21-year-old songwriter Meskerem Mees drew international attention with her first single “Joe”, and now she’s proving she’s a talent to watch with her new song “Seasons Shift”.
Mees enchants from the moment she opens her mouth, with an ethereal voice and cosmopolitan accent (she’s Belgian with Ethiopian roots). Alongside her friend the cellist Febe Lazou, she crafts gentle music out of turbulent emotions. “Seasons Shift” is more about a variable person than the changing weather, with lyrics that track differences over time. She sings of someone who “got serious in December/ Lonely in July, though you wouldn’t tell me why/ It might have been easier just to call me but you preferred to cry.” At first she seems to be sketching out a failed relationship, but as the song progresses, her concerns become metaphysical. “Seasons Shift” ends on a somber note, though the melody is as sweet as ever: “Lord, Lord, Lord would you please set us free?/ If not inside our rotting graves forever we shall be/ All that’s left of you right next to all that’s left of me.”
The track comes with a music video directed by Felix Ysenbaert. It shows a live-action Mees inside the saturated colors of an animated world. She does little more than type at her typewriter or play her guitar, but the setting around her constantly changes, evoking something between the twee aesthetics of Wes Anderson and Terry Gilliam’s crudely beautiful drawings for Monty Python.
Check out “Seasons Shift” below. Both that song and “Joe” are expected to appear on her as-yet untitled debut album, which is currently set for a November release.
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