Merynn Jeann, Photograph: Rosa Spring Voss
Dog Beach is the debut album from Byron-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Merryn Jeann. Jeann wrote the album while based in France and recorded it with producer Rob Ellis in a pair of residential recording studios in the UK countryside.
Across the album’s ten tracks, Jeann integrates elements of ambient and orchestral music with contemporary pop and indie rock sounds. The album is out via the Marseille-based Rescue + Return Records and Jeann celebrated the album’s release with a series of launch shows in the UK and Europe.
Check Check spoke to Merryn Jeann about the stylistic and thematic scope of Dog Beach, what she’s learned from Arthur Russell, and the influence of living overseas.
Merryn Jeann - "Subconscious Love Connections"
Check Check: The album bio describes Dog Beach as a “body of work that represents the entirety of your artistic world.” Was that the intention at the start of the process – to create something that encompassed all of your creative inclinations?
Merryn Jeann: The intention for the album unfolded as the songs came out. I tried initially to write a concept album of songs about films and film characters but I lost interest and the process began to feel faux and contrived. So, I just let the songs pop out one by one and when I ended up spending time at the dog beach near my mum’s house in Australia, the feeling for the album came to me with the title.
The album is just meant to reflect and celebrate the different feelings in life including the feeling of life itself – which naturally meant I had to include all that I felt important to express, which ended up becoming quite a diverse sound throughout.
You were influenced by Arthur Russell’s music direction at The Kitchen, where he brought avant-garde and minimalist music into contact with pop. What are some ways that you channel this influence into your music and performances?
Arthur Russell initiated something pretty pivotal in the underground NYC music scene by seeing the beauty and importance of what he deemed “bubblegum music” and how it related to the avant-garde expression and vice versa. I was really touched and excited to read this in Hold Onto Your Dreams, a biography of Arthur Russell by Tim Lawrence, as I feel like I play a similar role as a contemporary artist.
I feel in some ways that I’m bringing a different type of music to people who consume mostly contemporary pop as well as the ones who only listen to ambient music, and I think this is because when the expression is honest and deep, it goes beyond any pop cultural barrier. People just have to be invited in.
The album was recorded at Vada Studios in the West Midlands of England. It looks like a special place to work – a historic chapel surrounded by fields and gardens. What was it like staying and recording there?
Pretty fabulous. We went to Middle Farm Studios near Plymouth as well, which was a beautiful studio. It was the first time I’d gone off somewhere to live in a studio while making an album. It was really a dream come true and one of the only reasons why I want this to be successful is so that I can go do that again and again and again. It’s a real privilege to give so much time to the music rather than flitting in and out of life whilst recording.
Vada is a pretty rock-heavy music studio, so I think what we were recording in there was bringing in a different energy that was nice to share with the ghosts of the house. We almost buried my old 60s Italian organ synth that had carked it in the garden but opted to take it to the local charity shop instead.
You were living overseas when you wrote and recorded this album. Did a longing for home influence the writing? And did the experience of moving overseas have a substantial influence on your creative outlook?
I believe living overseas has impacted me greatly, but at the time I knew nothing better as I pretty much up and offed to Europe when I finished high school. I began to feel influenced by home when I realised what I loved so much about it wasn’t around me in Europe. The spirits of the Eucalypt trees, for example.
I wanted to get a big British pop sound for the album, so I don’t think anything to do with home had much to do with the album. Maybe homesickness for friends and lovers but not anything more specific than that.
What will the Dog Beach live show consist of?
Colour, child-like theatre, explosions – more symbolic and musical than that of flame – folk music, pop music, electronic music, harmonies, saxophone solos, samplers, old guitars and four people on stage having a fab time.
