Merge Indierock | Alternative 145 Items

It's hard to talk about Rosali's music. Songs that reach outward like this, but then constantly disarm with their intimacy. What do you call such inner searching that is hellbent on rollicking? Songs that long for a sense of peace and songs that want romance, all on equal footing in the same plot of earth? Performed wild, but always centered around the incredible lyrical calm that is Rosali's voice. Bite Down makes me think about singers and bands that throw themselves hard into the storm, the way the Rosali quartet does. (Jim captures the tone of this perfectly, again!) The calm of her voice over top of the band's raging - it is the emblem of songs that live to put themselves in harm's way. But it's not harm. It's just that you have to play hard to get at these goods. The calm of Rosali's voice, the straight talk of her inner search vs. the wildness of the band, the sonic storm she rides in on. That's their sound. The Mowed Sound. It's hard to talk about these last couple Rosali albums without talking about them. They play free and wild and relentlessly melodious. They rip and create space and fill it up with what seems like reckless abandon, but listen carefully or listen for a while and you'll find them paying real close attention to each other and exactly what the song demands. Maybe Fairport did this, maybe VU. It's a strange telepathic brew. Breezier songs like "On Tonight" and "Rewind" sound like they've fought their way to get to that sense of ease. Maybe that's the Mowed Sound "sound"_hard-won ease. Then add to that Ted Bois' patented Rhodes sleaze (see sinuous title track "Bite Down") steering the record into late-night corners; the incredible "Hills on Fire" (maybe the centerpiece of the album), the guitar-ripping and the singing taking turns in reaching new levels of intimacy. It feels listened-in on, exposed and invented on the spot. It is also simply a staggeringly beautiful song. There are a few of those on the album. In contrast, "My Kind" is a raucous, hand-delivered classic; the band throws tables over. For the most part, this is a moodier record than No Medium. It has the same sound of "I've traveled through fire to deliver you these songs," but it is also quieter, more nocturnal. The quiet dread of staring down an open road, and the excitement of that. By the final track, "May It Be on Offer," it is the prayer uttered as you hand yourself over to the world.” - Dan Bejar (of Destroyer)

Transistor Radio:the fourth M. Ward album. Listening to M. Ward's breezy ode toradio's forgotten heydays is a lot like taking in a huge breath of dust-bowl wind --however, its charms are rooted in the hazy lemonade-sipping of summer rather thanthe great depression-obsession of the post-O Brother, Where Art Thou? mainstream.

Post-War: the fifth M. Ward album. Its songs unravel their world-wearied tales of life, love, and human kindness with an innate and special grace, helped in part by the very talented friends who join him on this record, such as Neko Case and Mike Mogis, as well as old Monsters of Folk touring buddy Jim James (My Morning Jacket).

Duet for Guitars #2 introduced us to M. Ward's characteristic rasp andfingerpicking prowess. More minimal in scope than future records, the songsrun the gamut from lullabies to rocking declarations of love. Released onCo-Dependent Records in 1999, one of the initial 1,000 copies found its wayto Howe Gelb, who re-released it in 2000 on Ow Om. It went out of print andremained a hard-to-find piece of the M. Ward catalog until 2007, when it wasreissued on Merge with three new tracks. More than an origin story, Duet forGuitars #2 is a beautiful, assured album that is sure to make lo-fi andAmericana aficionados swoon, to say nothing of M. Ward fans new and old.

180 gram incl. free digital download!

On 9 August, 2024, Merge Records reissues David Kilgour's A Feather in theEngine, remastered and pressed on vinyl for the very first time. Originallyreleased in 2002, A Feather in the Engine followed two full-bandefforts_1997's David Kilgour & the Heavy Eights and The Clean's 2001 albumGetaway_and is thus almost startling in its intimacy.Recorded at home and mostly alone (The Verlaines' Graeme Downesprovides lush string arrangements), Kilgour once called A Feather in theEngine "the most solo LP I've made." Interpolating his genius for guitar popthrough acoustic guitars and gorgeous instrumentals, its melodies unfoldgently, suggesting that the 13 songs here, written over the course of fouryears, were searching Kilgour as much as he was searching them.The dichotomy between A Feather in the Engine's pop songs and instrumentalsfascinates the ear, drawing the listener closer and closer to Kilgour's virtuosicguitar playing when his lyrics aren't imparting his breezy charm. The depthof style he achieves_the psych pop of "Today IsGonna Be Mine," the Velvet Underground-esque churn of "All the Rest,"the chamber folk of "The Perfect Watch"_is daunting; listening to it now,every song feels capable of generating a dozen playlists, or like the spawningpoint of a new microgenre.Perhaps anomalous upon release, it's A Feather in the Engine's instrumentalsthat feel weightiest in this regard now. "Sept. 98" and "Backwards Forwards,"respectively the opening and closing tracks of the album, are elegant,pastoral epics that call out into the yawning expanse, presaging the simmeringambient country of William Tyler and SUSS, while "Instra 2" pushes outthe boundaries of Eastern-influenced psychedelia.Lovingly remastered (and in some cases remixed) from the original tapes byTom Bell at Port Chalmers Recording Services, the vinyl reissue of A Featherin the Engine is a crucial opportunity to rediscover one of David Kilgour'sbest records, a handcrafted gem that perfects guitar pop's p...

Originally released in October 2000, The C...

"Look to the East, Look to the West", das neue Album von Camera Obscura, ist eine Offenbarung. Die von Tracyanne Campbell geleitete Band hat sich wieder mit dem Produzenten Jari Haapalainen zusammengetan und ein Album geschaffen, das daran erinnert, warum die langjährigen Fans sie seit Jahrzehnten heiß und innig lieben, und das gleichzeitig ihr bisher anspruchsvollstes Werk ist. Es ist auch das am härtesten umkämpfte Album in der Karriere von Camera Obscura. Nach dem Tod von Gründungsmitglied, Keyboarder und Freund Carey Lander im Jahr 2015 (an den der vorletzte Track "Sugar Almond" gerichtet ist), ging die Band in eine längere Pause. Sie blieben in Kontakt, aber ihr Status war ungewiss. Nachdem sie eingeladen worden waren, im Rahmen von Belle & Sebastians Kreuzfahrtfestival Boaty Weekender 2019 aufzutreten, kündigten sie ihre Rückkehr an. Donna Maciocia (Keyboards und Gesang) stieß bei diesen Shows zu den Gründungsmitgliedern Kenny McKeeve (Gitarre und Gesang), Gavin Dunbar (Bass) und Lee Thomson (Schlagzeug und Perkussion) und ist seitdem Songwriting-Partnerin von Campbell. Aufgenommen im selben Raum, in dem Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" schrieb, fühlt sich "Look to the East, Look to the West" groß an, eine Breitwand-Neuinterpretation des Camera Obscura-Sounds, bei der die Band paradoxerweise zu den Grundlagen zurückkehrte - es gibt keine Streicher- oder Bläserarrangements, der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Klavier, Synthesizern, Hammond-Orgel und Drumcomputern, und, was vielleicht am auffälligsten ist, die Gruppe hat den Hallschleier fallen lassen, der ihre früheren Alben charakterisierte. Der Hauch von Country und Soul, der Camera Obscuras barocke Interpretation von Popmusik so bittersüß macht, war noch nie so offensichtlich - die Gitarren schimmern in die Ferne, die Tasten spuken, und Campbells Stimme sucht nach dem Herzen, reflektiert über Liebe, Verlust und den Lauf der Zeit. "Look to the East, Look to the West" ist Camera Obscura in seiner besten und eindrucksvollsten Form, ein Album, das den emotionalen Kern des Hörers völlig neu ordnet und ihn gleichzeitig traurig und beschwingt zurücklässt. Der Katalog von Camera Obscura ist voll von Liedern, die Menschen als lebensverändernd bezeichnen, Lieder, die sie ihr ganzes Leben lang begleiten werden. "Look to the East, Look to the West" hat 11 davon zu bieten.

"Look to the East, Look to the West", das neue Album von Camera Obscura, ist eine Offenbarung. Die von Tracyanne Campbell geleitete Band hat sich wieder mit dem Produzenten Jari Haapalainen zusammengetan und ein Album geschaffen, das daran erinnert, warum die langjährigen Fans sie seit Jahrzehnten heiß und innig lieben, und das gleichzeitig ihr bisher anspruchsvollstes Werk ist. Es ist auch das am härtesten umkämpfte Album in der Karriere von Camera Obscura. Nach dem Tod von Gründungsmitglied, Keyboarder und Freund Carey Lander im Jahr 2015 (an den der vorletzte Track "Sugar Almond" gerichtet ist), ging die Band in eine längere Pause. Sie blieben in Kontakt, aber ihr Status war ungewiss. Nachdem sie eingeladen worden waren, im Rahmen von Belle & Sebastians Kreuzfahrtfestival Boaty Weekender 2019 aufzutreten, kündigten sie ihre Rückkehr an. Donna Maciocia (Keyboards und Gesang) stieß bei diesen Shows zu den Gründungsmitgliedern Kenny McKeeve (Gitarre und Gesang), Gavin Dunbar (Bass) und Lee Thomson (Schlagzeug und Perkussion) und ist seitdem Songwriting-Partnerin von Campbell. Aufgenommen im selben Raum, in dem Queen "Bohemian Rhapsody" schrieb, fühlt sich "Look to the East, Look to the West" groß an, eine Breitwand-Neuinterpretation des Camera Obscura-Sounds, bei der die Band paradoxerweise zu den Grundlagen zurückkehrte - es gibt keine Streicher- oder Bläserarrangements, der Schwerpunkt liegt auf Klavier, Synthesizern, Hammond-Orgel und Drumcomputern, und, was vielleicht am auffälligsten ist, die Gruppe hat den Hallschleier fallen lassen, der ihre früheren Alben charakterisierte. Der Hauch von Country und Soul, der Camera Obscuras barocke Interpretation von Popmusik so bittersüß macht, war noch nie so offensichtlich - die Gitarren schimmern in die Ferne, die Tasten spuken, und Campbells Stimme sucht nach dem Herzen, reflektiert über Liebe, Verlust und den Lauf der Zeit. "Look to the East, Look to the West" ist Camera Obscura in seiner besten und eindrucksvollsten Form, ein Album, das den emotionalen Kern des Hörers völlig neu ordnet und ihn gleichzeitig traurig und beschwingt zurücklässt. Der Katalog von Camera Obscura ist voll von Liedern, die Menschen als lebensverändernd bezeichnen, Lieder, die sie ihr ganzes Leben lang begleiten werden. "Look to the East, Look to the West" hat 11 davon zu bieten.

On July 28, 2023, Merge Records will release I Am Not There Anymore, The Clientele's first new record in six years. Over The Clientele's 32-year career, critics and fans have described their songs with words like "ethereal," "shimmering," "hazy," "pretty," and "fragile." Their singer, guitarist, and lyricist, Alasdair MacLean, has his own interpretation of the effect his music creates. "It's that feeling of not being there," he says. "What's really been in all the Clientele records is a sense of not actually inhabiting the moment your body is in." I Am Not There Anymore, regularly evokes what MacLean calls "the feeling of not being real." Many of the songs were inspired by MacLean's memories of the early summer in 1997, when his mother died, but also represent The Clientele pushing towards a new sonic frontier as a band, experimenting over the course of a three-year recording period. Of this stretching out, MacLean says, "We'd always been interested in music other than guitar music, like for donkey's years." This time out, he and bassist James Hornsey and drummer Mark Keen incorporated elements of post-bop jazz, contemporary classical, and electronic music. According to MacLean, "None of those things had found their way into our sound other than in the most passing way, in the faintest imprint." With those elements in the foreground, I Am Not There Anymore reasserts The Clientele's standing among the great stylists of pop music, deftly shifting from image to image, mood to mood, in a way that feels both new and classically them.

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

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.

Waxahatchee, the solo musical project of Katie Crutchfield, is named after a creek not far from her childhood home in Alabama and seems to represent both where she came from and where she’s going. Ivy Tripp drifts confidently from its predecessors and brings forth a more informed and powerful recognition of where Crutchfield has currently found herself. The lament and grieving for her youth seem to have been replaced with control and sheer self-honesty. “My life has changed a lot in the last two years, and it’s been hard for me to process my feelings other than by writing songs,” says Crutchfield. “I think a running theme [of Ivy Tripp] is steadying yourself on shaky ground and reminding yourself that you have control in situations that seem overwhelming, or just being cognizant in moments of deep confusion or sadness, and learning to really feel emotions and to grow from that.”

Recorded and engineered by Kyle Gilbride of Wherever Audio at Crutchfield’s home on New York’s Long Island—with drums recorded in the gym of a local elementary school—Ivy Tripp presents a more developed and aged version of Waxahatchee. “The title Ivy Tripp is really just a term I made up for directionless-ness, specifically of the 20-something, 30-something, 40-something of today, lacking regard for the complaisant life path of our parents and grandparents. I have thought of it like this: [Waxahatchee’s last album] Cerulean Salt is a solid and Ivy Tripp is a gas.”

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.

Shattered will be Reigning Sound's first album for Merge and the first full LP by the group since 2009's Love and Curses. The band?s principal songwriter/member is Greg Cartwright, who's been leading the shifting cast of characters since 2001. The album was recorded at Daptone's Brooklyn studio (where drummer Mikey works in the office) and masterfully engineered by Wayne Douglas. The recordings are warm and punchy, a mixed bag of rockers, ballads, and something in between. There are only 11 songs on the album, but the band reckons it's just right.

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...

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

2lp Is Green Swirl Vinyl In A Gatefold Jacket.Ten Years After Its Release, Wye Oak's Civilian Remains A Raw, Sinewy Punch Of A Record _ Bleak And Intense And Lonely And Self-Assured All At Once. The Album Unravels With The Sort Of Selfquestioning And Uncertainty That Come With Youth, And Its Specific Confidence In Unflinchingly Probing All Of Those Emotions, Feeling Them To Their Deepest Extent Even When It's Tearing You Apart At The Seams. When Andy Stack And Jenn Wasner Released Civilian, It Marked Both The Ascension And Death Of Wye Oak, Or At Least A Version Of It. Now, A Decade Later, Civilian + Cut All The Wires: 2009-2011 Delves Back Into That Pivotal Record And Adds A Lost Album Of Unreleased Tracks And Demos To Civilian's Universe. Civilian Was Beloved Upon Release, Complete With Late-Night Tv Appearances, Sold-Out Concerts, And Glowing Reviews; It Was The A.V. Club's Favorite Album Of 2011. Cut All The Wires: 2009-2011, A 12-Song Collection Of Rare And Unreleased Tracks And Demos Culled From The Wye Oak Archives, Is An Extension Of The Bruised And Aching Civilian. Sonic Paradoxes Abound: The Mellow "Sinking Ship" Is Preceded By The Wall-Of-Sound Grunginess That Roars Through "Half A Double Man." A Pared-Down Acoustic Daytrotter Live Session Of "Two Small Deaths" Dovetails Into The Jangling "Holy Holy" Demo. The Closing Lyrics Over The Frenetic, Screeching Feedback Of "Electricity" Lend The Anniversary Release Its Title.

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

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?