Merge Indierock | Alternative 152 Items

Repress of A Very She & Him Christmas, the wonderful collection of tunes from two of music's most beloved artists _ Zooey Deschanel (She) & M. Ward (Him)! Recorded and originally released in 2011, Deschanel and Ward let the songs speak for themselves, oftentimes recording them with only acoustic guitar and vocals. The result is an intimate holiday recording that deserves a place in your collection next to seminal Christmas albums by the likes of The Carpenters, Vince Guaraldi, The Beach Boys, and Elvis Presley. A portion of all proceeds from A Very She & Him Christmas are donated to 826 National, a non-profit for young people to ignite and channel their creativity, explore identity, advocate for themselves and their community, and achieve academic and professional success.

Red Splatter On Milky Vinyl Edition.
Includes original inner sleeve.

Merge Records is thrilled to release the 35th anniversary edition of Neurotica, the 1987 power pop and alternative rock opus by Redd Kross. This reissue includes the original album, remastered by JJ Golden (Pearl Jam, Thee Oh Sees), as well as 12 previously unreleased demos from the era (rediscovered recently in the archives of the band's original A&R guy, Geoffrey Weiss). The double vinyl edition-the album on translucent turquoise, the demos on translucent orange-arrives in a slick gatefold jacket.For Neurotica, brothers Jeff and Steven McDonald enlisted a grand crew of musicians that included guitarist Robert Hecker, keyboardist Paul Roessler (Screamers, Nervous Gender), and Roy McDonald (The Muffs) on drums. And in the producer's chair guiding the young bucks? Tommy Erdelyi, aka Tommy Ramone, one of the originators of punk rock melody. Unshakeable hooks on tracks like "Peach Kelli Pop" and title track "Neurotica" would inspire rave reviews at the time of the album's original release in 1987. The L.A. Times' Craig Lee wrote: "In an age when too many bands base their music either on calculated career moves or heavy-handed pretensions, Redd Kross is as breezy as a kiss in the wind, a band born to rock in a world that forgot how." Decades later, Pitchfork would revisit the album with a glowing write-up: "Pop culture nostalgia was to Redd Kross what LSD was to the Butthole Surfers; their music was delivered with just as furious a passion, but their love for Beatles-esque pop harmony shone through as much as any punk sensibility, and their Kinks influences, entirely free of irony, served as lyrical substance over their powerful, hi-octane hooks." Plain and simple, Neurotica is just a fantastic piece of art.

A person whose words are so potent that they cause the people and beings around them to vibrate is said to have a "silver tongue." It's apt, then, that Mackenzie Scott_who has spent the 2010s making boundarypushing pop music under her TORRES moniker_has chosen to call her fourth album, and first release on Merge, just that. Recorded at O'Deer in Brooklyn, New York, Silver Tongue is a full-scale realization of the world Scott has created over TORRES' last few albums. Even when singing in more subdued tones, Scott's voice is fervent, her lyrics stirring and unyielding as she draws from both the divine and the everyday. It's also the first TORRES record produced solely by Scott. After having shared production duties on her first three albums, the latter two alongside PJ Harvey collaborator Rob Ellis, she found the process liberating: "I made exactly the record I want, and it feels very `me.'" Silver Tongue fastidiously chronicles the impulses that make up desire_ from the dreamy first blushes of infatuation through the slightly terrifying wonder that accompanies connection with another. In between, Scott wrestles with the highs and lows of what "being in love" might mean over heady guitars and swirling synths. While potent vocal hooks punctuate songs like the sparkling "Dressing America," which combines New Wave glitter with hovering frustration, and the brooding "Good Grief," which gently pokes at the idea of fetishized sadness, the knottiness lurking underneath reflects Scott's realtime processing of her emotions while making the record. Silver Tongue's musical world is vast and at times seemingly infinite. Edge-of-the-world synths add gravity to the vulnerability of "Two of Everything," and refracted guitars offer a gnarled counterpoint to Scott's increased determination at the end of "Last Forest." On "Gracious Day," one of TORRES' most forthright love songs, Scott's voice hovers over a starlit landscape in a way that transcends the mundane and enters the otherworldly as she sings. TORRES' music has long navigated the space between the physical and the metaphysical, and Silver Tongue faces that conflict head-on, examining the ways in which the actions of others can stir up deep-seated feelings and seemingly alter the space in which one exists.

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.

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

For Beginners: The Best of M. Ward is a collection for M. Ward fans of anyvintage. Gathering together 14 tracks from across his Merge Recordsdiscography, including the newly recorded song "Cry," For Beginners is botha primer and a mixtape of favorites sequenced in a way that gives them newlife.Beginning with "Chinese Translation" and "Poison Cup" from 2006's Post-War, For Beginners drops in on Ward as he expands his prowess in the studio.His singular cover of David Bowie's "Let's Dance," from 2003'sTransfiguration of Vincent, breaks out into the exuberant "Never HadNobody Like You" from 2009's Hold Time. Rather than the neat evolutionaryline suggested by a chronological arrangement, what holds For Beginnerstogether is Ward's impeccable skill as a songwriter, which remains in focusas his sound expands from low-fi home recordings to electric, radio-readystompers.Serendipitously timed for release during Merge Records' 35-year anniversary,this celebration of one of the label's most beloved artists includes "Cry"_his first new recording on Merge since 2018_a stripped-down cover of theGodley & Creme pop classic featuring Melbourne, Australia's Folk BitchTrio.M. Ward on "Cry":"Cry" was recorded in a Tasmanian modern art museum called MONA. I sat at theend of a long hallway a few feet away from Anselm Kiefer's sculpture of a 20-foot-highstack of lead books, and standing to my left and right around a single microphone wereMelbourne's Folk Bitch Trio; we rehearsed and recorded "Cry" in about 30 minutes. Apleasure to add this song to a collection of some of my favorite memories of music-makingduring the first decade of record-creating with my friends at Merge.The song is the perfect capstone for a collection of this nature, summing upmuch of Ward's power as a musician: the richness he's capable ofachieving in sparse recordings, his knack for collaboration, and his abilityto see through to the soul of a meticulously crafted pop song_as mucha means of looking forw...

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...

Jade Hairpins waste no time fulfilling their second album's titular demand. From itsharmony-drenched opening note to its baroque-anthemic conclusion, Get Me the GoodStuff is positively loaded with musical ideas, an absurdist buffet of sound andaesthetic that comes with one hell of a floorshow as the Hairpins stack thoseideas higher and higher, almost daring them to crash to the floor. Instead, thoseelements_punksploitation, power pop, baggy, funk, and Italo disco are just sometouchstones_are not only held aloft, they defy gravity and convention.These pyrotechnics are, in true Jade Hairpins fashion, something of a sleight ofhand. While the music swaggers and gallops, Get Me the Good Stuff grapples withanxiety and self-doubt, obfuscating pain and alienation with sparkling wit and somestraight-up ravers. Get Me the Good Stuff opens with one of those, "Let It Be Me," inwhich Jonah Falco shouts lyrics about being alone with one's shortcomings againstguitars, synths, and harmonized vocals that are on the verge of closing in. The songis just over 90 seconds long, hitting with the gnarled-barb ferocity of punk and thegleeful insanity of theatrical art rock.It is, in other words, overwhelming. Or it would be if Jade Hairpins_Jonah Falcoand Mike Haliechuk_weren't remarkably nimble in their ability to bring unity tosounds by placing them in competition against each other. When those sounds areadjacent, like the glam and disco that saturate "Drifting Superstition," the thrill ofthose universes colliding in the heat of an absolutely filthy clavichord line turns itslyrics, about the habit of solving personal problems by ignoring them, into a winner'santhem on the order of Bowie or Hot Chocolate.Get Me the Good Stuff arcs towards unequivocal joy as Falco, Jade Hairpins' primarylyricist, breaks these cycles and attempts to run away with his dreams. The arc isroughly analogous to how the album came to fruition. Four years removed fromHarmony Avenue, an album of material that pr...

Anthology serves as a celebration of The Clean, a band whose influence extends so far beyond their New Zealand home that even if you have never heard of The Clean before, you have surely heard of some of the bands (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Superchunk, to name a few) who have been influenced by their unique blend of homemade garage rock, hook-filled melodies, and psychedelic experimentalism.

The album is a compilation of songs from across The Clean’s legendary musical career, which began in 1981 and continues today.

The Clean’s story is on-again/off-again purely by design. It suits the trio’s creative desires and keeps them clear of the machinery that threatened to interfere with that process from the moment they threatened to get awfully popular awfully quickly over thirty years ago. The Clean’s modern age has seen them splitting time and hemispheres: David Kilgour has a reputable solo catalog; Robert Scott has The Bats; and Hamish Kilgour has been an endearing and enduring fixture in New York City, playing with assorted combos.

180g vinyl.

Original inner sleeve.

AMOR DE DIAS, the long-term collaboration between Alasdair MacLean (THE CLIENTELE) and Lupe Núñez-Fernández (PIPAS), release their sophomore album "The House at Sea" on Merge Records. While their debut album ,Street of the Love of Days" took three years to make, "The House at Sea" was recorded and mixed in only nine days. As a result, the sessions centered around a smaller band-the twin Spanish guitars and voices of Núñez-Fernández and MacLean, and an occasional rhythm section of James Hornsey and Howard Monk, both formerly of THE CLIENTELE. The fast pace of the sessions resulted in a rawer, more urgent album, recorded by Brian O'Shaughnessy (MY BLOODY VALENTINE, PRIMAL SCREAM, DENIM, BIRDIE) on 1970s valve equipment with a feeling for space and a deliberately limited palette, all the elements of which had to count. ,The House at Sea" is a snapshot of a y...

Limited edition deluxe 6x10 inch vinyl box. This vinyl reissue is beautifully packaged in a 10 inch slip case box with 3 double gatefold sleeves & the original booklet in 10 inch size.

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)

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.

180gm LP+CD set features not only the album in its original European tracklisting but also a revelatory set of covers, rehearsals & B-sides
that reveal the earliest iterations of the group. And there's the previously unreleased "Sarah's Prelude," too, the lovely, lonely & abandoned opener of an album that stuns, even without the strings.

Translucent Pink Vinyl! A little drums, a little atmosphere, and it wails like this! Hotter than anything printed by a Hearst daily, the 12-song Version Especial of Redd Kross' Teen Babes from Monsanto - all art, no filler, direct from the source, pure from the tap - reissued by Merge Records. The album features specially designed packaging that allows you to choose between two different front covers with just a flip of the wrist! Experience vintage teenaged Redd Kross as presented by Monsanto: 100% genuine, chemically inspired brilliance fueled by processed junk food.

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

Four 180g black vinyl LPs housed in two gatefold jackets in a Tip-on cardboard slipcase. The vinyl edition includes a 20-page collector's booklet of lyrics, photos, comics, posters, and other ephemera. Includes digital download card.Unravelled: 1981-2002 shines a loving light on lo-fi pioneers Tall Dwarfs, the prized New Zealand duo of Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate. The collection, available as a 4-LP box set, compiles songs from Tall Dwarfs' two decades of recordings. TThe songs on Unravelled: 1981-2002 were curated by Alec Bathgate, who also designed the box set packaging; Chris Knox suffered a debilitating stroke in 2009 just as they had started work on a new album. The collection captures the different sides of the Tall Dwarfs in 55 songs. Though the band was an excuse for two good friends who lived in different cities to get together, drink beer, watch shitty old movies, and do some recording and drawing, Tall Dwarfs created music unlike anyone else. Capturing the initial excitement of creation and taking pride in what they did, Knox and Bathgate showed a whole generation of musicians what could be done at home on a 4-track and what magic could be made if you mixed pop melodies and hooks galore with homemade sounds.

Receives a 8.3 rating from Pitchfork and calls it best reissue.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary as a label, Merge are reissuing albums from their back catalog throughout 2014. First up is Lambchop's 2000 album Nixon on 180g vinyl.

Nixon was one of the final Lambchop albums to feature several members?their subsequent records had fewer people joining Wagner. "Nixon might've been the peak of the 14-person Lambchop," Kurt Wagner said in a press release. It was also the last Lambchop album to be recorded almost entirely analog.

In the five years since Will Butler released his debut album, Policy, he's toured the world both solo and as a member of Arcade Fire, released the Friday Night live album, recorded and released Arcade Fire's international #1 album Everything Now, earned his master's degree in public policy from Harvard, hosted a series of touring town halls on local issues (police contracts, prison reform, municipal paid sick leave, voting rights), and spent time raising his three children. He also found the time and inspiration to write and record a new album, Generations. "My first record, Policy, was a book of short stories," Butler says. "Generations is more of a novel_despairing, funny, a little bit epic_ A big chunk of this record is asking: What's my place in American history? What's my place in America's present? Both in general_as a participant, as we all are, in the shit that's going down_but, also extremely particularly: me as Will Butler, rich person, white person, Mormon, Yankee, parent, musician of some sort, I guess. What do I do? What can I do? The record asks that question over and over, even if it's not much for answers." While the songs on Generations contain their fair share of dread and regret, there is ultimately a lightness that shines through Butler's music. That brightness is at its most intense when he and his solo band_Miles Francis, Sara Dobbs, and Julie and Jenny Shore_perform on stage. Their electricity is palpable throughout Generations, with the bulk of the new songs having been worked out live. Wild synth production_gnarly bass synths with live drums_and anthemic backing vocals as on first single "Surrender" are punctuated by intimate, direct moments: Butler's voice cracking on "Fine" as he conjures his ancestors, and "Promised," a meditation on friendship, how lives are built together, and how and why they drift apart. Generations was recorded and produced by Butler in the basement of his home in Brooklyn. Tracking finished in March 2020, as New York closed down for the pandemic. Half the record was mixed in Montreal by longtime Arcade Fire engineer Mark Lawson, the other half by Brooklyn-based producer Shiftee (who is, incidentally, bandmate Julie Shore's husband and Will's brother-in-law). Generations opens a dialogue with the world. It posits answers_and deals with those answers being refuted. Ultimately, it navigates the conversation as a way to find the truth_ or at least a way forward.

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.