Merge Rock & Indie 143 Items

Recorded live at Yellowhammer Brewing in Huntsville, Alabama, in May 2021, Secret Stratosphere finds William Tyler and fellow psychedelic dreamers The Impossible Truth refashioning prime cuts from the Nashville guitarist's rich catalog, casting new light onto once-familiar songs. Featuring the crackling combo of Jack Lawrence (Raconteurs, Dead Weather), Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews, Country Westerns), and Luke Schneider (solo, Margo Price), the quartet stretch the dynamics of Tyler's compositions to their fullest interdimensional potential, exposing a deep undercurrent of kosmische and post-rock influences (with the right amount of grit from the nitrous corner of the Dead Lot).In teasing these influences out on favorites and new songs alike-he cheekily calls closer "Area Code 601" a "Hawkwind meets Charlie Daniels B...

On the first of March, 2020, John Darnielle, Peter Hughes, Matt Douglas, and Jon Wurster, aka the Mountain Goats band, visited legendary studio Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN. Darnielle armed his band with new songs and reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang who engineered last year's In League with Dragons. In the same room where the Cramps tracked their 1980 debut album, the Mountain Goats spent a week capturing the magic of a band at the top of its game. The result is Getting Into Knives, the perfect album for the millions of us who have spent many idle hours contemplating whether we ought to be honest with ourselves and just get massively into knives.

This summer, Merge will reissue A Giant Dog's first two full-lengths_2012's Fight and 2013's Bone_worldwide on limited-edition colored vinyl, reintroducing the world to the quintetSpoon's Britt Daniel calls "the greatest American rock and roll / punk band since I don't know when."Celebrating its tenth birthday in 2022 is A Giant DogFight , the Texas group's hard-to-find debut album, remixed, remastered, and pressed on green vinyl just for the occasion. All thetrademark tenets of AGD lore are on display at the jump:monstrously adorable album art and punny title, whip-smartsongwriting dolled up in denim and leather, boiled down to thesweetest moments and blown out to the masses with bravadoto spare. Upon Fight's original release, the local Austin Chronicle raved: "The raucous, low-rent squall quakes with affirmative abandon, while a just-right dose of pop girds the buzz and yowl.

Raucous ear candy culled from the hook-driven melodies of Slade, the glammy swagger of Marc Bolan, the morbid fantasy of Killer-era Alice Cooper & the unpredictable wit of Sparks.

1st time pressed to vinyl. Originally released in 2005, this is a classic Fanclub record in tone & arrangement, & handsomely demonstrates the "less is more" maxim -- it is both airier & more light of touch than it's immediate predecessors.

Narratively, H.C. McEntire's Eno Axis is about finding direction in the natural world, and following love. Sonically, it's an album shaped enormously by the atmosphere it was recorded in_the crew's synergy and positivity, the proximity and presence of a band in a room playing with intention. Structurally, it's a group of songs inspired by the colors and tones of open tunings, by the sacrality of space and instinct. Stylistically, it's folk-rock leaning into its curious experimental side and moved by the spiritual rawness of classic soul and the simplicity of earnest pop. Eno Axis feels like a confident and mature step forward from her debut album LIONHEART_in tone, arrangement, production, and spirit.

She & Him, Aka Zooey Deschanel And M. Ward, Released Their Third Album Of Original Material, Entitled Volume 3, On May 7, 2013.With Fourteen Songs_11 Deschanel Originals And Three Covers_volume 3 Is An Effortlessly Effervescent, Bleached-Out-In-The-Sun Pop Record. The Album Features Some Of The Most Dynamic, Complex Songs Deschanel Has Ever Written, Allowing For Tempo Shifts, Disco Grooves, String Arrangements On Multiple Tracks, And Horn Flourishes That Perfectly Suit The She & Him Sound. Written By Deschanel During Downtime While Filming New Girl, And Produced By M. Ward, Volume 3 Features Guest Contributions From Nrbq's Joey Spampinato, Mike Watt, Tilly And The Wall, Pierre De Reeder From Rilo Kiley, And Tom Hagerman From Devotchka.

She & Him Released Their Sophomore Album, Volume Two, On March 23, 2011. Written By Zooey Deschanel (She) And Produced By M. Ward (Him), Volume Two Is The Follow Up To The Duo's Critically Acclaimed Debut, Volume One. The Album Includes Eleven Original Tracks And Two Covers: "Ridin' In My Car" By Nrbq And Skeeter Davis' "Gonna Get Along Without You Now."Described By Zooey As A "Feel-Good Album," Volume Two Is Bolstered By Rich Harmonies, Sweet-As-Sugar Melodies, And Brill Building Choruses. From Sweeping Opener "Thieves" And First Single "In The Sun" (Featuring Guest Vocals By Tilly And The Wall) To The Tempo And Mood Shifts Of "Home" And The Vocals-Only, Hymn-Like Closer "If You Can't Sleep," Volume Two Shimmers From Start To Finish.

Wild Flag is a Portland, Oregon- and Washington, DC based quartet consisting of Carrie Brownstein, Rebecca Cole, Mary Timony, and Janet Weiss. The members of Wild Flag have played in numerous and notable bands including Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi, The Minders, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, and others. The four musicians who make up Wild Flag have known one another for well over a decade; playing together felt almost inevitable. Brownstein and Weiss were in Sleater-Kinney and toured with Timony's band Helium on numerous occasions. Brownstein and Timony played in a side project called The Spells. Rebecca Cole's Portland-based band The Minders was a frequent opener for Sleater-Kinney. Weiss and Cole play together in the 1960's garage-rock cover band The Shadow Mortons. After collaborating on a score for a documentary, the ease with which they worked together proved infectious and promising. Wild Flag was formed. In April 2011, they went to Sacramento, California, where they recorded their self-titled album with engineer Chris Woodhouse at the Hangar. All tracks were recorded live except for the vocals. It remains their first and only album. The cover art was designed by filmmaker Mike Mills (Thumbsucker, Beginners). Subsequently "Wild Flag" was rated 'Best of 2011' at Rolling Stone, SPIN, NME, Pitchfork, Stereogum, Village Voice Pazz and Jop, Consequence, PopMatters, Under the Radar and more. "That sense of teetering on the ledge of chaos, of mayhem fighting melody for control, makes Wild Flag a debut for the ages..." _ CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Eric D. Johnson rarely lingers at one location too long. As a kid growing up in the Midwest, Johnson's family moved around a lot, but it wasn't until he became a touring musician years later that motion became a central part of his identity. That transient lifestyle stoked an enduring reverence for the world he watched pass by through a van window. A sense of place is a unifying theme he's revisited with Fruit Bats throughout its many lives. From the project's origins in the late '90s as a vehicle for Johnson's lo-fi tinkering to the more sonically ambitious work of recent years, Fruit Bats has often showcased love songs where people and locations meld into one. It's a loose song structure that navigates what he calls "the geography of the heart." "The songs exist in a world that you can sort of travel from one to another," says Johnson. "There are roads and rivers between these songs." Those pathways extend straight through the newest Fruit Bats album, aptly titled A River Running to Your Heart . Self-produced by Johnson, a first for Fruit Bats, with Jeremy Harris at Panoramic House just north of San Francisco, it's Fruit Bats' tenth full-length release and one that finds the project in the middle of a creative resurgence. After two decades of making music, hard-earned emotional maturity has seeped into Johnson's songs, resulting in a more complex sound that's connected with audiences like no other previous version of Fruit Bats. A River Running to Your Heart represents the fullest realization of that creative vision to date. It's a sonically diverse effort that largely explores the importance of what it means to be home, both physically and spiritually. And while that might seem like a peculiar focus for an artist who's constantly in motion, for Fruit Bats, home can take many forms, from the obvious to the obscure. Lead single "Rushin' River Valley" is a self-propelled love song written about Johnson's wife that clings to the borrowed imagery of the place where she grew up in northern California. Then, there's the gentle and unfussy acoustic ballad "We Used to Live Here," which looks back to a time of youthful promise and cheap rent. But the wistful "It All Comes Back" is perhaps the most stunning and surprising track on the album, Johnson's production skills on full display. Built upon intricate layers of synths, keyboards, and guitars, it's a pitch-perfect blend of tone and lyricism that taps into our shared apprehensions and hopes for a post-pandemic life. "We lost some time / But we can make it back / Let's take it easy on ourselves, okay?" sings a world-weary but ultimately reassuring Johnson in the song's opening lines It's the kind of performance that makes you hope Fruit Bats stays in this one place, at least for a little while longer.

Sara Dobbs and Jenny Shore used to work summer stock theater in St. Louis, Missouri. They'd do the hand jive with TV stars past and future; they'd get coldly corrected by the ancient, legendary choreographer Gemze de Lappe. Sara went on to Broadway, including a run as Anybodys in West Side Story. Jenny went on to choreograph in the independent dance scene of early 2000s Chicago. Julie Shore is Jenny's sister. She's always made music - playing Chopin, writing songs, making bands with her friends. She's had the archetypal Millennial journey of entering adulthood in the '08 financial crisis and figuring out what stupid series of jobs you have to take to pay rent while keeping an artistic life alive. Miles Francis grew up in New York City with Backstreet Boys posters covering their walls. An extraordinary drummer since youth, Miles thrives in collaboration_ whether producing artists in their West Village studio, performing with artists like Angelique Kidjo, or powering protests with a big marching drum. These four - Miles, Julie, Jenny, and Sara - are Sister Squares. What made them a musical unit was working with Grammy winner and Oscar nominee Will Butler. They've all just finished a new record together: Will Butler + Sister Squares. "After Generations, I considered making a weird solo record. Me alone in the basement, etc., etc. Mostly I realized that what I wanted was the opposite," says Will. He increasingly turned to the band for feedback on lyrics and song structures. He asked Miles if they'd produce the record. The band played a run of shows in August 2022, airing out studio ideas in live rooms. After coming home, the band regrouped at Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn. "I had quit my band Arcade Fire very recently, after 20 years - maybe the most complex decision of my life. I had spent the preceding two years at home with my three children. I was 39 years old. I was waking up every morning and reading Emily Dickinson, until I had read every Emily Dickinson poem. I was listening to Morrissey, to Shostakovich, to the Spotify top 50. I had unformed questions with inchoate answers," says Will. "But, honestly, I was feeling great about the record." The album projects widescreen emotional landscapes. Lead-off single "Long Grass" is like a Harry Styles song with 20 more years of life behind it. Standout track "Saturday Night" has a beat, according to Miles, "with that robot-alien-dancing-at-a-haunted- dive-bar feeling that we were going for." The back half of the album is a danceable, weird choral record with harmonies both beautiful and dissonant. Closing song "The Window" is the comedown after the party - Julie playing a Chopin Nocturne on a three-years-out-of-tune piano, slowed to half-speed on tape with Will singing over it in a voice exactly as tired as he was. It's a record with a warm, humane soul.

Peak edition is opaque yellow vinyl and includes a photo booklet of ephemera of the era! The Spinanes were Portland OGs singer-guitarist Rebecca Gates and drummer Scott Plouf and were snapped up by Sub Pop in the post-Nirvana feeding frenzy. Gates was a guitar manipulator more artful and poetic and sensual than her peers, with a voice full of emotion and warmth_a deep, distinct standout among the samey girly-girls. Plouf was a powerhouse drummer, exact and on-point, with a giant collection of shades and enough mod swagger to make Paul Weller proud. Their urgency was soft but they pummeled us hard. When they recorded their debut album, Manos, with Brian Paulson at AmRep in Minneapolis, they brought a ridiculous amount of energy: Few acts manage to capture that live spark in the studio. A college radio hit, "Manos" was characterized as indiepop or indie rock or alternative, but also had a touch of art rock, folk, emo, math rock, postrock, even jazz, nearing the same spiritual space as '90s bands like Unrest, Sebadoh, and Versus. Gates told our zine (chickfactor) in 1993 what kind of record she wanted to make: She wanted it to be really magical - the way the first Verlaines record is or a Replacements record - things that you can put on when you feel horrible. Named after a misheard Jesus Lizard lyric, "Manos" is just that: It sounds like smoky venues and dance parties at punk houses: woozy, tight, fraught, wrought, tense, intense, swoony, breathy, fast, worldly/weary -?sophisticated and primitive, stressful and soothing. Twelve songs and nary a dud: "Noel, Jonah and Me", the epic title track (a hip-swayer full of lust and longing), the rifftastic "Grand Prize", the catchy "Sunday". "Manos" was an original in a crowded market in 1993, and the Spinanes seemed to be everywhere. All hail its reissue, one quarter century later. - Gail O'Hara

A surprise cassette released April 2020, Songs for Pierre Chuvin is the Mountain Goats' first all-boombox album since 2002's All Hail West Texas. After selling over 4000 cassettes in a matter of minutes, the avid Mountain Goats fanbase has demanded more and Merge is happy to acquiesce. "Recording on the same boombox that launched his career, John Darnielle returns to his lo-fi roots for an album of alienation, ancient pagans, and making it through the year together." _Pitchfork / "Full of images fit for these dismal times and slogans suited to surviving them, Pierre Chuvin is an inspiring reminder of how much each of us has left to learn." _npr / "Songs for Pierre Chuvin is exactly what we've come to expect: big-hearted songs full of warmth and smarts, custom-built to comfort and to inspire." _Bandcamp

It's spring of 2023 in the North Carolina Piedmont, and songwriter and singer M.C. Taylor_leader of the band Hiss Golden Messenger_is feeling alive. Joyful. Eternal,he might say. For the Grammy-nominated musician, whose albums have traced an internal path through adulthood, fatherhood, spirituality, and depression for well overa decade, this is something new. "The tunes onJump for Joy were composed in freemoments throughout 2022, a year during which Hiss was on the road more or less constantly," explains Taylor. "And perhaps because the post-pandemic energy out in the world felt so chaotic and uncertain, I found myself thinking a lot abo...

In Prism is the best Polvo record even before you get to the majestic "A Link in the Chain," serene and tempestuous like few other things you'll hear. The album was recorded with Brian Paulson, and Polvo has never sounded better. Polvo spent 1990-98 giving voice to a chorus of discrete rock & roll ideas that really hadn't been heard before. While there was nothing wrong before, it's now so much more right-perhaps because after ten years, after other bands and their tours and records and worries (if they had any), none of the peripheral stuff matters anymore. -Mike Wolf, NYC, June 2009

Zooey Deschanel And Matt Ward, Aka She & Him, Are As Comfortable And Complementary A Musical Pair As Les Paul And Mary Ford. Matt And Zooey Make Music For An Eternal Springtime, When The Temperature Is Warm Enough To Go Riding With The Top (Or At Least The Windows) Rolled Down And The Radio Turned Up.They Were Paired Together By Director Martin Hynes To Perform The Richard And Linda Thompson Tune "When I Get To The Border" For His Film The Go-Getter Which Sparked The Idea For "Volume One".

As sculpted shards of guitar-tumbling, tolling, squalling-shower the jittery bounce of a piano on opener "Human," it's obvious that Reason in Decline, Archers of Loaf's first album in 24 years, will be more than a nostalgic, low-impact reboot. When they emerged from North Carolina's '90s indie-punk incubator, the Archers' hurtling, sly, gloriously dissonant roar was a mythologized touchstone of slacker-era refusal. But this, the distilled shudder of "Human" (as in "It's hard to be human / When only death can set you free"), is an entirely different noise. In fact, it's a startling revelation. In short, this is not your father's Archers of Loaf, even if you're a father now who was a fan then. (If that's the case, congrats on surviving the Plague and getting to hear this fearlessly poignant record, you alt-geezer!) Otherwise, thank your youthful fucking lucky stars, kids! Enjoy Reason in Decline with fresh ears and do as the Archers have been doing: Stay humble, stay informed, express yourself creatively, and try not to lose your goddamned mind while the polar ice caps melt. Peace.

The Will to Live was produced by Titus Andronicus singer-songwriter Patrick Stickles and Canadian icon Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen, The Whole Nine Yards) at the latter's Hotel 2 Tango recording studio in Montreal. Drawing on maximalist rock epics from Who's Next to Hysteria, Bilerman and Stickles have crafted the richest, densest, and hardesthitting sound for Titus Andronicus yet. All at once, the record matches the sprawl and scope of the band's most celebrated work, while also honing their ambitious attack to greater effect than ever before. "It may strike some as ironic we had to go to Canada to record our equivalent to Born in the USA," quips Stickles, "but the pursuit of Ultimate Rock knows no borders." For his recent stretch of personal stability, he credits a newfound domestic bliss and steadfast mental health regimen ("Lamictal is a hell of a drug") as well as the endurance of what has become the longest-running consistent lineup of Titus Andronicus_Liam Betson on guitar, R.J. Gordon on bass, and Chris Wilson on drums. On the crueler side of the coin, however, The Will to Live was created in large part as an attempt to process the untimely 2021 death of Matt "Money" Miller, the founding keyboardist of the band and Stickles' closest cousin. Stickles explains: "The passing of my dearest friend forced me to recognize not only the precious and fragile nature of life, but also the interconnectivity of all life. Loved ones we have lost are really not lost at all, as they, and we still living, are all component pieces of a far larger continuous organism, which both precedes and succeeds our illusory individual selves, united through time by (you guessed it) the will to live." "Naturally, though, our long-suffering narrator can only arrive at this conclusion through a painful and arduous odyssey through Hell itself," he qualifies. "This is a Titus Andronicus record, after all." When Titus Andronicus made their long-awaited return to the stage in 2021, it was to celebrate the anniversary of their landmark breakthrough The Monitor, and the act of playing that material before an ecstatic audience left the band determined to deliver an album that would reach for those same lofty heights, relying this time less on the reckless fire of youth and more on the experience and perspective at which a band only arrives with a thousand shows under their belt. Through this golden ratio, Titus Andronicus have arrived at the peak of their creative powers. From its adrenalizing opening instrumental "My Mother Is Going to Kill Me" to its wistful closing benediction "69 Stones," The Will to Live conjures a vast landscape and sends the listener on a rocket ride from peak to vertiginous peak. Rock fans will find themselves a feast, whether they crave barn-burning rock anthems such as "(I'm) Screwed" and "All Through the Night," rapid-fire lyrical gymnastics ("Baby Crazy"), symphonic punk throwdowns ("Dead Meat"), or an adventurous excursion into the darkness that delivers thrills as it breezes boldly past the seven-minute mark, "An Anomaly." As if that wasn't enough gas for the tank, The Will to Live features sterling contributions from members of the Hold Steady, Arcade Fire, and the E Street Band, as well as duets with the aforementioned Betson, former Titus Andronicus drummer Eric Harm, and Josée Caron of the Canadian rock band Partner. The album comes packaged with gorgeous triple-gatefold artwork by illustrious illustrator Nicole Rifkin, a Hieronymus Bosch-inspired triptych which mirrors the three-part structure of the narrator's perilous voyage across the corresponding three sides of vinyl. All together, this esteemed ensemble, with Stickles and Bilerman determined and defiant at the helm, have found The Will to Live_now, the question is_ will you?

2LP is pink & violet vinyl pressed to Side A / Side B effect in a gatefold jacket. Eric D. Johnson, the creative force behind Fruit Bats, doesn't spend a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror. "Maybe it speaks to some Midwest thing," he says. "Don't be overly reflective or navel-gazing. And as a songwriter, you always want to be looking forward, not backward." But with the 20th anniversary of his first Fruit Bats release (2001's Echolocation) on his mind, it seemed as good a time as any to take stock of his work_and he's doing so in the form of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud: Slow Growers, Sleeper Hits and Lost Songs (2001-2021), a two-disc collection that tracks the history of Fruit Bats from its earliest days to right now. Thoughtfully compiled by Johnson himself, this set is split in two distinct halves. Set in reverse chronological order, the first disc cherry-picks from Fruit Bats' official releases, including fan favorites _ "Humbug Mountain Song" from 2016's Absolute Loser and "The Bottom of It" from his 2019 Merge debut Gold Past Life _ alongside some of Johnson's more personal choices like "Glass in Your Feet" from Echolocation. If the first disc of this set is "the collection that you buy for your friend that's Fruit Bats-curious," according to Johnson, the second disc is for longtime fans that want a deeper dive into Fruit Bats lore. To put this half of Sometimes a Cloud Is Just a Cloud together, Johnson dug into several hard drives' worth of material. Included here are lovely early versions of "Rainbow Sign" and "The Old Black Hole," recorded to a Tascam 4-track just as Fruit Bats was becoming a reality. There's also a rambling take on the Steve Miller Band's classic rock mainstay "The Joker," and some wonderful never-before-heard original tunes.

When the Mountain Goats got together in March 2020, it was to make not one album, but two. The idea was to again work with Matt Ross-Spang, the dashing Memphis wunderkind. Matt pitched we spend a week at Sam Phillips Recording, his home base in Memphis, followed by another at the storied Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, a plan that dovetailed nicely with John's notion of corralling these songs into two complementary batches: one light, one dark. The Memphis album_Getting Into Knives, would be brighter, bolder, marked by rich and vibrant hues; the Muscle Shoals album _ Dark in Here, is quieter, smokier, but more deeply textured and intense. We were all aware of the mythos surrounding Fame. The second you step inside you transport to its early '60s heyday and its louche mid-'70s denouement. The room we set up in is the room where Percy Sledge sang "When a Man Loves a Woman" and where Aretha Franklin recorded "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)." The Wurlitzer with which Spooner Oldham opens the last? It's sitting right there. Spooner is living musical history, having played with everyone from Bob Dylan and Neil Young to Linda Ronstadt and Liberace, for crying out loud. And Spooner is all over Dark in Here_any time you hear a bit of Hammond organ or electric piano chiming in without repeating a phrase. We tracked the album's one outright banger, "The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower," live with Spooner, and "Mobile" and "Dark in Here" with guitarist Will McFarlane_another local veteran who played with Bonnie Raitt for years. We only had Spooner for two afternoons, though, and Will for just one. After it was just the four of us: John playing acoustic guitar and occasional piano, the rhythm section of drummer Jon Wurster and myself, and our jack-of-all-trades Matt Douglas picking up everything else. The result is something more stripped down and intimate than the lush arrangements of Getting Into Knives. Of "The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums," John concedes that the song is autobiographical. While the lines, "In a new universe / trying to find the mask that fits me" would take on a newly literal connotation in the weeks to come, the song is about going to late `80s metal shows at Fender's Ballroom in Long Beach, and about seeking a sense of identity and community in strange and occasionally forbidding places. This theme _ feeling at once conspicuous and invisible, the frustrated craving for acceptance _ is echoed elsewhere. Then there are elegies to lost causes, some big and institutional ("The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower"), some small and personal ("Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review," a tribute to David Berman, whose return from self-imposed musical exile had been cause for huge celebration in our camp). "Before I Got There" neglects to identify its victims, or the tragedy that's befallen them. John writes in the liner notes that "if you're looking for a governing theme here, it's calamity, as all the songs are either anticipating one or reflecting one that's already happened." - Peter Hughes, Rochester, March 2021

Like every record Superchunk has made over the last thirty-some years, Wild Loneliness is unskippably excellent and infectious. It's a blend of stripped-down and lush, electric and acoustic, highs and lows, and I love it all. On Wild Loneliness I hear echoes of Come Pick Me Up, Here's to Shutting Up, and Majesty Shredding. After the (ahem, completely justifiable) anger of What a Time to Be Alive, this new record is less about what we've lost in these harrowing times and more about what we have to be thankful for. (I know something about gratitude. I've been a huge Superchunk fan since the 1990s, around the same time I first found my way to poetry, so the fact that I'm writing these words feels like a minor miracle.) On Wild Loneliness, it feels like the band is refocusing on possibility, and possibility is built into the songs themselves, in the sweet surprises tucked inside them. I say all the time that what makes a good poem_the "secret ingredient"_is surprise. Perhaps the same is true of songs. Like when the sax comes in on the title track, played by Wye Oak's Andy Stack, adding a completely new texture to the song. Or when Owen Pallett's strings come in on "This Night." But my favorite surprise on Wild Loneliness is when the harmonies of Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley of Teenage Fanclub kick in on "Endless Summer." It's as perfect a pop song as you'll ever hear _ sweet, bright, flat-out gorgeous_and yet it grapples with the depressing reality of climate change: "Is this the year the leaves don't lose their color / and hummingbirds, they don't come back to hover / I don't mean to be a giant bummer but / I'm not ready / for an endless summer, no / I'm not ready for an endless summer." I love how the music acts as a kind of counterweight to the lyrics. Because of Covid, Mac, Laura, Jim, and Jon each recorded separately, but a silver lining is that this method made other long-distance contributions possible, from R.E.M.'s Mike Mills, Sharon Van Etten, Franklin Bruno, and Tracyanne Campbell of Camera Obscura, among others. Some of the songs for the record were written before the pandemic hit, but others, like "Wild Loneliness," were written from and about isolation. I've been thinking of songs as memory machines. Every time we play a record, we remember when we heard it before, and where we were, and who we were. Music crystallizes memories so well: listening to "Detroit Has a Skyline," suddenly I'm shoutsinging along with it at a show in Detroit twenty years ago; listening to "Overflows," I'm transported back to whisper-singing a slowed-down version of it to my young son, that year it was his most-requested lullaby. Wild Loneliness is becoming part of my life, part of my memories, too. And it will be part of yours. I can picture people in 20, 50, or 100 years listening to this record and marveling at what these artists created together_beauty, possibility, surprise_during this alarming (and alarmingly isolated) time. But why wait? Let's marvel now. - Maggie Smith

Over the past 20 years, The New Pornographers have proven themselves one of the most excellent bands in indie rock. The group's ninth album and first for Merge establishes them alongside modern luminaries like Yo La Tengo and Superchunk when it comes to their ability to evolve while still retaining what made them so special in the first place. A dazzling and intriguing collection of songs, "Continue as a Guest" finds bandleader A.C. Newman and his compatriots Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, John Collins, Todd Fancey, and Joe Seiders exploring fresh territory and shattering the barriers of their collective comfort zone. Newman began work on "Continue as a Guest" after the band had finished touring behind 2019's "In the Morse Code of Brake Lights". Themes of isolation and collapse bleed into this album, as Newman tackles the ambivalence of day-to-day life during the Covid-19 pandemic. But Newman says that the album's title track also addresses the concerns that come with being in a band for so long. "The idea of continuing as a guest felt apropos to the times," he explains. "Feeling out of place in culture, in society, being in a band that has been around for so long_not feeling like a part of any zeitgeist, but happy to be separate and living your simple life, your long fade-out. Living in a secluded place in an isolated time, it felt like a positive form of acceptance: find your own little nowhere, find some space to fall apart, continue as a guest." Newman discovered new vocal approaches within his own talent. There are new and rich tones to Newman's voice throughout Continue as a Guest, from his dusky lower register over "Angelcover" to his slippery slide over the glimmering synths of "Firework in the Falling Snow," to bold tones he embraces on the soaring "Bottle Episodes." Another sonic change comes courtesy of saxophonist Zach Djanikian, whose tenor and bass luxuriate all over Continue as a Guest's alluring chassis, especially on the menacing build of "Pontius Pilate's Home Movies." Along with Newman's usual collaborators, several songwriters contribute. The bursting opener and first single "Really Really Light" is a co-write with Dan Bejar (Destroyer, the New Pornographers). Then there's "Firework in the Falling Snow," a collaboration with Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13. Even as Newman embraces a collaborative spirit more than ever, his new album is a testament to his ability to discover new artistic sides of himself. "Continue as a Guest" sounds like a thrilling path forward for The New Pornographers, with songs that generate a contagious feeling of excitement for the future as well.

Limited Edition for Record Store Day 2022.

1st time pressed to vinyl. Originally released in 2010, this picks up on the introspective, world-weary quality of Man-Made but also delivers a bit of the classic bright pop the band is known for.