Last month, Spotify heeded Adele’s insistence that albums should be played in the order their creators intended, and removed the shuffle button as the default play option. While many celebrated the move, south London’s Me Rex now come off as the anarchists of the platform: their debut album Megabear is not so much a record as an interactive experience. Comprising 52 pieces at roughly 30 seconds apiece (the minimum track length required to register a play on Spotify), it is designed to be shuffled at will, thanks to similarities in key and time signature, and paired with a card deck and randomised website to offer paths through the music. You’re not going to find any breakout singles here, but rather a commitment to a journey, a choose-your-own-adventure trip through a video-gameworthy soundscape.
Novel presentation notwithstanding, it’s a remarkably immersive listen. Shades of midwestern emo mingle with the closer-to-home approach of Los Campesinos! or Frightened Rabbit, weaving diffidence and careful enunciation into strange, tattoo-worthy mantras of hope and pain: “Sickness and discontent made glorious autumn again,” Myles McCabe sings on Distillate. He frequently returns to the imagery of a river, letting it flow through him and cleansing whatever sin he appears to fear. Left broadly open for the listeners’ interpretation, there’s something almost religious in the ritual, a catharsis far greater than the sum of its parts. In the streaming age, the format of the album is undoubtedly worthy of protection. But who’s to say you can’t still have some fun with it?
