Mercurial World

Mercurial World is a lockdown record by a band that lived online, two people at home in Los Angeles making glossy pop about time running out while the world had stopped.

Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin had grown up playing prog rock together in Miami before switching to pop, and when the pandemic cancelled their first real tours in 2020 they stayed home and wrote. They made the whole album themselves, writing, producing and mixing it, and meanwhile built an audience with odd, deadpan TikTok skits, livestreams and a website that looked like it was from 1999. The music has that same internet brightness: busy synths, club beats, Tenenbaum's light, sweet voice, and a lot of detail packed into every corner, sometimes so much that the words get lost. Underneath the sugar it's about getting older and things ending, which is why it opens with “The End” and closes with “The Beginning.” Coming out in late 2021, when people were starting to go out again, it sounded like a party that knew it couldn't last. It's a debut, a bit crowded, but songs like “Chaeri” and “You Lose!” are as good as anything they've done.