PROJECT MEG: A returning face on the scene, chronic illness, and new music

From the grungy sound of OHBOY! to the indie-pop danciness of SARPA SALPA, and most recently the hook-laden heft of UNPEOPLE’s massive riffs, Meg Mash has run the gauntlet of the UK’s DIY music scenes across the last couple of years. However, when a chronic illness diagnosis - in Meg’s case, a particularly severe bout of COVID-19 - caused them to have to exit UNPEOPLE for the sake of both her mental and physical health, the possibility of touring as a career instantly went down the drain. Over a year later though, and not only have her symptoms stabilised, but the drive to create returned. From this, PROJECT MEG has emerged, a solo project and outlet for the musician to still explore her creativity whilst acting as the only writer on the project. We sat down to discuss everything about the upcoming EP absent from it all, ahead of the release of lead single force quit on January 16th.

We jumped right in to discuss the sound of the EP. As a musician who’d been in a variety of acts, this new sound is a different direction to all of Meg’s previous work, and so inevitably we had to ask about the producer and production found on the EP:

Meg: So Simon Jackman, the producer, was recommended to me via the guys in BLANK ATLAS. I’d see a couple of the guys at festivals and such, so I loosely knew them, and then when I was looking for somebody to work with on this project, they recommended him to me. I wanted to work with somebody good, obviously, so that it didn't sound like amateur hour, but also being an independent artist, working on a budget and stuff that was also a factor, and Simon just was a perfect middle ground. In fact, I think, like, he's an absolute steal in terms of, like, the quality of his output and his knowledge. And it was funny because I got there, like, I'd never met him in person, and we just immediately clicked. Similar age, grew up listening to the same music, both support Arsenal, it just clicked. And yeah, I can't really imagine it turning out better with somebody else, we just kind of get each other and get each other's tastes, but considering he's worked with some really heavy bands - he goes out to Scandinavia quite a lot, and works with with with bands out there, a lot of heavy sounds - but as I hope you can hear on on my stuff, like he can also do slightly less heavy music pretty well.

Following on from the production, we wanted to know what it was that a different producer managed to do with Meg’s writing and demos, and what changed in the studio:

Meg: It's interesting because I don't really rate myself as a very good home producer. Like, there's certain things I can do pretty well, like all the synths and keys are just taken straight from my demos, because I'm quite confident with that. But guitars, that sort of thing, I'm just terrible at creating that sound in my own bedroom studio. So I think the main thing when I went in with Simon was establishing what the guitar sound was going to be, ‘How crunchy do we want to go with it?’ or ‘How shoegazey do we want to go with it?’ I think we probably leaned a bit more into the shoegazy side of things, which, again, leans into some of my tastes; my favorite band of all time is probably DEFTONES, because they have that combination of metal but also that shoegaze washy guitar sound where it's just a wall of sound. Another interesting thing, I love playing heavy music, and I love being in heavy bands, and I loved being in UNPEOPLE for that reason, but I actually really struggle writing heavy music. It doesn't come very naturally to me. I feel like my natural instinct is to go down a more pop-y route, so when it came to writing music for the first time, that was just me and just my sound, that was what came out, those synths and the hooky choruses and that sort of thing. So, yeah, I think the only big thing that changed when I took the songs into the studio was getting some loud guitars in there and beefing it up in that way. It was just amazing to hear them come to life with the addition of good sounding guitars, not just my crappy plugins at home. It was just - I'll never forget that feeling of being like, this is exactly how I wanted it to sound, without knowing before how I wanted it to sound.

From there, we shifted over to the content of the lyrics - namely those in force quit - and we asked how they related to about Meg’s departure from UNPEOPLE, the toll of long COVID, and what effect it had on her:

Meg: It's been a very strange year and a half, because I was still in UNPEOPLE for a while when I was becoming unwell, I just didn't really know what was happening at the time. I knew at the time that my lifestyle was not sustainable - I was the only one in the band that had a full time job, for example, I had to in order to live in London and pay rent, I didn't have a choice. So I had that. And then being in UNPEOPLE, I wouldn't say it was like having a second full time job, but it was certainly like having a part time job on top of my full time job, and then trying to balance relationships and friendships and family - a massive burnout was always on the horizon, and unfortunately, it came in the form of long COVID, which in itself, even if you don't have really exciting stuff going on is a really life changing and devastating illness, because your life changes overnight. Essentially, you go from able-bodied to disabled overnight. So leaving the band; it's hard, because at the time I couldn't really process how heartbreaking that was for me, because I was so focused on my health, and they needed to keep going. They couldn't wait for me. So there wasn't really anything I could do about it. I needed to focus on my health. I think when I started getting a bit better, and I say this in the lyrics, it's not something I'm embarrassed to say, but there's a lot of jealousy.  It's really hard seeing this band I was in doing all this amazing stuff that I could have been a part of, you know? One that really stood out to me was when they opened for SMASHING PUMPKINS, that was insane. It's a really complex feeling, because part of you is just so happy for them, because I know how hard we all worked and how hard they continue to work, and I know they deserve it, but at the same time, you have that feeling of oh, this sucks. Because all I ever wanted to do from when I was a kid was be a musician and be on stage. And I came very close to,in fact I did achieve that, but I feel like I came very close to something really big and really special, and it got taken away from me through nobody's fault. But now a year, a year and a bit on, I can look back with hindsight and say, I think - long COVID aside - this is the healthiest thing for me. I don't think I'm built for that lifestyle of touring, of being on the road. It's just not a healthy lifestyle for me.

As opposed to that, we then chatted about what the new project would mean in relation to what we discussed about everything prior to contracting COVID:

Meg: With this project, I'm being really cautious about establishing boundaries really early on, so because it's just me, I don't have that pressure if I need to pull out of a show, that I'm letting three other people down, it's just me. And also, on getting a live band together, I want to make it really clear to them that if ever comes a time where they can't do something because of their physical or mental health, that's fine, just say and we won't do it, because I know how challenging it can be when you're pushing yourself to do things that you just aren't in the physical or mental headspace to do. It's given me a really different outlook on life. I wouldn't say I'm glad it happened, because I wish it never happened, but there are some silver linings to it, and I'm really glad that I've been able to start this project and create these three songs, and hopefully more in the future that I'm really proud of. It's purely me. There's no other influence other than my influence, which is a really nice feeling. You have to just look on the positive side. I used to be such a negative person, and it's so strange, this whole experience has turned me into one of these positive mental attitude people, because I think we all sweat the small stuff all the time, and it's just not worth it. Life is so short. I think the most important thing is just making sure you're healthy and you're happy, they're the most important things. And also, just being authentically yourself - I don't feel like I was necessarily being that authentic to myself trying to live that crazy touring lifestyle because, although parts of me loved it, and I love the performance side, the rest of it I genuinely just don't really enjoy. It's tiring, you're away from your loved ones a lot, you're missing birthdays and weddings and stuff and yeah, I feel like my life now is where it's supposed to be.

Returning now to the writing of the music, we asked Meg how it felt to write purely on their own for the first time, and to do that in the context of a solo project:

Meg: I've had a few false starts in the past with launching a solo product, and I've always written, I started writing songs when I was about 14 or 15. I'm 35 now, so 20 years of writing songs, and it's taken me this long to release a proper EP! In UNPEOPLE I struggled to write, and I think that's because Luke and Jake are just so good at writing those kind of songs, catchy, heavy rock songs, that it didn't really feel - well, first of all, it didn't really feel necessary for me to contribute that much. But also, I thought even if I did, it would not be up to the standard of what they were able to create. In my prior bands, though, particularly SARPA SALPA, I did a lot of the songwriting. So I have carried that weight before, but I've always had band mates to bounce ideas off of, or to add their little spin on it as well. And I must say, I did write these songs myself and recorded all the parts, apart from the drums. I brought in the drummer from SARPA, Charlie, because he's such a creative drummer, and I'd had that experience of writing with him a lot in SARPA. Although the parts he actually ended up playing were quite similar to what I'd written on the demo, he added little flares and stuff that for me as a writer, with drums not being my primary instrument, I just wouldn't have been able to do. So I wrote the songs, and then I'd come back to them maybe a couple of months later and tweak a few things, and then again, maybe a month later. So they certainly went through a process, and I actually feel like I've learned a lot through writing this EP, as I'm quite an impatient person, so quite often I'll finish something and I’d be like, okay,  it’s finished, I won't make it any better than this. But during this process, because I was ill and I didn't feel ready to go into a studio yet, I had to sit with the songs for quite a while. And because of that, I went through a bit more of a process and was able to keep building on them. Maybe change a chord progression here or there, maybe take out this section, add this section. And ultimately, I think that's the massive lesson that I've taken away from this is to just not always just say ‘I'm done, it's finished.’ I think things have always got room to develop more and improve.

Moving on from the writing to a sadly less exciting and rather more concerning occurrence, we asked Meg about her experiences with online harassment and homophobia after she was unveiled as an Orange Amplifiers artist:

Meg: As I'm sure you're aware being part of the LGBTQ community, I feel like you go through phases in life, and I certainly had a long phase where I really was quite embarrassed about my sexuality, and even when I came out, I didn't want to look like a lesbian or act like a lesbian, because I didn't want to be a stereotype. However, I'd say, over the last, like, 5 to 10 years, I've really become a lot more comfortable with who I am. For that reason, when we played the first UNPEOPLE show at 2000Trees, I had a trans inclusive pride flag on my amp to say that we’re a band that supports everyone, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, and I thought it was a really important statement to make. So I took a picture from that show, I actually chose that picture for them to use, because, again, it summarises that pride in just being who you are. I quite naively did not expect that backlash, and I say that knowing that there's still so many people out there who hate people like us for no good reason. But yeah, I pretty naively just thought ‘these people are only interested in guitars and amps.’ But unfortunately, the main thing they took away from that post was that I had a rainbow flag on my amp. It didn't shake me, it didn't affect me, like do you know what? If that bothers you that much, you live a very sad little life, but it upset me that somebody else might see that, some young guitarist, maybe following orange, and they see those comments, maybe they're still in the closet, maybe they're struggling with their gender, and they see those comments and they think, I'm not welcome here. That was the complete opposite of what I was trying to do in that band, having a pride flag on my amp was there to say you are welcome here. So yeah, it was a shame. But the way that Orange reacted was really great - they immediately put out a statement saying something along the lines of ‘if that's your opinion we don't want you here’, sort of thing. Credit to them, they handled it as well as they could have. But, yeah, it's not nice to feel like people don't like you just because of who you are, or who you love.

From there, we pivoted to discussing the EP’s cover - a silhouette, shrouded in muted reds and blues - and asked where the design came from:

Meg: My friend Carla, who is an incredible photographer, basically was looking for people to do test shoots with. And I was like, ‘Carla, I'm going to need pictures for my new music, shall we team up?’ So I ended up going and doing a shoot with her, which ultimately resulted in the image that is now the EP cover, which is me behind a veil or shroud. Carla asked, ‘What are some of the themes of the EP?’ And one of the big ones was isolation and loneliness, which was where the idea of looking locked out or not fully focused came from. And we're actually shooting a video on Saturday - all being well with health obviously, you have to always be cautious of that when we've got a chronic illness. - for force quit, and that's going to be an element of the video as well, the premise of not being fully seen and absorbed and stuff, because it felt like that a bit when I was really ill.

Extending that train of thought, we asked about what happened after Meg left UNPEOPLE, and the large volume of people who unfollowed her:

Meg: You know what, when I was writing songs over the beginning of 2025, maybe beginning of summer 2025, one of the first songs I wrote, which was originally going to be on the EP, was quite a lot about that. I'm saving that one for later, just because I feel like it sits a bit better with some of the other songs I've written, but being in UNPEOPLE was the first time I feel like I've got a bit of a peek behind the curtain of what it is like to be successful and popular as a musician, going to award shows and mingling with people. Fortunately, in the rock scene, the majority of people are very genuine, very kind, very authentic, and having been in bands in other scenes that aren't like that, I would say that in the rock scene, especially the heavy scene, the majority of people are so lovely, and I haven't really lost those connections. Even pretty big names, like Steve from HOUSE OF PROTECTION, who was also in FEVER 333 and THE CHARIOT, I met him at the heavy music awards right before I left. He's a hero of mine, and he was so, so sweet, and we connected on socials. And I could still message him and he'd respond; people are very genuine in this scene. Obviously you do get a bit of bandwagoning and butt kissing, but people in other bands are all really great and really lovely. I've certainly lost followers consistently since then, but the thing is, it's fairly inconsequential to me. I don't really care, it's not something I take personally at all.

As our time was running out, we asked one last question about how Meg was planning to conflate her chronic illness with a newfound desire to play this new music live:

Meg: It;s a really good question, because I didn't think I would want to play shows. However, I'd say the main thing I love about being in a band is that feeling of being on stage, connecting with people, even if they don't know your music, just sharing your art with people one on one in that moment is an amazing feeling. A friend of mine recently, who's also been working on some music, reached out to me and asked if I’d want to do some shows together, like a one off in London, and maybe a one off up here in Northampton? And I could maybe make that work! So I've pretty much got the band rounded out now, and in terms of making that manageable with a chronic illness, I'm quite lucky as I would categorize myself now as having just mild to moderate chronic fatigue. So if I plan ahead and pace myself, I can manage quite a lot of things, but it would be a case of balancing any activity with rest and being really thoughtful and conscious about how I plan those show days, taking the day off work the next day for example, to recover and rest and things like that. But, at the end of the day a show at this level is what, a 20 to 30 minute set, which is the only thing that I really would need to reserve my energy for. So I'm hopeful that I can manage it. Aside from the three songs on the EP, I have quite a few other songs, so I've definitely got a set ready to go, it's just a case of getting a band up to speed and booking some shows. But yeah, I certainly won't be booking a 30 day tour. It might just be the odd show here and odd show there, but fortunately, I still, like I said, know a lot of the people that I met through UNPEOPLE, so I still have some really nice, friendly connections in that scene in terms of booking shows, so I'm hoping I can get something together.

With that, we wrapped up our chat and bid Meg farewell. With any luck, you’ll not only be able to catch PROJECT MEG live (if you’re very lucky!) sometime in the not-too-distant future, but we’ll be right there with you watching a star of the British DIY scene carry on their journey as a fantastic musician, start their journey as a solo artist, and (sadly) continue to be an Arsenal fan.

Lead single force quit will be released on January 16th 2026, and full EP absent from it all will be released on March 6th 2026.

Words: Jasmine Longhurst

Photos: PROJECT MEG, Carla Mundy

With thanks to: Meg Mash