Menea, the shortened moniker for Menea Kefalov, provided the WFNM crowd at Hotel Ziggy with an enchanting performance. It was in support of her March 5th EP release paint me green. She started off her set with "that familiar place." There was just something about her vocals that immediately caught my attention. She wasn't trying to always sing in a smooth and melodic manner. She sang at times like she was tuning her guitar, just going slightly off-tune for just a moment before veering back. Was it an inability to keep a tune? No, it was done on purpose. Other times, she just let her vocals switch time signatures on a dime. It hit me shortly that there was a touch of Basia in those vocals.
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| Menea at Hotel Ziggy |
When it came to her title track "paint me green" she gave a little insight into both the song and album. The song was written about, "Taking a personality test and being like, well, nothing f*cking new here." As for the EP, she said, "The EP is kind of centered around a self-annoying of the self."
Does she like singing "dark" songs? That's how she describes "kitchen fire" and "junkie." For "junkie," she describes it about a time when she couldn't sing, "It felt very isolating and hard and weird."
Her song "disaster" has a wistful feel to it. She has the lyrics "let me feel old, looking back at this whole disaster." It is a song about wanting to get past the moments of sadness that is filling her youthfulness. Now, I'm not sure exactly that growing old is the answer to addressing the thought that your life is a disaster. Of course, there is also that desire in the song to look back and see that you survived it all. It definitely clicked with her friends. I noticed two of them who were separated by say 10 feet singing the lyrics to each other.
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| Menea at Hotel Ziggy |
The song to spotlight here is a TBD song title. I'll just call it "Ponder" for now. The TBD, of course, means you won't be able to find it on Spotify, which means you'll just need to catch her live to hear it. She gave the song a little introduction, "I have a word that I really love. You've never guess what it is. I love to ponder. I recently had a conversation with a bunch of friends that made me ponder a lot about the concept of pondering. And how cool it is that we think about things and then we express them with our words. Sometimes expressing them is way harder then thinking and feeling it."
For the song, she sent her band off stage and sang it solo while playing a 12 string guitar.
"They think it's funny when I say I've been pondering lately. And I laugh as I say what I'm thinking."
Her Spotify account has the following bio, "I wrote my first song at the age of 9 and since then it’s become my way of processing life. Pondering if you will." Yes, it seems appropriate to say that "Ponder" should be the song spotlight.
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| Menea at Hotel Ziggy |
The final song of the set was also a new one called "Angels." She took a deep breath before starting the song and then concluded it with the final guitar note drifting into silence.
Quote of the night. "This song is also in five-eight." It resulted in a few boos from the audience. I suspect musicians don't exactly enjoy playing / singing in five-eight.
Setlist: that familiar place, paint me green, kitchen fire, junkie, disaster, TBD Title (Ponder), Angels.
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