The music of M+E is all about balance. The moods and emotions from alt-pop project mastermind Luke Niccoli pivot between our two favorite styles: the unabashed pop ambition of the ’90s FM dial and the more unfiltered promise of the twenty-teens bedroom project. Today, M+E, which play our South By Southwest party with Berklee College of Music on March 17, surface to along the modern alt-pop landscape with the video for ‘talkabout’.
“[It’s] all about nostalgia,” says Niccoli, who when not creating his own brand of sound as M+E toils as guitarist and co-producer of fellow retro-pop-envelope pushers Amy & The Engine. “Musically, I threw it back to some of my favorites ’90s records with the acoustic guitar loop, lead guitar riff, and up-tempo beat. Lyrically, the song is about re-living the memories of a past relationship.”
The track’s video, which you can watch below, is a different story.
“We had lofty ambitions of recording a big party scene in slow-motion with special camera gear,” says Niccoli. “By the end of the night, we had hours of sub-par footage and a bunch of drunk friends. Rather than starting over from scratch, I chopped the footage up and made it as weird as possible. We projected the edited footage on top of me and filmed the result. Ended up kinda weird and artsy!”
M+E’s new single is the latest cut off the project’s upcoming EP, nothing to talkabout., out March 18, which Niccoli produced, engineered, and wrote in his bedroom. The sound provides another balance a week from today, when M+E perform at the Vanyaland + Berklee College of Music “Boston & Beyond” party at SXSW alongside Seattle guitar-rock band Great Grandpa, Los Angeles indie upstarts IAN, Allston garage rock trio Lady Pills (selected by Heavy Rotation Records), electronic-pop duo mar | co, psych-pop project Plastic Waves, and riff-mad Brooklyn rock quintet Rann.
It all goes down at Brush Square Park’s West Tent from noon to 6 p.m., (located next to the Austin Convention Center), is an all ages party, and is open to all: Get on the list without charge by RSVPing here.
