like a dream of art-pop: thread of Merely and especially her 2022 album Sculpture

so i was really into merely's collab with malibu (there should also be a malibu thread already) from last year, essential mixtape, sort of a collagist ambient mist that collects on your skin over the course of a long roadtrip, a really relentless waterfall of synths and voices, and after listening to it yesterday i thought to myself "i've never really heard anything by merely!" so i picked her most recent album, sculpture. and. like, um, holy shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrq6QSgZnsU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_HTZF2MeUU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj0XV9XQDsI

idk there are probably a lot of obvious referents for this (name a dream pop artist from the past 40 years) but i'm hearing a whole lot of fumbling towards ecstasy and hats. ivy embodied in music. some people will find this boring or think there's too little differentiation between tracks, maybe true, who cares!!!! anyway i felt so strongly i had to make an ilm thread about it. hope someone finds it after it's sunk to the bottom of sna for a thousand years

ooh really liking Tangerine Skies, adding the album to my listening queue

Sculpture is great, thank you for this thread, ivy! "Tangerine Skies" still my fav but there's some differentiation here and there - the last track sounds closer to Burial or something in that vein. in any case, the mood is one I'm happy to sit in. will continue backward through her older albums