A Family Affair

Norwegian chamber proggers Meer are back with their hotlyanticipated third album, Wheels Within Wheels. Prog catches up with co-vocalist Johanne Kippersund Nesdal and guitarist Eivind Strømstad to discuss the writing process, running their own festival and the challenges of being part of an octet.

- Dave Everley

Meer were playing in Germany a couple of years ago when a man came up to them after the show. “He wanted to thank us, but he started crying,” says co-vocalist Johanne Kippersund Nesdal. “And he just cried and cried. He said, ‘You are making me do this.’ Getting that kind of reaction from a grown man makes you realise that your music is impacting people’s lives.”

It’s not surprising they provoked such a reaction. The Norwegian eight-piece’s music is big in every sense: melodically, emotionally, dramatically, marrying the intricacy and grand sweep of modern prog to the accessibility of pop. Even their name is a play on ‘Mer’ – the Norwegian word for ‘more’.

“We always want more,” jokes Eivind Strømstad, Meer’s guitarist and also Johanne’s husband.

The pair are speaking to Prog via Zoom from a room in the theatre that Nesdal and her brother and co-vocalist Knut’s parents own in the lakeside town of Hamar, 90 minutes north of Oslo (current productions: a summery spin on Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale and a version of Alice In Wonderland). Nesdal and Strømstad both work here. “He married into the family business,” says the singer.

Appropriately, there’s a sense of drama to Meer’s third album, Wheels Within Wheels. The uplifting rush of their music is powered by the Nesdal siblings’ distinctive voices: Johanne’s powerful and soaring, Knut’s lithe and melodic. The latter came fourth in the Norwegian heats for Eurovision in 2014. “We both love to sing, but he’s more into the glam, TV stuff than I am,” says Johanne.

Wheels Within Wheels doesn’t exactly set its sights on Eurovision, but it does come with an unashamed desire to balance complexity with catchiness.

“We wanted to write songs that people would have fun singing along with,” says Johanne. “Some of the songs are a little more pop-rocky. You can dance along to them.”