On his new album Infinite Youth, Merk e­xamines the blurry line between adolescence and adulthood, and all the clarity and mess that accompanies that blurring. This is a record that thrives on a certain simplicity of lyric, melody and rhythm, and is compelled by contrast: pop songs influenced by art music, an album about adulthood that reflects heavily on what it is to be young, and a sonic world that is both expansive and deeply intimate.
 
Merk is the solo project of New Zealand songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mark Perkins, which began when Perkins re­corded 2016’s Swordfish (Win­ner of The Taite Music Prize Auckland Live Best Independent Debut). His debut album showcased a knack for melody, based around guitars strummed to catchy perfection. While Swordfish in­troduced many of the qualities that Merk continues to cultivate, it’s on Infinite Youth that he comes fully into his own.
 
“In the past it felt like I was hiding, but now I’m trying to wear my heart on my sleeve a little more,” Perkins muses. He has an understated, commanding presence, a playful intensity, as well as an ability to simply let go. Lyrically, this album treads a line between earnest, vulnerable, and knowingly tongue in cheek: songs that began in irony mutated into sincerity, and vice versa.
 
The chorus of lead single H.N.Y.B., in which Merk wishes a lover a Happy New Year, is deceptively simple, but is at once an expression of love, an acknowledgement of a new beginning, and a nod to the fact that this particular new beginning happens every year.
 
This feeling, of a simplicity that opens up into a great depth, is refracted through every aspect of Infinite Youth: sonically, it was essential that this album leave behind the guitars that Perkins had strummed incessantly while touring the world as a member of Fazerdaze an­d Tom Lark, in favour of a palette that captures space and time in its immensity and intimacy.
 
Merk credits Danish producer and key collaborator Johan Carøe with opening up Infinite Youth’s space: “He was so good at seeing where I was hiding”.
 
An album that will capture you on first listen and then reward your every repetition, In­finite Youth reintroduces Merk and invites you, warmly, into his orbit.