Meemaw presents us with their newest release, Glass Elevator. Maybe you will like it. I do not.

The album sounds like a bunch of 12-year-olds decided to write a CD worth of songs and get their 8-year-old brother to record them. The lyrics are brain numbingly simple and really gave me no reason to want to listen more than once. Some of them, like song three, “Smoking in the Sun,” make absolutely no sense.

Musically, the album consists of almost atonal instruments mixed together forming an alternative pop punk sound that could certainly be right out of the playbook of some of the earlier and more famous punk bands. Right down to the sound of the recording quality (which feels like someone pushed record on a 4-track tape machine), this album mimics the lesser (or greater) moments from some of punks most famed time periods.

Instrumentation consists of drums, bass and electric guitar with multiple voices arranged in a loud aggressive blend of singing and yelling. There is some amount of distortion on everything. Electric guitars provide most of the tone, although these mostly just strum chords in a choppy fast strait rhythmic pattern. Drums and bass also follow this pattern.

I will say, as a songwriter and a musician myself, I tend to play within my means. Music is supposed to be fun, so people have a tendency to not push themselves and only play things that are familiar or come naturally to them. To their detriment, Meemaw has taken this philosophy to the extreme.

On a positive note, I actually thought that their last song, “Feverdreaming,” is pretty decent. But, considering the production and arrangement, this song seemed exactly like all the other songs, and did not stand out at all.

Overall, this band could benefit heavily from a focus on creative instrumentation, and a bit more time spent in writing lyrics that mean something.