Last Friday, the Horn Gallery hosted mmeadows, New York City-based duo Kristin Slipp and Cole Kamen-Green, who stunned the audience with their complex melodic songs and engaging performance. Before mmeadows took the stage, Keira Ely ’29 opened the show with a few of her original acoustic songs. Several audience members noted her sonic resemblance to singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker, admiring her profound melodies and intimate lyrics. 

Then, mmeadows began, with Slipp on vocals and Kamen-Green on both the trumpet and electronic valve. Audience members appreciated the bands’ indie-electronic sound. “I’ve never heard anything like it,” Cordelia Pollach ’30 explained. As Slipp began singing the lyrics “Do you ever notice how the light moves around you?” her soaring soprano riffs were accompanied by a warm synth melody as the song built until, eventually, everyone was swaying in rhythm.

Near the end of the show, the band surprised the audience by playing a new song it had released the same day. The single, titled “Think About You,” immediately became a fan favorite; students lined up after the show to buy it on vinyl and CD, along with band T-shirts and merch. Jack Perry ’30 noted that mmeadows’ “rhythms were impeccable,” and many others expressed their love for the experimental feel of the music. 

As a musician myself, I was interested in their songwriting process and what motivates their writing. When asked if they usually set a time to write or if inspiration strikes sporadically, the two explained they took part in a song-a-day challenge, where they wrote a song each day for a week and shared them with friends. Slipp and Kamen-Green shared that most of the songs they performed were written this way. “Like, if I look at this list, I think every single one of these songs was in a song a day, so like the skeleton of the songs were done in one day,” Slipp explained. She said she usually comes up with most of the lyrics, and then they work together to create a full song, although she admitted her lyrics usually start out more melodic and abstract. “I’ll be singing something and it will already have a vowel sound to it,” she said. 

After the band played its last song, the audience immediately began chanting for an encore. In response, mmeadows played a cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” The Horn filled with slow bass, floating melodies and symphonic winds as students danced around singing the lyrics. 

The band is currently on tour and you can listen to “Think About You” on most streaming platforms. Slipp also admitted it was one of the best shows she’s put on, and later expressed gratitude for Kenyon’s warm and welcoming atmosphere during the performance. “When you’re doing something so vulnerable that means so much to you, in front of a group of people, it’s, like, that’s kind of what you live for. So I would rate this at the top.”