Meg & Dia - Here, Here, and Here
Rating
RIYL
Tegan & SaraLydia
Michelle Branch
Vanessa Carlton
Release Date
04/21/2009
Label
Doghouse RecordsTracklist
1. Going Away2. Hug Me
3. What If
4. Are There Giants Too, In The Dance?
5. Inside My Head
6. Black Wedding
7. Bored Of Your Love
8. One Sail
9. The Last Great Star in Hollywood
10. Agree To Disagree
11. Fighting For Nothing
12. Kiss You Goodnight
13. Here, Here And Here
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Meg & Dia are yet another one of those 'Myspace bands'. Back when the number of your Myspace friends actually counted for something and weighed your popularity, it was a big vehicle in dictating the next big thing. With their rising popularity via self-promotion, the group caught the attention of 'Myspace Tom' and landed a slot as the 'official MySpace band' on the Warped Tour 2006. Releasing their Doghouse début, Something Real, shortly after, the group were all set to explode, but it unfortunately never really came to fruition. While there was a couple of filler tracks on the record, there were also several other songs that should've impacted and gone straight to radio. On Here, Here, and Here, we find this has been reversed, with an album consisting of mostly filler and featuring only one or two memorable songs.
The band's swift decline with the release of this album is comparable to that of both Vanessa Carlton and Michelle Branch – remember them? Stylistically and sound-wise Meg & Dia are audibly similar to both, but while the group unfortunately and unfairly never collected any mega-airplay hits like the aforementioned's “A Thousand Miles" and “Everywhere” did, the group have followed suit by releasing a follow-up album of disappointingly dull songs.
The opening three tracks of “Going Away”, “Hug Me” and “What If” are all nice light-hearted - if not generic - pop-punk ditties but feature some truly terrible lyrics. There's the trite line in the album opener, “Silly girl pride kills more than AIDS” (WTF?), and then some nonsensical wittering about “World War 2” and “piss-stained pants” (eh?) in “What If”. The bad lyrics don't stop there either: In interviews the band have been quick to mention books as more of an influence than actual bands, and they manage to rather pretentiously drop in some silly out-of-place literary references such as the unnecessary comparison of an ex-boyfriend to Charles Dickens in “Inside My Head,” amongst others.
While none of the songs up to this point in the record have been truly terrible, the record seriously nosedives in quality around the halfway mark. “The Last Great Star in Hollywood” is sung in an annoyingly weird faux-British accent, and then there's a drab country ditty of “Agree to Disagree”, but the worst song to be featured here is the puke-inducing love song “Bored of You”. Trading verses back and forth between male and female leads the song sounds better suited to a cheesy cliché school prom scene in a teen Disney film. Keep that shit in High School Musical, please. Yuck.
There's been a massive drop in quality from the release of their last album, Something Real, to this LP. There's no such strong songs as “Monster” or “Indiana”, and one noticeable quality largely missing from this record is the cutesy Tegan and Sara-esque duets and vocal trade-offs the duo occasionally employed, but they're now almost completely absent on Here, Here and Here. While the album starts off with the best of a bad bunch of songs, the record soon dives into dulling mediocrity becoming a chore to get through, and it is seemingly bottom heavy dragging the album down slowly and surly into Snoozeville.
--Rich Taylor
Comments
Dubuque
I totally agree that while nothing was awful on the album, nothing stood out. At least on Something Real they had a few standout tracks (like "Monster"). I just felt very underwhelmed after listening to the new effort. I really wish I didn't because I thought these guys were going to do well on a major.
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View Chris Conlan's profile on LinkedIn
it's not that bad, I mean it doesn't rock as much as "somethng real" but still.
San Jose, CA
I think I'll go check out their first album, but the songs I've heard from the girls have never impressed me.
last.fm/user/thetsaiguy
Fort Bragg, CA
I really need to hear this. Love Meg and Dia.
Fort Bragg, CA
Just listened, and you're all crazy. This album is excellent! I suppose this ties in with my M.O. of liking the albums that people seem to dislike. This is showing more promise than Something Real to me, though.
Green Brook, NJ
i thought this was more consistent than their last record. it didn't have the hooks of a song like "monster" but it was still enjoyable. they've matured quite a bit in the 3 years since that album.