MEER

Wheels Within Wheels KARISMA Norwegian prog-pop perfection. When progressive ideals and pop sensibilities collide, the results can be variable, but Norway’s Meer seem to have found the perfect formula. Their second album, 2021’s Playing House, was almost overburdened with great melodies and tumultuous, theatrical arrangements, and frothing, elated critical responses followed. Led by brother and sister duo Knut and Johanne Nesdal, Meer’s distinctive sound that achieves new levels of drama, bombast and melodic elegance on Wheels Within Wheels. A sumptuous, hour-long stream of enormous hooks and fizzing ensemble chemistry, it reaches several goosebump-inducing, emotional peaks, powered in part by the siblings’ startlingly powerful vocals, but also by a production that wrings every last drop of grandeur from each song. “It frequently sounds like a band built for enormodomes.” As razor-sharp…