Stephanie Meincke’s voice is a little American accented and if I’d been told that she was out of Williamsburg or Silver Lake I wouldn’t have queried it.
And that’s why it isn’t hard to perceive a US level of inquisitiveness about this single, ‘Full-Time Driver’ and the EP it is from, ‘Not Never Thinking’
Because I’m pretty darned sure that is what most American twenty somethings are engaged in most of the time – never not thinking – their brains overloaded from the minute they open their eyes until the moment they close them again each day. 24/7/365.
Those lives are chock full of smart phones clamouring relentlessly for your attention; the World Wide Web, 666 with its endless pap and fake news; Amazon and Netflix; YouTube; podcasts; Zoom chats; Instant this and that; X, Y and Z; and all the other wastes of time I either can’t remember or I’m too freaking old enough even to know about.
Did you know that the brilliant Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit of Shakespears Sister wrote these lines in the song ‘Hello (Turn your radio on)’?
“And as I stumbled through last night’s drunken debris/The paperboy screamed out the headlines in the street/Another war, and now the Pound is looking weak… A brave new world has dawned upon the human race…”
And then the apogee:
“…Where words are meaningless, and everything’s surreal /Gonna have to reach my friends to find out how I feel”.
That was written in 1992.
The New World Order; Fake news; virtual reality; and social media dependence predicted, 33 years ago.
I doubt that any artist could write something as prescient these days, or as foretelling as Zager & Evans’ ‘In the Year 2525 (Exordium & Terminus)’ from 1969.
Not because they haven’t got the talent but because they are overwhelmed by merely surviving day to day life and everything it throws at you; ‘the social swirl’ as Tom Wolfe called it (in 1987 this time!) in Bonfire of the Vanities.
In her promotional photo Stephanie, who describes herself as a ‘professional overthinker’, is pictured in her kitchen, frozen in time, almost Zombie-like, as she wrestles with the question of whether she should get the dinner on first or wash up the lunchtime plates.
Such catatonia afflicts as all as we battle to distance ourselves from the swirl.
No, the future is here and “the hard rain that’s a-gonna fall” (Dylan, 1962) has assumed monsoon proportions. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t gonna improve any time soon either.
If I read it correctly that’s the main thrust of Stephanie’s EP, while in ‘Full-Time Driver’ she relates how she feels she’s going the wrong way around a race track, dawdling along while everyone she knows is hurtling happily in the other direction, “having kids, and getting married.”
(I sense a secondary agenda there, but we’ll pass over it).
But it also serves another purpose, a more positive one, namely to remind her of “the small but significant goals, experiences, and moments that inspire us to do so much more.”
Now we’ve got the philosophy out of the way let’s turn our attention to the musicality. The song lies somewhere vaguely in that no-man’s land between pop, folk and Americana. It is sumptuous.
Quality flows out of every note and every syllable sung.
It has a distinct 1980s feel to it, the same that you got from Alanis Morissette and Suzanne Vega, perhaps Cyndi Lauper in some of her songs.
And any amount of Nashville based stars but they would never write lyrics as good as this.
“Am I stuck here in the fast lane?” That one line says so much.
“While my friends are having babies…I’m driving with my fingers crossed”.
This sort of stuff is right up in the St Vincent and even Fiona Apple class.
That American accent helps of course and the clarity of her vocal delivery is exceptional.
However you come at it, this song is fabulous and on its strength alone I predict a big star in the making.
I find it hard to believe this is debut work and that Stephanie doesn’t have a lengthy history in the business already.
Now pardon me while I check out the rest of the EP.
‘Never Not Thinking’ is Stephanie’s debut EP and was released worldwide through the independent label Unmuted on March 14th.
Find her on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stephaniemeinckemusic
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephaniemeincke/
