Meg Myers – TZIA
Release Date: 24th March 2023
Label: Sumerian Records
Pre-Order/Pre-Save
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock.
FFO: Ellie Goulding, Tove Lo, St. Vincent.
Review By: Andy Spoon
Chances are, if you’re listening to this type of album, you like the heavy electro-pop offerings like St. Vincent, Ellie Goulding, Halsey, and maybe even Billie Eilish. Meg Myers’ most recent LP, TZIA will be available for purchase or stream/download on March 24th. The first thing to note is that TZIA is packed full of material, with 15 tracks over a 52:44 run time. There’s not a lot of subtext here. I was excited to see what themes and meanings can be gleaned across the entire range of tracks. My expectation is for some raw, ugly emotions to be mixed with the romance and horny sexiness Myers is known for.
The first track feels like a harder version of Imogen Heap from her Just For Now era, which is definitely not something bad to emulate. The vocals bounce back and forth between light, airy, and ethereal, to the deep, chesty, Katy-Perry-esque diaphragm voice. Once the song’s energy builds to full force, you can quickly hear the “classic” Meg Myers sound that she’s known for. I’m not immediately getting the rock-guitar “lens” from her older sound. The beatdown patterns are largely electronic and based on breakdowns or drops. Her style is to generally build a song around a serious musical and lyrical hook that’s memorable and usually provocative, per her artistic style. TZIA seems to be a continuation of some of those elements, but with the growing addition of the contemporary sound.
HTIS is definitely one of the “singles” that I expect to bubble over to the more mainstream fans. They generally love Myers music that is sexually-provocative, such as her previous hit Desire. It’s 100% a club-style track that fits in perfectly with contemporary artists like Halsey and Tove Lo. I think that the more-likeable tracks for this single writer are the ones which tend to hit the grittier subject-matter, like T33NAGERS, a song that seems like an ode to Alanis Morissette’s angst anthems of the 1990s, or Children of Light II, a track that is more of an ethereal rain dance right out of the gate.
Having several tracks on the album that seem to be homages to other artists is both confusing as well as entertaining. Something that has the effect of being an homage or a tribute can sometimes come off as a cheesy photocopy. I have been listening to TZIA with that virtual gaze to help me decide if this is something that is merely exploring the various sounds of influences and associated acts, or if it’s someone trying to be “gen Z’s Alanis”. Obviously, I don’t often think about Meg Myers with that much scrutiny, but other listeners will definitely discover some of these similarities and question Myers’ motives for certain tracks’ familiar tones.
My favorite parts of the album were the ones which were quintessentially Meg Myers’ sound, such as her cover of Numb (Linkin Park), and her hate-ballad “Waste of Confetti”, a pissed-off track that’s 100% a big “fuck you” to the world and their awful expectations on artists and women (at least that’s my interpretation). TZIA (song) was one of the pinnacle moments for the album, as a big, wide track with heavy, from-the-chest vocal power throughout the entire track. I feel like it absolutely deserves to be the title track, given I wanted to blast it again immediately.
The end ⅓ of the album is full of ballads covering mental health, societal stigmas, and suicide awareness. I think that it’s hard to try and criticize the tracks which are meant to bring people together, but I was really underwhelmed by them. Perhaps Myers is using them (Bluebird and SOPHIA_144_) as personal inclusions by her own choice, but I found them really unnecessary for the album’s overall flow and feel. THAT BEING SAID, I find those tracks’ messages powerful and thoughtful. I don’t want to criticize her good intentions for adding these tracks to the album, but they do deviate from the overall sound flow, and would have been best as independent releases (singles or EP), in my opinion.
In all honesty, I don’t think TZIA will connect with most metal listeners, despite the fact that it’s been marketed through Sumerian records. I love Meg Myers, but this album is about half of what I’d love to hear from her, and half is cheap, four-chord studio tracks that are absolutely designed to be background music for teens twerking on TikTok. 
(2.5 / 5)
