Mery Steel soundtracks the collapse

In the months prior to Covid and in the tumultuous stretch that followed, Mery Steel wrote more than 50 songs that she said “all sort of orbit a time of major disruption in my life and also in other people’s lives.”

For Steel, this period of self-reckoning extended from a breakdown that led her to question everything from her attachment to romantic relationships (the musician described herself as a “serial monogamist” who had been continuously partnered since high school) to her former corporate career and the misplaced sense she once had of income’s role in achieving contentment.

“So, over time, I’ve been trying to become more independent – and not just from romantic relationships but also in society,” said Steel, who will join bandmates Nick Kurth, Matthew Peyton Dixon and Milo Petruziello in concert at Natalie’s Grandview on Saturday, Feb. 22, where the quartet will perform songs from the in-progress album Dust prior to March recording sessions with producer Jon Helm. “I always felt these pressures to latch onto institutions, which never sat right with me. And learning how other communities deal with the fraught relationships that they have with institutions helped me to really get me in touch with how I’m oriented, and it also put a moral imperative behind it, right? It was like, ‘Oh, shit. There’s a reason to do this beyond it just being good for me.’ Learning how to divest and build connection that doesn’t require you to participate in these shitty, dehumanizing enterprises has made me happier as a person. It’s good for me and it’s good for us.”

Considering the backlog of songs at her disposal, Dust could have taken innumerable forms. But in selecting the tracks to record, the singer and songwriter instinctively gravitated toward those more shattered, emotionally weighty entries, describing them as the ones “that had been resonating with me as I’ve been climbing out of the pit of the breakdown I had.” 

Rather than countering these bruised words with upbeat instrumentals, Steel opted to lean into the depressive environs while shaping the music, bluntly calling the emergent tunes “sad as fuck.” This holds true whether the singer is lamenting the air of hopelessness broadcast daily on network news (“News Hour Blues”), the hollow pursuit of wealth accumulation (“Dissin Billies”), or the persistent fears that accompany feeling hopelessly shackled to a version of your life that you no longer recognize or even really want (“Dirt”).

And yet, despite the persistent cloud cover, the album’s arc does gradually bend toward the light, Steel closing with a title track on which it’s possible to hear her resolve hardening to concrete. “The night ain’t over but I know what I gotta do,” she sings, a few beats later adding, “If you’re feeling like I’m feeling, it’s time. I’m ready for it.”

“With my last record … there was no real concept beyond, ‘Here are some songs and I hope you like them,’” Steel said. “But this is a trip we’re intended to go on together, where we can talk about how shitty life seems these days from a bunch of different angles. And I tried to acknowledge more than just the sad energy, because it’s easy to get sucked into the pit. … So, there’s a lot of grief on this record, and the songs are sad and heavy, but there’s also some hope.”

Though born of the personal experiences Steel navigated leading into 2020 and beyond, the songs on Dust are uniquely attuned to this social and political moment, particularly the persistent pull toward communities and connections that exist outside of those more established institutions – an idea that has been echoed in recent interviews I’ve done with trans activists, abortion rights advocates, and immigration nonprofits, among others, and each rooted in the idea that in this moment nobody is coming to save us. “I promise you; your neighbor has abortion pills,” Abortion Fund of Ohio executive director Lexis Dotson-Dufault said in November. “That’s the thing about community: People are willing to do illegal things for the people they love.”

“I think the real reason we’re so fucked right now is that we’ve been so isolated sociologically, and if you’re hearing those ripples of artists and activists saying that togetherness is what we need to focus on, I think that’s coming from the same place,” Steel said. “In order to heal, we need to be together. We can’t just be these little silos.”

As a means of illustrating this point, Steel shared how she once heard someone talk about lawnmowers, and how virtually every homeowner in America has a lawnmower – even if they live in a crowded suburb adjacent to hundreds of neighbors who own the same machine. 

“And how often are you actually mowing your own lawn? And I think that’s such a rich metaphor, and it encompasses so much of what I’m trying to get at, which is this idea that has been instilled in us that we all should be running our own little kingdoms,” said Steel, who noted current events such as the Elon Musk-led DOGE blindly ripping the guts out of myriad federal departments might finally allow “the scales to fall off” for some people. “It feels like there is this shadow that has been cast on us by our society, and we’re all feeling that and starting to see where the light really is and where the shadow is prevailing. … So, I figured if I had a bunch of songs that helped me reckon with these feelings, maybe now is the time when everything is collapsing for other people to hear this music, too.”