tonight’s audience, emblematic of the world post-lockdown, where people have seemingly forgotten how to interact or how to behave, particularly people of a certain age. Yes, it’s sold out, so inevitably it’s rammed, but I’m shocked by the number of times I get nudged and knocked by people moving backwards or sideways without considering the space around them, and the fact there are groups of people holding conversations at the bar when there are others wanting to get served.

Emilia Slade, who’s up first, and as such opens the weekend’s proceedings, is playing without her full band, is here in the capacity of acoustic singer songwriter, and serves up some emo-hued introspection and confessionals, with a side-serving of environmentalism, and a cover ‘The Obituaries’ by The Mezingers. Texas Forever, whose main purpose of existing is to play this festival each year, are the heaviest and most ferocious guitar band on the bill, playing some fairly fiery hardcore, but with a Yorkshire twist. Their most interesting feature is the dynamic of the twin vocals, which find guitarist Jonny Gill, of Lyon Estates and (formerly?) On The Ropes, adding countervocals to powerful effect, and it really sets them apart in their field. But as most of their songs are only a minute or two long, there’s a fair bit of chat to fill out a half-hour et.

Emilia Slade / Texas Forever

It’s not just Texas Forever: for a festival that’s such a York scene thing, it’s noticeable how few of the local acts I’ve seen elsewhere, and the same is true of the crowd. As I come here often, and am accustomed to running into people, it’s rare that the only people I know or even recognise are the venue staff, and one gets the impression that for many of those present, this is their sole annual outing. This makes the presence of Meryl Streek even more incongruous. And – spoiler alert – Meryl Streek is incongruity defined, in any context.

When the festival started in 2013, country / folk / Americana acts were ubiquitous in York. Heavyset. take us back to those days. One of the songs has a guitar line that sounds like a fiddle. The punctuationally frustrating Bad Nights Sleep – a beardy six-piece – serve up some middling, middle of the road 00s emo punk pop crossover. Rarely have three guitars (plus bass) given so little impact. But then, they have middling, middle-of-the road song titles like ‘Call Your Mother’ and ‘Dance a Two Step’, and ‘The Kids Need New Shoes’. Seeing the middle-age women swing their handbags and the anorak-sporting older guys swaying to this, I begin to relish the prospect of them shitting their pants to Meryl Streek’s rage. ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers’ dives into a Pink Floyd prog wankfest of intertwining solos, and they have a song about being a rock n roll band that sounds like the fucking Commitments. Towards the end of the set, they do land a song that’s half decent, a bit Oceansize, a bit Biffy Clyro, but it’s not exactly adequate compensation. And yet there are people – older men – rushing for set lists and to have their festival posters signed.

The Heavyset. / Bad Nights Sleep

Credit to these crets, they mostly stepped back rather than left, mean that Meryl Streek got to pay to a packed house. He did so in near darkness, too, with the entire lighting rig off, and turning off the illuminated stage backdrop off for large portions of the set, with the sole illumination being a torch, and even then, only occasionally. But , while in near-darkness for over half an hour… what a set! Largely culled from the new album, Stories They Don’t Teach You in School, released just this week, it’s forty-five minutes of relentless, explosive rantology.

My first thought, in terms of the Sleaford Mods comparisons, was that while the Mods are all about the anti-performance shtick, Meryl Streek puts on a performance. But watching him in a smaller venue tonight, there’s a sense that this isn’t a performance at all. The relentless pacing back and forth, the frenzied energy that emanates from every pore as he spits out his words at a hundred syllables a second, it’s art, but it’s not show: this is necessity, this is how it has to be, because he can’t be any other way. Streek isn’t doing this for fun, he’s doing it because he has to, and the relentless stream of vitriol is the only way he can stay even remotely sane. It’s powerful – and then some. Every second, you get the impression he’s reliving some trauma or another, and he channels it and channels it, and when he runs out of words or feels he needs to psyche himself up for the next lyrical onslaught, there’s a phlegm-shifting, guttural “wwurrgh!!!” before he resumes his endless stomping.

Meryl Streek

A mash-up of dance, trance, punk, and shoegaze, there’s a lot happening in the laptop backing track, which is also littered with sampled, often lifted from new reports on murders and suicides, common focuses of his songs. There are no two ways about it: Streek focuses on dark topics, and some would likely say his material should carry trigger warnings. But fuck that: life doesn’t come with trigger warnings and we need to face up to this stuff.

The fact he’s made multiple charts, including the UK album chart in the week of the release of Stories They Don’t Teach You in School is immense, and proves there’s a market for DIY music that’s ugly, brutal, and speaks honestly of the human condition.

He spits and snarls his way through ‘The Chancer’, and ‘Kelly’ is both powerful and devastating, and closes with the ripping pairing of ‘Death the Landlord’ and anthemic single cut ‘If This is Life’. Never has such passionate rage and relentless negativity felt so magnificent.